Robert Michael Ballantyne

The Pirate City Robert Michael Ballantyne

To say that Mrs Langley was dumbfounded is but a feeble way of expressing the state of her mind. Although a lady of great moral courage, and accustomed from infancy to self-control, she felt, on first beholding her timid little daughter, strongly disposed to seize Fatma by the hair of the head, and use her as a bludgeon wherewith to fell her Algerine mother; but, remembering the dignity of her position as, in some sort, a reflected representative of the British Empire in these parts, and also recalling to mind the aptitude of Algerine gentlemen to tie up in sacks and drown obstreperous Algerine ladies, she restrained herself, bit her lips, and said nothing. Some time within the first quarter of the present nineteenth century, a little old lady-some people would even have called her a dear little old lady-sat one afternoon in a high-backed chair beside a cottage window, from which might be had a magnificent view of Sicilian rocks, with the Mediterranean beyond.