A fresh outburst of screams from the crew summoned the captain. 'They
are putting out the long-boat,' was the cry; 'they will board us!'

'Madame! I entreat of you, shut yourself into the cabin.'

And the four maids in various stages of deshabille, adding their cries
to those of the sailors, tried to drag her in, but she looked about for
Arthur. 'Come with us, Monsieur,' she said quietly, for after all her
previous depressions and alarms, her spirit rose to endurance in the
actual stress of danger. 'Come with us, I entreat of you,' she said.
'You are named in our passports, and the treaties are such that neither
French nor English subjects can be maltreated nor enslaved by these
wretches. As the captain says, the danger is only in the first
attack.'

'I will protect you, Madame, with my life,' declared Arthur, drawing
his sword, as his cheeks and eyes lighted.

'Ah, put that away. What could you do but lose your own?' cried the
lady. 'Remember, you have a mother--'

The Genoese captain here turned to insist that Madame and all the women
should shut themselves instantly into the cabin. Estelle dragged hard
at Arthur's hand, with entreaties that he would come, but he lifted her
down the ladder, and then closed the door on her, Lanty and he being
both left outside.

'To be shut into a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the
fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a
hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion,