turning short upon Tier, he directed a tremendous blow directly between his eyes.  Jack saw the danger and dodged, falling backward to avoid a concussion which he knew would otherwise be fearful, coming as it would from one of the best forecastle boxers of his time.  The full force of the blow was avoided, though Jack got enough of it to knock him down, and to give him a pair of black eyes.  Spike did not stop to pick the assistant steward up, for another gun was fired at that very instant, and Mrs. Budd and Biddy renewed their screams.  Instead of pausing to kick the prostrate Tier, as had just before been his intention, the captain entered the tent.

A scene that was sufficiently absurd met the view of Spike, when he found himself in the presence of the females.  The widow had thrown herself on the ground, and was grasping the cloth of the sail on which the tent had been erected with both her hands, and was screaming at the top of her voice.  Biddy’s imitation was not exactly literal, for she had taken a comfortable seat at the side of her mistress, but in the way of cries, she rather outdid her principal.

“We must be off,” cried Spike, somewhat unceremoniously.  “The man-of-war is blazing away, as if she was a firin’ minute-guns over our destruction, and I can wait no longer.”

“I’ll not stir,” answered the widow—­“I can’t stir—­I shall be shot if I go out.  No, no, no—­I’ll not stir an inch.”

“We’ll be kilt!—­we’ll be kilt!” echoed Biddy, “and a wicket murther’t will be in that same man, war or no war.”

The captain perceived the uselessness of remonstrance at such a moment, and perhaps he was secretly rejoiced thereat; but it is certain that he whipped Rose up under his arm, and walked away with her, as if she had been a child of two or three years of age.  Rose did not scream, but she struggled and protested vehemently.  It was in vain.  Already the captain had carried her half the distance between the tent and the boat, in the last of which, a minute more would have deposited his victim, when a severe blow on the back of his head caused Spike to stumble, and he permitted Rose to escape from his grasp, in the effort to save himself from a fall.  Turning fiercely toward his assailant, whom he suspected to be one of his boat’s crew, he saw Tier standing within a few yards, levelling a pistol at him.

“Advance a step, and you’re a dead man, villain!” screamed Jack, his voice almost cracked with rage, and the effort he made to menace.

Spike muttered an oath too revolting for our pages; but it was such a curse as none but an old salt could give vent to, and that in the bitterness of his fiercest wrath.  At that critical moment, while Rose was swelling with indignation and wounded maiden pride, almost within reach of his arms, looking more lovely than ever, as the flush of anger deepened the colour in her cheeks, a fresh and deep report from one of the guns of the sloop-of-war drew all eyes in her