Robbery Under Arms by Rolf Boldrewood (epub read online books TXT) 📕

spite of her. She struggled fierce and wild for nigh a solid minute to clear herself from him, while her beautiful eyes moved about like I’ve seen a wild animal’s caught in a trap. Then, when she felt her strength wasn’t no account against his, she gave one piercing, terrible scream, so long and unnatural-like in the tone of it that it curdled my very blood.

I lifted up the window-sash quick, and jumped in; but before I made two steps Jim sprang past me, and raised his pistol.

“Drop her!” he shouts to Moran; “you hound! Leave go Miss Falkland, or by the living God I’ll blow your head off, Dan Moran, before you can lift your hand! How dare you touch her, you cowardly dog!”

Moran was that stunned at seeing us show up so sudden that he was a good bit took off his guard, cool card as he was in a general way. Besides, he’d left his revolver on the piano close by the armchair, where his grog was. Burke and Daly were no better off. They found Starlight and Warrigal covering them with their pistols, so that they’d have been shot down before they could so much as reach for their tools.

But Jim couldn’t wait; and just as Moran was rising on his feet, feeling for the revolver that wasn’t in his belt (and that I never heard of his being without but that once), he jumps at him like a wallaroo, and, catching him by the collar and waist-belt, lifts him clean off his feet as if he’d been a child, and brings him agen the corner of the wall with all his full strength. I thought his brains was knocked out, dashed if I didn’t. I heard Moran’s head sound against the stone wall with a dull sort of thud; and on the floor he drops like a dead man⁠—never made a kick. By George! we all thought he had killed him.

“Stash that, now,” says Burke; “don’t touch him again, Jim Marston. He’s got as much as’ll do him for a bit; and I don’t say it don’t serve him right. I don’t hold with being rough to women. It ain’t manly, and we’ve got wives and kids of our own.”

“Then why the devil didn’t you stop it?” says Starlight. “You deserve the same sauce, you and Daly, for sitting there like a couple of children, and letting that ruffian torment these helpless ladies. If you fellows go on sticking up on your own account, and I hear a whisper of your behaving yourselves like brutes, I’ll turn policeman myself for the pleasure of running you in. Now, mind that, you and Daly too. Where’s Wall and Hulbert?”

“They went to yard the horses.”

“That’s fair game, and all in the day’s work. I don’t care what you take or whom you shoot for that matter, as long as it’s all in fair fight; but I’ll have none of this sort of work if I’m to be captain, and you’re all sworn to obey me, mind that. I’ll have to shoot a man yet, I see, as I’ve done before now, before I can get attended to. That brute’s coming to. Lift him up, and clear out of this place as soon as you can. I’ll wait behind.”

They blundered out, taking Moran with them, who seemed quite stupid like, and staggered as he walked. He wasn’t himself for a week after, and longer too, and threatened a bit, but he soon saw he’d no show, as all the fellows, even to his own mates, told him he deserved all he got.

Old Jim stood up by the fireplace after that, never stirring nor speaking, with his eyes fixed on Miss Falkland, who had got back her colour, and though she panted a bit and looked raised like, she wasn’t much different from what we’d seen her before at the old place. The two Misses Whitman, poor girls, were standing up with their arms round one another’s necks, and the tears running down their faces like rain. Mrs. Whitman was lying back in her chair with her hands over her face cryin’ to herself quiet and easy, and wringing her hands.

Then Starlight moved forward and bowed to the ladies as if he was just coming into a ballroom, like I saw him once at a swell ball they gave for the hospital at Turon.

“Permit me to apologise, Mrs. Whitman, and to you, my dear young ladies, for the rudeness of one of my men, whom I unhappily was not able to restrain. I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Whitman, and I hope you will express my regret that I was not in time to save you from the great annoyance to which you have been subjected.”

“Oh! I shall be grateful all my life to you, and so, I’m sure, will Mr. Whitman, when he returns; and oh! Sir Ferdinand, if you and these two good young men, who, I suppose, are policemen in plain clothes, had not come in, goodness only knows what would have become of us.”

“I am afraid you are labouring under some mistake, my dear madam. I have not the honour to be Sir Ferdinand Morringer or any other baronet at present; but I assure you I feel the compliment intensely. I am sure my good friends here, James and Richard Marston, do equally.”

Here the Misses Whitman, in spite of all their terror and anxiety, were so tickled by the idea of their mother mistaking Starlight and the Marstons for Sir Ferdinand and his troopers that they began to laugh, not but what they were sober enough in another minute.

Miss Falkland got up then and walked forward, looking just the way her father used to do. She spoke to Starlight first.

“I have never seen you before, but I have often heard of you, Captain Starlight, if you will allow me to address you by that title. Believe me when I say that by your conduct tonight you have won