John Conroy Hutcheson

“ The Irishman’s face flamed with rage and anger. “Kill them, sor!” cried he, springing to his feet from the chair in which he had been seated alongside the colonel, whose injured limb he had been carefully attending to again all the while, his reddish beard and moustache bristling, and his steel-blue eyes flashing out veritable sparks, it seemed of fire. “Faith, killin’s too good for ’em, sure, the haythen miscreants! I’d boil ’em alive, sor, or roast ’em in the stoke-hold, begorrah, if I had me own way with ’em. ”

“ They were as watchful as ourselves, though, for as Cato, anon, trying to creep forwards so as to release the French sailors confined under the main hatchway, had a narrow escape of his life, a heavy spar being suddenly let down by the run almost on top of his head when he ventured out on the exposed deck. This was at midnight, when the second mate, Basseterre, and Don Miguel, with the French sailor Duval, relieved Captain Alphonse and me, taking the middle watch. ”

“ Besides, my friend, the good Cato is dead now, and the useless sacrifice of your life, of both our lives probably, if you go forwards, and perhaps too the life of the little one, who cannot even help herself, will never bring back the breath to the brave lad’s body! No, no, colonel, I promise you,’ said he, at the same time kissing the tips of his fingers and elevating his shoulders, in his French fashion, ‘We will do something better than that. ”