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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75314 ***
+
+Transcriber’s Note: Obvious printing errors have been corrected. Original
+period spelling, though, has been maintained. There are two CHAPTER
+XXIIIs.
+
+
+
+
+                           EMMANUEL APPADOCCA;
+                                   OR,
+                              BLIGHTED LIFE.
+
+                        A TALE OF THE BOUCANEERS.
+
+                                    BY
+                             MAXWELL PHILIP.
+
+                  Φεῦ. ὦ μῆτερ ἥτις ἐκ τυραννικῶν δόμων
+                  δούλειον ἦμαρ εἶδες, ὡς πράσσεις κακῶς,
+                  ὅσονπερ εὖ ποτ᾽· ἀντισηκώσας δέ σε
+                  φθείρει θεῶν τις τῆς πάροιθ᾽ εὐπραξίας.
+
+                                               EURIPIDES.
+
+                             IN TWO VOLUMES.
+                                 VOL. II.
+
+                                 LONDON:
+                       CHARLES J. SKEET, PUBLISHER,
+                 10, KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS.
+
+                                MDCCCLIV.
+
+
+
+
+EMMANUEL APPADOCCA;
+
+OR,
+
+BLIGHTED LIFE.
+
+A TALE OF THE BOUCANEERS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+    “O conspiracy!
+    Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night
+    When evils are most free?”
+
+                                        JULIUS CÆSAR.
+
+
+The small cutter that was carrying Agnes and the other captives held her
+course towards the land.
+
+It could not but occur to the priest and to his ward, unaccustomed as
+they were to encounter dangers, that their position was one which was in
+itself highly, if not imminently perilous. There they were, thrown in an
+open vessel on the ocean, and sent on a voyage which was to consist of
+three days’ or more beating up against the wind and the waves, while
+their little vessel was every moment subjected to the accidents of a very
+tedious and difficult navigation.
+
+These thoughts were the more forcibly thrust upon the priest, when after
+the lapse of a day, and on the approach of night, it was to be perceived
+that no progress towards the land had been made. The little cutter had
+tossed about on the high billows, had tacked and re-tacked, still at
+the close of the day she was not much nearer the end of her voyage than
+when she was thrown off by the schooner. Under the influence of these
+thoughts, the priest lost much of his cheerful equanimity. He looked
+concerned, and his conversation did not flow so freely as it was wont to
+do. Perhaps this was a happy accident for Agnes; for that young lady,
+apparently disinclined to speak or to listen, still leaned over the side
+of the cutter, and, from time to time, cast a side-long look at the
+schooner that was sailing away in another direction.
+
+The first night of the voyage came, and augmented still more the alarm
+of the priest. He felt his isolation among the other men whose pursuits
+and habits were different from his, and now freely allowed his mind to
+conjure up fears of assassination and robbery. To add to his suspicions,
+the sailors of the captured ship seemed to herd closely together, and to
+sympathise but little with their fellow passengers. The master fisherman,
+true to his promise, paid the greatest attention both to the sailing of
+his little vessel, and to the safety and comparative comfort of those who
+had been placed under his especial care.
+
+When the sun, that true and never disordered timekeeper of the tropics,
+had on the next morning illumined the ocean, the first thought and first
+action of Agnes, was to cast her eyes around and survey the horizon.
+Nothing was to be seen; the Black Schooner had disappeared. Scarcely
+believing her eyes, she looked and looked again; it was as the eyes
+made it out, and not as the wish would have it; there was no vessel to
+be seen. Dejected, wretched, sad, and disappointed, she suspended her
+further survey, and began again to contemplate the blue waters that was
+rushing pass the jumping cutter. A sad feeling was that of Agnes, the
+feeling which arises when we lose the last memento of some dear and
+cherished creature: the memento which, in the absence of the object that
+it recalls to our memory, receives, perhaps, the same amount of worship
+as the being itself which it represents. Whatever be the nature of such
+a token, it is all the same: a golden toy, a lock of hair, a favourite
+pin, a prayer-book, these are amply sufficient to strike up within us
+the active feelings of grief-clothed happiness, and to awake anew the
+recollections of periods whose real and unbroken felicity never permitted
+us to contemplate or fear a change. To lose one of these imaging toys,
+is the breaking away of the last link that binds us, in one way at
+least, to the objects which they symbolize. On such sad occasions the
+heart is stricken with a prophetic fear, which like the canker-worm ever
+afterwards eats deeply, and more deeply into our spirits, until there is
+nothing more to eat away.
+
+Agnes felt this when she could no longer see the Black Schooner. As long
+as she could gaze on the vessel, there was still a little consolation,
+or, perhaps her grief was still subdued, but when that vessel disappeared
+from her view, it reached its height and preyed upon her without
+mitigation. Who has not stood on the sea-washed strand and watched the
+careering ship that was bearing away father, lover, or child, and felt
+his tears restrained as long as a waving handkerchief could convey the
+ardour of a last “farewell,” but who, a few moments after, experienced
+the bitter misery that followed, when the ship had disappeared from
+the view, when an unsympathising horizon had veiled in silence and in
+obscurity his lost and lonely friends, and his damp spirits were left
+free to recoil upon themselves? What person is there, who in the hey-day
+of existence, at the age when the heart is fresh, and the spirits are
+high, when necessity intervened to drive him away from among friends and
+relatives, has not felt the pang of separation more and more as every
+familiar object was, one by one, left behind, and gradually disappeared
+from his view.
+
+“Agnes, you are sad,” said the priest, who notwithstanding his own
+anxiety, and disquiet of mind, could not but mark the unsettled and
+unhappy state of his ward.
+
+“Not very, sir,” the young lady replied, “though our present condition is
+not the most pleasant.”
+
+“Truly not,” answered the priest, “still we must hope that we shall
+soon arrive on land. Recollect, that, although we are not now very
+comfortable, we are still on a voyage towards home, and that thought
+ought to support us under greater inconveniences than the present.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Agnes, “we are returning home, and that is a comfort....
+How beautiful this water is,” she continued, falling naturally into that
+romantic train which was necessarily called forth by the present state
+of her sentiments, “how remarkably beautiful are those blue waters, and
+how pure and transparent is that thin foam which now fringes yon crystal
+wave!”
+
+“All the works of the Creator are beautiful, my child,” answered the
+priest.
+
+“Yes,” continued Agnes, “and the ocean is so still and quiet: who could
+ever imagine that it contained so many terrible monsters.”
+
+“True;” remarked the priest, “surfaces, my child, are, alas! too
+frequently deceptive. For instance, take the appearance of the ocean this
+beautiful and blessed morning; it looks as pure and unspotted as when
+the sun first dawned upon it on the fourth day of creation; still, how
+many murderous deeds have there not been done upon it since that time,
+and over how many wrecks of human fabrics has it not rolled? If we could
+penetrate its depth, and see its bed, we should probably behold the
+skeletons of the fierce Caraibs that first inhabited this part of the
+world, and their rude instruments of war, blended confusedly together
+with the bones and elaborate weapons of their more polished conquerors;
+while the large fishes that still hold possession of their medium of
+existence, now peer with meaningless eyes into the naked skulls, or
+rummage for their food the rotting wrecks of the bristling war-vessels
+that once rode these seas.”
+
+Agnes felt thankful for this long and solemn observation, which gave her
+time to think on one of the vessels that had not as yet become a wreck
+beneath the ocean.
+
+After a pause, the priest continued:
+
+“This basin over which we are now sailing, my dear Agnes, may have once
+been high and dry land, and the islands which are scattered about in this
+horse-shoe fashion, may have been—.”
+
+“Stop, sare,” interrupted the master fisherman, who the reader may
+recollect was constituted the captain and proprietor of the cutter
+when it was dispatched from the schooner, and who was now sitting
+between Agnes and the priest, steering the boat, “stop, sare,” he said,
+endeavouring to make himself understood in English, “me wees hear
+something they say there,” and he made an almost imperceptible sign
+towards the bows of the cutter, where the sailors of the captured ship
+were sitting together, and speaking among themselves in a sort of half
+whisper. The master fisherman’s attention had been attracted towards them
+by a few words which he had overheard, and being suspicious lest they
+should presume upon their numerical strength, and make an attempt to take
+possession of the cutter, he was anxious to make himself acquainted with
+their plans in order to anticipate them.
+
+“We will never get ashore at this rate, Bill,” said one sailor to another.
+
+“I’ll be d—n—d, if we will,” answered the other, “what the devil does
+that d—n—d jack Spaniole know about steering a boat.”
+
+“Don’t speak so loud,” whispered another.
+
+“He don’t understand English, and I don’t care if he did,” answered the
+other.
+
+“Yes, I think it is a devilish hard case,” joined in another, “that we
+should be obliged to sit here and let that fellow, who don’t know a jib
+from a paddle-box, steer the boat.”
+
+“What do you say if we take the management, my hearties?” inquired a
+lean, long-featured individual.
+
+“Hum,” groaned one.
+
+“Suppose we do?” inquired another.
+
+They whispered still lower among themselves for a moment.
+
+“I say, you sir—you sir, keep her off, will you, don’t you see the wind
+is right a-head?” shouted one to the master fisherman, in a tone of
+derision.
+
+“Keep her head up, Mr. Spaniole, d’ye hear? don’t you see the wind is
+turning her round?” cried another.
+
+These insults seemed lost on the master fisherman, for he took them with
+marvellous fortitude.
+
+“My good men,” said the priest, “forbear: consider where we are, and
+under what circumstances we are placed; pray, do no not endeavour to
+cause any quarrel.”
+
+“Mind your own business, parson, will you?” shouted a bolder sailor than
+the others, “it is you who already prevents us going any faster; so, if
+you don’t wish to be sent to Davy Jones, hold your tongue.”
+
+The priest became now quite alarmed:
+
+“Do not answer them,” he whispered to the fisherman.
+
+“Hollo! there; ready about,” continued one of the sailors, apparently
+bent on provoking a quarrel, “ready about,” and he proceeded to let go
+the jib-sheet.
+
+The master fisherman now quickly stood up, with the marks of anger
+already becoming visible in his eyes.
+
+“Stop, or me kill you,” he cried, while he levelled one of the pistols,
+with which he was armed, at the audacious sailor.
+
+“Kill him, will you,” simultaneously shouted two of the sailors, and
+rushed together towards the stern of the cutter, “kill him, will you, you
+cut-throat Spaniard?”
+
+The master fisherman stood firm where he was. He now held both of the
+pistols, which Appadocca had given him, and raising them to a small
+distance before him, awaited the two men.
+
+Undeterred by the weapons, they rushed on.
+
+“Stop for your life!” cried the master fisherman, highly excited.
+
+“Be reasonable men,” cried the priest, as he also stood up to defend
+himself.
+
+The men came on;—flash,—a report—and the bullet pierced the foremost
+one. He fell into the bottom of the cutter, and rolled over the master
+fisherman’s other man, who had been wrapped in sleep in that part from
+the very moment that he had got into the cutter.
+
+“Hon!” he groaned and awoke, as the sailor that was shot rolled heavily
+upon him, when, seeing the blood, he jumped up.
+
+The shrieks of Agnes, the fierce and deep Spanish oaths of the master
+fisherman at once told him how matters stood. He grasped the first of the
+sailors that came within his reach, and wrestled with him. Both fell into
+the bottom of the cutter, and rolled about on the ballast.
+
+The quarrel had now assumed a serious aspect; furious at the death of
+their comrade, the other sailors rushed to the stern of the cutter. The
+master fisherman discharged the other pistol: it told, another sailor
+fell. But the shot was no sooner fired, than one of the two other
+sailors, closed with the master fisherman. They wrestled: each pressed
+successively his adversary on the side of the cutter, endeavouring to
+throw him overboard; but they were well matched: their strength was
+equal: now, the master fisherman was down, and seemed to be about to be
+thrown overboard; now he had the sailor down in the same position. Both
+fought with desperation, and clung with the pertinacity of iron to the
+side of the vessel. The cutter, having no one to steer it, had flown into
+the wind, its sails were flapping, and its boom was swinging violently,
+from one side to the other. The master fisherman was now down; over,
+over, the sailor was gradually pressing him; his grasp began to relax:
+he was bending farther towards the water; the sailor raised himself a
+little, so that he might have a better purchase to strike the final blow:
+as he did so, the boom swung violently, and struck him on the temple,
+with a great splash, he fell a yard or two into the water. The master
+fisherman quickly rose, and went to the assistance of the priest, who had
+met the attack of the remaining sailor, and was now holding him down in
+the bottom of the cutter. The master fisherman clutched a stone, and in
+his passion, was going to dash out the brains of the prostrate sailor.
+
+“Hold!” cried the priest, “no more violence: bring a rope, and let us tie
+him.”
+
+The master fisherman drew back his arm, and let fall the stone. Even in
+his fury he felt the force of his natural veneration. He brought a rope,
+and tied the sailor down.
+
+“Do the same to the other,” said the priest, now almost exhausted by his
+effort, “tie him too.”
+
+The remaining sailor, who was still languidly rolling at the bottom of
+the cutter, with the fisherman, was next pinioned.
+
+“See now to the wounded,” said the priest, who now, when his first terror
+was over, displayed great presence of mind.
+
+The two men who had been shot were examined. They still breathed,
+although their wounds were very serious.
+
+The attention of the priest was now turned towards Agnes, who sat almost
+petrified with fear in the place where she was.
+
+“Thank God, this danger is also past,” said the priest to her, “I must be
+guilty of some grievous sin, indeed,” continued the good father, “to have
+thus drawn down upon us the chastisement of Providence. Twice have we
+passed through bloodshed and death, and who knows what new perils we may
+still have to encounter before we reach Trinidad.”
+
+“Yes: and when shall we reach it? It looks as if we were never to get
+back,” and Agnes was overwhelmed by a multiplicity of different feelings.
+
+“Let me see,” said the priest, “I think it would be easier to proceed
+straight towards it, than to be beating about on these seas.”
+
+“Have you any object to go to Granada in preference to any other place?”
+he inquired of the master fisherman, who had now adjusted the sails of
+the cutter, and resumed the tiller.
+
+“No, he had not,” was the reply: “he was endeavouring to make that island
+because it was the nearest land indicated to him by the pirate captain.”
+
+“Would it not be easier to sail at once to Trinidad?” again asked the
+priest.
+
+“Most decidedly,” was the answer; “the distance was greater, it was
+true,” added the master fisherman, but that was overbalanced by the
+fairness of the wind, because they would then be able to sail with a free
+sheet and should gain Trinidad within an infinitely shorter space of time
+than it would take to make Granada, by beating up against the wind from
+the position in which they then were.
+
+“Then let us steer to Trinidad,” said the priest.
+
+“Very well,” replied the master fisherman.
+
+The cutter was kept off, the sheets and tacks were slackened, and the
+little vessel, now feeling the full force of the wind began to tear
+through the water.
+
+Away, away, it went. During day and during night the master fisherman sat
+gravely at the tiller; neither fatigue nor want of sleep could induce him
+to entrust for a moment the command of the little vessel to his man; “He
+had taken an oath,” he said to the priest, when he requested him to take
+some rest.
+
+It was on a beautiful morning when the priest and Agnes, on awaking from
+their uncomfortable slumbers, beheld themselves within the Gulf of Paria.
+
+They looked with highly-pleased astonishment at the master fisherman, who
+wearied and worn, still sat at the rudder. He returned the glance with
+the same visible contentment and pleasure.
+
+“We are indebted to you, my good fisherman, for your incomparable conduct
+towards us. We shall scarcely be ever able to show you sufficient
+gratitude,” he said.
+
+“Not at all: we must deal well towards those who conduct themselves in a
+proper manner to us,” said the fisherman, in the best manner he could;
+“now I am at home again; I am on my own gulf,—where do you wish to be
+landed, sir?”
+
+“Land us wherever you please: we will be always able to make our way to
+Cedros,” answered the priest.
+
+“To Cedros? I shall take you there at once,” answered the master
+fisherman, and then turned the cutter’s head to that part of the island.
+
+“Agnes,” whispered the priest, “I have always found much that is to be
+admired in the humbler classes; they require but proper treatment, as all
+other men do.”
+
+“This seems to be a very worthy man,” replied Agnes, more in respect to
+the priest than from any desire to converse, for Agnes had ceased to be
+over communicative since the capture of the vessel in which she had been
+a passenger.
+
+The sugar-cane fields arose more conspicuous and beautiful to the view
+as the vessel drew nearer and nearer to the land; and within a few hours
+Agnes arrived on the plantation and was locked in the affectionate
+embrace of her aged father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+    “And winds of all the corners kissed your sails
+    To make your vessel nimble.”
+
+                                          CYMBELINE.
+
+    “Had not their bark been very slow of sail.”
+
+                              COMEDY OF ERRORS.
+
+
+The grey dawn of the morning found the crew of the man-of-war busily at
+work. The unwieldly machines clanked and reclanked as the sturdy sailors
+heartily threw their whole strength upon them, in raising the heavy sails
+and weighty anchor.
+
+As soon as there was sufficient light to see, watches, who were provided
+with the most powerful telescopes, were sent up to the very top of the
+tall masts to survey the horizon, in order to discover, if possible,
+the pirate vessel, which was supposed to be hovering about at no great
+distance.
+
+After a careful survey, the report was made, that far out to leeward
+there was a sail—that it was apparently a vessel which was lying to.
+
+“Look again,” shouted out the officer of the watch, “what is she like? is
+she square-rigged?”
+
+“No, your honor.”
+
+“What sort of a thing is she?”
+
+“She looks to be a fore-and-aft, your honor.”
+
+Willmington was called, and, on being required to do so, gave the best
+description he could of the pirate vessel.
+
+“It is likely the same vessel,” the officer remarked, after he had heard
+Willmington.
+
+“Cheerily, men, look active.”
+
+The sailors scarcely required any exhortation. They went through their
+work with more than ordinary good-will. In the first place, the idea
+of something like active service excited them, for they felt oppressed
+under the ennui of leisurely sailing from one port to another; and they
+longed to chastise the rash temerity of those degraded wretches who had
+the insolence to make an attempt of rescuing a prisoner from their lordly
+ship.
+
+The majestic structure, therefore, was soon put in motion, and was now
+to be seen sailing magnificently before the wind. Gradually it gained
+on what was at first distant and obscure. As the ship drew nearer and
+nearer to it, the vessel grew more and more distinct, and could now be
+clearly made out as a long, low, rakish schooner. It was, in fact, the
+Black Schooner.
+
+The huge vessel-of-war approached nearer and still nearer, but the
+schooner remained still stationary where she was. The sailors of the
+man-of-war prepared for action with enthusiasm. They could easily judge,
+from the shape of the schooner, and its peculiar rig, that she was the
+vessel of a pirate, if not of the pirate of whom they had so often heard.
+They saw their prize before them. The schooner, they thought, must yield
+to the superior strength of the man-of-war, and her conquest would be
+the easiest thing in the world. Besides, the little vessel could not
+but perceive their approach, and as she did not sail away, they argued
+there must needs be some cause, either mutiny or some other disagreement
+on board, which neutralized the authority of those in power, and which,
+consequently, would make her a still easier prize. They prepared their
+guns, on this account, with the keenest alacrity and lightness of heart,
+for men are always the more enthusiastic and brave when they are pretty
+well assured that they can command success.
+
+The large vessel sailed down on the small schooner, that was still lying
+to, the standard of England was already waving from the spanker, the men
+were standing at their several stations, and the commander himself, who
+had now come on deck, was anxiously waiting until he came within gun-shot
+of the schooner, to signal her to surrender. The ship drew still closer,
+the order was given to make ready to fire, when ... like the shadowy
+fleetness of a dream, the masts of the Black Schooner at once became
+clothed in canvass, the black ensign with the cross bones and skull ran
+up the line on her gaff in chilling solemnity, while on the top of her
+raking masts floated two long pendant flags as red as blood, and the
+sharp vessel began to glide like a serpent silently over the waters.
+
+Fearful of losing his prize, which was well-nigh within his reach, the
+commander of the ship-of-war observing the movements of the little
+vessel, quickly gave the order to fire. A loud and rending report of
+several guns at once echoed over the waves, and the shots dipped, and
+dipped, and dipped again, and fell harmless within a short distance of
+the schooner. The flag of the pirate schooner was lowered and hoisted,
+lowered and hoisted, lowered and hoisted again, in derision, as she
+steadily held her course. Another discharge ... and the shots sank as
+harmless as before: again the pirates lowered and hoisted their flags.
+
+Every sail was set on the unwieldly ship, and her enormous studding-sails
+covered her yards and booms. Her hull could scarcely be seen, under the
+vast sheets that shaded her. The waves boiled up on each side of her
+bows, and like a whale, furious with a wound, she left behind her a wake
+of foam.
+
+The Black Schooner glided along like a slender gar. Confident of the
+fleetness of their vessel, the pirates seemed inclined to mock the large
+and threatening fabric that was pursuing them. Ever and anon they changed
+their tack, and the vessel itself, which seemed to anticipate their
+wishes, played gracefully on the blue surface.
+
+When all the ship’s studding-sails were set, and she was sailing rapidly
+before the wind, they would suddenly change their course, and draw their
+obedient vessel as close as possible up to the wind. As soon again as the
+man-of-war went through the labour of taking in her superfluous sails,
+again they would change their course. Now they shortened their sails, and
+then, as the ship gained on them, they had them up again as if by magic.
+Now they sailed away to a great distance, and then tacked and returned as
+if to meet and brave the pursuers; all the time, however, they kept out
+of the reach of the man-of-war’s guns with astonishing precision.
+
+The chase continued thus the whole day, until night came and veiled
+pursuer and pursued.
+
+Vexed with disappointment, and irritated by the taunts of the pirates,
+the commander of the man-of-war ordered the sails to be taken in, and the
+vessel to be luffed up into the wind. The order was immediately obeyed,
+and the crew, in thorough disgust, went away from the station to which
+they had that morning rushed with so much buoyancy.
+
+It was, indeed, sufficient, to try the moral fortitude of the
+most philosophical. On one side there was a large heavy vessel,
+of size sufficiently huge to have crushed two such vessels as the
+pirate-schooner, from mere contact: on the other was that small and light
+vessel, which could be so easily destroyed, but which, notwithstanding
+the most eager desire on the part of the commander and crew to capture
+her, had so tantalizingly escaped them. After the continued chase of
+a whole day, the large vessel had proved as impotent and as incapable
+of carrying out their wishes, as a piece of floating timber; and
+what was still more galling, they had, in addition, been exposed to
+the most annoying derision of the pirates. Worse again, there was no
+probability of her being able, at any time, to overtake the schooner;
+for it was too clear that their large vessel could not sail so fast as
+she. The only chance of their capturing her was, in their taking her
+by surprise, an event which could not be reasonably calculated upon,
+when the pirates exhibited so much prudence and precision. The sailors,
+therefore, doggedly retired to their respective cots, muttering all the
+while, strong and complicated oaths against the individual who built the
+fast-sailing schooner.
+
+As for the commander himself, he bore the disappointment with the less
+dumb patience, as the discipline of the ship did not bind him down to
+so much silence, as it did the crew. He fumed only as seamen can fume,
+and vowed, in the extremity of his anger, that he would perpetrate,
+Heaven only knew, what extent of cruelty,—which he never meant,—upon the
+insolent pirates, if he once had them in his power.
+
+When calmer moments, however, succeeded to his wrathful feelings of
+disappointment, he began to think deeply on the course which it was
+prudent to adopt, in order to have a probable chance of capturing or
+destroying the schooner. The batteries and the crew of the ship, he
+rightly concluded, were of no use against an enemy that was sufficiently
+wise and experienced always to keep beyond the range of his guns; and, as
+for overtaking the schooner, it was a matter of absolute impossibility.
+He could decide on no clear plan. He, therefore, resolved, in that
+conjuncture, to sail about in those parts under little canvass, and trust
+to accident for a means of capturing the pirate vessel. The ship was,
+therefore, kept under only a part of her sails that whole night, and she
+moved almost imperceptibly.
+
+At the first dawn of the next morning, watches were sent up the masts,
+and the horizon was carefully surveyed in search of the enemy which
+night had shrouded. Nothing was to be seen. The watch was, nevertheless,
+continued.
+
+About four hours after sunrise, a vessel could be barely distinguished
+on the horizon. It was steering in the direction of the man-of-war. It
+rapidly approached, and as it drew nearer and nearer, it was discovered
+to be a long, low, sharp-built brig, with white port-holes, apparently a
+Mediterranean trader. She sailed so fast, that within three hours from
+the time when she was first discovered, she was opposite the large ship.
+She passed her at a short distance, but beyond the range of her guns.
+
+The man-of-war immediately hoisted her ensign as a signal to the brig to
+show her colours; in answer to this signal, the strange vessel hoisted
+the Mexican flag.
+
+The extraordinary speed of the strange brig, her low hull, the more than
+ordinary symmetry of her make and rigging, could not pass unobserved.
+They at once attracted the notice, and called forth the admiration of
+the sailors on board of the man-of-war; and leaning carelessly on the
+bulwarks, they were studying the beautiful brig before them, and were
+viewing her with the delight that seamen experience when they see a fine
+vessel.
+
+“If that ain’t that ere identical pirate customer as we chased
+yesterday,” said an old grey-headed sailor, gravely, as he stood looking
+at her, “it’s one of the same sort, I know.”
+
+“What are you saying, now,” asked a young man next to him.
+
+“Why, the vessel we chased yesterday was a fore-and-aft schooner, and
+this one is a brig: where are your eyes?”
+
+“Is this all you know?” inquired the old tar, indifferently, with a
+slight satirical smile. “Well, let me tell you, younker, that them ere
+customers change their skins, just like snakes, by G—d; and these eyes of
+mine that you inquire of, winked at a sou-wester long before you knowed
+what was what, my boy,” and the old seaman walked away to attend to some
+passing occupation, while, from time to time, he cast a stealthy look
+from under his spreading straw hat, at the vessel he seemed to hold in
+suspicion.
+
+This feeling towards the Mexican brig was not confined to the common
+sailors alone: all seamen have an eye for the beautiful in ships. The
+commander himself was struck by the remarkably fine proportions of the
+vessel. He interrupted his habitual walk to gaze at her.
+
+“A fine craft that is, Charles,” said he to his son.
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the latter, “a very beautiful model.”
+
+“Look at her run, what a beautiful stern, and how sharp at the bows!”
+continued the old gentleman, with enthusiasm.
+
+“And how remarkably fast she sails, too,” rejoined Charles.
+
+“Hum!” remarked the old gentlemen, “she seems very light to be a trader.”
+
+“It strikes me so, too,” replied Charles.
+
+“The merchant who could have built that vessel to carry cocoa and coffee,
+must have been a very great fool, Charles,” continued the commander,
+still looking at the tidy brig that was sailing away magnificently before
+him.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“I begin to have my suspicions, Charles,” resumed the commander, after a
+pause, “that Mexican flag protects many a rascal: I shall make the fellow
+heave to.”
+
+So saying, he ordered a gun to be fired, as a signal to the brig to lie
+to. The report of the huge machine of destruction rang over the waters,
+and the shot skipped the waves and sank. The suspicious brig paid no
+attention to it, but held her course, and, in four hours’ time, went out
+of sight, leaving the commander in now stronger suspicion with regard to
+her nature and character, and, in a furious rage into which he was thrown
+by the cool contempt with which his command was treated. He looked at the
+brig that was leaving his vessel behind, as if the latter was at anchor,
+and fretted, when he considered that his large ship was unable to enforce
+his order on account of its comparative slowness. With greater impatience
+than reason he looked only at what was, for the moment, a defect in the
+large man-of-war, and forgot, at the time, that if the two small vessels
+which had so mortified him, those two consecutive days, had over his ship
+the accident of speed, she, in her turn, possessed the infinitely more
+serviceable advantage of greater strength and more heavy metal.
+
+“Well, younker,” said the same old sailor of the morning, to the same
+young man who had doubted his penetration, “well, younker, what do you
+think of that ere customer now, eh? He has the wind in his maintopsail,
+has’nt he? and seems to have plenty of pride of his own, and won’t speak
+to nobody. Ay, ay, them customers, never throw away words or shots, I
+know. Come, younker, I’ll give you another wrinkle,” continued the old
+tar.
+
+“Well, let’s have it?”
+
+“Mark my word,” continued the old sailor, in a low and mysterious tone,
+“if you don’t see that ere customer again, before long, my name is not
+what it is, I know,” and winking impressively on his hearers, he rolled
+away chuckling with self-satisfaction.
+
+The man-of-war continued there the remaining portion of that day and the
+night which ensued: nothing happened, during that period of time, to
+relieve the longing anxiety of the man-of-war’s people.
+
+The next morning the usual watches were again sent up the masts. About
+noon, a vessel came in sight. It was steering, like the one of the
+previous day, directly towards the man-of-war; and seemed to approach her
+with an equal degree of speed. As she drew nearer and nearer, she was
+made out to be a light brigantine, such as those that are to be seen on
+the Mediterranean. Strange, however, the hull and make seemed to be the
+same as those of the vessel spoken the day before: but the new comer,
+instead of painted port-holes, had but a plain white streak.
+
+The men evinced the same admiration for this “craft,” to use their own
+term, as they did for the one of the day before. There was, however,
+such a striking similarity in the hulls of the two vessels, that their
+admiration soon gave place to a feeling of mixed surprise and suspicion.
+
+“What can those two crafts be?” they mutually asked each other.
+
+“They are men-of-war,” some answered: “but where are the port-holes of
+this customer?”
+
+“By jingo! I think they are pleasure boats,” said one.
+
+“Oh, no, they look to me like Malaga boats,” said another.
+
+“But they are of the same make,” observed a third.
+
+“Ay, ay, don’t you see they are sister-vessels, fools, and are on the
+same voyage?” said another, gravely, who, up to that time, had maintained
+unbroken silence, and had, with the aid of a serious aspect, looked
+wisdom itself.
+
+“Ay, that’s it, that’s it,” they all cried, at this suggestion, “they
+belong to the same owner, and are on the same voyage.”
+
+All seemed to concur in this opinion, except the same old sailor, who, on
+the previous day, regarded the Mexican brig with so much suspicion. He
+seemed to entertain doubts about this new vessel, as he did with regard
+to the other.
+
+“Well, younker, what do you think of this fresh gentleman, now?” he
+said, satirically, to the unfortunate young man who had offended his
+self-esteem, and who seemed now to be entirely devoted to the revengeful
+ridicule of that elder son of Neptune.
+
+“Don’t know,” was the crabbed reply.
+
+“Don’t know, eh? you will know, perhaps, when them young eyes of yours
+have squinted oftner at the sun, my hearty, hi, hi, hi!”
+
+The brigantine drew nearer and nearer, and seemed carefully to measure
+the same distance at which the brig of the day before had passed. She
+came with her sails filled with the fresh breeze, and was passing the
+man-of-war, when one of the heavy guns of the large vessel was fired. The
+shot fell across the brigantine’s bows, but at some distance from her.
+
+Her sails still bellied with the wind; she still skipped along, and the
+beautiful and pure white wavelets of foam still swelled on each of her
+sides.
+
+“Who the devil you may be, I shall have you to-day,” said the commander,
+looking intently fierce at the brigantine. “Give him another shot.”
+
+Another deafening report was heard, and the grey smoke shrouded for a
+moment the dark riggings of the war-vessel, and then grew thinner and
+thinner, and rose above her masts.
+
+A moment after, four flags ran up the peak of the brigantine.
+
+“Ho! read what the fellow says, Mr. Cypher,” cried the commander, with no
+small degree of excitement, “he hears what we can say, I see.”
+
+Mr. Cypher took the telescope.
+
+“Y,” he said, “O,” he continued, “U,”—“YOU,” he proclaimed, with a loud
+voice.
+
+“Hoist the answering pendant:” it was done.
+
+The first four flags of the brigantine were now lowered, and four others
+hoisted in their place.
+
+“A,” proceeded Mr. Cypher, deciphering the new signal, “R,”
+“E,”—“ARE,”—“you are.”
+
+“Hoist the answering pendant:” it was done again.
+
+The four flags were again lowered on board the brigantine, and four new
+ones were again hoisted. They were read, and were found to signify ‘too.’
+
+“What can the fellow want to say?” inquired the commander, vaguely:
+“answer his signal.”
+
+The signal was answered, and other flags were again hoisted on board the
+brigantine. When all the signals were taken together, they read—
+
+“You are too far, your guns don’t carry.”
+
+While at the conclusion of the process of exchanging signals, the broad
+black flag, with its head and bones, was spread over the mainsail.
+
+“The rascals,” muttered the old commander, as he moved away from the
+bulwarks, with indignant disgust, “it is the same set, may the devil take
+them!”
+
+“Ha, younker, what d’you see now, eh? You will believe old Jack Gangway
+another time, I know,” said the same old sailor, who all along had been
+so knowing and so suspicious.
+
+“Crack on, crack on,” cried the old commander, “and haul your wind, we
+may edge up to her on a close bowline, and let her feel our metal.”
+
+All the sails of the large vessel were now set. She was drawn closely to
+the wind, and leaned under the fresh breeze.
+
+No sooner was this manœuvre completed, than the brigantine’s sails were
+also trimmed, her long yards were braced sharp; her vast mainsail was
+pulled in almost on a line with her rudder, and her head was put almost
+into the point of the wind itself, or, as seamen would designate it,
+into the “eye of the wind,” her stern was turned to the ship-of-war, and
+as she gradually left the latter behind, other four flags ran along the
+signal line. When read they said—
+
+“Au revoir.”
+
+And the black flag rose and fell, rose and fell again, at the mocking
+ceremony, that was intended to accompany this salutation.
+
+This chase continued the rest of the day. The hours quickly fleeted by,
+and when gauzy twilight had shed its soothing and dreamy haze around, a
+few waves of the pirate’s flag, might still be dimly perceived, like the
+trembling of the phantom—leaves of dream; and then darkness spread its
+shrouding mantle over the ocean.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun had risen, the man-of-war was lying-to under one or two sails,
+the others had been taken in during the night; at some distance in the
+direction, in which the brigantine had disappeared, a vessel, apparently
+a wreck, was to be seen. She was a barque: portions of her masts were
+broken away; her rigging was slack, loose, and dry; her racketty yards
+waved from one direction to the other, as she clumsily rolled into the
+trough of the sea, or rose heavily on its crest. Their braces dangled
+loosely and neglectedly about, and either dragged overboard, or swung
+with a spring from one part of the deck to the other. In keeping with
+her disordered gear, her hull itself exhibited the greatest neglect and
+uncleanliness: the barnacles grew unmolested, to a considerable height,
+and the marks of the lee-water from the cuppers, stained her sides. The
+few sails which still remained on the unsteady yards were tattered and
+worn, and tied up in the oddest manner imaginable. The vessel had her
+English ensign tied upside down, in token of distress, on the little that
+remained of the mainmast’s rigging: an indication, which was not by any
+means required, in as much as the miserable manner in which she rolled
+about, was quite sufficient in itself, to tell that she was in a wretched
+condition.
+
+As soon as the distressed vessel was perceived, signals were made to her
+to launch her boats, and to send alongside; but they seemed to be either
+not understood, or the people of the barque had no means of answering
+them.
+
+But one solitary individual was to be seen standing on its deck, at the
+gangway, and wistfully looking towards the man-of-war.
+
+The commander was not willing to launch any of his boats, he had,
+during the three or four days that had lately expired been so much
+cheated by pirates, that he was now made more than ordinarily cautious,
+and he repeated his signals, and waited many hours, either to have them
+answered, or to force the people of the distressed ship to launch their
+boat and come alongside his vessel: but neither the one thing or the
+other was done.
+
+“These fellows can’t be cheats,” he said, “else they would have sailed
+away, though, it strikes me, it would be difficult for them to spread a
+sail on those yards of theirs,” said the commander, as his good feelings
+began to press upon him.
+
+“They may be starved to death, or ill, have a boat launched, sir,” said
+he to the officer, after this short soliloquy, “and let them pull to
+those poor fellows. Tell the officer he must not let any of the men go on
+board, he may do so himself, if he thinks it necessary.”
+
+Joyfully the true-hearted sailors, eager to succour their suffering
+brothers, lowered a boat, which a moment afterwards was bounding away in
+the direction of the distressed vessel.
+
+They soon approached near enough to admit of speaking, and at his order,
+the men rested on their oars to allow the midshipman in command to hail
+the barque.
+
+“What ship is that?” asked the midshipman.
+
+“The Sting,” answered the solitary individual, who was standing at the
+gangway.
+
+“Where from, and whither bound?”
+
+“From Pernambuco to Liverpool,” answered the individual.
+
+“What cargo?” demanded the midshipman.
+
+“Cayenne pepper,” answered the individual.
+
+“What is the matter with you?” asked the midshipman.
+
+“Have been boarded by pirates—by a Black Schooner—men cut down in
+defending the vessel—the pirates left but me and another man, who is now
+ill below—they took away every thing,” answered the individual.
+
+“It must be those same devils of pirates,” whispered the boatmen one to
+the other, “who have raked that cove; what fellows they seem to be, we
+will singe them some of those days though—be damn’d if we don’t.”
+
+“If you would only let one of your men come on board for a moment to help
+me trim the yards, I should be all right,” added the individual at the
+gangway.
+
+“Hum!” muttered the young midshipman; “that’s not much, but I fancy, old
+boy, you will do yourself no good in setting your sails, unless you wish
+the wind to help you take them in. Pull along side, men,” he said, after
+a second or two, “I shall go on deck and help him.”
+
+The boat soon boarded the vessel.
+
+“Keep the boat off,” said the officer, as he grasped the ropes of the
+steps.
+
+“Ay, ay, sir,” said the boatswain, and the boat was shoved off from the
+vessel.
+
+A shrill sound was heard, the apparent sides of the distressed barque
+opened, the stern fell heavily into the water, the racketty yards and old
+ropes went over the side, and from amidst the wreck of the skeleton ship,
+the Black Schooner sprang forth as she felt the power of her snow-white
+sails, which, with the rapidity of lightning, had now clothed her tall
+masts.
+
+This metamorphosis was so sudden, that the schooner had already begun
+to move before the boatmen comprehended the change. They quickly pulled
+alongside, and fastened their hooks, but no hand of man could hold them.
+They were all torn away by the speed with which the schooner went. Every
+man in his turn let go his hold, and the boat, with its angry crew, was
+left floating far behind in the wake of the flying schooner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+    “Demand me nothing; what you know you know;
+    From this time forth I never will speak word.”
+
+                                         OTHELLO.
+
+    “Torments will ope your lips,”
+
+                            IBID.
+
+
+After he had been defeated by the untoward accident of the shark in his
+attempt to rescue his captive chief, Lorenzo betook himself on board the
+schooner, a victim to disappointment and disgust.
+
+He felt irresistibly inclined to break out in the most violent terms,
+and hurried down into his cabin as soon as he got on the deck of the
+schooner. He then partially gave vent to his feelings by speaking almost
+aloud.
+
+“It would have been bearable,” he said, “bearable, if we had fought, and
+had been driven back; but to be foiled at the very moment when we were
+completing a breach, by a brute of a shark: confound it, and all other
+sharks, the brutes!” and thrusting his hand deeply into the bosom of his
+coat, he paced rapidly up and down his narrow cabin, while, from time
+to time, his lips moved violently as if he were repeating his anathemas
+against the particular shark and all the others.
+
+This fit, however, did not continue long.
+
+Schooled under the continual insecurity and danger which attended the
+life that he led, in which safety itself demanded the exercise of the
+greatest foresight and calmness, he speedily curbed his instinctive
+impulses of rage, and immediately began to deliberate with coolness and
+precision on the next measures which it was requisite for him to take.
+
+He did not deliberate long. Accustomed to act in the face of danger,
+and to oppose his ready resources to sudden contingencies, he never
+required much time to debate with himself on the best and most prudent
+course to be adopted under unforeseen circumstances of danger. At this
+conjuncture, he resolved to watch the man-of-war closely, and to embrace
+the very first opportunity either to steal away Appadocca, or to rescue
+him at a calculated sacrifice of some of his men. For that purpose, the
+schooner was kept in the same position in which she was, until, as we
+have seen, the man-of-war made the descent upon her. Lorenzo purposely
+awaited the approach of the large vessel, so that he might have the
+opportunity of keeping, as he intended, close to the man-of-war. Nothing
+ever escaped the disciplined vigilance of the pirates, and although they
+seemed to be taken by surprise, still they had their eyes all the time
+on the movements of the pursuing vessel; and, as the reader has seen,
+disappointed so signally the encouraged expectations of its crew and
+commander.
+
+When night had put an end to the chase of that day, Lorenzo put his men
+busily at work.
+
+In a few moments, the ordinary sails of the Black Schooner were
+symmetrically folded within the smallest imaginable size, and carefully
+covered up at the foot of each of the masts, and from under the deck,
+yards, cordage, and sails for a square-rigged vessel were brought up,
+and, in as short a time, the thin tapering masts were seen garnished
+with the numerous ropes, yards, and sails of a full-rigged brig; while,
+to complete the metamorphosis, stripes of new canvass were carefully cut
+in the shape of the imitation port-holes, which are generally painted on
+the sides of merchant vessels, and were closely fastened to the sides of
+the Black Schooner, and adjusted in such a careful manner as to conceal
+completely the guns of the disguised vessel.
+
+It was in this guise that the Black Schooner passed before the
+man-of-war, and showed Mexican colors.
+
+After Lorenzo had closely reconnoitered his pursuer, and had raised the
+suspicion which procured him the salute of a gun, he again sailed away
+out of sight, and with the same expedition as of the night before, the
+mainmast of the apparent brig was immediately divested of its yards, and,
+in their places, the sharp sails of a schooner were again set. In the rig
+of a brigantine, the Black Schooner again passed before the man-of-war.
+
+But these distant surveys, for caution prevented him from going within
+the range of the ship’s guns, were not sufficient to satisfy Lorenzo, who
+now began to suffer under the most impatient anxiety with regard to the
+safety of his chief and friend.
+
+The brave officer feared, that annoyed by his inability to overtake the
+schooner, the commander of the ship might, perhaps, have immediately
+ordered the execution of his prisoner; that Appadocca might, by that
+time, have been dealt with in the summary manner in which pirates were
+usually treated, and had been hanged on the yard-arm without accusation,
+hearing, or judgment.
+
+“If so,” cried Lorenzo, as this fear grew more and more upon him, “if so,
+I swear, by the living G—d, that I shall burn that large vessel to the
+very keel, and shall not spare one, not a single one of its numerous
+crew to tell the tale—cost what it may, by G—d, I’ll do it.”
+
+To procure information, therefore, about the fate of one whom he loved
+as a brother: and in order to satisfy his doubts, he resolved at once on
+taking one or two of the man-of-war’s men, and settled on the expedient
+of the distressed barque, with which the reader has just been made
+acquainted.
+
+The young midshipman had no sooner laid his foot on the deck of the
+disguised schooner, before he was strongly grasped by the powerful arm of
+a man who had been carefully concealed behind the false bulwarks of the
+skeleton barque, while the voice of Jim Splice—it was the man—whispered
+in his ear,—
+
+“Don’t resist, young countryman, all right.”
+
+But as soon as the first impulse of the young officer had passed away,
+and he discovered that he was left on board a vessel which presented
+an unmistakable appearance of being engaged in some forbidden trade,
+and when he saw before him numbers of fierce-looking, armed men, he
+struggled for a moment, and succeeded in drawing his sword. But Lorenzo,
+the formerly solitary man on the deck of the distressed vessel, calmly
+stepped up to him, and said,—
+
+“Young gentleman, be not alarmed, no violence will be done to you:
+sheath your sword,” and casting his eyes around on the men, continued,
+“you see, it will not be of much service to you against such odds.”
+
+“Who are you?” peevishly inquired the young officer, “what do you intend
+to do with me?”
+
+“I shall soon tell you,” replied Lorenzo, “if you will be good enough to
+accompany me to my cabin.”
+
+“What cabin? and what to do? You may cut my throat here,” said the
+midshipman, angrily.
+
+“Perhaps you would not be so unreasonable,” remarked Lorenzo, softly, “if
+you were to hear the little that I have to inquire of you: pray, come
+with me.”
+
+“I shall not go with you,” angrily rejoined the midshipman, “I am in the
+hands of pirates, I know. You may murder me, where I am, but I shall not
+go down with you to any cabin.”
+
+“Then stay where you are,” coolly answered Lorenzo, and he walked away
+to the after part of the schooner, and ordered Jim Splice to let go the
+young man.
+
+The older sailor relaxed his grasp, but availed himself of the
+opportunity which he now had, to whisper in the ears of the midshipman—
+
+“Don’t attempt to crow too high here, shipmate, else you will get the
+worst of it, ’d’ye hear?”
+
+And the old tar winked his eye to the young midshipman. The familiar
+sign of knowingness contrasted strangely with the terrible moustachios
+and beard with which Jim Splice had deemed it characteristic to ornament
+his homely and good-natured old face.
+
+In the mean time all sail was set, and the man-of-war was left far
+behind. The sailors had now again posted themselves at their regular
+stations, and the ordinary quiet had now succeeded to the short
+excitement of making sail. The midshipman was still standing in the same
+spot where Lorenzo had left him. His anger, however, had evaporated to
+a considerable extent, under the wise prescription of leaving the angry
+man to himself, which Lorenzo was wise enough to make, and like all men
+who are not absolutely fools, the midshipman had thrown off as much as
+possible of that wasting and useless attendant—rage, as soon as his first
+impulses had somewhat subsided.
+
+Instead of continuing in that dogged sulkiness, in which he had been
+left by Lorenzo, he was now examining, with an interested eye, the make,
+rigging, and equipment of the strange schooner.
+
+It was at this moment that a steward approached him, and inquired if he
+was then at leisure to attend his master in his cabin, and led the way
+to the part of the vessel in which that was situated. The midshipman,
+without answering, followed. Lorenzo was already there, waiting for him.
+The officer politely stood, bowed to the stranger, pointed to a cabin
+chair: the midshipman seated himself.
+
+“Before mentioning the business for which I have entrapped you, young
+gentleman,” said Lorenzo, “I must tell you, that you need be under no
+apprehension as long as you are on board this schooner, and that you
+shall receive the proper treatment that one gentleman owes to another,
+unless, it is understood, you force us, by your own conduct, to act
+otherwise than we usually do.”
+
+“Gentleman! how dare you compare yourself to me, and call yourself a
+gentleman?” said the midshipman, with more of impulse than of reason.
+
+Like one who has disciplined his mind to pursue his purposes with a
+stedfast straightness which is not to be diverted by any accident, though
+not, perhaps, without some disdain for the immoderation of the young man,
+the pirate officer heeded not his last remark, but proceeded as if he had
+not heard it.
+
+“My purpose for enticing you on board this vessel, is to procure
+information about my chief, who is now a prisoner on board the ship to
+which you belong. You will be good enough to give clear and categorical
+answers to the questions which I shall put to you.”
+
+This was said in a firm, although cool tone.
+
+“What? do you imagine,” inquired the young officer, with scorn, “I am
+going to tell to a pirate what takes place on board a vessel in which I
+have the honor to serve? By Jove, no!—it is hard enough to be kidnapped
+by a set of rascals, without being asked to play traitor and spy, to
+boot. But—”
+
+“Cease this nonsense,” interposed Lorenzo, “you waste time, answer me
+first, is Appadocca alive?”
+
+“I shall not give you any information,” peevishly replied the young
+officer.
+
+“I do not see,” remarked Lorenzo, mildly, and almost paternally, “I do
+not see that it can possibly affect your honor if you give me a very
+simple answer to a very simple question. I ask, if Emmanuel Appadocca is
+alive?”
+
+“I shall answer you nothing,” said the midshipman, insultingly.
+
+“Shall answer me nothing,” calmly echoed Lorenzo, while, like the still
+and steady terrors of an earthquake, the signs of anger were now fast
+gathering on his brow. He reflected a moment.
+
+“Young man,” he said firmly, “men do not usually speak with negatives to
+me, or such as I am. You seem disposed to run great risks—risks, of the
+nature of which you are not, perhaps, aware. Let me caution you again;
+I put my former question,—is the captain of this schooner, who is now a
+prisoner on board the ship to which you belong, alive and safe?”
+
+“I have said I shall answer none of your questions,” replied the
+midshipman, “trouble me no more.”
+
+The pirate officer rose, and drew forth a massive gold watch.
+
+“You see,” said he, pointing to the time-piece, “that the minute-hand
+is now on twelve, when it reaches the spot which marks the
+quarter-of-an-hour, I shall expect an answer. In the meantime make your
+reflections. If you wish for any refreshment speak to the man outside,
+and you shall have whatever you desire.” So saying, the officer rose,
+made a slight bow, and left the cabin.
+
+The young officer being left alone, seemed by no means inclined to
+trouble himself about the last speech of the pirate officer. He moved
+about the cabin restlessly. Sometimes he stopped to examine one object,
+and then another.
+
+No further thought than that of the moment seemed to intrude on his
+mind; and the consequence of his persistence in refusing to answer the
+questions of the pirate officer never seemed to break in upon him. The
+levity of youth was, perhaps, one of the principal causes of this strange
+carelessness. He was also highly swayed by the notions which he had
+gathered from among those in whose society he lived. These led him to
+entertain an extravagant idea of his own importance, which, among other
+things, could not admit of accepting terms from the officer of any nation
+that was lower than his own, and, least of all, from a villainous pirate.
+He, therefore, affected to treat the pirate officer with a contempt,
+which it was as inexpedient to show, as it was silly to entertain.
+
+He was moving about in the temper which we have described, when the door
+of the cabin opened, and Lorenzo entered. He moved up to the upper part
+of the cabin, and seated himself.
+
+“Will you now answer my question?” he demanded, “the hand is on the
+quarter.”
+
+“I have already told you, no,” replied the youth.
+
+Lorenzo called—an attendant appeared.
+
+“Let the officer of the watch send down four men,” he said.
+
+The attendant retired. In a few moments four men, under the command
+of a junior officer, entered the cabin. Lorenzo stood—pointed to the
+midshipman—
+
+“Torture him until he speaks,” he said, and abruptly left the cabin.
+
+The pirates silently advanced on their victim.
+
+“The first man that dares approach me, shall die under this sword,”
+shrieked the midshipman, furiously, and brandished his sword, madly.
+Still the pirates advanced more closely to him. They beat down his guard,
+surrounded him, and, in the twinkling of an eye, he was bound hand and
+foot. Lifting him bodily, the pirates carried him on their shoulders out
+of the cabin.
+
+He was then taken to a narrow compartment at the very bows of the vessel,
+that was, it seemed, the torture-room.
+
+The appearance of the room was sufficient to strike one at once with an
+idea of the bloody and cruel deeds that might be perpetrated there. It
+was a narrow cabin into which the light could never penetrate; for there
+was no opening either for that or for fresh air. The small door which
+led into it was narrow and low: it turned on a spring, and seemed so
+difficult to be opened, that one was forced to imagine that it was either
+loth to let out those that had once got in, or that it was eager to close
+in for ever upon those that might enter through it.
+
+The deck was scoured as white as chalk, and, like the shops of cleanly
+butchers in the morning, was scattered over with sand. The sides of the
+cabin, as if to augment the darkness that already reigned, were painted a
+dark, sombre, and gloomy colour, which was here and there stained by the
+damp.
+
+In contrast to this prevalent hue of frightful black, hung a variety of
+exquisitely-polished torturing instruments. Cruelty, or expediency, or
+necessity, seems to have exhausted its power of invention in designing
+them, so different were they in form, and so horridly suited to the
+purpose of giving pain.
+
+These seemed to frown malignantly on those who entered that narrow place;
+and the imagination might even trace, in their burnished hue, and high
+efficient condition, a morbid desire, or longing, to be used.
+
+To make the “darkness visible,” and to reveal the horror of the place, an
+old bronzed lamp hung from the beams of the upper deck, and threw a faint
+and sickly light around.
+
+In the centre of this cabin lay a long, narrow, and deep box, which was
+garnished within with millions of sharp-pointed spikes. The torture which
+the victim suffered in this machine, was a continued pricking from the
+spikes, against which he was every moment suddenly and violently driven
+by the lurching of the vessel.
+
+In this the midshipman was immediately thrown, and he shrieked the shriek
+of the dying when he was roughly thrown on the sharp instruments.
+
+“Hell! hell! the torments of hell,” he yelled out, as the sharp spikes
+pierced him to the quick.
+
+As he made an effort to turn, he increased his agony, and as the vessel
+heaved, the points went deeper and deeper into his flesh.
+
+Already the suffering of the young man was at its height, and by the
+livid light of the glimmering lamp, large drops of death-like sweat,
+could now be seen flowing over his pallid face, which was locked in
+excruciating pain.
+
+“Oh, God!” he cried, frantic with suffering, “Heaven save me.”
+
+His executioners stood around immovable, calm, and fierce, as they always
+were, more like demons sucking in the pleasure of mortals’ pains, than
+men.
+
+The young man seemed maddened with pain, his shrieks pierced through even
+the close sides of the torture-room.
+
+“Will you speak?” inquired the officer.
+
+“Yes—no. Oh, good God! No—yes: curse you all—you devils; you demons—d—n
+you,” were the frenzied replies.
+
+An hour passed; his pains and shrieks continued; albeit the latter now
+grew fainter and fewer. Nature could endure no more; his nervous system
+sank under pain and exhaustion, and he swooned.
+
+The pirates removed him, and plied him with restoratives, and he
+gradually revived.
+
+The suffering of the midshipman had produced a weakening effect upon him,
+such as disease produces on the strongest minds; it had destroyed his hot
+and fierce spirit. Yes, the pain of the body had conquered the resolution
+of the mind, and after the first torturing, the young officer was less
+spirited, less boisterous, and less impatient.
+
+Animation had scarcely returned, when the wretched victim was again
+thrown on the spikes which, piercing through his fresh wounds, added
+still more to the agony which he had before endured. The pain this time
+was not bearable.
+
+“Oh! save me from this,” the young man cried, convulsively, “kill me at
+once.”
+
+“We want not your life, what good is that to us?” replied the junior
+officer in command of the pirates, “we wish only to hear about our
+captain, who may be at this moment undergoing the same pains as you.”
+
+“Then remove me, and I shall speak. No, yes, no, yes.”
+
+“You will then cease to play the fool at your own cost,” was the laconic
+and unsympathising reply of the above-mentioned officer, who, at the same
+time, dispatched one of his men to report that the prisoner was willing
+to speak.
+
+Lorenzo, in a few moments, crept into the narrow room.
+
+“Will you now answer my question?” he inquired of the victim.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Is the captain alive and safe?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What are the intentions of your captain about him?”
+
+“To—oh! take me away from these spikes: oh! these cursed spikes.”
+
+“Speak.”
+
+“To take him to Trinidad, to be tried.”
+
+“When is your ship to direct her course to that place?—Take him out, men.”
+
+The victim was taken out.
+
+“She was—oh! what happiness—she was to do so, to-day.”
+
+“That’s enough. Young man, I admire your spirit: it might be developed
+into something useful under proper discipline; as you are, at present,
+you are only a slave of impulses, that are as wild as your original self.
+Take him to the surgeon’s room.”
+
+Giving this order to his men, Lorenzo left the cabin of torture.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+    “If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
+    That none but fools would keep; a breath thou art,
+    Servile to all the skyey influences,
+    That dost this habitation where thou keepest
+    Hourly afflict:”
+
+                                  MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
+
+
+When the men of the man-of-war pulled on board, after their young officer
+had been entrapped into the schooner, and reported the occurrence to
+the commander, notwithstanding the great command which, considering his
+life and avocation, he had over himself, he flew into a violent passion.
+The success which had, up to that time, attended the pirates, either in
+flying from him, or in outwitting him, had already tried his patience to
+the utmost. To have met an enemy equally armed, to have tried the fortune
+of a fight with him, and to have been beaten would not, perhaps, have
+had such a mortifying effect on the mind of the old commander as to have
+been subjected to the tantalizing deceptions and mocking cunning of the
+pirates.
+
+He walked the deck as furiously as his gouty old limbs would carry him,
+and spoke to himself in a voice that was hoarse with passion.
+
+“First,” said he, “the blackguards waited until I was just about to
+give the order to fire, and then sprang out of my reach. Then their
+d—n—d schooner sailed so fast, and this tub of a thing was so slow,
+that by G—d, by making the masts creak again, I could not force her to
+move faster; while all the time those d—n—d villains were playing about
+me, and amusing themselves at my expense: the devil take them. Then
+the rascals went, and took down their own sails, and rigged themselves
+up in a brig’s canvass, and passed by me—fool as I was. I showed the
+blackguards bunting, instead of sending a broad-side into them at once,
+d—n them; and now, at noon-day, when the sun is high in the heavens, when
+every man can see fifty miles before him, I have let those rascals come
+almost alongside, and kidnap one of my officers. D—n them, d—n them.
+
+“I tell you what it is, Charles,” continued the old gentleman, red in the
+face with rage, “the weight of a feather in my mind would make me hang—by
+G—d, yes—hang at once that astronomical friend of yours; hang, I say, on
+one yard-arm, and that d—n—d rascally looking father of his on the other:
+for it is these fellows, d—n them, that have been the cause of my being
+insulted and duped by a set of ruffianly cut-throats,” and the old man
+walked the deck even still more violently than before.
+
+His son, who had listened to this explosion, was too prudent to interrupt
+it or to reply to it.
+
+He knew his father: he knew that, like the generality of persons of
+a warm, generous, frank and open disposition, his outbreaks were as
+furious and unmeaning, while they lasted, as they were short-lived; he,
+therefore, remained silent, and permitted the fit to exhaust itself.
+
+“Hark you,” continued the commander in a tone that indicated a subsiding
+of the paroxysm, “let the course of the vessel be changed immediately,
+and let us go to Trinidad. I shall not be lumbered with rascally pirates,
+and villainous planters, on board my ship. My vessel was made to fight
+better foes than these scurvy sea-thieves. Crowd on canvass, crowd on
+canvass, and let us steer for Trinidad at once, and deliver these foul
+fellows into the hands of the lawyers. But first, call up that friend of
+yours: a fine companion for a British officer, Mr. Charles—a very fine
+companion!”
+
+“You forget, sir,” meekly remarked his son, “that when I knew Appadocca
+he was not a pirate.”
+
+“Well, well, that will do, let the man be brought before me.”
+
+In a short time Appadocca, under the charge of two marines, was led into
+the presence of the commander.
+
+Imprisonment and anxiety, if he was still capable of of feeling the
+latter, seemed to have had no effect upon him. His calmness, his cynicism
+was the same. Solitude, which to other men is at best but dreary, and
+is ordinarily but the provocative of reflections which may, perhaps, be
+embittered by the events and scenes which they recall—solitude which,
+to Appadocca in particular, one might suppose could have been only an
+encouragement to musings, which were likely to be attended if not with
+sorrow, at least with but little happiness, appeared to have had no
+effect on him. He seemed, if we can use the expression, but to enjoy
+his own misanthropic seclusion, and as for the circumstance that he was
+a prisoner, that made no change in him. He looked upon every position
+with the eye of fatalism, ay, and of that fatalism which does not arise
+from the obligation of any religious creed, but which is the tasteless
+fruit of a long series of disappointments and calamities—the fatalism of
+despondent resignation.
+
+Such a feeling has influenced more than one mortal in his earthly career.
+Full many a warrior, whose praises are now chimed through an admiring
+world, has gone forth to achieve wonders, to conquer, and to be great,
+with such a sentiment rooted in his heart. Full many a conqueror has let
+loose the eaglet of his ambition, without seeing the rock or prominence
+on which the still young and strengthless master of the far skies could
+rest, save, indeed, the shadowy foot-hold that hope could fancy to
+discover in the sombre workings of inscrutable fate.
+
+Such was the feeling of Emmanuel Appadocca, the pirate captain: such was
+the strengthening thought which buoyed and supported him in the unnatural
+career into which cruelty and unkindness had drawn him, and that idea
+imparted to him equanimity under all adversities, courage and valour in
+the fight, unscrupulousness in according judgment, boldness in working
+retribution, and stoicism in imprisonment.
+
+“Tell me, sir,” said the commander, endeavouring to resume as much of his
+native dignity as his heated blood would permit him; “tell me, sir, in
+what bay those lawless men—the pirates who follow you—hide themselves,
+and where I can surprise them. I expect the truth from you, sir, although
+you may denounce your associates by speaking it.”
+
+The lips of Appadocca curled a little.
+
+“My lord,” he answered, “as long as I was on board my schooner, we sought
+no other shelter than that which was afforded us by the high and wide
+seas.”
+
+The commander looked at Appadocca fiercely in the eyes.
+
+“I should be sorry,” he said, “to suspect you of falsehood or
+prevarication, since you have been the fellow-student of my son: but your
+answer is vague and unsatisfactory. Do you mean to say that you have
+no harbour, no creek whither you were accustomed to resort, after your
+piratical cruizes?”
+
+“None, my lord: after our ‘piratical cruizes,’ as you, I dare say justly,
+call them, we were in the habit of taking our booty for sale to the
+nearest port and of depending upon our own skill and watchfulness for
+safety.”
+
+“Hum!” muttered the commander, after a pause, “you are aware, sir, that
+one of my officers has been kidnapped by your rascally associates, as I
+presume them to be,” continued the commander, with his temper evidently
+breaking through the composed dignity which he endeavoured to retain.
+
+“Now, sir, the punishment that I should feel justified in inflicting upon
+you, would be to have you hanged, at once, on that yard,” and he pointed
+to the main yard.
+
+“My lord,” calmly replied Appadocca, “I am in your power, the yard is
+before you, you have men at your command, do whatever you may choose with
+me.”
+
+The commander looked at him steadfastly for a moment or two.
+
+“D—n him!” he muttered, and turned away.
+
+The frankness and generosity of his nature were again gaining ground upon
+his temper.
+
+“I should not like to have anything to do with the death of this fellow,
+after all. It is a pity that his bravery is thrown away among those
+rascally devils,” he whispered to his son. Then, addressing the two men
+who guarded Appadocca, “take the prisoner away. See that canvass be put
+on the ship, and steer for the Island of Trinidad, Mr. Charles.”
+
+“If you will allow me the liberty, my lord,” said Appadocca, as the
+marines were about to lead him away, “I would tell your lordship that you
+need be under no apprehension on account of your officer: we are not in
+the habit of using violence, or of ill-treating our captives when there
+is no occasion for doing so.”
+
+“Hum!” groaned the commander somewhat incredulously.
+
+“And, if you allow me, my lord, I shall request my officer to be
+especially careful of putting any restraint whatever upon your
+midshipman,” continued Appadocca.
+
+“What the devil do you mean, sir?” briskly inquired the commander, “do
+you wish to insult me?”
+
+“By no means, my lord,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“And how do you tell me, then,” continued the commander, “that you will
+‘request your officer,’ when there is no officer to be requested?”
+
+“Although there is no officer to be seen, my lord,” answered Appadocca,
+“still I can request him: all things can be done by a variety of ways, my
+lord.”
+
+“How am I to understand you, sir?” inquired the commander.
+
+“Simply in this manner,” replied Appadocca, “that if you allow me, I
+shall communicate with my chief officer, and request him to take care of
+your officer.”
+
+“And how do you propose to do so,” asked the commander, after a
+considerable pause.
+
+“Only with four flags,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“What will you do with those?”
+
+“I shall make signals with them.”
+
+“But there is no vessel in sight.”
+
+“No, my lord.”
+
+“How, then, can your signals be of service?” inquired the commander.
+
+“Pardon me, my lord, if I decline to answer this question. The sparrow
+by caution flies the heavens with the hawk.”
+
+“I should suppose, sir, when you have now no prospect of ‘flying the
+heavens’ again,” said the commander, “you could have no objection to
+give us a piece of information, which cannot but be serviceable to us.
+However, make the signals, sir. Bring four flags there.”
+
+Appadocca took the flags and adjusted them in a particular manner on the
+line.
+
+“Stop!” cried the commander, when they were about to be hoisted. “What
+warrant have I that you will not say more than is necessary?” he inquired
+of Appadocca.
+
+“None, my lord, except my word,” cooly replied Appadocca, “if you
+consider this of any value, take it, if not, reject it. But recollect,
+my lord, if I had been inclined to be a deceiver, I should have remained
+in the society of mankind, and should have prospered by coating over my
+rascality with the varnish either of mock benevolence or of sanctimony;
+I should not have openly braved the strength and ordinary notions of the
+world.”
+
+“Very well, sir, proceed,” said the commander.
+
+“Within a few minutes after the completion of the signals, you will
+hear the answer—the report of many guns fired at the same time,” said
+Appadocca, and made a sign to hoist.
+
+“What is the fellow going to do?” inquired the sailors one of the other.
+
+“He is going to speak to the ‘old boy,’ I suppose,” answered one.
+
+“He won’t do him much good, I fancy,” remarked the other.
+
+“No, he will leave him in the hands of the landsharks, I guess,” said
+another.
+
+In the mean time, continuing to make the signals, Appadocca adjusted and
+re-adjusted the four flags in a great variety of ways, and, at last, said
+to the commander:—
+
+“Now, my lord, listen.”
+
+In a few moments the report of distant guns fell on the ear.
+
+“Magic, by G—d!” each sailor exclaimed.
+
+“How very strange,” the commander remarked.
+
+“Bring up all the glasses, there,” he said, “and send up there Charles,
+and see where that firing comes from.”
+
+Men immediately climbed the masts, and surveyed the horizon. No telescope
+of the man-of-war could discover whence came the report of the guns.
+
+After this Appadocca was led back to his cabin, and sails were put on the
+huge vessel that now began to move majestically through the water.
+
+There is a soft and sweet pleasure in sailing among the West India
+Islands. He who has not sailed in the Caribean sea, he who has not stood
+on the deck of his gliding vessel, and felt the cooling freshness of the
+trade winds, and seen the white winged birds plunge and rise in silent
+gracefulness, he who has not marked the shining dolphin in its playing
+course, and seen the transparent foam rise and melt before the scattering
+breeze, with the blue waters below, a high smiling sky above, and the
+rich uninterrupted beams of a fierce and powerful sun, gilding the scene,
+can scarcely say that he knows what nature is. For, he who has not seen
+the tropics has not seen her as she is in her most perfect form.
+
+The ship held her course through the waters which, reflecting the rays
+of the sun, undulated like a sheet of molten silver, in which she seemed
+but the gathered dross floating on its surface. As she moved and broke
+that shining surface, the waters frothed for a time about her and then
+closed in smoothness again; while the sea birds playfully gathered in the
+silvery wake, the weeds which shone, like golden drops, in the pebbly bed
+of some clear and limped stream.
+
+With nature smiling thus around him, with the silence which brings not
+gloom surrounding him, with the balmy breeze rising fresh and sweet
+from the bosom of the waters, fanning him into contemplation, the
+hardest-natured man must feel if only for a moment, the chastening
+quietude, which only nature, and he who is mirrored in nature, can impart
+and bestow.
+
+The bosom in which the snakes of envy or hatred have long nestled and
+brooded, may feel itself relieved of half its oppression and suffering
+whilst gazing at nature’s beautiful works, as manifested among the
+islands of the tropics, and beholding in its embodiment of splendour the
+omnipotence of the Creator. How many a heart whose life-blood has been
+frozen under the influence of ingratitude, cruelty, revenge, and pride,
+or, perhaps, of the sad consciousness of a country’s thankfulness—a
+country in whose cause youth, energy, wealth, and talents—may all have
+been spent, has not been soothed into mild quiescence by scenes like
+these?
+
+There are countries around which the works of man have thrown a veil of
+enchantment; there are climes that are sacred, because some Heaven-born
+poet sang there; there are spots about which the memory of mankind
+has clung, and will for ever cling: such countries and such places
+are made famous, great and enchanting by man alone. Their beauties
+sprang from his hand. The idea which plants on them the ever-enduring
+standard of veneration arose from his valour, his heroism, or perhaps
+his benevolence, but whatever charm or interest the tropics possess they
+derive from nature, and from nature only.
+
+For three days together, the ship continued her course, amidst the
+horse-shoe formed islands of the West-Indian Archipelago, which, at a
+distance at sea, appear merely like heavy clouds where nothing is real,
+nothing is animated, resting on the surface of the waters.
+
+On the morning of the fourth, the towering mountain-peaks of Trinidad
+which inspired in the devout Columbus, the name which the island now
+bears, appeared in sight.
+
+Gradually the bold and rocky coast which girds the island on the north,
+grew more and more distinct and as the day waned, the ship entered the
+channel that separates the small island of Tobago from Trinidad, and
+bears the name of the latter.
+
+The old commander, with necessary caution, ordered the greater part of
+the sails to be taken in; the vessel moved along slowly, and was borne
+down principally by the strength of the current.
+
+The commander stood on the quarter-deck admiring the romantic scenery
+which presented itself on the left to his view. There the overhanging
+rocks rose perpendicularly from the heaving ocean, whose long lasting
+and lashing billows broke on their rugged base, and shrouded them in one
+constant sheet of white bubbling foam, and as they towered and seemed to
+lose themselves in the clouds, they bore on their hoary heads forests
+of gigantic trees, whose many colored blossoms appeared far out at sea;
+while down their furrowed sides torrents of the purest water fell foaming
+in angry precipitance. Here some cave hollowed by no hand of man—the home
+of the untiring pelicans that ply the wing the live-long day, would send
+forth its hollow murmurs, as it regurgitated some heaving rolling wave
+that had intrusively swept into its inmost recess. There some rock from
+whose side time had torn away its fellows, stood naked and bare, sullen
+in its solitude, and resisting the powerless waves that dashed themselves
+into a thousand far-flying sprays upon its jagged front; and here
+again some secluded creek, eaten deeply into the heart of the frowning
+highlands, in which the waters lay smooth and quiet, like tired soldiers
+after the toil and strife of battle.
+
+Such scenes might well make an impression on those who looked on; and
+even the rough weather-beaten sailors, to whose eyes nature may have long
+grown familiar, stood leaning on spar or anchor viewing the awe-inspiring
+scene.
+
+Among those on deck stood also James Willmington: and what were his
+feelings, he whose memory had been so recently recalled to deeds which
+could not render him an easier-minded man, if they had not had the effect
+of making him a better one? Nature is itself an accuser! To the bosom
+where all is not right, she speaks in terror. The trembling of a leaf,
+the sudden flight of a startled insect, the gliding of a lizard appals
+the guilty conscience. Could the man on whose head the crime of huge
+injustice pressed heavily—the man whose cruelty had blasted the life
+which he gave, and who was at that moment conducting to the gallows, the
+child whom he had begotten—could such a man mingle the stirred sentiments
+of his soul with the sublime grandeur of nature, and send them forth with
+the voice of the mighty proclaimer, in mute veneration to the throne of
+God. No! nature is not cruel, nature deserts not its humblest offspring,
+she, therefore, could receive no sympathy from the heart of such a man.
+
+Let us now go to the cabin of Appadocca. He was sitting on the rude
+accommodation which had been afforded him, with his arms crossed over
+his breast, and his earnest eyes fixed on the mountains of Paria, which
+he could see on the right, through the port-hole that admitted air and
+light into his cabin, and which had now been opened, inasmuch as it was
+considered a matter of impossibility for him to escape, while the ship
+was under sail on the high seas.
+
+He was absorbed in deep thought; and he watched the neighbouring
+mountains with more and more earnestness, as they rose higher and higher
+to the view, on the gradual approach of the vessel. Twilight came, and
+threw its mellow hue around. It soon departed, and the scene, which was
+but a short time before enlivened by the powerful sun, was left in gloomy
+silence.
+
+As the ship approached the little islands of the Bocas, nothing could
+be heard but the roars of the lashing surges, as they broke at regular
+intervals on the rocks.
+
+Night came, dark and dreary. The ship approached the largest of the
+three small outlets. Every one on board was fixed in silent attention
+to his duty. The senior officer stood at the shrouds, trumpet in hand,
+with the aged commander by his side. Every man was at his post, awaiting
+in anxiety the command to trim sails, in order to enter the difficult
+passage.
+
+That was always a moment of anxiety in every vessel going through it;
+for such was its narrowness, and the strength of the current that swept
+down the channel along the Venezuelan coast, that if a ship once went but
+a yard further down than where she ought to trim her sails, and luff up
+through the passage, it became a labour of many weeks to beat up against
+the wind and current to the proper place.
+
+The critical moment came; the ship was within the Dragon’s Mouth; she
+trembled as if she had been lashed by the tail of some sea-monster, ten
+times larger than herself, as she mounted the cross chopping seas, which
+always run high and heavy at that entrance to the Gulf of Paria.
+
+“Lee braces all,” the commanding officer trumpeted forth.
+
+“Luff.”
+
+The ropes glided through a thousand pullies, and the heavy chains of
+the tacks clanked through their iron blocks as they were eased away.
+The sailors moved in disciplined order from rope to rope, and the deck
+sounded with their rolling foot-falls. The serious marine intermitted his
+monotonous and limited march for a moment, and leaned in a corner to give
+room to the busy mariners.
+
+Appadocca had continued to sit in the same position as we have mentioned
+a few lines back, from the fading of the short twilight up to that time,
+which was now near midnight.
+
+Although he could not see, nevertheless he seemed during the whole time
+to use his ears for the same earnest purpose as he had done his eyes; and
+as soon as he felt the heaving labours of the vessel, and heard the noise
+that was made by the falling of the blocks on the deck, he sprang from
+his seat like a young horse when it is goaded.
+
+“Ha! this is the time at last,” he exclaimed, in a subdued tone, and
+springing towards the port-hole with one effort of impulsive strength, he
+tore down its framework: next, he grasped the stool on which he had sat.
+
+“Confusion,” he cried, “it will not yield:” the stool was tied to a ring
+on the deck.
+
+When Appadocca discovered this, he seemed slightly alarmed: he stood for
+a moment thinking how he could unfasten the stool. To undo it with his
+hands was a labour of hours, and he had nothing with which he could cut
+it. His eyes quickly surveyed the cabin; he rushed towards a basin which
+had been allowed him, he placed it on the deck, and jumped upon it. With
+the pieces of the brittle ware, he began to saw at the lashing of the
+stool.
+
+It was a tedious labour, one which required an unconquerable perseverance
+to overcome.
+
+Full ten minutes—minutes that on such occasions are more precious than
+years—had expired, and he had made scarcely any progress. As he sawed
+through one fold of twine, another appeared, but still he persevered, and
+blunted every piece of the broken basin in succession.
+
+The stout heart and persevering hand will conquer immensities of
+obstacles.
+
+At last, at last, the folds were sawed through. Appadocca seized the
+stool with both hands.
+
+“Now for life again, and the accomplishment of my design,” he said, and
+endeavoured to pitch it through the hole, but ill-fortune stepped in
+again to baulk him. The stool was too large to pass through the opening,
+he tried it various ways, but with no success.
+
+“Destiny,” he calmly muttered, as he put it down with the fortitude of a
+Diogenes.
+
+He cast his eyes around him; there was a large Spanish pitcher of clay,
+such as are used in the tropics, in which water was brought to him: a
+drowning man, they say, will grasp at a straw: he laid hold of it, he
+tried it, it passed the opening.
+
+“Now, farewell, good ship,” he said, and leaned over the side of the
+vessel. He allowed the pitcher to fall quietly into the water, and he
+himself, plunged after it into the unfathomable waste.
+
+“A man overboard!” some one cried on deck.
+
+“No, no:” said another, “it’s only the slack of the main-brace.”
+
+“Are you sure of that?”
+
+“Quite sure.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+    “The torrent roar’d; and we did buffet it
+    With lusty sinews; throwing it aside
+    And stemming it with hearts of controversy.”
+
+                                  JULIUS CÆSAR.
+
+
+On jumping into the sea, Appadocca swam dexterously after the pitcher,
+which he had thrown before him; then resting one hand upon it, and moving
+the other easily through the water, he paused a moment to gaze at the
+large ship that was now looming in the darkness, and was rapidly leaving
+him far behind.
+
+The vessel continued her course. It was evident no one on board of her
+had seen his escape. He was left alone on the sea. He now began to
+swim in the direction in which long habit had taught him the coast of
+Venezuela was situated. As he progressed through the water he pushed
+the pitcher before him. Now and then he paused, and rested as before,
+with one hand on the pitcher, while he lightly floated himself with the
+other. Hours passed, and every succeeding one found the indefatigable
+Appadocca buffetting the waves with a heart of resolution, and an eye of
+determination. The thick darkness of the night was fast passing away, the
+gray dawn of morning was appearing, and the dark mountains of Venezuela
+began to rise to the view with that cheating delusion which mountains at
+that early hour of the morning present, and by their apparent nearness,
+one moment seduce the weary oarsman into the grateful belief that he is
+fast approaching the end of his irksome labour, only to irritate him the
+next by their constant and still greater recession.
+
+The swimming fugitive felt encouragement and support from these two happy
+circumstances. More and more vigorously he stretched out his arms. Only
+three miles now seemed to separate him from the land. The currents and
+the sweep of the waves were in his favour.
+
+On, on he pushed his befriending pitcher, and swam and rested
+alternately. The desperate hazard which he had incurred in throwing
+himself overboard in a boiling sea in a part where all the sharks of the
+neighbouring waters assemble to feed upon the refuse that is borne down
+by the gulf-current, seemed about to terminate happily and prosperously,
+and the act which at first may have borne the appearance of a voluntary
+seeking of death on his part, was about to result in deliverance and
+safety.
+
+Perhaps even the seared, stoical heart of the cynical Appadocca, under
+these happy forebodings, throbbed a little more highly than usual.
+
+But the grounds on which pleasure and hope are built, are too often
+sandy: our highest subjects of joy and congratulation are, alas! too
+liable to be converted, in the imperceptible space of a second, into
+those of misery and woe. So it proved with Emmanuel Appadocca.
+
+When, as we have remarked, these prospects dawned in reality upon him,
+his strokes were made with more vigour; he became, consequently, the
+sooner tired, and was obliged to pause for rest more frequently.
+
+After one of these intervals, after having “screwed up his courage to
+the sticking point,” he gave his pitcher a push before him. The vessel
+floated to a considerable distance in front, then suddenly melted to
+pieces and sank for ever.
+
+The soft clay of which it was made was dissolved by the water, and could
+no longer hold together.
+
+If Appadocca had, a moment before, permitted his cynicism to incline
+beyond its medium point towards joy, so now he could not prevent it
+from verging to an equal distance on the opposite side. He had, but a
+few minutes ago, been induced to hope that he should be able to reach
+the land. Prospects of once more heading his faithful followers warmed
+his heart; and the prospect, too, of still being able to execute his
+design upon the man whose heart was too bad to open to repentance and
+justice from the lessons of his victim-judge, and from the perils out
+of which only the sheerest hazard had delivered him: but now, with the
+assisting pitcher his hopes also sank. It was now next to impossible
+that he could reach the shore; for although like the pedestrian who,
+with certain intervals of rest, may walk the whole globe, he could swim
+a considerably greater distance than seven miles—the distance which now
+intervened between him and the land—by now and then holding to something
+which could assist him in floating until he had rested, still it was
+impossible now for him to accomplish, much fatigued as he already was, at
+the utmost more than a mile; and the shore was still three miles away.
+Despair, utter despair would have seized a mind that was more susceptible
+of ungovernable influences, but Appadocca made up his mind not to be
+drowned, and continued to swim. He had not swum to any great distance,
+when he began to experience the want of his pitcher; his limbs began to
+feel exhaustion, he muttered something to himself, and went on still;
+his limbs became more tired; sensibility began to diminish; his arms
+grew stiffer and stiffer; on, on, still he went; his features manifested
+exhaustion, his respiration grew shorter and shorter; already nature
+could bear no more; his eyeballs glared like those of one in the last
+agony of drowning; his strokes became weaker and still weaker; already
+he swam more heavily; his chest sank deeper and deeper into the water;
+the mountains before him began to wheel, and pass, and vanish like clouds
+floating over a mist; his vision was indistinct, and nature drooped,
+exhausted with one long breathing; he was sinking, sinking, sinking ...
+when ... something met his feet, and Appadocca stood on a sunken rock
+with the water to his chin.
+
+Surprised to a certain extent by such an unexpected occurrence, he at
+once remained where he was, fearful less the first step he would take
+should lead him again into the danger which he had, at least temporarily,
+escaped.
+
+He stood there for a considerable time; but although the position was
+one, which, on the point of drowning, might be very advantageous, still
+it ceased to be so when the immediate danger had passed; and now, on
+the contrary, presented another peril; for Appadocca was now exposed, in
+his motionless state, to become the prey of the very first hungry shark
+that might happen to swim in that direction, and what was still worse,
+he felt that the sea was every moment rising higher and higher. It was
+therefore clear that he could not stay much longer where he was. He began
+to resolve, but before he could determine on any definite resolution, a
+large wave broke over him; for mere safety, he was again obliged to swim.
+He had not gone far, when in spite of his strong will, his limbs would
+not move. Thus with his resolution still strong, and his volition still
+active, Appadocca, nevertheless, found himself rapidly sinking.
+
+“Oh! destiny,” he bubbled out, as the water now almost choked him, “is
+there such a thing as destiny?” He was sinking, sinking, sinking, when
+something, something again met his feet.
+
+Appadocca quickly planted his nerveless feet as firmly as he could, upon
+the support which it would appear that destiny, which he had well nigh
+invoked for the last time, had again placed under them. He concluded at
+once, that he had fortunately alighted on a layer of rocks, which ran far
+out to sea, and of which the one that first received him, was about the
+beginning. To ascertain the correctness of his judgment he ventured,
+after he had rested a little, to put one foot forward, it rested also on
+the rock; the other, it rested too.
+
+Appadocca now waded along towards the shore, swimming now and then,
+when a larger chasm than usual intervened. As he approached the land,
+however, the rocks began to sink lower and lower, until at last he was
+left without a footing. There was yet a considerable distance between
+where he was, and the shore, and in his condition, the prospect of being
+saved, even after the succession of unexpected auxiliary accidents was
+but slight and precarious. Nevertheless, he was obliged to hazard all;
+so he began to swim again. His arms after the rest they had had, were
+more powerful. On—on, he went—closer, and closer—he drew to the land;
+still the distance was immense to a well-nigh exhausted man. His strength
+began again to fail; but a few strokes Appadocca, and you are on land.
+His strength diminished more and more, shadows again began to flit across
+his vision, his senses reeled; he was sinking, no befriending rock now
+met his feet; he disappeared.... In a moment he rose again, in the second
+stage of drowning, with his features locked in despairing agony. As he
+came to the surface the rolling volume of a sweeping billow met him,
+carried him roughly to the shore, and threw him high and dry on the
+white sandy beach, that was glimmering under the scorching rays of a
+fiery sun.
+
+The tide ebbed away and left Appadocca on that which was now dry land.
+Nature was overwhelmed, and he seemed scarcely strong enough to rally
+from the swoon. There he lay, far from human succour, with the land
+rising perpendicularly from the beach, for a great distance away along
+the shore, and thus shutting out to those who might inhabit that part
+of the country, any immediate view of the sea, or the shore below. The
+fugitive might, have lain in this state until nature, by an effort
+scarcely to be expected in his condition, might have suddenly revived,
+or what was the more probable, life might have quietly departed from
+the miserable man, had not the same fortune which seemed all along to
+befriend him, again interposed to foster still the spark of life which
+now scarcely lived in him.
+
+A wild bull, maddened with fury, came bounding over the heights. The
+animal was so headlong in its race, that rushing to the ridge of the
+precipitous highlands, ere it could abate its speed, it was borne away by
+its own impetus over the ledge, and with a tremendous bound, it rolled
+dead at the foot of the still insensible Appadocca.
+
+In a few moments two horsemen appeared above, and reining up their
+horses carefully at the edge, looked down on the late object of their
+chase. They were children of the Savannahs—the Bedouins of South America.
+They were two Llaneros, their lassos were coiled in wide circles round
+one arm, while with the other, they clutched a short spear and the
+powerful reins with which they governed their still unbroken horses.
+They looked carefully at the now motionless animal, which but a second
+before careered so proudly over the plain, and was so formidable to them,
+shrugged their shoulders, and were turning their horses’ heads to return,
+when the attention of one of them, seemed attracted by an object at the
+foot of which the body of the dead bull lay.
+
+“Es un hombre—’Tis a man,” both of them said, with great excitement.
+“’Tis a man, go you and look at him, Juancito.”
+
+One dismounted, and, leaving his horse in charge of the other, scrambled
+down the rocks to the beach. He examined the body and cried out to his
+companion above, that life was still in it.
+
+“Esta un hombre de cualidad, he is a great man,” he added.
+
+Moved by their spirit of native hospitality, and partly influenced by
+the not unselfish motive of saving the life of a great man, the two
+Llaneros began to devise the means of getting Appadocca on the dry land
+above, and of conveying him to the house of the Ranchero, whose oxen they
+tended. But it was next to impossible to carry him up those rocks on
+which only the most steady-footed could manage to move; besides, it was
+necessary for one to remain above to hold the horses which, unguarded and
+unrestrained, would have obeyed their strong instinct and scampered off
+to their native wilds.
+
+In this difficulty the natural recourse of the Llaneros was to their
+lassos. But those could scarcely be used, as the projections of the rocks
+would have shattered in a thousand pieces the person whom they designed
+to save, if they undertook to hoist him up along their rugged surface.
+They, therefore, had to think of some other expedient: but no other
+occurred to them, and they were obliged to recur to their lassos, in the
+use of which they were so long and perfectly practiced. They thought,
+however, in conjunction with the resolution of adopting this expedient,
+of removing Appadocca to another part of the beach, from which the rocks
+did not rise so roughly. This was easily done, and having fastened their
+lassos together, they secured one end to Appadocca, and the other to one
+of the horses; one of the Llaneros spurred the animal forward, while the
+other remained at the edge to guide the rope as much as it was in his
+power to do.
+
+By this means the still insensible Appadocca, was brought safely on the
+table land. After the violent shaking he had received, he seemed to come
+to himself a little; he opened his eyes, but it was only for a moment. He
+was no longer insensible, but he was totally prostrated, and sank again
+into an inactive condition. He was then placed on the saddle before one
+of the Llaneros, and they rode off towards the house, whose roof could
+be barely discerned from amidst the clustering branches of the trees by
+which it was surrounded.
+
+The Llaneros soon alighted at the door, where they were met by the
+Ranchero, and the insensible stranger was carried in.
+
+Like all the houses of the Ranchas of South America, this was an
+extensive wooden building, built of only one storey—a necessary measure
+against the ravages of the frequent earthquakes which shake so terribly
+those tropical regions.
+
+The large and shady fronds of the beautiful palms that decorate the level
+and grassy Savannahs, were cleverly sewn together to form a covering,
+which was as effectual in excluding the dews and rains, as it was
+in itself romantic. No ceiling concealed the beams and rafters which
+supported this primitive roof; but from the exigences of the climate,
+and probably from the unwillingness to raise highly finished structures
+in the wilds, where the inhabitant scarcely ever saw the face of any
+one beside those of the Llaneros who tended his numerous and half-wild
+herds, the space between the low flooring and the roof was entirely
+unoccupied. The apartments were extensive, and as airy as such a climate
+required. Windows opened in all directions, and the winds of heaven
+swept freely through every crevice of the house. The furniture seemed to
+be as simple and as primitive as the building that contained it. A few
+heavy chairs, made of the hides of the oxen, that formed the wealth of
+the Ranchero, were placed about, here and there, more for the service of
+the few individuals who occupied the place, than for the accommodation
+of visitors or strangers, both of whom were exceedingly rare, if ever
+seen in those solitary wilds. Indian hammocks hung in several places,
+and moved to and fro, before the power of the wind that blew into the
+apartment; and on supports from the walls, rested beautiful Spanish
+saddles, whose bows and stirrups of massive silver, attracted immediate
+attention. Around the house stood some magnificent trees, under the
+shady boughs of which, herds of oxen, which were partially reclaimed
+from the wild state in which they had been bred, now quietly chewed their
+cud, not without, however, casting from time to time, a wistful look on
+the strong pallisades that fenced them in. Wild looking undressed horses,
+restively cropped the short grass that grew around the house, and now
+and then tugged with evident impatience, the tethers of cowskin, that
+restrained their liberty.
+
+Away, at a short distance from the inhabited house itself, stood also
+pens for cattle, and apparently a slaughter-house, on whose roof the
+large heavy vultures of South America, pressed and fought and nibbled
+each other for a footing, while around it were strewed a thousand horns,
+the spoils of the fierce natives of the plains, that had fallen there
+under the Picador’s knife. To complete the peculiarity of the scene a
+few half naked and fierce looking individuals, loitered here and there,
+carelessly smoking their cigars; or leaned against the fences, and
+criticised the ruminating oxen within, as objects among which their
+entire life had been spent, and with such apparent skill and earnestness,
+as to leave one to fancy that the world contained nothing that deserved
+so much interest in their estimation as the animals which formed the
+tissue of their associations, and of their fathers’ before them. The
+horses that were tied in their rude accoutrements, to the posts of the
+fences, and the huge spurs of solid silver, which were tightly thonged to
+the naked heels of those men, showed that they belonged entirely to the
+plains, and were probably there, only for the purpose of receiving the
+orders of the master.
+
+“Feliciana,” cried the Ranchero, as Appadocca was carried into the large
+chamber that formed, what in Europe, would be called the with-drawing
+room—“Feliciana ben aca,—Feliciana, come hither.”
+
+At this call, a beautiful young lady appeared, and started back as she
+beheld the pallid, wasted, and haggard, but still beautiful face of
+Appadocca, while, at the same time, the low interjection of “Jesu!”
+escaped her lips.
+
+“Que se haga todo necessario por ese infeliz,” “Let every thing be done
+for this unhappy man,” said the Ranchero, who even in the half barbarous
+life that he led, did not entirely lose the distinguishing politeness of
+his people.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+    “O, thou didst then ne’er love so heartily:
+    If thou remember’st not the slightest folly
+    That ever love did make thee run into,
+    Thou hast not loved:”
+
+                                 AS YOU LIKE IT.
+
+
+Appadocca, under the care of the fair Venezuelan, was carried into an
+extensive chamber, which was much more comfortable than any one would
+have imagined any part of the house could be. He was laid on a couch that
+was unornamented, but that was as white as the flock of the cotton-tree.
+It was not to rest, however, that he was thus accommodated. His fatigues
+and privations overpowered the strength which his peculiar philosophy
+had tended to maintain, and the movement and exercise of the hoisting,
+and transporting on horseback, had completed what they had begun. He was
+seized with a violent fever, which now terribly manifested itself in the
+wildest ravings.
+
+Alarmed at the state of the stranger, Feliciana called every one into
+service. Peons flew here and there and everywhere, for herbs and weeds,
+while she herself remained by the bedside of the delirious sick man,
+watching every movement that he made, and listening to every word that he
+uttered.
+
+Nature overcame even this passing madness, and Appadocca fell into a
+light slumber. Feliciana, with looks even more serious than when she went
+to attend her unknown patient, left the apartment.
+
+Feliciana was a little above the middle size, exceedingly well formed,
+and majestic in her appearance. Her face was in itself a study, on
+account of the many different expressions which it wore at one and the
+same time. Her forehead was large and expansive, indicative of a large
+amount of intellect. Her nose was slightly elevated at the centre, and
+at the same time full and rounded at its termination; her lips were full
+and well formed, while the compression which marked the slight pout
+that they possessed, pointed to much firmness of character. To heighten
+all these separate individual expressions, nature had bestowed upon her
+large melting eyes, that swam like the gazelle’s, in a bed of transparent
+moisture, and in which, it would be difficult to say, whether sentiment,
+or the serious contemplation of the Spanish character prevailed the most.
+
+Upon the whole, a student of physiognomy would have pronounced, on seeing
+the beautiful Venezuelan, that Heaven had bestowed on her a high degree
+of intellect, a high degree of sentiment, and a high degree of firmness.
+She would have been at once pronounced one who was capable of great
+discernment, of forming high designs, and of overcoming every obstacle
+that might oppose their execution; while, at the same time, the sentiment
+which was clearly perceptible in her eyes, could be very accurately
+predicated as that, which, from its decided prevalence and preponderance,
+would always act as the leader of her mental and more solid endowments.
+
+Her dress, in addition, was calculated to make these striking features,
+and her handsome person still more conspicuous. It was of dark materials,
+and adjusted in a manner that attracted from the general idea of
+simplicity that prevailed in it, while, at the same time, it displayed to
+advantage the gracefulness of the wearer. As a head-dress, a dark veil or
+mantilla, hanged loosely from a high and valuable comb, down along the
+side of her face over her shoulders, and enhanced by the contrast her
+beautiful and clear complexion.
+
+Nature in youth, especially when such youth has been weakened by no
+unphilosophical propensities, ever inclines to amendment. In Appadocca,
+especially, whose life-time had, up to that period, been spent in the
+practice of that strengthening discipline which consists in the happy
+combination of exercise for mind and body, it turned towards health with
+extraordinary vigour; so that the stranger, who but a few days ago had
+been as near death as mortal man could be, and during whose feverish
+paroxysms one would have imagined that the reason which regulated the
+form that still writhed in its madness, was about to take a last farewell
+of the machinery which it had up to that time animated and guided, now
+presented the clear eye, the earnest look, and the same stern resolution
+that usually compressed his lips. The only remaining indication of the
+fatigue which he had undergone, and of the subsequent illness, was the
+increased pallor of his complexion, and the slight attenuation of his
+body; in a word, it was in body and not in mind that Appadocca now showed
+signs of illness.
+
+It was a day or two after this gratifying change had shown itself, when
+Appadocca and the beautiful daughter of the house were seated together in
+the large apartment which we have before described.
+
+The stranger was sitting in one of the peculiar but luxurious chairs of
+cow-hide at one side of the wide window, and Feliciana at the other.
+
+Politeness and gratitude, independently of a sense of duty, called forth
+the gallantry of Appadocca in entertaining the lady. He discoursed on
+a life in the wilds, on the marvels that nature can there continually
+display to the eyes of the wondering spectator, of the free and
+independent life of those who inhabited the “Llanos;” and from this high
+and general theme he descended to the particular beauties that surrounded
+the romantic abode of his host himself.
+
+He spoke on. But his greatest and most graceful eloquence could not draw
+a word from his beautiful auditor, or even secure a silent nod. She sat
+with her head turned away towards the window, her eyes fixed on the
+ground, and wore an air of more than ordinary seriousness. She seemed
+entirely wrapped in a web of her own reflections.
+
+Appadocca could not but remark this reverie. After having yielded several
+times to his habit of silence, and given way to his own abstracted moods,
+he would awake himself suddenly, and seeming to feel the embarrassment
+of the situation, would address the young lady again on some new and
+interesting topic. But it was in vain.
+
+“Senora, I hope, is not ill?” he at last inquiringly observed.
+
+“No, senor,” was the laconic reply.
+
+“Then senora is a little melancholy,” rejoined Appadocca, after a moment
+or two.
+
+No answer.
+
+“Banish, senora, that pernicious feeling. Life is itself sufficiently
+insipid and sour, and does not require to be made more bitter by
+melancholy. Look out, see how nature softly smiles before you. The birds
+fly from branch to branch, and chirp, and are happy; the insects—listen
+to the hoarse cicada—seem enjoying their insect happiness; even the very
+grass, as the breeze turns its blades to the beams of the beautiful sun,
+reflect on our minds an idea of felicity. How can you be melancholy when
+you look out?”
+
+Feliciana turned and bent her large eyes fully on Appadocca, looked at
+him intently for a few moments, and then turned away again.
+
+Struck by the action, and not feeling himself as indifferent as he
+usually was, Appadocca said nothing.
+
+A long interval ensued.
+
+Feliciana kept her head in the same direction: at the side of her eyes
+two drops began to gather; they grew larger and larger, and in a few
+moments stood like two crystal beads ready to burst. Not a muscle,
+however, not a fibre of the beautiful weeper, seemed to sympathise, or
+quiver in unison with this silent grief. Like a statue of alabaster
+she remained rooted where she sat, and one could judge of the emotions
+which might affect her, only by the two transparent drops which balanced
+heavily at the corners of her eyes.
+
+Appadocca saw this, and remained silent from respect to the sorrow of
+Feliciana. He thought of leaving the room, and giving the young lady
+freedom to indulge in that grief which seemed so deep and overpowering.
+Although prompted to do so by his sense of propriety, still he found
+himself detained by he knew not what, and seemed half to suspect that the
+sorrow had some sort of connexion with himself,—“Else,” he reasonably
+argued, “the young lady would have concealed her grief in the privacy of
+her own apartment.”
+
+Appadocca, therefore, remained where he was, in deep silence, watching
+the tear drops that now again grew gradually smaller and smaller.
+
+“Can one who owes, senora, a large amount of gratitude,” he at last said,
+in a mild, subdued tone, “be of any service to her?”
+
+She was still silent.
+
+“Can I do anything to dry these tears?” Appadocca again inquired.
+
+Feliciana suddenly turned her head, and fixed her expressive eyes
+steadily on the inquirer. She maintained her earnest look for some time,
+then rising, said, with great excitement,—
+
+“Yes, you can dry these tears. Shun the wicked pursuit in which you are
+engaged, and then these tears may never again escape to betray me. Nature
+could never have intended you for a pirate.”
+
+At this sudden action, and unexpected language of Feliciana, Appadocca
+required all his self-command to conceal the surprise which he felt.
+
+“I a pirate, senora!” he said, “may I ask how it is you have been induced
+to suppose me one?”
+
+“Put no idle questions,” she quickly replied, “I feel that you have
+sacrificed yourself to such a life. You, too, have confessed it. Why was
+it, that in your ravings, you called on your men to board, to cut down,
+to make prisoners? that you spoke of blood, of booty, and still worse,
+of revenge; and revenge, too, it would seem, on your own father? Do you
+think, to persons as I am, in my position, the least word of those—of
+those—of those—” she contended with herself for the expression, “those
+whom we wish well, can fail of its meaning. I am a stranger to you: but
+let me not prevail the less on that account; let me pray and beseech you,
+in the name of God and the saints,” she continued, clasping her hands,
+“to promise me to abandon a life that is hateful both to Heaven and
+earth, and to think no more of those terrible projects of slaughter and
+revenge, about which you spoke so much in your sleep.”
+
+“Pray, senora, sit down,” said Appadocca, as he rose quickly from his
+seat to conduct her to hers.
+
+“No, leave me,” she exclaimed, more excited, “I shall not sit down till
+you pass your word. Remember the dear person whose picture you now wear
+on your heart, and which you so affectionately pressed to your bosom,
+when the fever was on you. Can you suppose that she can look down from
+heaven, with joy or pleasure, on the son that she nourished, when he
+has abandoned himself to a course that God and man alike reprobate and
+condemn? Picture her in the society of the saints and angels looking down
+upon you, at the head of your lawless and cruel men, red with the blood
+of your murdered victims, and rushing forward to plunder, and to spread
+misery around as you go. Do you think that the sight of her child—her
+son, in this position, can impart to her either happiness or pleasure?
+Think of that: and, when ever you press her picture to your heart,
+recollect you only go through a cheating mockery, that the life you
+lead takes away from her happiness, from the happiness even of heaven.
+Remember the tears that she may have shed for you while here: remember
+the cares and anxieties she may have suffered for you; those, surely,
+were enough: and, if death ended her miseries on earth, do not you spoil
+the joy which she may now enjoy in heaven?”
+
+“Enough—enough,” cried Appadocca, with more warmth than was his habit,
+“stop, stop, I implore you.”
+
+“Then promise me.”
+
+“My vow is recorded in heaven, I cannot promise,” answered Appadocca,
+drily.
+
+Feliciana staggered stupified to her seat, while she gazed, without the
+power of utterance, on the person before her.
+
+“You will not promise!” she said, recovering herself, “you will not
+promise! Well, I shall promise,—I now vow,—that I shall follow you to
+the end of the world, until you consent to renounce for ever this wicked
+life.”
+
+So saying, she sprang violently from her chair, and rushed out of the
+room.
+
+Appadocca, after the disappearance of the agitated Feliciana, sank back
+into the cow-hide chair, almost confounded by the scene which had just
+been enacted, and well-nigh distracted by the thousand reflections which
+it made to rush upon him. The first thought was of his safety.
+
+“Suppose,” he quickly reasoned, “others beside Feliciana, should have
+heard his disclosures during the fever; what could he expect under such
+circumstances, but to see the kindness with which he had been treated,
+suddenly changed into a most ferocious spirit of revenge.” For he knew,
+too well, what cruelties the pirates of the West-Indian sea had, under
+Llononois and other captains, practiced on the unfortunate inhabitants of
+those coasts.
+
+Those atrocities could not be blotted out from the memory for centuries,
+and it was likely, that at the very name of pirate, the revenge of the
+Spaniards would break out as uncontrollably as fire in its favourite food.
+
+And it was probable, that not stopping to consider whether he was
+actually what he was supposed to be, they would at once immolate him, to
+the memory of their slaughtered and plundered countrymen. This thought,
+however, soon gave way to those of a different nature,—to those which
+in his own manner of thinking, affected the most important accident
+of existence, and was, in his estimation, higher in value than life
+itself—namely, his honour.
+
+It had not escaped him from the very moment that his convalescence had
+permitted him to exercise his discernment, that his beautiful and kind
+nurse, was in love with him. That could not but strike him; and though
+his stoicism balanced violently on the contemplation of the handsome
+form, and on appreciating the character of the mind which was as pure,
+as simple, and as artless, as the flourishing wilds which had reared
+and still surrounded it, still it required no great restraint over
+himself—himself, who had long banished from his heart the sentiment,
+that lends to life a charm, and who was now well exercised in choking to
+instant death any fresh feeling as it began to spring—to renounce for
+ever every desire to encourage or foster the affection that showed itself
+to him as clear as the sun at noonday. It would have been dishonor to
+steal away the heart of the innocent creature that watched over him with
+a mother’s fondness and anxiety. He resolved, therefore, to be always on
+his guard, and to maintain more than ordinary restraint in conversing
+with her, in the hopes that the feeling which evidently animated her,
+might perish from the absence of sympathy.
+
+It was, consequently, with alarm that he beheld the violence of feelings
+which Feliciana exhibited during the scene which we have depicted.
+“No ordinary interest,” thought Appadocca, “could call forth such an
+impassioned remonstrance as Feliciana had made, and make her surmount
+all maidenly timidity, and speak to him as she did. For in what could
+it interest a stranger? whether an unhappy man, whom she had accidently
+succoured was a pirate or not: and those tears; persons of her race,
+he thought, weep only on deep subjects. And, finally, the desperate
+resolution of following him all over the world, professedly to hold back
+his hand from crime, was a thought that only one great feeling could
+inspire.”
+
+Such were the reflections of Appadocca, they were made in a moment: and
+they immediately produced a resolution as firm as it was sudden. “I must
+leave the house of this good Ranchero,” said Appadocca to himself, with
+much energy of mind. “God knows, I am already pledged to the causing of
+sufficient misery. I shall not stay here to add any more to the necessary
+amount. Not in this place particularly, where I have met with so much
+hospitality and kindness.”
+
+These reflections had scarcely been ended, and Appadocca’s brow was still
+knit in the energy of his own thoughts, and his eyes still glimmered
+forth the fire of his excited mind, when soft footsteps were heard
+within the room, and on turning his head, he beheld Feliciana, who had
+again entered the room, and was now advancing towards him.
+
+She was, by this time, comparatively calm; the paroxysm of her feeling
+had passed, but she appeared still determined on one purpose. Feliciana
+walked to the window as she entered, and said to Appadocca, who stood up
+to receive her:
+
+“Pray forgive me, sir, for the lengths to which I, a mere stranger, was
+bold enough to proceed just now.”
+
+“There needs no forgiveness, senora,” quickly rejoined Appadocca, as he
+led her to the other cow-hide chair at the window, “where no offence
+has been given: on the contrary, might I speak so freely, I should say,
+that the warmth you have so lately manifested, can be taken only as the
+indication of a high degree of feeling.”
+
+Appadocca spoke in a calm and serious strain. The young lady coloured
+slightly at the end of this speech.
+
+“Among different persons, senora,” continued Appadocca, with the apparent
+purpose of bringing about an intended end, “it would, perhaps, be a
+breach of civilized politeness to speak with the same latitude that I
+now intend to do. But, I think as we understand each other, it would
+be well nigh folly to keep back a few necessary words, simply from the
+circumstance that the laws of polished social intercourse may tend
+to render their plainness awkward. It is very clear, senora, that I
+have been fortunate enough to enlist in my favour, your most friendly
+sympathy, perhaps I should be justified in mentioning a much stronger
+feeling.”
+
+Feliciana coloured deeply.
+
+“For my part, I cannot but express myself sensible to the existence of
+such a sentiment, and can only say, that from a self-same affection, I
+am capable of appreciating and responding to yours. But, senora, there
+are but few instances of real happiness under the sun. The beautiful sky
+that frequently enlivens our spirit, and cheers us up for a moment, is,
+alas! but too frequently, suddenly darkened and obscured by the dark
+clouds that bring tempests in their course. The innocent and snowy lily
+that gladdens our sight to-day, decays and falls away to-morrow. The days
+and years on which we may have been counting, during a long life-time,
+for the realization of a few moments of joy, may arrive at last, loaded
+with bitterness. The thoughts and sentiments which oft gladden us in our
+waking dreams, wean us away for a time from care, and foster in us the
+hope of undecaying felicity, then pass like the flashes of the lightning
+away, to leave only gloom and desolation behind.
+
+“For my own part senora, I have long sacrificed myself to one object. I
+have long banished away Emmanuel Appadocca, from Emmanuel Appadocca: it
+boots not to tell the reason why. The world to me, it is true, is the
+world; the stars, the stars; but the halo that once surrounded them is
+gone—the feeling with which I may have regarded them is gone from them,
+and has centred itself in the now single end of my existence. For a long
+time mental anguish and I have been companions, and from its constant
+proximity it has chased away the softer feelings, whose aspect is too
+cheerful to bear the approaching shadow of that demon. My heart is
+wasted and its tenderness gone; gratitude for you, senora, is all that
+I dare encourage in my bosom. Let me exhort you, for your own sake, to
+forget the unfortunate man whom accident and distress brought into your
+presence. Forget him, and by doing so, avoid much suffering on your part,
+and, at the same time, confer much happiness on him. For if at the hour
+when this existence of mine will be about to terminate, there should
+linger in my fading memory some object that I could not look upon with
+cold indifference; if when the breath of life shall be on the point of
+passing I should not be able to shut my eyes and say, ‘mankind, you have
+among you nothing that is dear to me,’ the pains of succumbing nature
+would be tenfold heavier than they might.”
+
+In speaking thus, Appadocca had unwittingly to himself risen from his
+seat, and approached Feliciana, who, deeply affected, hanged down her.
+
+Warming more than usual, Appadocca caught her hand as he spoke.
+
+“To throw away a thought on a person of this temper, Feliciana,” he
+proceeded, “I need not tell you, is doing an injustice to yourself, but
+fear not that I am insensible to your kindness. I feel it as much as I am
+now permitted to feel such things, and may destiny,” continued he, with
+more warmth, “be ever propitious to you;” so saying, he abruptly let fall
+her hand, and walked towards the door.
+
+“Stay,” cried Feliciana, as she rose to keep him back: but Appadocca
+rushed out of the room.
+
+The young lady resumed her seat; her high temper had now yielded to
+a more tender feeling: one that buoys not up, nor supports so much,
+for there is a spirit of pride in high wrought vexation, that imparts
+strength to the other faculties and to the body. Like the last convulsion
+of the dying madman, it derives from its very extremity and excess,
+uncontrollable strength; but when that is broken—when it is softened
+down by tenderness or pity, the mind which was but now strong under a
+fierce influence is left weak, impressible, and like the vision of a man
+rising from a swoon, when that influence is removed. Thus the feelings
+of Feliciana instead now of following the course of her stronger and
+more predominant powers, yielded entirely to the softer endowments of
+her nature, and her affection vented itself in a more seductive, more
+natural, more overcoming way. She no longer endeavoured to disguise to
+herself the extent to which her affection had already gone. She perceived
+at once that the sorrow which the involuntary revelations of Appadocca
+had cost her, had a different source from that which she would fain have
+believed at first; and that her apparently chivalrous denunciation of
+his course of life, and her resolution to follow him, and like a good
+angel, to stay his piratical hand, did not spring from a mere instinct of
+abstract right and wrong, but rose from a more interesting and personal
+feeling.
+
+This great point being laid bare, she at once considered the
+circumstances, and the recollection of the last speech of Appadocca
+fell upon her heart, like the chilling hand of death. She sat in silent
+sorrow, and the evening had long yielded to night, when her father
+returned from the Savannahs to interrupt her grief, and to divert for a
+few moments the dark and troubled currents of her thoughts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+    “This week he hath been heavy, sour, sad,
+    And much, much different from the man he was;
+    But till this afternoon, his passion
+    Ne’er brake into extremity of rage.”
+
+                                COMEDY OF ERRORS.
+
+
+The night was far advanced, when Appadocca undertook to carry into
+execution, the design which he had formed of leaving the Rancha. He
+cautiously went out of the apartment which he occupied, and found no
+difficulty in opening the carelessly fastened door of the house. He
+went out softly, and when he had got outside, he had to stand still for
+a moment, in order to have recourse to his memory to help him to form
+some sort of idea of the position in which he found himself: such was
+the excessive darkness. Had he previously petitioned nature for a night,
+which might effectually shroud him from any one that might pursue him,
+she could not have sent one that was more dark or dismal. The blackness
+of the wilds, heightened a thousand-fold that of the night, which itself
+required no augmentation. Objects seemed heaped together in one pitchy
+chaos, and nature seemed to sleep heavily under a canopy of gloom. The
+fire flies that flew low and lonely on the level Savannahs, seemed to
+show their light, merely to point out the surrounding darkness. In the
+same proportion with this thick gloom was the silence of the hour, which
+permitted the faintest sounds to be heard. At long intervals the brief
+but sonorous cry of the owl, as it signaled to its mate, would fall upon
+the ear; or there might be heard the hoarse and unearthly shriek of the
+night raven, as it vented its rage at the falling of some fruit, which
+it carried in its beak; or, perhaps, the low sound of some tethered and
+invisible horse that cropped the short grass hard by.
+
+Incapable of seeing one foot before him, Appadocca could not proceed.
+He remembered well where he was, but the darkness confounded his
+calculation, and he knew not in what direction to move.
+
+“The pen lies there,” he said, “no there—no there,” and vainly pointed
+where he could not see his own hand before him.
+
+In this dilemma he bethought him of the stars: full of hope he quickly
+looked up: the heavens were as dark as the earth, not a star was to be
+seen.
+
+“Shall I stay where I am,” he inquired of himself, “until the morning
+star shows itself? this gloom will not, it cannot last!” No there might
+be a chance of his being discovered, and who knew the inconveniences,
+that such a circumstance would bring.
+
+“The wind—there is no wind.”
+
+Appadocca wet the tip of his index finger with his saliva and turned it
+round.
+
+“Ha! there is a breath,” he said, as he felt the chill, on the tip of the
+moistened finger. “The wind,” he argued, “blows at this hour in these
+regions, at a point varying from north-east to east. Following such a
+course, I shall assuredly open on the ocean: good.”
+
+Appadocca now began to move along, keeping his index finger straight
+before him, and taking care to moisten it from time to time. He proceeded
+under the pilotage of his sense of feeling, and heard the drowsy dialogue
+of some Llaneros, as they lazily turned in their hammocks, in some
+neighbouring pen, and asked each other, if he did not hear some one
+walking.
+
+The soft breeze still gently blew, and afforded the same means of
+directing himself. He tumbled here and there into the deep farrows
+which the heavy rains had made. The severe shocks and bruises which he
+received, as he fell into those holes, were quite sufficient to try
+the endurance of a strong man, much less that of one who was but just
+recovering from illness. Fortunately the point to be attained was not far
+off, and Appadocca, after having groped his way for an hour, heard the
+low moaning of the ocean before him. He approached as much as he thought
+he could with prudence, for he conjectured that the ground would be the
+more broken and torn, as it verged nearer toward the sea; and, finally,
+sat down on the grass to await the approach of morning.
+
+The gray light which temporarily chases away darkness immediately before
+the advent of morning, to leave a moment afterward the gloom which it
+dispelled for a time, came. Careful not to lose one favourable moment,
+Appadocca immediately got up, and advanced in the direction in which the
+sea was rolling. Again, however, he was obliged to suspend his progress,
+for darkness again returned.
+
+At the approach of the real light Appadocca felt his sensibility deeply
+moved by the view which opened before him. The great Atlantic rolled
+heavily below, and it was only where the horizon limited vision that its
+silently rising mountains would appear as if they were at last levelled
+into easy quietness. Its moving volumes were as yet undisturbed by the
+wind, and the transparent haze that still floated over its surface,
+imparted an air of repose that well befitted the hour. The mountain-peaks
+of the little islands that lined the shore, rose forth to contrast the
+wild waste of waters, and then came the high land on which he stood, that
+verged to the north-west into capacious bays and havens, and pointed
+out towards the east, and advanced high and lofty like a battalion of
+fearless soldiers, against the billows that lashed them, and that had
+likely lashed them long long before they bore the adventurous Columbus to
+its foot. At his back, also, lay the level and wide-spreading Savannahs,
+where, too, only the horizon bourned the sight.
+
+Solitary and alone in such a situation, Appadocca could not refuse to
+his heart the pleasure of admiring such a scene; and, although prudence,
+not to say safety, pressed him to hie away from the Rancha, he could not
+resist the temptation of resting and feasting his eyes upon that which
+was before and around him.
+
+Rousing himself, however, from the influence of this feeling, he
+endeavoured, and succeeded in descending the cliffs, and resolved to wait
+until fortune, or, to use his own expression, destiny, should send in his
+way, one of the numerous little vessels that trade along that coast.
+
+That day passed, and destiny—the broken reed—was not kind enough to send
+a vessel his way. Worn out with anxiety, and weakened by the want of
+food, he drew himself up in the chasm of a rock, with the intention of
+resting himself there in the best way that his unbroken fast, and the
+uninviting accommodation would permit.
+
+Despite these two unfavourable circumstances, he fell into a deep sleep,
+and had been under its influences for some hours, when he was startled by
+a most terrifying noise. It seemed that numbers of savage animals were
+assembled immediately above his head, and were designedly giving vent in
+one unbroken roar to their dismal and fearful howlings, that rose above
+the measured breakings of the billows below.
+
+“What can this be,” said Appadocca to himself, as he awoke; “what now
+comes to break this slumber that weans me from the sense of hunger?” So
+saying, he jumped up and walked a little way from the foot of the cave,
+across the beach, and looked up. He perceived the dark outlines of some
+large animals, that were moving about restlessly on the ridge, and were
+howling in the manner we have described.
+
+“Ha!” he exclaimed, “shall I have escaped from the scaffold, the waves of
+the Atlantic ocean, and from the jaws of the sharks that fill the bocas,
+to be, at last, ignominiously devoured by wild beasts; by Heaven, then,
+whatsoever you be, if you attack me, I warn you, you will attack one that
+is prepared for you, and one who is ready, at this moment, to make any
+one, or any thing, bear a heavy amount of chastisement.”
+
+This was spoken in a resolute and even fierce and over-confident tone.
+The speaker seemed impatient.
+
+There has not been, perhaps, a single philosopher since the human race
+began, to ruminate on rules and plans of human excellence, who can be
+said to have entirely controlled the emotion of anger. All our other
+feelings seem to give way, and yield to the discipline of a well-watched
+life, and to the strong volition of our reason, but that passion alone
+still remains uncontrollable; smothered it may be for a time, it is true,
+but it is liable on the very first occasion, to be fiercely kindled.
+It seems to be so intimately connected, although negatively with the
+pleasures of the mind and body, and consequently with the gratification
+of the actual cultivation of philosophy itself, that any derangement of
+any of these things acts in producing the feeling which human perfection
+is too weak to avoid.
+
+Notwithstanding his cynicism, Appadocca was irritated by the numberless
+difficulties that fell to his lot to surmount.
+
+‘But a feather breaks the loaded camel’s back’: he had undergone
+privations, borne sufferings, staked life, happiness—all that was dear
+and solacing to man—on the accomplishment of a design; after exerting
+himself to an extent that such as he, only, could exert themselves; after
+sacrificing the happiness that a lovely and angelic being was willing to
+confer, he was, at the eleventh hour, of his suffering, when hope began
+to beam again, now exposed to be devoured by vile unreasonable creatures.
+
+These reflections might have been made on another occasion, without
+endangering the temper of the person who made them. But Appadocca was
+now almost maddened by fatigue and hunger. Famine makes the most steady
+violent, and human nature has already a sufficiently hard duty to contain
+itself, even when starvation is not present to gall it into rage.
+
+In this mood he stood boldly on the shore, looking up at the wild beasts,
+with his chest heaving highly and quickly, and apparently desiring that
+they should rush upon him at once, and afford a but to his fury, and put
+an end to his unsweetened existence. His wishes were partly fulfilled.
+
+The animals rushed to and fro and seemed to be looking for a footing
+to descend the crag; but their instinct apparently did not deem it
+sufficiently secure for that purpose, for they drew back and howled as
+if disappointed of their prey.
+
+“Fools,” cried Appadocca, addressing them with more rage than reason, “go
+further down the ridge if you would have me to feast upon.”
+
+One of the animals, bolder than the others, went as far forward as
+possible, and seemed to have found a means of descending, but as the
+creature endeavoured to rest the weight of its body on the projection,
+on which it had laid one of its paws, it gave way. Its balance was lost
+and headlong it tumbled down the precipice. It had no sooner reached the
+ground, than Appadocca, wild as the animals themselves, threw himself
+upon it and buried his thumb and finger into its neck.
+
+“Now you must either kill me, or I shall kill you, vile creature that
+assails me, as if mankind could not inflict sufficient injury without
+your coming from your native wilds and forests to aid them. Die, by
+Heaven! or I shall”—saying this, he contracted his muscles as tightly as
+the sinews of a convulsive man.
+
+The animal lay for awhile stunned by the fall; but as soon as the blood
+commenced to circulate again, it felt the pressure on its wind-pipe, and
+began to kick violently.
+
+“Kick your spirit away, vile brute, I shall not budge,” cried Appadocca,
+now half mad with fury.
+
+On its legs the creature stood, and shook its head and plunged, and away
+it went with Appadocca still clutching its wind-pipe with the grasp of
+the dying crocodile. The animal staggered a few paces and fell heavily to
+the ground, strangled to death.
+
+Appadocca got up from the ground to which he had been borne by the beast
+in its fall, and walked round his prey in triumph.
+
+“Whatever you are,” said he, “provided you are flesh and blood, I shall
+have a meal of you.”
+
+He groped about among the small stones that strewed the upper part of
+the beach, and found what he seemed to have been searching for, a flint.
+He dashed it against a larger one and with the sharp pieces of it he
+began to cut through the hide of the animal that he had killed. He then
+succeeded in cutting a large portion of the still quivering flesh, and
+eat it.
+
+What will not famine relish? Oh! hunger, that eternally tells us of our
+lowliness. Hunger levels. Hunger brings down the highest and proudest
+individuals to the standard of the meanest creature, whose instinct is to
+eat, whose life is concentrated in devouring, and whose death comes by
+over-feeding.
+
+After Appadocca had fed upon the reeking flesh of his victim, he seemed
+recalled to himself: the madness of famine was past. He now looked upon
+the carcass before him with the indifference that formed the greater part
+of his nature, and the faint glimmerings of the fact that he had defied
+that beast which was now before him, and had engaged it in mortal combat,
+disgusted him: he contemned himself, too, when he recollected a little,
+the vain boastful and undignified language that he had held, and bent his
+steps in much sadness towards the same crevice where he had slept away
+the first part of the night. The other animals had fled after the fall of
+the one we have mentioned, and the stillness of the night was, as before,
+broken upon only by the moans of the ocean.
+
+The next morning revealed to Appadocca the extent of the danger that
+he had escaped the night before. The animal was discovered to be one
+of those American tigers or jaguars, which pervade the plains of
+South America, and whose hunger has not unfrequently surmounted their
+instinctive cowardice so far as to bring them to the very houses of the
+Rancheros. The huge and powerful jaws of the animal, in which his bones
+could have been ground to pieces, attracted the attention of Appadocca;
+and when he observed the wound on the animal—the rude incision that he
+had made with the flint, and recollected the bloody meal that he had made
+of its flesh, he shuddered in disgust.
+
+It was now that, withdrawing his eyes from the jaguar, he perceived at
+a distance a small craft tossing about on the heavy billows. He nimbly
+climbed the eminence to have a better view of what he feared his fancy
+may have too flatteringly pictured to him. It was in reality a small
+_fallucha_ that was labouring on the heavy seas. Her course was under
+the land, but on the reach she was edging sea-ward. Alarmed at this
+appearance, he came down the cliff and ran along the beach towards the
+little vessel. Having got nearly opposite, he halloed as loudly as he
+could. He was not heard; again he cried, but with as little success as
+before.
+
+“Am I destined again to meet with other misfortunes?” he muttered,
+calmly. “Am I destined to be left to perish on this unfrequented shore!
+Oh my father! how many events seem to arise to befriend you. Were I not
+sufficiently grounded in my belief, I would be almost tempted to believe
+that destiny, or Providence, or something else, exerted itself to shield
+you from your merited chastisement. But avaunt, vain, and stupid thought,
+the fatalities that have befallen thee, Emmanuel Appadocca, are only the
+acting of one of the grand laws by which yon sun stands where it is,
+while the earth wheels around it; or by which thou thyself throttled
+the huge beast last night. Dost thou not see that the distance is too
+far for thy voice to reach? Providence has instruments enough among his
+creatures, he does not interfere with our little concerns.”
+
+Muttering this, Appadocca climbed the heights, took off the jacket with
+which the hospitable Ranchero had provided him, and waved it in the air.
+
+The mariners on board the _fallucha_ held their oars in mid-air.
+
+“They have seen me,” said Appadocca, and waved the jacket again.
+
+The _fallucha_ had discovered the signal.
+
+Casting away the jacket, Appadocca threw himself at once from an
+overhanging rock into the sea, and began to swim boldly out to meet the
+vessel that was now slowly approaching him.
+
+His eagerness however, was now well nigh proving his death; for
+miscalculating the distance as well as his strength, he had ventured
+farther than his fatigues could justify. He was just sinking from
+exhaustion, when the powerful arm of a sailor from on board the
+_fallucha_ grasped him.
+
+He was laid on one of the rower’s benches, where he lay insensible.
+The sailors gravely bent over him, and tried every means for producing
+re-animation, which was not easily attained, for the Spaniards had no
+effectual restoratives, and Appadocca was now so overwhelmed, that the
+healthy elasticity of nature was almost destroyed.
+
+Appadocca proffered his thanks to the four men who formed the crew of
+that little vessel for their kindness, as soon as he had come to himself.
+
+“Who are you?” asked the captain, after receiving the thanks, “and where
+do you come from, you do not seem to me to be a seaman?”
+
+“No,” readily answered Appadocca, “I went out from Trinidad in my
+pleasure boat, together with some friends; we were taken through the
+bocas by the force of the currents, and having inadvertently approached
+too near a whirlpool, we were capsized. My friends have been drowned. I
+am the only one who have survived: I managed to swim ashore, and had to
+encounter a number of accidents, and a large amount of suffering. I at
+last saw your vessel.”
+
+“And where are you going,” he demanded in his turn, anxious to divert
+further inquiry.
+
+“To Trinidad.”
+
+“To which port,” again demanded Appadocca.
+
+“To any one where I may be able to sell my cargo,” answered the captain
+of the _fallucha_.
+
+Appadocca yielded himself up to his reflections.
+
+The captain could not withdraw his eyes from the stranger. He looked at
+him with the peculiar expression of the face, which indicates the absence
+of entire mental satisfaction, with regard to the reality of the object
+gazed upon. Still there was nothing in the appearance of Appadocca that
+could warrant any definite suspicion; but there was a combination in it,
+nevertheless, which forcibly attracted attention, and inspired a peculiar
+sort of feeling that probably was akin to awe.
+
+The morning gradually passed. When the strong trade-wind sprang about
+eleven o’clock, the rowers pulled in their sweeps; the feather-like sails
+of the _fallucha_ were hoisted; her head was pointed towards the bocas,
+and the little vessel began to mount over the waves under her closely
+boarded sheets. The sailors now carelessly threw themselves at full
+length on the rowers’ benches; the captain kept his eye on the bows of
+the little vessel; and Appadocca gazed pensively on the ocean before him.
+Had any of those who were on board the _fallucha_ cast his eyes towards
+the land that lay on the lee, he would probably have made out the dim
+outlines of a female form that was waving a white handkerchief in the
+air.
+
+At night-fall, the _fallucha_ was in the chops of the outlets.
+
+Appadocca thus saw himself, by a strange coincidence, in the same place
+and about the same time that he had jumped from the man-of-war. He gazed
+on the rolling waves which nature had surrounded with the terrors both of
+the animated and unanimated portions of creation. For the rocks beneath
+the impending mountains, together with the waves that looked merciless
+and unrelenting, raised at first sight the idea of sure destruction:
+while the huge repulsive sharks that are there to be seen in thousands
+reminded one of a still more painful and frightful death.
+
+“Nil arduum,” muttered Appadocca, as he gazed on the scene of his
+daring adventure, “said the Roman poet, and no mortal ever enunciated a
+greater truth. Here are these overwhelming waves that seem to carry sure
+destruction on their frowning crest, that roll over an abyss, which if
+it were dry, would be difficult for man to fathom, that contain within
+themselves all sorts of huge and destructive monsters, in comparison to
+the smallest fins of which, man, enterprizing, achieving man, dwindles
+to the insignificance of the rose-twig by the side of the towering
+magnolia: still the human race subjugates them even in their fiercest
+mood, and from their frail fabric of boards and pitch, men make war on
+their dangerous denizens. Not only that, but I, my very self, at the
+hour of midnight, when man and beast retire to their habitations, and
+sleep away darkness and its horrors, I plunged into the terrific waters
+with only a clay-pot to help me through, and here I am, principally
+by dint of perseverance, safe and sound. Oh, human race, you know not
+your power; you know not what you could do if you would only throw away
+the superstitious fears in which you have enthralled yourselves, and
+venture to assume a position, which the indefiniteness of your intellect
+assuredly intends you for. But you must study the law of nature: until
+you do that, you cannot be fit to achieve great things; as you are, you
+are living merely like brutes, with this aggravation, that the resources
+of your reason give you a greater facility of corrupting yourselves, and
+of becoming cowardly and base, the natural effect of corruption.
+
+“Had I permitted myself,” continued Appadocca, “to be nursed in the
+lap of an enervating luxury, either mental or bodily, to be surrounded
+with numbers of base menials, whose care was to prevent even the dew of
+heaven from falling too heavily upon me, who were to prepare the couches
+of indolence for me, who were to pamper my body, beyond the power of
+endurance, and at last transform me into an animal lacking thews and
+muscles? if I had been tutored to look upon the falling of a picture as
+a calamity, or been taught to tremble at the ramblings of a mouse; and
+more, had I permitted my mind to be enslaved by the ignorant notions
+of fiends, of horrors after death, and of all those things by which
+the world is made to quake in utter fear, should I have undertaken the
+execution of a design that would have been made to appear, even more
+terrible than that death in which its entire failure could have resulted?
+No, decidedly not.
+
+“And, my good father,” a sardonic smile might have been marked about
+his lips, “rejoice while you can, amidst vain pomps and ceremonies,
+surrounded as you are again by smiling and sympathising sycophants, for
+your time of merry-making will be but short.”
+
+Such were the half-muttered reflections of Appadocca as the _fallucha_
+crossed the bocas.
+
+Having once cleared the straits, the little vessel drew closely under
+the land on the left side with her sails filled by the cool and gentle
+land breeze. She was sailing up to Port-of-Spain, among the beautiful
+little islands with which the reader was made acquainted at the beginning
+of this narrative. The curling wavelets of the smooth gulf broke on
+the sharp prow of the fast-sailing _fallucha_, and kept up a soothing
+music that invited to repose. The rustling of the trees that grew to the
+water’s edge, charmed the ear of the mariner; the land breeze wafted far
+out to sea the sweet perfumes of the wild flowers, which nature has known
+to create only in the tropics.
+
+The little vessel was doubling a small promontory, and entering the
+beautiful bay which indents the coast about that part, and is known as
+“Chaguaradmas Bay,” when the hasty splashes of several oars were suddenly
+heard, while, from the darkness of the night, the approaching boat was
+still unseen.
+
+The splashes every moment grew more and more loud and distinct, they
+sounded more and more near, and suddenly a large boat, pulled by ten
+armed men, appeared, and the next instant the _fallucha_ was boarded; as
+nimbly as antelopes the men jumped into the little craft.
+
+“Que es ese?” the Spaniards simultaneously cried, and each drew his knife.
+
+“Lorenzo,” exclaimed Appadocca, with more warmth than his cynicism could
+justify, and, in a moment, that officer—for it was he—was affectionately
+shaking his chief by the hand: they were both much affected.
+
+How sweet it is when loving relatives have died away, one by one, when
+lover has been inconstant, and has shot the arrow—coldness—through the
+loving heart; when the ingratitude of professed friends has frozen the
+limpid currents of our feelings, when the world has heaped upon us
+miseries on miseries, and then has cast us forth; when father shews the
+front of enmity to filial deservedness, when we are isolated in ourselves
+in this great world of numbers of movements and of alacrity; how sweet
+it is to meet, after separation, the friend whose heart-strings throb in
+sympathy with ours, and about whose head the shadows of suspicion could
+never play.
+
+At the sound of the captain’s well-known voice, a loud and prolonged
+cheer from the men in the boat, echoed in the silence of the night far
+and wide over the gulf, and was repeated long and loudly by the ringing
+dales on the shore.
+
+“Thanks, thanks,” exclaimed Lorenzo, in his joy, “to the chance that sent
+us after this vessel.”
+
+“Where is the schooner?” inquired Appadocca.
+
+“Behind that promontory, that you barely see: she is there safely hidden.”
+
+“Then take the helm,” said Appadocca, “and steer to her.”
+
+Lorenzo attempted to take the tiller out of the hands of the captain, but
+met with strong resistance.
+
+The captain of the _fallucha_ brandished his knife, and called on his men
+to assist.
+
+“Stop,” coolly said Appadocca, “do not resist: I shall give you five
+hundred dollars for your little vessel and its cargo. Submit, I am
+Appadocca, the young pirate.”
+
+“Jesu!” cried the captain of the _fallucha_, “whom did I receive on board
+my vessel?” and he resignedly gave up the tiller.
+
+The command of the _fallucha_ was now taken by the pirate party. She was
+immediately put about. On making two or three tacks she headed the small
+promontory, and discovered the long Black Schooner that lay enshrouded,
+in the silence of night, on the smooth and deepening bay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
+    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
+
+                                                 HAMLET.
+
+
+After Lorenzo had been satisfactorily informed, by the confessions of
+the midshipman, with regard to the safety of his chief, deeming it no
+longer necessary to hazard any nearer approach to the man-of-war, he kept
+the schooner where she was: while, at the same, he continued to keep the
+ship-of-war still within sight. He was enabled to do so by an instrument
+of a very peculiar and strange device. From the tall masts of the
+schooner, there were reared to an immense height into the air long poles
+of steel that were joined and joined again to each other, and were, at
+the same time, carefully secured on all sides; at the top of these were
+adjusted large globe-shaped metallic mirrors, that were filled with a
+thick white liquid, which was continuously agitated by a small electric
+engine, which received its power from a battery on deck. These mirrors,
+when the sun was at a certain height, were made, by a trigonometrical
+principle, to receive impressions of objects that were beyond the scope
+of the human eye, and by conveying those impressions to other mirrors,
+that were fixed in a thousand different ways, to the several parts of the
+vessel, gave the power to an individual on deck to see every movement of
+any vessel which would otherwise be invisible, while his own remained
+unseen.
+
+Thus, by the force of the same genius with which he might have shone
+among men on the side of good, Appadocca was enabled to excel, to be
+unapproachable and irresistible in his career of crime and evil. The
+firmness of mind which enabled him to curb the natures of even pirates,
+and to establish a discipline on board the Black Schooner that made
+his men simultaneously act as if they were but the individual members
+of only one single body moved but by one spirit, might, perhaps, have
+procured for him the reputation of a wise and great leader; the powers
+of invention, which supplied even the deficiencies of human nature, and
+permitted him to make almost every element his servant, could again have
+handed down his name to posterity as that of a profound philosopher, if
+his talents had been turned to a proper object. But the combination of
+circumstances—destiny, decided otherwise, and instead of finding himself
+in the high position of good, Appadocca found himself, by the very
+necessity of those self-same talents, in the high position of evil.
+
+It is not Emmanuel Appadocca alone that has been thus doomed to bury a
+high intellect in obscurity, or been impelled by circumstances to expend
+its force in guilt. No: the world seems scarcely as yet prepared for
+genius, a higher humanity is required and must exist, before the man who
+possesses it can find a congenial place of existence on this planet. Mere
+chance now moves the balance in which he is weighed; circumstances either
+hazardously call him forth, or he is left to feed upon his own disgust,
+until his rough sands are run, then earth covers over the fire that ought
+to burn only in the skies. From among one hundred men of genius scarcely
+one ever goes beyond the boundary of the desert on which so many flowers
+are destined to “blush unseen.”
+
+It was two hours after noon, on the day which we have above mentioned,
+that Lorenzo was standing by the helmsman of the schooner, eagerly
+reading the reflections of the mirrors, when the signals of Appadocca
+from the man-of-war fell upon his eyes.
+
+“What is this?” involuntarily exclaimed the officer, as he read the
+well-known symbols of his chief.
+
+“Too late, too late! his stupidity has already made him undergo the
+torture,” he exclaimed, as he deciphered,—
+
+“TREAT WELL THE OFFICER, FOR THEY TREAT ME WELL.—SCORPION.”
+
+Lorenzo gave an order to the officer on duty; a piercing sound was then
+heard; in a moment or two, the sides of the schooner became peopled with
+men, whose brawny arms were bared up to the shoulders. Not a word was
+spoken. The polished and shining guns of the schooner were immediately
+pointed, they seemed to thrust their muzzles through the port-holes, as
+if they worked by one impulse, by their own choice and their own action,
+for the slightest difference could not be traced either in the time or in
+the manner in which each separate piece was moved to its proper place.
+
+Another piercing sound: each gun was fired at the precise moment. The
+schooner shook under the deafening explosion that followed, and the ocean
+rang, and rang again with the echo.
+
+This was Lorenzo’s reply to the request of Appadocca.
+
+By the aid of the same machine, that officer perceived when the
+man-of-war set all her sails, and began her voyage to Trinidad, as
+he concluded, both from the revelation of the young officer, and the
+direction in which she was steering. He rejoiced when he observed this,
+for he was persuaded that, in the event of the man-of-war entering the
+Gulf of Paria, he would be able triumphantly to rescue his chief. For
+the thousand bays and creeks which diversify the shore, the distance at
+which large vessels are obliged to remain on account of the harbour’s
+shallowness, and the lukewarmness of the inhabitants of the town with
+regard to pirates, for they have seldom or never been subjected to the
+ravages of those people, he calculated, would afford him all assistance,
+while they should, on the contrary, tend to perplex, hinder, and
+embarrass the enemy.
+
+He immediately ordered a certain quantity of sails to be put on the
+schooner, and began to follow the man-of-war. He kept always out of
+sight, and at noon on each day, the sails were lowered, the same machine
+was erected, and he made his observations on the ship-of-war, which
+sailed away majestically, its commander little knowing that he was
+followed by a cunning, vigilant, and determined enemy.
+
+Four hours had not elapsed since the man-of-war had crossed the bocas,
+before the Black Schooner also passed them, and thus left in the water
+behind her the person to whose rescue she was going.
+
+Lorenzo kept her head still towards the centre of the gulf, then went
+about, and, with one tack, gained the headland, behind which the schooner
+now lay concealed.
+
+In that position, Lorenzo quickly disguised himself, and taking
+possession of one of the many little vessels that sail along the shore
+from the Spanish main, went up to Port-of-Spain, and heard the confused
+intelligence that Appadocca had committed suicide.
+
+His cargo was sold, and he could remain no longer in the harbour for fear
+of detection, so he resolved upon the plan of taking another _fallucha_,
+and of returning to Port-of-Spain as a different captain. He lay in watch
+for the first vessel which might pass, and destiny willed that the one
+which he should board should carry Appadocca.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As soon as Appadocca had arrived on board of the schooner, after
+having bowed to the officer and men, who saluted him, he descended the
+companion-steps and requested Lorenzo to follow.
+
+They arrived at the Captain’s cabin: and Jack Jimmy, who met Appadocca
+at the door, stood on tiptoe, threw his head forward, opened his eyes,
+and was just on the point of venting some exclamation, when Appadocca
+made a sign to him to be silent. The little man, almost bursting with the
+internal ebullition of the greeting which he was obliged to restrain,
+retreated into an angle, and Appadocca passed on.
+
+“Sit down,” said he to Lorenzo, when they had arrived into the cabin,
+“and allow me to express my approval of the brave and wise manner in
+which you have discharged your duty during my absence.”
+
+The officer bowed modestly.
+
+“Has the crew always acted up to its office?” Appadocca demanded.
+
+“Yes, your excellency,” replied Lorenzo.
+
+“The unfortunate accident,” proceeded Appadocca, “which happened,
+deprived us of our last booty: but, in two days’ time I shall let the
+men have as much as they can desire. I shall let them have pleasure
+to-morrow. Lorenzo, let us drink together.”
+
+Appadocca pressed a spring, and one of his attendants appeared and laid
+on a table wine and drinking-cups. Appadocca filled a goblet and passed
+the decanter to Lorenzo.
+
+“Thanks to you, Lorenzo,” said Appadocca, and drank.
+
+“To the joy of your return, your excellency,” said Lorenzo, and did the
+same.
+
+In a few moments after the officer left the cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+    “For valour, is not love a Hercules,
+    Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?”
+
+                      LOVE’S LABOUR’S LOST.
+
+
+At early dawn on the morning that followed the departure of Appadocca,
+Feliciana was sitting in the principal apartment of the Rancha. She was
+occupying her favourite chair by the window, and with her cheek resting
+upon her hand, was gazing listlessly and absently on the green grass
+without, on which the dew still sparkled in the silvery rays of the
+rising sun.
+
+She seemed occupied by her own thoughts, although the beautiful picture
+of waking nature—a scene always enchanting in the tropics—was before
+her, and every moment, as she heard the rustling of the _carat_ that
+roofed the house, or the creaking of the cedar windows as they became
+heated with the sun, or any other sound which might resemble a footfall,
+she turned her head eagerly to look, and turned away again, evidently
+disappointed when she saw nothing.
+
+The morning merged more and more towards noon, she more and more
+frequently turned round to look, but seemed every time disappointed as
+before, for Appadocca, whom she was expecting, did not appear.
+
+“Can he be ill,” thought Feliciana, “Maria, Maria!” she cried, as she
+became more and more alarmed by the idea.
+
+An old servant appeared, and was immediately sent to see if the stranger
+was well.
+
+She soon returned, and said that there was no one in the room.
+
+Feliciana jumped up and rushed into the apartment which Appadocca had
+occupied. No one had slept on the bed.
+
+The truth now broke in upon the young lady. Her countenance fell; she
+walked back dejectedly to her chair, and looked out as before.
+
+“What shall I do?” asked the old domestic, who had now a long time waited
+in vain for the orders of her absent mistress.
+
+Feliciana started: “Tell my papa,” she said, and turned away her head.
+
+The old domestic went slowly and in a side-long manner out of the
+apartment, gazing at the young lady the whole time, and muttering “what
+is the matter with the child?”
+
+Feliciana remained where she was the greater part of the day, closed
+her ears to the repeated exhortations of her old servant to take food,
+and declared, in answer to her pressing questions, that she had had
+a disagreeable dream the night before, which had thrown a feeling of
+melancholy over her the whole of that day. When she retired to her
+apartment in the evening, the young lady hastily gathered her valuables,
+and wrote a letter, which she addressed to her father, and sat quietly
+and pensively until the night was half spent. She then rose, and
+carefully let herself out of the house, and walked slowly and cautiously
+away, until she got to a considerable distance from the Rancha. Once
+in the open field, the bold Feliciana began to run, for it was only by
+running that she could keep pace with the rapidity and activity of her
+thoughts. The next day she was by the sea shore, and was just in time to
+catch a glimpse of the little _fallucha_ which had received Appadocca on
+board, as she was sailing away. She waved her handkerchief, but no one on
+board saw her, and the _fallucha_ left her behind.
+
+Undaunted by this accident, the young lady continued her journey along
+the shore, moving, however, in an easterly direction.
+
+Oppressed with fatigue, she sat for a moment, in the evening, on the
+grass, to rest herself.
+
+The dull sounds of horses’ hoofs in a short time were distinctly heard.
+
+“I am undone,” Feliciana exclaimed, and turned to look.
+
+Two horsemen were seen rapidly approaching in the direction by which she
+herself had come.
+
+“They are my father’s men,” she said to herself, and looked about for
+some tree, or other object, behind which she might conceal herself: but
+there was not a thing at hand.
+
+The horsemen drew closer and closer again; she looked round once more: at
+a short distance, the grass seemed to grow richer and thicker. She crept
+along towards this point, and threw herself flat into the tuft: but she
+was barely concealed, and durst not hope to escape being seen.
+
+“I cannot avoid being taken,” she said to herself, and seemed unnerved
+by the thought. The horsemen approached nearer and nearer. The thoughts
+of Appadocca crowded on her; the conflict of undefined feelings which
+had taken place in her mind, had ended in leaving her a being that was
+devoted to that mysterious man, and one who could now form no idea of
+life in which he was not the beginning and the end. Her fears now yielded
+to a stronger feeling; she drew from her bosom a gilded poniard, and
+vowed that she would not be deterred from fulfilling her vow as long as
+she lived. The horsemen had almost arrived to where she was, they came
+opposite to her, they looked neither on one side nor on the other, but
+seemed entirely absorbed by the subject on which they were conversing in
+a loud tone of voice.
+
+From her hiding place Feliciana could see them distinctly. Joy, joy! they
+were not her father’s men. But may they not be other persons that were
+sent after her in one direction, while her father’s own Llaneros went in
+another? She remained quiet and listened.
+
+“No, I shall not take less than seven piastres each for my oxen; and, as
+for my jack-asses, I shall not let them go for less than four piastres
+a-head,” said one of the horsemen.
+
+“You are quite right,” replied the other; “those people in Trinidad can
+afford to pay a good price for their bullocks. By-the-bye, have you
+remarked what a number more of beasts we sell since the English took that
+island. I understand these fellows live entirely on beef, and that is
+the reason why they are such good soldiers.”
+
+“Good or bad soldiers,” answered the other, “if they eat beef, and make
+us sell our cattle, that is all we care about.”
+
+“They are merchants,” said Feliciana to herself, and resolved at once to
+speak to them.
+
+“Yes, continued the first speaker, I shall not—”
+
+“Ho!” cried Feliciana, springing from the ground, “senores, senores, ho!”
+
+The horsemen looked round, and crossed themselves, and at the same time,
+cried, “Jesu!”
+
+“Stop, stop, I wish to speak to you,” Feliciana continued.
+
+The horseman reined up their horses, and remained apparently under the
+effect of some powerful fear.
+
+“What may she be?”
+
+“Who knows what she may be! that’s just the reason why we should obey
+her,” replied the other.
+
+In the mean time Feliciana came up.
+
+“Shall we speak to her?” one inquired of the other.
+
+“Where are you riding to, senores?” she inquired.
+
+They looked inquiringly at each other, and then asked each other in a
+whisper, “Shall I answer?”
+
+“Where are you going to, senores?” she repeated.
+
+“To Guiria, beautiful lady,” one at last answered.
+
+“Be good enough to take me with you,” said Feliciana.
+
+The horsemen looked amazed at each other.
+
+“I shall give you two hundred piastres.”
+
+The two horsemen opened their eyes.
+
+“Two hundred piastres?” they repeated inquiringly.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“And who are you, beautiful lady, that are thus solitary in the
+Savannahs? are you one of us or some blessed spirit that is permitted
+to walk the earth. We are good and true catholics, do not harm us,
+we beseech you.” The two horsemen here devoutly crossed themselves
+respectively.
+
+“I am no spirit,” answered Feliciana, “but an unfortunate lady, who is
+flying to the rescue of—of—her—husband: pray take me on with you, and I
+shall reward you, as I have said.”
+
+The horsemen mused, and whispered to each other for a moment. Then one of
+them dismounted.
+
+“Senora,” he said, “Heaven forbid that we should ever commit the crime of
+leaving a lady in the wilds without shelter or protection. Allow me to
+assist you in mounting my horse.”
+
+Feliciana was supported on the saddle. The three persons then proceeded
+on their journey. The horsemen changed places alternately at the various
+stages of the journey; and while one walked at the side of Feliciana’s
+horse, the other rode by turns, until they arrived in the environs of
+the town of Guiria, where Feliciana found a number of opportunities to
+continue her wanderings in search of Appadocca.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+            “How would you be,
+    If He, who is the top of judgment, should
+    But judge you as you are? O, think on that;
+    And mercy then will breathe between your lips,
+    Like men new made.”
+
+                              MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
+
+
+After Appadocca had jumped overboard, the large ship passed the bocas
+safely, entered upon the still waters of the gulf, and within a few hours
+afterwards her large Anchor was cast off the harbour of Port-of-Spain.
+
+As the vessel approached nearer to her port of destruction, Charles
+Hamilton had become more and more anxious, and uneasy about the fated
+doom which he saw every moment hanging lower and lower over his friend.
+He reasonably argued that, with such a willing witness as James
+Willmington, and with such a stoical disposition as his friend had formed
+to himself, there would not be the slightest chance of Appadocca’s
+acquittal when he should be tried. For Willmington, it was to be
+supposed, would not attenuate the least feature of the case, nor would
+Appadocca descend from his high notions of philosophy to conceal or deny
+the charges that would be brought against him.
+
+In this state of mind, Charles Hamilton considered a long time, and
+endeavoured to think of some means of still saving his friend. It was,
+however, a difficult and perplexing matter, for the only available
+measures that he could adopt, were doggedly repudiated by Appadocca
+himself.
+
+“Confound his obstinacy,” the young officer muttered, when he thought of
+his friend’s infatuation; “he might have been saved long ago if it were
+not for that.”
+
+Among a number of expedients and plans, Hamilton at last adopted the
+one of having an interview with James Willmington, of endeavouring to
+soften down his persecuting feeling, and of establishing, if not terms
+of kindness and affection, at least those neutrality and indifference
+between him and Appadocca.
+
+It was in this disposition, that long before the sun had risen on the
+morning after the man-of-war had come to an anchor, Charles Hamilton
+requested a servant to ask James Willmington to be good enough to attend
+him in his cabin. Willmington, whose excitement had kept him awake the
+whole night, shortly appeared.
+
+“Be good enough to sit down, sir,” said Hamilton.
+
+Willmington sat down.
+
+“I have taken the liberty, sir, of asking you to my cabin, to speak to
+you on a subject that I am aware must be very delicate; but my great
+anxiety for my friend, and the just apprehension that I entertain with
+regard to his life itself, have led me to put aside whatever reluctance I
+should otherwise feel, and to speak to you on that head.”
+
+Willmington looked stolidly and vaguely at Hamilton, and said not a word.
+
+“You are aware, sir,” continued Hamilton, “that Appadocca runs, at this
+moment, the risk of his life.”
+
+“I am aware, sir,” replied Willmington, briefly.
+
+“Well, sir, shutting my eyes to all family quarrels—”
+
+“There are no quarrels in my family that I know of, sir,” interrupted
+Willmington.
+
+“Perhaps you will hear me out,” remarked Hamilton.
+
+Willmington exhibited the rudiments of a bow.
+
+“Shutting my eyes to all private quarrels between you, I say, I cannot
+but consider it a misfortune that a young man, like Appadocca, should be
+brought to a disgraceful death on a scaffold at such an early age. You
+will be the only prosecutor in this case, and, to a certain extent, you
+hold his life in your hands; will you suspend—suspend your animosity, and
+give Appadocca a chance of escape?”
+
+“I do not understand you, sir,” said Willmington.
+
+“I do not think there is much obscurity about what I said,” remarked
+Hamilton, in his turn.
+
+“Do you mean, sir, to ask me to connive at a felony, and to permit a
+criminal to escape?”
+
+“Call it what you choose, sir; I ask you to save Appadocca from an
+ignoble and untimely death,” answered Hamilton.
+
+“Then, sir, I must tell you at once, I cannot. The law must take its
+course. Beside, sir, I feel called upon by public justice and morality,
+to bring to punishment the individual in whose favour you are making
+these representions.”
+
+“Hum,” groaned Hamilton—“you forget one great point,” he said after a
+short pause.
+
+“What is that, sir?” inquired Willmington.
+
+“That by bringing Appadocca to the scaffold, you will disgrace your own
+blood,” answered Hamilton.
+
+“I do not care much for that, sir,” answered Willmington.
+
+“But you might show some consideration, at least, to your own son,” said
+Hamilton.
+
+“He did not show any to me,” sullenly replied Willmington.
+
+“That is no reason why you should not: and you must recollect, he
+justified his harshness to you precisely on the same grounds as you now
+do yours. Besides, he may again, one day, justify any vengeance that he
+may be inclined to wreak upon you by your conduct to day.”
+
+“There will not be much chance left of his doing so, I warrant you,”
+replied Willmington, with a sardonic smile.
+
+“There is many a slip between the cup and the lip,” said Hamilton.
+
+A pause ensued.
+
+“Beside,” continued Willmington, re-opening the dialogue—“besides, he is
+my son only of a sort.”
+
+“What do you mean,” inquired Hamilton.
+
+“That his mother was not Mrs. Willmington,” answered Willmington.
+
+“Do you mean to say, then, that you do not consider you owe any duty to
+your children that may not have been born in wedlock?” inquired Hamilton.
+
+“Scarcely,” answered Willmington.
+
+“You consider, therefore, that where the word of a priest has not been
+pronounced on your union, you are absolved from your honor, and from
+natural obligations?” inquired Hamilton.
+
+“I do,” answered Willmington.
+
+The lips of the young officer curled up with scorn, as he stood up and
+said, with ill-concealed disgust:
+
+“Leave my cabin, sir; leave my cabin. By G—d you are not made worse than
+you are. If I were Appadocca, I should have hanged you outright, and not
+sent you with a philosophical scheme to float on a cask and to be picked
+up.
+
+“Hark you, sir,” continued Hamilton, in a suffocating temper, “if you
+have a son that resembles you more than Appadocca does, born of Mrs.
+Willmington, understood—send him to me, sir, and, by his own appointment,
+I shall give him satisfaction for ordering you out of my cabin.”
+
+Willmington turned to leave, but met face to face a servant that came
+rushing it.
+
+“Your honour, your honour,” the man cried with much excitement, “the
+pirate prisoner has drowned himself.”
+
+“What?” exclaimed Hamilton, and fell back into his chair.
+
+“The pirate prisoner, your honour, has jumped overboard. When the
+steward went into his cabin this morning, he was not to be found: on
+examination, the skylight was discovered to be open.”
+
+The officer leaned his forehead on his hand.
+
+“There, sir,” he said, “your vengeance is satisfied: public justice and
+morality are vindicated.”
+
+“Scarcely,” muttered Willmington between his teeth, and left the cabin.
+
+Charles Hamilton was deeply affected by the supposed suicide of his
+friend; recollections of bygone days crowded on his mind. He recalled
+vividly to himself the happy hours which he and his friend Appadocca
+had spent together in the lightheartedness and warm fellowship which
+only students can feel, when strong and mutual sympathy links them, and
+carries them together through study and through recreation: he pictured
+to his mind, the ardent and aspiring youth, such as his friend then
+was, with a mind that was stored with learning, and a heart that was
+overflowing with abundant benevolence, and then contrasted him with
+the cold soured, cynical man, whose mind was now entirely engrossed
+with schemes of death and revenge, and whose heart now beat but in
+cold indifference, or throbbed with a more active feeling, only when
+retribution and punishment quickened its action. He then thought of the
+career which hope would have foretold on the one picture—a career, that
+like the stars themselves which Appadocca measured, was to be ever bright
+and brilliant, that might have shed its light on humanity, and might,
+perhaps, have signalized an epoch of philosophy and certain truth: and
+he thought, on the other hand, of the actual reality of a life spent in
+the degrading society of the reputed scum of mankind, with its energies
+and powers exercised and lost in devising methods for robbing others, and
+closed at last in immorality and crime.
+
+Such thoughts weighed heavily on Charles Hamilton, and when he proceeded
+on deck, his step might be observed to be less light, and his eye less
+quick than they were wont to be.
+
+As for James Willmington he walked on one side of the deck restlessly,
+and bit his nails.
+
+“The fellow,” he interjected to himself, “to go and drown himself when
+I expected to have made him feel the consequences of his insolence, in
+having me put on a cask and set adrift. The villain! to go and drown
+himself, when the gallows and the hangman’s hand ought to have sent him
+to his account. Never mind, he is out of the world, and one way is as
+good as another, there is no fear now of being judged again in the name
+of nature.”
+
+Willmington smiled satanically.
+
+“He is gone, and that is one blessing, at least, and he will, no doubt,
+meet those in the other world who will be better able to answer his
+philosophy than I.”
+
+And a diabolical smile played on the lips of that heartless and selfish
+man.
+
+“Have that man landed at once, Charles?” said the commander dryly, who
+was attentively watching Willmington, from the quarter-deck.
+
+His attention had been at first attracted by the restless and impatient
+movements of Willmington. He had remarked the workings of his lips, and
+had noticed the bitter sneer that settled upon them at the end. The
+dislike which he had always entertained for that man, was worked up to
+its height by this exhibition.
+
+“He could not have been uttering a prayer for his son,” he justly
+thought; “prayers do not end so. No—no—he must be truly a vile
+individual. Death ought to suspend, at least, the enmity of the bitterest
+foes. It is a strange father that can curse the memory of his own son,
+however great a reprobate he may have been. Have that gentleman landed
+immediately, Charles,” he again said to his son.
+
+In a few moments, James Willmington was made acquainted with this order,
+and was told that a boat was ready to take him ashore.
+
+“Thank God, thank God!” he cried, almost aloud, and quickly ascended the
+steps of the quarter-deck, to take leave of the commander.
+
+“My lord, I have to bid you, good morning,” said he, as he approached the
+commander.
+
+“Good morning,—good morning,” quickly replied the person addressed,
+apparently desiring to have as little as possible to say to the
+individual, who was taking his leave.
+
+“I am much obliged to you,” continued Willmington, “for the protection
+and assistance, and—”
+
+“Not at all, sir,” dryly rejoined the commander, “I have only discharged
+the duty which I owe to all His Majesty’s subjects on these seas.”
+
+“Yes, my lord,” pursued Willmington, “and I trust my lord, when you land,
+you will condescend to remember your former guest.”
+
+“I thank you, sir,” replied the commander, as dryly, as before.
+
+“Good morning, my lord.”
+
+“A very good morning, sir.”
+
+The boat, soon bore Willmington away from the ship.
+
+“If the world possessed many more like that man,” said the commander
+to his son, while he pointed to Willmington, who was now on his little
+voyage toward the shore, “it would indeed be worse than a den of thieves.”
+
+“I am afraid there are many more of this sort, sir, than you imagine,”
+replied Charles, “and that the world is not even as good as a den of
+thieves, for they say, those individuals recognize a certain code of
+honor.”
+
+“Things were not so in my time,” replied the commander; “when I was
+young, Charles, we feared God, honored the king, and dealt justly and
+honorably by all men.”
+
+“The times, then, are changed, sir,” said Charles, “and the greatest
+misfortune is, that such characters as that Willmington, unluckily for
+humanity, make as many Appadoccas.”
+
+“True,” observed the commander, “it is a misfortune. I always thought I
+perceived much to be admired in that unfortunate Appadocca. I am rather
+glad, I must say, that he has drowned himself rather than permit himself
+to be dealt with by the executioner.”
+
+On landing, Willmington hurried up the magnificent walk of almond-trees,
+which lead from King’s-wharf, into Port-of-Spain. He pursued his way
+through the city, and scarcely recognised the many wondering friends and
+acquaintances, who proceeded forward to congratulate him on his return,
+for they had heard of the accident which had befallen the ship in which
+he had taken passage; and also of the manner in which he, in particular,
+was treated.
+
+When he had arrived at the beautiful Savannah which lies at the
+Northern-end of the city, he diverged into a footpath that led to the
+beautiful villas with which Saint Ann’s-road is ornamented. He quickly
+walked up the road a little way, and immediately stopped at the gate of a
+magnificent and romantic suburban house that stood in solitary grandeur,
+amidst the beautiful trees that belted it.
+
+He rang at the gate-bell, and was immediately admitted by the servant,
+who started back, and almost went into hysterics at seeing his master
+back again.
+
+“Gad bless me, massa, da you, or you ’pirit?” inquired that official,
+as he opened the gate and let his master in, who, without noticing the
+wonderment of the man, rushed into the house.
+
+“Ah! is it you, Mr. Willmington?” said his wife, with fear, surprise, and
+joy, all confusedly pictured on her face.
+
+“Heavens be praised, and thanked,” and she embraced him affectionately.
+
+“Tell me, tell me all about the accident that befell you,” she asked.
+
+“Not to-day, dear,” answered Willmington; “not to-day, dear. Only thank
+Providence that I am again safe. I shall relate everything when I am more
+composed.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+    “Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth
+    Hide thee!
+    Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold!
+    Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
+    Which thou dost glare with.”
+
+                                        MACBETH.
+
+
+It was with the greatest difficulty that James Willmington succeeded in
+restraining the curiosity of his wife until the period which he himself
+had appointed to tell her the particulars of the capture of the ship, and
+also the singular circumstance of his trial, punishment and rescue.
+
+The period had now arrived.
+
+In a beautiful and fantastic pavilion, into which the soft evening breeze
+wafted the sweet perfume of a thousand delicate flowers which bloomed
+around, sat James Willmington. He was seated at the head of a vast,
+spreading table that was loaded with the choicest and most delicious
+fruits that the tropics produce. Opposite to him sat Mrs. Willmington, on
+whose side two very beautiful infant daughters were respectively placed.
+On the right hand of Willmington was his son, a youth of about eighteen,
+who was dressed in the uniform of an officer.
+
+The pure wax tapers that burnt in chaste and elegant candlesticks of
+solid silver, shed a cheerful and soft light around. The faint music of
+a small fountain that played hard by, fell soothingly on the ear, as it
+grew louder and louder, or fell fainter and still fainter, according
+to the direction and strength of the lulling breeze that seemed to
+sport with its jets. The old family pictures that hung on the walls
+looked down fiercely and frowningly, or smiled upon the happy and quiet
+group, according to the stern and warlike disposition or the benignant
+characters of each.
+
+The servants had all retired for the time to their own apartments; and
+Willmington sat quietly smoking an exquisite cigar, and sipping from time
+to time the crystal iced water that stood in a tumbler by his side.
+
+“I shall now tell you,” he said, “the succession of accidents which has
+brought me back to Trinidad,” and he began to relate the particulars of
+the capture of the merchant vessel, the distribution of the shares,
+his trial, his being thrown overboard, the agony that he suffered on
+the cask, and finally his providential rescue, the capture of the
+pirate captain and his supposed suicide. He narrated circumstance on
+circumstance, quickly passed over the alleged causes of his sufferings,
+and mentioned Appadocca as one who claimed to be his son.
+
+“Confound his impudence,” cried the youth of eighteen. “I wish I had been
+there, I should have caned his insolence out of him. The idea! to call
+my father, his father, vile cut-throat as he was. I wish I had him now.
+But do you know anything at all of him? How came he to claim you as his
+father, sir?” he inquired, after a time.
+
+“Do not interrupt me;—do not interrupt me,” was the only answer
+Willmington made to this home and embarrassing question.
+
+Time had flown during his long narrative. The clock had already struck
+eleven—a late hour in the tropics—when he was concluding.
+
+“Yes, my children,” he said at the end, with great solemnity,
+endeavouring to make the contemplated impression, “there is one above to
+punish evil doers.”
+
+“Ay, and he never slumbers,” replied a deep sonorous voice from without,
+and in a moment afterwards the pirate captain stood before James
+Willmington.
+
+The cigar fell from his jaws, that palsied with terror, now gaped
+asunder. His hands trembled, and threw over the glass of iced water
+towards which it was being stretched, his silvery hair seemed to stand
+on end, and with a sudden bound, Willmington started from his seat and
+reeled over his chair towards a corner of the apartment.
+
+“Get out of my sight, get out of my sight, accursed, damned spirit; in
+the name of Christ, I conjure you!” he cried, while his eyeballs glared,
+and large drops of sweat trickled down his forehead that was almost green
+with fear.
+
+Appadocca calmly raised the chair from the floor, drew it to the head of
+the table, folded his thin cloak around him and sat down.
+
+“I did not design to deliver you up to the authorities,” shrieked
+Willmington, almost inarticulately. “No, no! I had only intended to
+frighten you, I would have allowed you to escape. Oh, yes, I would have
+protected you; yes, yes, I would have protected you like a father.
+Forgive, forgive me, and scare me no more.”
+
+Appadocca looked round upon the miserable Willmington, who, contracted
+with terror within the smallest possible heap, crouched in a corner.
+
+“Do not look at me,” cried Willmington still more terrified, “vanish,
+vanish, in the name of Heaven and all the saints. If you come from
+Hell—to-to haunt me,—return, return. It was not I that wronged you.
+Forgetfulness, forgetfulness—I intended—I intended always—always to find
+you out. Your mother, aye, your—your mother loved me. Have mercy—mercy—on
+me,—the vessel—the vessel took me by—by chance to St. Thomas. I did
+not—I did ask him: no—no—I was sorry—sorry, when—when—you were drowned.
+Mercy—mercy.”
+
+“Come here and make your will,” said Appadocca, authoritatively, without
+paying the slightest attention to the cries of the wretched and almost
+distracted man.
+
+“Make my will? will!” recommenced Willmington, “do you intend to murder
+me? Hence, hence, I am a christian, you have no power on me. No, no,—do
+not—do not—out, out of my sight, damned, reprobate spirit.”
+
+“I am no spirit. Speak not to me so sillily. Make your will, I say,” said
+Appadocca, with more authority, “and do not let these children suffer
+from your loss. The minutes that you can remain with them are counted.”
+
+“Will, will!” exclaimed Willmington, as if already staggering in his
+intellect.
+
+“Will? I have no will to make. My will is made already. Do not speak to
+me of wills—do not speak to me of wills, I do not wish to die—I will not
+die. Leave my sight—leave my sight—leave my sight.”
+
+“Then settle your other affairs,” said Appadocca with the same authority
+as before. “I allow you five minutes; at the end of that time you must go
+with me.”
+
+“No—no, I will not go with you,” shrieked Willmington, “I did you no
+harm——I intended you no harm. Let me live a little longer—give me but
+seven years to live—five—two;—half a year;—a month—a week, a day;—do not
+take me away so soon. Let me live, let me live. Do not take me with you.
+It was not I that drowned you.”
+
+“It would be prudent on your part to fill the five minutes, which are
+accorded you more profitably than by these vain petitions. I—”
+
+“Vain petitions! Let them not be vain; look at the children that I
+have to maintain and protect: do not take me away from them,” cried
+Willmington, interrupting Appadocca.
+
+“I am no ghost,” continued Appadocca, “but something worse.”
+
+“Was he not drowned?” Willmington began to mutter. “Did he not jump into
+the sea—at the bocas—or farther out?—Can he—could he have been saved?
+no, no, delusion—delusion. His face is as pale as death. He is still
+and quiet as the grave;” continued Willmington, as he gazed intently on
+Appadocca, who was still sitting calmly at the table.
+
+The period had elapsed, the moment of doom had now arrived.
+
+“The period is past, your time is come,” said Appadocca, “rise and go
+with me.”
+
+“No—no,” shrieked Willmington, madly,—“no—no—no.”
+
+And with a sudden spring he jumped from the corner to one of the doors:
+he was roughly thrown back by some person who was outside: he then
+rushed to another, and was again repelled—to another, and he was once
+more forced back. He sprang on to the jalousies, and as he succeeded in
+opening one, he was quickly shoved back by some powerful arm from the
+outside, into the room again.
+
+Like one who endeavours to flee from devouring flames, that rush in
+merciless fury to close him in, and finds every passage, every outlet,
+or crevice for escape barred against him, the unhappy man reeled back
+into the room in the madness of despair.
+
+“Murder—murder,” he shouted,
+“John!—Charles!—James!—Edward!—Murder!—Murder!—pirates!—fiends, pirates,
+robbers, police, police.”
+
+“Ho! there! Domingo,—Gregoire!—Alphonso!—Jose!” called Appadocca, with
+his habitual calmness.
+
+Four men on the call entered the room. Their flashing eyes shone from
+beneath their overhanging red caps, and their long beards and mustachios
+exhibited a peculiar appearance under the silvery light of the tapers,
+which tended to display to the full their dark and dry complexions.
+
+“Secure him,” said Appadocca pointing to Willmington, as the men entered.
+
+“Do not touch him for your lives,” cried the young officer, the son of
+James Willmington, that sat on his right.
+
+He, like his father, had been under the power of a supernatural terror
+from the moment that Appadocca entered, and had been addressed as a
+visitant from another world; but when he became awake to the fact that
+the intruder was a being of flesh and blood, he grasped his sword that
+lay on a table, and rushed at Appadocca.
+
+“Do not touch him for your lives,” he cried, while he made a lunge at
+the breast of the pirate-captain who still retained his seat. The point
+was already touching the cloak of Appadocca, when the heavy weapons of
+some unseen individuals from without, shattered the slender sword into a
+thousand pieces.
+
+“Secure you the young man, Baptiste,” said Appadocca, unmoved by the
+danger which he had so narrowly escaped.
+
+A man immediately stepped into the room and threw his arm round the
+unresisting young officer.
+
+The four men had rushed upon Willmington. Despair had maddened him into
+a sort of courage: he met the foremost one of them half way, and grasped
+him around the throat, with the clutch of death. The pirate also seized
+him, and the two men, animated with passions which though different in
+their natures were equally fierce in themselves, grappled like madmen,
+and staggered violently to and fro. The strong effort of the pirate,
+could not throw off Willmington, who clung to him with the tenacity of
+the serpent that tightens its refolded coils around the triumphant tiger
+that still presses its paw on its bruised head.
+
+Lashed into rage, the pirate drew his knife: it gleamed for a moment
+overhead, and was descending, with certain death upon its point, when——
+
+“Hold!” cried Appadocca, “no blood; help him Gregoire, Jose, help him,
+there.”
+
+The voice of the captain arrested the disciplined arm.
+
+Spurred by the immediate commands of their chief, the other pirates
+closed in upon Willmington, and by the exercise of violent force tore him
+away from their comrade, who stood for a moment with his eyes fiery and
+glaring from anger, and with his chest heaving heavily and quickly.
+
+The prisoner kicked and shouted until the words rattled hoarsely in his
+throat; but he was now in no soft or gentle hands. Sooner than we can
+write it, he was tied hand and foot; his cries, nevertheless, still
+resounded through the place.
+
+“Gag him,” was the immediate order.
+
+The prisoner’s neckcloth was roughly undone, and violently thrust into
+his mouth.
+
+“Away with him.”
+
+The pirates stretched out two pikes: the prisoner was laid across them,
+they raised him on their shoulders, and walked silently out of the
+apartment.
+
+“Now unhand your prisoner, Baptiste,” said Appadocca, to the man who held
+young Willmington. Baptiste let go his hold.
+
+“My father, my father,” shouted young Willmington and rushed first to one
+door, and then to the other, all of which he found guarded on the outside.
+
+“Sir, you cannot go out,” said Appadocca.
+
+“I will go out—I will go after my father,” ejaculated young Willmington.
+
+“You cannot, and shall not,” answered Appadocca.
+
+The young officer rushed to all the doors in succession, and was rudely
+pushed back at each.
+
+“You see you cannot go out,” observed Appadocca.
+
+“Who are you? what do you wish to do with my father?” inquired the young
+Willmington, as he turned disappointedly from the door.
+
+“I shall tell you, by-and-bye,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“Tell me at once, and let me out,” cried young Willmington.
+
+“That cannot be.”
+
+“That must be: I must rescue my father,” rejoined young Willmington.
+
+“Banish the idea: you will never be able to do so,” replied Appadocca.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because you will be prevented,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“Prevented?—prevented? Hell, itself, with all its legions, shall not
+prevent me,” shouted young Willmington. “I will rescue my father.”
+
+“Do so,” answered Appadocca.
+
+The young man rushed to the doors again, and was thrust back as before.
+After a series of vain attempts, he staggered, almost exhausted, into the
+centre of the room.
+
+“You see, sir, I make no ungrounded assertions. It is impossible for you
+to follow your father,” said Appadocca.
+
+“Why impossible? Confound you as a cut-throat—murderer,” asked young
+Willmington.
+
+“Because,” answered Appadocca, without noticing the harsh epithets,
+“because he is implicated in a vow that must be fulfilled.”
+
+“I understand no such vow,” said young Willmington, “and if I had a
+sword, I should force my way in spite of you.”
+
+“Ha! we shall now understand each other, sir,” said Appadocca, then threw
+aside his cloak, unbelted his richly-ornamented sword, and laid it on the
+table. “You can use that, sir,” he said to young Willmington, while he
+pointed to it, and stepping towards the door—
+
+“Lend me your sword,” he said to one of the men.
+
+The person gave up his sword at once to Appadocca, who went round the
+room, and carefully bolted every door, one after the other. After that,
+he said to his men.
+
+“Retire into the high road, and remain there until I call.”
+
+The men retired from the doors, and Appadocca closed with the same care
+the one by which he had entered.
+
+He was now left in the apartment only with young Willmington, Mrs.
+Willmington, who lay insensible on the floor, where she had fallen at the
+appearance of Appadocca, and her two infant daughters, who stared on in a
+state of absolute stupefaction.
+
+“Now, sir,” said Appadocca to young Willmington, standing by the table,
+and leaning on the sword which he had borrowed, “allow me to speak to
+you. I am your father’s son.”
+
+“You are not,” indignantly remarked young Willmington.
+
+“It is an honor,” said Appadocca with a smile, while he bowed to the
+young man, “which I have never prized, I believe your stock is stamped
+with a peculiar mark: behold it!” and Appadocca opened his little finger
+as widely apart as possible from the other, and pointed to something
+between the two fingers.
+
+Young Willmington looked, stared, and started back in astonishment, but
+spoke not a word.
+
+“He,” continued Appadocca, after this disclosure, “treated me with
+harshness, injustice, and cruelty, and wronged, in addition, one whose
+place I now supply, and in whose name I seek vengeance. I owe him nothing
+except punishment. I am, therefore, your father’s sworn persecutor, and
+retributioner. You, he has always treated with kindness and affection;
+the bonds of natural obligation have been drawn the tighter on you by
+good deeds. You are, therefore, by the principles of justice, his natural
+defender. Now he is named in a vow that I have made, and I cannot let
+you rescue him. I have the power to prevent you from making any attempt
+to that effect, and I shall do it. But there is yet a satisfaction which
+I can give you, and I shall do so. With my life, the persecution which
+is now carried on against your father will cease; for I shall leave none
+behind me to take up my cause. I am willing, therefore, to throw life
+and death on a hazard, and to afford you as fair a chance as possible
+of purchasing your father’s deliverance by your valour and bravery. My
+sword, which I offer you, is of the finest metal, you may rely upon its
+fidelity. I challenge you to mortal combat.”
+
+Appadocca put himself in an attitude of defence, bent his left arm over
+his back, raised his head proudly, and held his sword straight before
+him.
+
+Young Willmington was undecided: he seemed to be under the power of a
+thousand different and conflicting feelings. There was no possibility of
+denying the well-known family mark with which Appadocca was stamped; he
+saw, consequently, before him his brother, by the laws which nature had
+made, whatever he might be by those which man had framed, and was forced
+to recognize in that brother the prosecutor, enemy, and almost murderer
+of his father. He was divided between two duties, the duty which he owed
+to a father, and that which he owed to a brother.
+
+“I shall not fight with you,” he said after a long pause. “If you grudge
+us any of his property, take as much as you please, but render us back
+our father.”
+
+“Will not fight!” exclaimed Appadocca, “I had imagined that your father
+was the only selfish coward in an old race of reputedly brave men.”
+
+“Coward do you call me?” inquired young Willmington, with a frown.
+
+“Ay, coward,” answered Appadocca. “First you made a thrust at me when my
+attention was directed otherwise, and now you seek to wound my feelings
+by supposing the possibility that I could grudge you your father’s
+wealth. Grudge, indeed! his most precious jewels would disgrace me. My
+men, however—the friends that received me, shall enjoy it. Coward, ay,
+thrice four times coward; again, and again, I proclaim you as such.”
+
+“No more, defend yourself,” cried young Willmington, and he clutched the
+sword which Appadocca had laid on the table.
+
+Young Willmington warmly pressed on Appadocca who still stood on
+the defensive. Thrust after thrust, lunge after lunge came in rapid
+succession from young Willmington. Respiration came short and quickly.
+He made a desperate thrust at Appadocca, who with a slight but quick
+movement of the wrist at once disarmed his adversary.
+
+Young Willmington bowed haughtily, while his face grew crimson with
+vexation.
+
+Appadocca quickly picked up the sword and presented it again to the young
+officer.
+
+“No, no, I am satisfied,” said the last-mentioned person, and refused it.
+
+“You ought scarcely to be so, sir. Recollect this is the only chance
+that will probably be afforded you,” replied Appadocca, “to recover your
+father. Try it again.”
+
+“Have you any object in pressing me to fight longer? By the law of arms
+you are not justified in thus asking me again when I am defeated,” said
+young Willmington.
+
+“Perhaps not,” answered Appadocca, “but you must recollect this is a very
+particular case. To be frank, I must confess I am scarcely satisfied with
+the chance that I have afforded you, I like to satisfy justice, sir. Pray
+try it again.”
+
+“Strange man, I shall,” answered young Willmington, and then began to
+prepare himself more deliberately for this second combat.
+
+The swords were again crossed. Willmington no longer thrust so widely
+as he did—he fenced more cautiously. Appadocca still maintained the
+defensive. The combat proceeded but coldly—Willmington tried every
+skilful pass and cunning trick. He had contrived to edge his sword, as he
+imagined, imperceptibly to Appadocca, within but a short distance from
+his adversary’s hilt, and was just inclining his hand inwards to thrust
+home, when Appadocca met the inclination by an opposite movement, and by
+a sudden jerk again unarmed his adversary.
+
+“Sir, destiny seems to favour me at these. I presume you have pistols,
+shall we try them?” inquired Appadocca.
+
+“It strikes me you are longing for my blood?” remarked young Willmington.
+
+“By no means,” answered Appadocca, “I have waded through too much of
+that already. But I am willing to give you the greatest opportunity of
+redeeming your father. Then am I to understand that you will fight no
+more?”
+
+“No more,” answered young Willmington.
+
+Appadocca drew forth a small silver whistle, he blew it, and in a moment
+the pavilion was again surrounded by his men.
+
+“Sir,” said Appadocca, on the arrival of the men, “the safety of my
+followers require that you should be rendered incapable of alarming the
+town. You must consent to be gagged and bound. Ho! outside there.”
+
+Three or four pirates entered the room,
+
+“Gag and pinion him,” said Appadocca, and pointed to young Willmington.
+
+In less than a few minutes the order was executed upon him.
+
+“Take him to the remotest room in the house.”
+
+Young Willmington was carried bodily out of the apartment.
+
+“Ho! Jack Jimmy,” cried Appadocca.
+
+That individual immediately rushed into the room, trembling with
+excitement.
+
+“Rummage the whole house, and bring all the silver and gold. Pedro, help
+him.”
+
+“Yes, massa,” Jack Jimmy answered, and hurried out of the apartment.
+
+While Jack Jimmy and the other man were intent on searching for whatever
+valuables the villa contained, Appadocca seated himself on the same chair
+that still stood at the head of the table.
+
+His eyes had become gradually more and more intently fixed on the two
+beautiful children, who clung in wakeful unconsciousness to their pale
+and still insensible mother.
+
+They seemed actually petrified with fear, while their large interesting
+eyes were firmly rivetted in a vacant stare on the terrible being whose
+coming had brought so much horror to the happy villa.
+
+“Yes, it is too true,” muttered Appadocca, “the sins of the fathers are
+visited on their children. Were it not for the injustice of your father,
+my little ones, I should not be here to-night to terrify you with my
+fierce and unfriendly looks. If my heart had not been long seared, if
+there was still in it one single portion that continued as fresh as once
+the whole was, your silent looks, your unspeaking terror, would move me
+more than the eloquence of a thousand glib-tongued orators. Nay, I might,
+perhaps, forget my vow.
+
+“How poisonously bitter are the cups that others season for our lips?
+Still, may Heaven preserve in your minds the deeds of to-night, and when
+you shall have grown up, always recollect this sad retribution, and speak
+a word whenever you may be able, and say that you know, by the experience
+of a scene of your childhood, that certain creatures who are branded and
+repudiated by society are beings who possess feelings, and who claim the
+same measure of justice as is meted out to all.”
+
+“Me get all, massa,” said Jack Jimmy, who now came in with an air of
+serious importance.
+
+Appadocca rose and pointed to the door; the two men then walked off from
+the villa, and were immediately followed by the captain himself.
+
+The villa which, but a short time before, presented a scene of domestic
+happiness, was now left in the desolation of death, with the lights still
+burning, and the superfluity of luxury still scattered about. The gate
+was heavily drawn after them by the three persons that had just passed
+through, and silence settled over the place.
+
+The pirates, who with their prisoner and booty, awaited the captain in
+the road, were drawn up in order, and after saying a few words to an
+officer, Appadocca gave the word to march, and they silently went down
+the road. He himself remained behind.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+    “How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags,
+    What is’t you do?”
+
+                                           MACBETH.
+
+
+It was dark, on a certain evening, to which the attention of the reader
+is now called, when, amidst the rocks and bushes of the mountainous
+district that flanks Port-of-Spain on the east, and that is known by name
+of La-vantille, two female forms might be perceived.
+
+They were following a rough and narrow path which led up to the mountains
+through a thousand rugged ascents and yawning and frightful precipices.
+The two travellers seemed foot-sore and exhausted, and were compelled
+now and then to grasp a root or twig of the Guava-bushes that grew here
+and there to assist them, as they arrived at a more broken and difficult
+part of the small road. The air was also oppressive—the rocks were still
+radiating the beams which the sun, that had not long set, had shot full
+upon them as it was sinking in the west. Nature was hushed: but the
+distant and faint barking of the cur that guarded some invisible hut, and
+bayed at some imaginary danger, fell on the ear.
+
+The two persons still followed the path, and ascended still higher and
+higher up the mountain that overlooks Port-of-Spain.
+
+“You are tired, madame,” said one of the persons, whose dress indicated
+an humble condition in life, and who was evidently conducting the other.
+
+“Yes,” replied the other, who appeared to be of a different class.
+
+“We shall not have very much farther to go,” said the guide.
+
+“The place is certainly a great distance from town,” remarked the other.
+
+“Yes, it is, and the path is very rough and unpleasant; but we shall
+presently come to a beautiful spot, where we shall be able to rest for a
+few moments.”
+
+“No, no,” answered the other; “it would be better to proceed at once: the
+night is now quickly coming on, and we do not know what dangers there may
+be among these solitary rocks. What, if robbers were to attack us?”
+
+“Robbers,” replied the other; “madame needs not fear robbers; bless me,
+people would not take the trouble to come and remain here for the purpose
+of robbing others. Robbers are never heard of in Trinidad, I assure you.”
+
+“Indeed,” replied the other.
+
+“Yes, indeed: I know persons who have traversed this place at all hours
+of the night. I myself have passed here on one of the darkest nights, and
+quite alone, also: you need not be under any fear, I assure you.”
+
+In the mean time the wayfarers arrived at a small level piece of ground
+that was covered with grass. It was quite an “oasis” in those rough and
+flinty parts.
+
+“Ah,” cried the guide, “here is the place, let us rest here,” and sat
+down on the grass. The lady did the same.
+
+“This is a beautiful little spot, is it not, madame?” remarked the guide
+interrogatingly.
+
+“It seems so,” answered the lady.
+
+“If it was day, you should be able to see the whole country round from
+this,” proceeded the guide: “on that side is Caroni, where we first
+settled when my master and his family came from Carriacou; a disagreeable
+and muddy place, madame; there is Maraval, a sweet pretty spot, with
+beautiful hills and scenes; and straight before us lies the sea. If it
+were light, you would be able to perceive the five islands, and the large
+bay where Admiral Appadocca—”
+
+At this name the lady started suddenly.
+
+“What is the matter, madame?” asked the guide.
+
+“Nothing, nothing,” hastily replied the lady.
+
+“Do not be alarmed; it is, no doubt, a cricket, that has jumped on you.
+There are not many snakes here: Caroni is the place for them,” observed
+the female cicerone.
+
+“Well, as I was saying, madame,—what was I saying?—I was telling you
+about the large bay where Admiral Appadocca—”
+
+The lady started again, but more slightly than before.
+
+“Let me drive it away for you,” said the guide, “these crickets are
+sometimes very troublesome; but they are a sign of good luck—they are a
+sign of good luck. People say, those on whom they may happen to jump, are
+sure to have money—plenty of money. Where is it? let me catch it.”
+
+“Oh, never mind, never mind,” the lady said hastily, “continue, continue
+your story.”
+
+“When Admiral Appadocca, I was saying, set the Spanish ships on fire,
+at the time when the English took the island, I remember the blaze they
+made. People say they were laden with gold: what a pity that was.”
+
+“Why did he set them on fire?” inquired the lady.
+
+“Because he would not let the money fall into the hands of the English,”
+answered the guide.
+
+“And what became of the admiral himself?” the lady inquired again.
+
+“I really cannot say,” answered the guide.
+
+A short pause ensued.
+
+“Had he any son, do you know?” asked the lady after a time,
+
+“I do not know, madame,” answered the guide.
+
+“The money that I spoke of just now, has been all lost. They say that
+sometimes the fishermen manage to bring up a portion. I don’t think that
+is true,” said the guide.
+
+“Do you not think we had better go on,” inquired the lady—“I wish very
+much to see that old woman, as soon as possible.”
+
+“Come, then,” answered the guide, and the two travellers continued their
+journey. As they proceeded, the path became still more rough, steep, and
+trying. They, however, went on.
+
+“I should be very much disappointed,” said the lady, “if after all this
+trouble and labour, the person that you tell me of, should not be able
+to give me the information I require.”
+
+“Never fear that, madame, never fear that,” replied the guide, “she is a
+wonderful woman.”
+
+“Do you know of any instance in which, what she said, turned out to be
+the truth?” asked the lady.
+
+“Bless me, yes, madame, great many, I can assure you. She has often
+foretold what would happen, and what she said, proved as true as
+possible.”
+
+“She may be able,” said the lady, “to speak about what is to come, but
+can she say any thing about the present?”
+
+“All,” replied the guide.
+
+“Do you think, she will be able, to give me any information, about the
+person whom I am now seeking?” inquired the lady.
+
+“I am sure she will,” answered the guide.
+
+“Let us walk faster,” said the lady, and, at the same time, quickened her
+pace.
+
+“I should not advise you to walk faster, madame,” said the guide, “we
+have still a considerable way to go.”
+
+“True,” said the lady, and fell again into the measured and leisurely
+pace of the guide.
+
+“You are sure she will give me the information, you say?” observed the
+lady.
+
+“Quite sure,” answered the guide, dryly, “I can point you out a hundred
+families in town, who were landed here as poor myself, and who made the
+great fortunes they now possess, only by consulting her. In the time of
+slavery, when a planter lost any of his slaves, he had nothing else to
+do, but to come to her, and she would send him to the very corner, where
+he would be sure to find his run-a-way.”
+
+“Indeed!” cried the lady.
+
+“It is true,”—replied the guide, “beside, she can cure all sorts of
+disorders. Those that are pronounced incurable by the doctors in town,
+resort to her, and are sure to be restored to health.”
+
+“I remember one case in particular,” said the guide, seriously, “of a
+man who had been suffering for two years, from a hand that was swollen
+to a very great size. He could not get any rest, either night or day,
+but groaned continually. He consulted every doctor—they did everything
+in their power but could not relieve him. His hand grew daily worse and
+worse: and he was reduced to the size of a nail. Well, some one told him
+about this old woman, and he came to her. She examined the hand, then
+pressed the fingers; from under the nails of each she took out a rusty
+pin. Next day the hand was perfectly cured.”
+
+“Impossible,” said the lady.
+
+“Quite true,” replied the guide.
+
+“There is another case,” continued the guide, “that is as striking. There
+was once an unfortunate man who was afflicted with madness; sometimes
+he was quiet, at others he would break out in the greatest violence and
+beat his wife and children almost to death. All the doctors saw him and
+said he was quite gone, there was no curing him. His illness daily gained
+ground upon him, until at last he went violently mad. His friends were
+grieved on his account, and were at last persuaded to take him to the
+old woman. They did so: as soon as she saw him, she took a little stick
+and struck him on the head; his skull opened: she took out twenty small
+fishing hooks that were stuck into his brains; and closed the skull
+again. In a few moments the man was cured.”
+
+“Is that possible?” exclaimed the lady.
+
+“It is remarkable,” observed the guide.
+
+“Did you see the cure yourself?” inquired the lady.
+
+“No, I did not,” answered the guide, “but every one in the town knows it.”
+
+The path in the meantime became more rugged, broken, and steep.
+
+“Ha, we are now arrived,” said the guide, taking a long inspiration.
+
+The travellers made two or three steps forward, and they immediately
+perceived a faint light that glimmered indistinctly through the brushwood.
+
+“Now, madame, you must disguise yourself, or else she won’t speak to
+you,” said the guide.
+
+“Why so?”
+
+“Because,” replied the guide, “there is a law in this country against
+those who tell fortunes. If it was to be known that she told anything to
+any one, she would be burnt alive. Leave your veil here, madame, there,
+so, and hide your comb with it. That’s it, that’s it; now take this
+handkerchief, tie it round your head—let me do it.”
+
+The guide tied and adjusted a Madras handkerchief on the head of the lady.
+
+“Now let us go: and recollect let me speak.”
+
+The two travellers diverged into a still narrower part that was almost
+entirely hidden by the bush which grew thickly and fully about it.
+
+The angry barking of a dog was now heard. The travellers still went on,
+until they could now distinguish the outlines of a low and narrow hut,
+in the open part of which the embers of a wood fire still smouldered. By
+its faint light, was to be indistinctly seen, the form of the wakeful
+watch-dog, that stood determinedly a little way in front of the hut, and
+barked fiercely and fretfully.
+
+The two women stood, afraid of approaching nearer. The dog still barked
+noisily.
+
+“Ho, mother! mother Celeste,” called the guide. “Mother Celeste!”
+
+No one answered.
+
+“She does not hear,” observed the lady, “she is asleep; call louder.”
+
+“Ho, Mother Celeste! Mother Celeste! it is I, it is I,” repeated the
+guide.
+
+Still there was no answer,—the dog barked still more loudly.
+
+“Heavens! I hope we have not come all this way for nothing,” exclaimed
+the lady, in a voice that faltered with anxiety.
+
+“It is to be hoped not,” answered the guide, and she began to call out
+more loudly than before. “Mother Celeste! Mother Celeste!”
+
+“Who is is that comes to disturb me at this lonely hour of the night?”
+said a weak and obscure voice, that came from within the fragile hut.
+
+“It is I, it is I, and another person, who wish to see you,” answered the
+guide.
+
+“You cannot see me to-night. I do not know what you have to see me
+about,” answered the same voice.
+
+“We have come a great distance, and we cannot return without seeing you:
+let us in.”
+
+“I cannot open my door at this hour of the night,” replied the voice:
+“return.”
+
+“That we cannot,” replied the guide. “Call your dog, Mother Celeste, and
+open the door to us; you will see what a present we have brought you.”
+
+“What present can you bring me this time of night?”
+
+“Fifty dollars, Mother Celeste, fifty dollars.”
+
+“I can’t open to you,” replied the voice, “I can’t open to you.”
+
+“Say a hundred,” said the lady.
+
+“Well, a hundred dollars,” cried the guide.
+
+“It is very late, I do not know who you may be; I shall consider—I shall
+consider,” said the same voice.
+
+“She will open now,” said the guide, “that is what she always says, she
+is now hiding all her things.”
+
+Truly enough, in a short time, the voice from within was again heard.
+
+“Approach, my children; come and tell me your woes,” it said.
+
+“But the dog, the dog,” cried the guide.
+
+“True,” replied the same voice, “Fidele, Fidele,” it called, and the dog
+immediately became silent and disappeared.
+
+The two females now approached the hut. It was a little cabin, that was
+built of a few pieces of round timber, which were now black with smoke.
+Palmeto leaves formed a slight covering to it. A few reeds roughly
+fastened to the primitive posts, fenced in the part which lay in the
+direction from which the wind usually came. The other, or inner part of
+the hut, however, was fenced entirely in, and covered, as the sleeping
+apartment.
+
+“Wait until I strike a light,” said the same voice.
+
+In a few moments a rudely constructed old door opened.
+
+“Enter, enter, quickly, my children,” said the same voice.
+
+The lady hesitated a moment.
+
+“Go in, go in, madame,” said the guide, and gently pushed her.
+
+The two travellers entered.
+
+The hut presented as peculiar an appearance on the inside as it did on
+the outside. The rough pieces of Palmeto bark that boarded it, was hung
+with drapery of spider’s webs, that either floated black with time and
+dust, or was still spread in the process of extension, under the industry
+of the master insect himself. From crooked nails, that were driven into
+this primitive wall, a number of bottles, of peculiar fashions and makes,
+hung suspended by cord that had long lost its colour under the many dyes
+which it may have received from the black, yellow, green, brown, and
+bluish liquors which those bottles seemed to contain.
+
+In one corner stood a rough bed, that seemed constructed of four branches
+of a Guava-bush; and around, a number of nasty, greasy, barrels were
+ranged, and had their heads carefully covered over by pieces of plastered
+old canvass.
+
+In one of the deep angles of the hut there burnt a lamp, constructed of
+a hollow gourd, in which some cotton and some oil were adjusted, and
+was made to throw around a dim light, whose faint radii did not extend
+farther than a foot or two beyond its centre.
+
+At the side of this lamp was huddled up a being which at first view,
+might appear to be one from whom life had long departed, and whom the
+veneration of friends or kindred persisted in still retaining among them.
+She was a little black woman of diminutive size, with an old greasy
+dress, that lay slack and loose about her. Her knees were drawn up to
+her jaws, which protruded largely and hideously. Her skin was shrivelled
+and dry, and seemed to flap as she moved her toothless jaws. A Madras
+handkerchief was tied carelessly round her head, and from a corner, or a
+hole here and there, her short gray and matted hair peeped out.
+
+“Good night to you, Mother Celeste,” said the guide, as she drew a
+three-legged stool for the lady, and sat, herself, on the ground.
+
+“Good night to you, my children, good night,” said Mother Celeste.
+
+“I have brought this friend of mine,” said the guide, “to see you on a
+matter of great importance.”
+
+“To see me? to see me, my child,” mumbled Mother Celeste: “what can I do
+for her, poor old woman as I am, except give her my blessing?”
+
+“She wants some information about a person she is seeking,” said the
+guide.
+
+“How can I give it, how can I give it, my child?” answered Mother Celeste.
+
+“Try, mother, try,” remarked the guide.
+
+A pause ensued, during which Mother Celeste seemed thoughtful.
+
+“What friend of yours is this, my child?” inquired Mother Celeste.
+
+“She is from the Spanish main,” answered the guide.
+
+Mother Celeste raised the rude lamp to the face of the lady: “Yes, yes,”
+she muttered, and replaced it on the ground, and then grasped her hand:
+the lady started when she felt the rough hacked skin of the sorceress.
+
+“Do not start, my child,” said Mother Celeste, “do not start; and now
+tell me your story,” she mumbled. “Will you go into the front awhile?”
+she added to the guide.
+
+The latter opened the little door, and went out.
+
+“I love,” said Feliciana, whom the reader may have recognised before
+this, “I love a man—a stranger to me—I cannot tell you how I love him. He
+was taken to my father’s house, from the beach on which he was found half
+drowned. I loved him the very first moment I saw him, he is so handsome.
+He suddenly left my father’s house, and now I wish to know where to find
+him. Do tell me: there are a hundred dollars for you.”
+
+The sorceress clutched the money and pressed her flabby lips to it again
+and again, then tottered towards her rude bed and laid it under her
+pillow.
+
+“Yours is a difficult case, child,” mumbled the old woman.
+
+“What is the man?”
+
+“Alas, mother,” answered Feliciana, “I fear he is a pirate.”
+
+“Is he short or tall?”
+
+“Tall.”
+
+“Dark or fair?”
+
+“Pale.”
+
+“Retire for a moment, child,” said mother Celeste.
+
+Feliciana went out of the small apartment.
+
+An hour passed. During this time, Feliciana and her guide were alarmed by
+the horrible noises that were heard from the room of the sorceress. Now
+the most fearful yells—now the most heart-rending groans broke forth—the
+violent stamping of several individuals were at one time heard, at
+another, the strangest jargon grated harshly on the ear, while, at the
+same time, the stench that penetrated through the chinks in the partition
+almost suffocated those without.
+
+Feliciana and her guide trembled in utter fear.
+
+“Shall we run away?” said one to the other.
+
+“No, no,” answered Feliciana, her whisper almost inarticulate with terror.
+
+Even at this trying moment the thought of Appadocca was the most powerful
+in her mind. The hope of finding him, sustained her against all terrors.
+
+At the end of the hour the little door of the hut was violently opened,
+and the little sorceress was seen standing in a body of flame.
+
+“Seek your lover, amidst the tombstones to-morrow, at the lonely hours of
+night,” she said, and the door was violently closed.
+
+This uncertain answer fell on the ears of Feliciana like a thunderbolt.
+
+“Oh, he is dead—he is dead,” she cried, and wept bitterly.
+
+The guide stood aside and allowed the young lady to give vent to her
+sorrow.
+
+“Who knows, madame,” she said, after a few moments, “the answer may not
+mean that.”
+
+The young lady raised her head for a moment, a new thought seemed to
+strike her.
+
+“Let us ask,” she said, “let us ask?”
+
+“Oh, she will not open the door now, for the world,” the guide replied.
+
+“Will she not? Mother Celeste, Mother Celeste,” cried Feliciana.
+
+The barking of the dog that now reappeared drowned their voices.
+
+“I tell you, madame, she will not open the door,” said the guide. “I
+ought to know her, since I bring people to her almost every day.”
+
+Feliciana remained buried in thought where she was for a moment. “Let us
+go,” she shortly said.
+
+The two travellers began to retrace their steps towards Port-of-Spain.
+
+Feliciana was sad and pensive; the guide was less talkative than before,
+and after half-an-hour’s walk, the barking of the dog still reached their
+ears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+          ——“Who’s there?
+    Who is it that consorts, so late, the dead?”
+
+                              ROMEO AND JULIET.
+
+
+Appadocca stood for a while, and watched his men, who, in military order,
+were marching down the dark and solitary road. When even their footsteps
+could no longer be heard; he cast one more look on the desolated villa,
+that still shone resplendently under the many lights which burnt within,
+and that now presented the appearance of a place, in which the pleasures
+of a marriage feast, may have been broken in upon, by some unexpected and
+chilling calamity.
+
+What ever reflections he may have made, while he gazed at the house
+before him, were short and transitory and perhaps unpleasant, for he
+suddenly turned away his head, and bent his steps rapidly towards the
+beautiful Savannah, that opened before the splendid house of James
+Willmington.
+
+Having immediately approached the Savannah, Appadocca climbed over the
+iron rails that enclose it, and got within.
+
+The night was one of a peculiar sort. It was dark, but the air was soft
+and dry, and the numberless stars that shone, seemed to twinkle more, and
+more, and more brightly, and by their brilliant light, the imaginative,
+may have seen, or fancied to have seen, to a vast depth into the bluish
+ethereal fluid, in which they were suspended. Appadocca directed his
+steps immediately across the Savannah. He walked on pensively and
+moodily, without even raising his head for a moment, to gaze on the stars
+above; or, to listen to the faint and peculiar insect-sounds, that might
+now be heard, amidst the general calm and lull of nature.
+
+When he had arrived at the western end of the Savannah, he again climbed
+over the railing, and found himself in the road which runs parallel in
+that direction, with the Saint Ann’s road, on the opposite side. He then
+diverged towards the left, and continued down the road, until he had
+arrived to a certain street, which ran to the right.
+
+Appadocca walked along this street, and was obliged to stop from time to
+time, in order to drive away the numbers of dogs that followed, and that
+kept up an unceasing noise at his heels.
+
+The street opened on the extensive cemetery, that lies to the west-ward
+of Port-of-Spain, and that looks picturesque and beautiful by day, under
+the grove of magnificent trees, that shelter it; but which, by night,
+looks as dark and as gloomy, as the thoughts themselves which it calls up.
+
+Appadocca stood for a moment, and looked over the wall; no one, nothing
+was to be seen, save a few white and spotted goats, that silently cropped
+the grass at a distance, or frisked capriciously over the tombstones.
+
+He scaled the wall, and held his way straight down the road, which lies
+concealed beneath the thickly knotted branches of the trees that overhang
+it, and that unseen, leads into the innermost parts of that long and
+lasting home of thousands.
+
+Having reached the utmost end of this road, he turned towards the left,
+into one of the many cross-formed paths, that bisect the cemetery. He
+walked carefully along, and examined attentively every tomb that he
+passed, until he had arrived at a simple grave, that with a plain cross
+at its head, lay sheltered beneath the rich spreading foliage, of a thick
+cluster of bamboos. Here Appadocca stood, and remained motionless and
+entranced, at the foot of that unornamented tomb; his arms were folded
+over his breast, and he was in the attitude of one whose thoughts were
+veiled in an absorbing and holy feeling.
+
+In a moment he approached nearer and nearer; then seated himself down at
+the head of the grave, and remained there, his brow resting on his hand,
+as if his spirit was in communion with that of the body which the grave
+contained.
+
+Time fled, still the pirate captain remained in the same position. The
+deeds of a whole life-time, one would have said, were returning in rapid
+succession on his memory. The pursuits, the pleasures and pains, the
+endearments and enjoyments of childhood, of boyhood, of youth, of all,
+seemed to fly back like administering angels, or like fiends of hell upon
+his mind; for his recollections were freshened, his sensibilities were
+awakened by his mother’s grave:—his mother’s grave, which he approached
+now a different man from what he was, when he bade the farewell which
+proved the last on earth to that mother. He had left her with the halo
+of those virtues, which she had taught more by example than by precepts,
+still surrounding his head, with his spirits fresh and expanding,
+with his heart good and at ease, with his intellect aspiring higher
+and higher; now he revisited her in the cold tomb, with a callous
+indifference either to virtue or to vice, with a heart that was poisoned
+to the centre, with spirits lacerated and torn to shreds and tatters. How
+to wreak retribution now engrossed his whole intellect—retribution on the
+man whom that mother had once too fondly loved, and whose placid nature
+had, no doubt, long long forgiven. How could he be certain that her
+spirit now looked down upon him with pleasure, the spirit of her whose
+life was a speaking lesson of patient endurance.
+
+Such might be the feelings and thoughts of Emmanuel Appadocca, whose
+manhood could not restrain the tears that trickled down his cheeks, and
+flowed, as it were, in mockery over the hilt of the sword that lay across
+his knees, and moistened the mound before him.
+
+The fleeting hours glided by, Appadocca was in the same position. The
+brilliant stars shone beautifully above him, the fire-flies played about
+the tombstones, the tall dark trees rustled, and the pliant bamboos
+creaked melancholily before the gentle night breeze.
+
+“I may not look upon you again: still, let me—let me perform, perhaps,
+the last office that I may be permitted,” said Appadocca, as if speaking
+to some one by his side, and began to pluck the weeds that grew over the
+grave.
+
+Time passed quickly. His labour was completed. Appadocca took one last
+and earnest gaze at the grave, then muffled his cloak leisurely around
+him, and turned moodily away.
+
+He followed the same path that led to the grave, and came out on the
+wide gravelly walk. His footsteps echoed in the silence of the hour, and
+he proceeded with his eyes fixed upon the ground. From time to time,
+however, he raised them to look at the morning star. He had now done so,
+when he beheld before him a tall female form, that was clad in black,
+standing under the branches of a rose-apple tree, which edged the road.
+
+“Heavens!” muttered Appadocca, “is there, then, such a thing as a spirit?”
+
+He stood for a moment.
+
+“Oh, human mind,” he cried, “how weak thou art in all thy greatness! how
+imperfectly thou canst cut away the indifferent portions of thyself.
+Behold, whither imagination now hurries thee. Can there be such a thing
+as a spirit?”
+
+Appadocca began again to walk. The form began to advance towards him.
+They met.
+
+“Appadocca,” it cried, and grasped the hand of the pirate captain.
+
+“Feliciana! impossible: my ears play upon me,” said Appadocca.
+
+“No, no: it is—it is Feliciana; Feliciana, who has tracked you from
+her father’s humble house, and who will still follow you as long as
+life continues under the labours she will undertake for you, and the
+privations she may have to endure on your account.”
+
+“At this place, and at this dismal hour!” remarked Appadocca.
+
+“Better this place with all its horrors than the palace in which I could
+not find you,” answered Feliciana.
+
+“Strange devotedness,” muttered Appadocca.
+
+“But how came you to know that I was here,” asked Appadocca.
+
+“A sorceress told me you would be,” answered Feliciana. “I entered this
+cemetery. Heavens, how I trembled! and trod its solitary walk, and
+examined each whitened monument until—until—I—saw you—at—at—a grave.
+Return, return, with me, let me pray with you, let me join my prayers
+with yours.”
+
+On saying this, Feliciana proceed down the walk, and led the unresisting
+captain after her.
+
+Arrived at the simple grave, she threw herself on her knees, and began to
+pray. Appadocca stood by, now resting on his sword.
+
+“Oh grant,” said the lady, in conclusion to her prayer; and she repeated
+the part aloud, “grant that his heart may be turned from the unholy
+pursuit which now throws his soul into the hands of demons, and let the
+spirit of his mother inspire him with the thoughts that she possessed.”
+
+This loud conclusion sounded solemnly in the silence of the night. The
+sternness of Appadocca’s character could scarcely resist it.
+
+“Come and join me; say you renounce the life you now lead,” said
+Feliciana.
+
+Appadocca made no answer.
+
+“Come, come—for your mother’s sake, come,” said Feliciana.
+
+“Pray you, senora. I will not pray, and I cannot renounce.”
+
+“I entreat you: imagine you behold the mother that you have loved so
+much, making the same petition to you. Could you refuse her?”
+
+“Senora, speak no more on this theme, I say I cannot renounce; my vow is
+made.”
+
+“Heaven looks not upon unholy vows; not on vows of vengeance,” said
+Feliciana, “renounce your life and forget that oath.”
+
+“Senora, the morning star is sinking; my followers must be growing
+impatient. I must go;” and Appadocca moved a step.
+
+Feliciana sprang from her knees and grasped him by the hand; “do not go
+from this spot the same man as you came to it. Wash yourself by prayer
+from the blood which you may have shed, and ask—ask her spirit to forgive
+you, if you offended it.”
+
+Appadocca drew his hand quickly across his brow. “Feliciana, your are
+ungenerous, unkind: my—feelings—require—no—further laceration. Life and
+my miseries have already made me too, too well acquainted with anguish.
+Spare me, spare me the thought of an offended mother—the only—the
+only—the only—friend that I had in this bitter, bitter, world.”
+
+“Say—say not so,” quickly rejoined Feliciana, still more melted by
+the grief of one who appeared always so indifferent. “You have still,
+still a friend. Oh fly, fly with me to some wilderness; there enjoy
+your thoughts, your silence, your feelings. I shall be your slave, your
+dog, that will gather the inkling of the wish from your very eyes. My
+_fallucha_ is by the shore; Appadocca will you go?”
+
+A pause ensued.
+
+“No, no, Feliciana,” said Appadocca; “I shall not: lean not, good, good
+girl, upon a broken reed. To me all things, save one idea, are stale and
+indifferent. My life is gloomy, dark, and troublesome: my existence is
+already a heavy, heavy oppression. My soul, like the cumbrous tower, fell
+but once, it can never rise again. Your presence would create a new grief
+in me, for I could not see you love one whose blood was chilled.”
+
+“I require no love—I require no love,” quickly rejoined Feliciana, “I
+shall be your slave.”
+
+“That, I shall not endure; my idol is woman. I ought to worship, not she.”
+
+“Still you will let me follow you?” eagerly inquired Feliciana.
+
+“No, no, my career may still lie through blood,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“Speak no more of blood,” cried Feliciana, “forswear your vengeance.”
+
+“Never,” answered Appadocca sternly.
+
+“Say, why doom yourself for ever,” Feliciana was going to inquire—when—
+
+“That the world may profit by my conduct,” answered Appadocca.
+
+“But the world will not know, will not attend to what you do.”
+
+“I care not, I care not,” answered Appadocca, “my word is passed and I
+shall fulfil it. I am resolved, the sacrifice must be made.”
+
+“But see, the morning star is sinking fast. I must away.”
+
+“But do not——”
+
+“Come, come, let me lead you hence,” so saying Appadocca grasped the arm
+of the faint Feliciana, and hurried out of the cemetery.
+
+They walked down the street that runs from north to south on the western
+side of Port-of-Spain, and soon reached the principal landing-place,
+where the crew of the Black Schooner were impatiently waiting for their
+captain.
+
+“Feliciana, I bid you a long, long adieu,” said Appadocca, as they
+stopped under one of the almond trees that form the shady walk we have
+already mentioned.
+
+“Do not say so,” said Feliciana indistinctly, as she leaned against the
+tree, “oh do not say so.”
+
+There was no answer, not a word.
+
+“Feliciana let me ask you—to—to—place this near your heart, and whenever
+you gaze upon it, let one thought return—to—to—the—the sick man of your
+father’s house.” So saying, Appadocca drew his sword and cut off a lock
+of his flowing hair, and presented it to the lady.
+
+“Look—look—there,” she cried faintly, as she received the token.
+
+Appadocca turned round and beheld a crowd of people who, with torches and
+lanterns, were following a company of soldiers that were marching quickly
+down the walk.
+
+“Flee,” cried Feliciana.
+
+“One more request,” said Appadocca. “Forget not, Feliciana, the place
+where you first saw me to-night. If foul and rank weeds grow upon it,
+pluck them as you pass by. Farewell, farewell.”
+
+Appadocca walked down the wharf and was received by his men.
+
+“Shove off,” he cried, as he threw himself on the stern sheets of the
+boat, and folded his cloak around him.
+
+The soldiers arrived at the wharf just in time to see the boat disappear
+in the gray light of the morning.
+
+They fired—the air resounded with their repeated volleys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+    “Go back again thou slave, and fetch him home.”
+
+                                 COMEDY OF ERRORS.
+
+
+It was not until an early hour of the morning, when Mrs. Wilmington
+recovered from her swoon, that it was possible to give any alarm of the
+outrage that had been committed at the villa of James Willmington.
+
+When the lady recovered from her state of insensibility, and saw before
+her the scattered and disordered furniture, the flickering wax candles
+that had now burnt down to the very sockets, and her children, who,
+after the departure of the pirate party, had fallen asleep around her,
+recollections of the supposed apparition, and of the terror of her
+husband, flashed across her mind. Alarmed at the silence that reigned
+around, and not being able to understand why she had been permitted
+to remain in the same place where she had fainted away, she rushed
+impulsively to the bell, that lay on the sideboard, and rang it violently.
+
+No one came.
+
+She rang again—no one came: she rang again, and again, more and more
+violently; still no one came.
+
+She then looked out of the parlour, and beheld the whole house still
+lighted up. She ventured out a little, and still a little farther, until
+she summoned sufficient courage, traversed the court yard, and entered
+the servant’s apartments.
+
+In the principal room nothing was to be seen. Mrs. Willmington raised the
+light high up, while she stood at the entrance, and looked into every
+corner and hole. She could see nothing.
+
+“Good God! can I be abandoned here with my children,” she said in a low
+tone, fearful to hear even her own voice, in such a silent and deserted
+situation.
+
+She entered the room, and proceeded towards a door, which opened into
+another apartment. She turned the handle, and went into that room also;
+nothing was to be seen. She was turning to leave, when a low groan was
+heard. Mrs. Willmington started two paces backwards, but raised the light
+and looked back intently towards the part from which the groan came. In
+a dark recess, that lay in a remote corner of a room, two white shining
+balls seemed to glare upon her. She started still farther back: another
+groan was heard; she raised the light still higher; it fell upon a part
+of the recess, and discovered the shining face of the individual to whom
+the eyes belonged and from whom the groans proceeded.
+
+“It is Jack, it is Jack!” cried Mrs. Willmington, and walked up towards
+the recess.
+
+It was, indeed, Jack, who had his mouth as well filled with grass and
+cloths as it could possibly hold, and whose arms were as tightly tied
+behind his back, as mortal arms could be: and whose short legs were
+stretched straighter than they had ever been stretched before in Jack’s
+life. He was lying on his side, and his eyes were playing in their
+sockets like those fierce-looking things which German ingenuity has
+designed to represent the visual apparatus of man, and which are to be
+seen every day in some of the back streets of London in full play, to the
+infinite excitement and gratification of the awe-struck and wondering
+urchins.
+
+“Jack, cook!” cried Mrs. Willmington, “what state is this you are in?”
+
+“Jack, cook,” groaned, and his eyes played still more rapidly.
+
+“How can I assist?” said Mrs. Willmington, “I think of it!” she ran
+hastily out of the room, and returned a few moments afterwards, with a
+large knife.
+
+With this, she cut the cords which bound the limbs of the unfortunate
+Jack. A task of no little labour, for those who secured him, had done so
+with a marvellous amount of skill and success.
+
+“Do the rest for yourself, now,” she said, when she had completed part of
+the work.
+
+Jack required no exhortation, but as soon as his arms were free, he began
+with all his might to pluck out the number of things, with which his not
+incapacious mouth had been filled.
+
+“Tenk Gad,” he cried, as he nimbly jumped on his legs, and shook himself
+like a newfoundland dog coming from the water.
+
+“Where is your master?” quickly inquired Mrs. Willmington.
+
+“Me massa, ma’am!” answered Jack in the manner that is rather peculiar to
+his class.
+
+“Yes, your master; and where are the other servants?” Mrs. Willmington
+asked again.
+
+“Dem gane?” asked Jack again, in his turn.
+
+“Who, gone?” inquired Mrs. Willmington.
+
+“De paniole, ma’am:” answered Jack.
+
+“Tell me, Jack, will you; tell me quickly,” said Mrs. Willmington, now
+waxing impatient, “where is your master and the other servants?”
+
+“Let me see if dey gane,” said Jack, and he walked on tiptoe towards the
+door, then carefully and cautiously peeped out, then ventured a little
+way into the courtyard, then ran hurriedly towards the great gate, and
+bolted it and rebolted it.
+
+“Awh!” he cried, “Garamighty! Dey gane now! awh! me, neber see such ting
+in all my barn days. Wha dat? Me hab time foo blow now: put big, big,
+bundle so nan me mout! tap my breath, awh! But me can blow now—tshwh,
+tshwh!” and Jack took along breath in the fashion which seems to be
+peculiar to his people—a fashion which compresses a vast quantity of
+air, and sends it vehemently forth, so that the same hissing noise which
+the steam makes when it comes through the valve of a railway engine, is
+produced. A fashion which, be it said within parentheses, may be very
+economical, inasmuch as it affords a certain large amount of respiration
+within a certain small period of time.
+
+This soliloquy, in the making of which, the illustrious cook by no means
+limited himself as to time, being over, and after having cast searching
+glances about the gate, and having looked and relooked above, below,
+sideways, before, and behind, Jack then, and not till then, deemed it
+proper to return to his mistress, who had also come to the door, and was
+endeavouring to discover what the cook was about.
+
+“Me shet it, ma’am, me shet it,” cried Jack, as he returned.
+
+“Now, perhaps, you will tell me what I ask,” said Mrs. Willmington,
+getting still more excited and angry, “where is your master?”
+
+“Tap, missus,” answered Jack, “I’ll tell you all bout it.”
+
+“Make haste, then.”
+
+“Yes, missus,” said Jack, and began to tell all about it. He had the
+preliminary caution, however, of looking carefully round to see if no
+more “paniole,” as he called the pirates, were concealed thereabouts.
+Being for the time satisfied on that point, he proceeded—
+
+“Last night, ma’am—no, the night before the night, ma’am, ee already dis
+ma’aning, Bekky come in, and find me da smoke me pipe. ‘Good night.—’”
+
+“What has that to do with Mr. Willmington, Jack? Tell me where your
+master is, will you,” said Mrs. Willmington, still more angry.
+
+“Me da tell you, missus,” answered Jack. “‘Good night, buddee Jack,’
+say Bekky, says she. ‘Good night, sissee Bekky,’ me say, says I. ‘Awh!
+Jack!’ Bekky say, ‘wha tobacca you da smoke dey Jack, ee smell bad! da——’”
+
+“No more of this, Jack,” said Mrs. Willmington; “tell me.”
+
+“Tap, missus, tap, if you plase; me da come to it, me da come to it now,”
+said Jack.
+
+Mrs. Willmington looked resignation itself.
+
+“‘Da tobacca I buy dis ma’aning, Bekky,’ me say ma’am,” continued Jack;
+“and dat was all. Last night wen me finish de fowl, and bin da clean the
+kitchen, who me see, but Bekky. ‘Good even, buddee Jack,’ she said, says
+she. ‘Good even, sissee,’ I say, says I. ‘Look, some good tobacca a bring
+foo you, Jack,’ she say; and give me a bundle tobacca. So last night,
+when I sen in the dinna, I went into the garden foo try dis tobacca.
+
+“Me sit down unda de bread-fruit tree; me tink me see somebody walk in
+de garden. Garamighty! me say, wha jumbee want early, early so. Me look
+agin, and me see de purson hab big, big beard like Paniole. Me frieghten!
+Da who you, me bin go halla out, and bin da go run away, when somebody
+hold me fram behind, and chucked grass and ivery ting into my mout, tie
+me han an foot, and trow me into the little room way you fin’ me ma’am.”
+
+“And where is your master?” asked Mrs. Willmington.
+
+“Me no know, ma’am,” answered Jack.
+
+“And where are the servants?”
+
+“Me no know, ma’am,” again answered Jack.
+
+“Rummage the house, you simpleton,” said Mrs. Willmington, and lighted
+him the way to the other parts. Jack went cautiously, and turned his head
+round in all directions.
+
+They entered another room. “Garamighty! Jim, dey tie you, too,” exclaimed
+Jack, as his eyes alighted upon the “Jim” who was exactly in the same
+predicament from which Jack himself had but a short time ago been
+delivered.
+
+The only intimation of intelligence that Jim could make was, rolling his
+eyes about.
+
+All the apartments were now searched, and the servants were found,
+one here, the other there, among them. They said that they were all
+simultaneously laid hold of by a number of “panioles,” and were gagged,
+bound hand and foot, and deposited separately in the different rooms.
+
+“And where is your master; and your young master?” asked Mrs. Willmington.
+
+“Dey carry old massa away pon their shoulders, ma’am, and dey took young
+massa up-stairs.”
+
+“Heavens!” cried Mrs. Willmington, “and was it not then a spirit?” she
+asked.
+
+“He looked more like a paniole than a pirit, ma’am,” said the individual
+who gave the information, who was the chief servant in the house, and
+whose especial destiny it had been to be gagged and otherwise dealt with
+in his pantry, wherein he was at the moment busy about some particulars
+connected with his avocation.
+
+“Run up stairs. Go you, Edward, to—to—Mr. ——, the magistrate; alarm the
+town; tell the soldiers at the fort,” exclaimed Mrs. Willmington, while
+she herself rushed up-stairs with a servant.
+
+Young Willmington was found duly gagged and tied in the favourite style
+of the pirates. He was immediately released, and he got up from the bed
+on which the kind consideration of the unwelcome visitors had laid him.
+He exhibited less pleasure at his freedom than one would have expected to
+see.
+
+“What is the matter with you, James?” said Mrs. Willmington, not a little
+surprised at the strange calmness of her son. “Do you know that your
+father has been carried away from his house?”
+
+“Yes, mother, I know it.”
+
+“Then why not make more haste, James, and go to see about it?” rejoined
+Mrs. Willmington.
+
+No answer.
+
+“I shall go,” said young Willmington, after a pause, “but my mind
+misgives me about this whole affair. My father ought not to have
+concealed the truth from us. The man who came into the house, last night,
+is my brother.”
+
+“Your brother!”
+
+“Yes, dear mother; he possesses the family peculiarity,” answered James.
+“However, I shall go and alarm the authorities.”
+
+The magistrates were awakened, the alarm was given at the forts, and the
+whole town was shortly in commotion. The streets were searched, but no
+pirates could be found. A body of soldiers was then marched down to the
+wharf, as the reader already knows.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At early dawn the magistrates went alongside the English man-of-war, and
+related to the commander what had taken place.
+
+“There is not much mystery about all this, gentlemen,” said the
+commander, after he had reflected a moment, “I shall promise you,
+that when it is clear, you will be able to see a long, sharp, and
+strange-looking schooner in these waters. I have, unfortunately, been
+made too familiar of late with the boldness of that set of pirates. I
+am so certain of what I am telling you, that I shall at once give orders
+for weighing anchor: so that I shall be ready, as soon as it is light, to
+give chase, and I shall see,” muttered the commander to himself; “if I
+cannot get to windward of those fellows this time.”
+
+True enough, the pirate schooner was seen in the light of the morning
+opposite the harbour of Port-of-Spain, but at an immense distance out at
+sea.
+
+The heavy sails of the large ship then began leisurely to ascend its
+encumbered masts, in preparation for the chase of the pirate vessel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+    “The deed is done.”
+
+              MACBETH.
+
+
+When Appadocca with his party had gained the schooner, he immediately
+ordered the prisoner Willmington to be taken to the torture-room and to
+be there kept in custody: at the same time the men were summoned to the
+main deck, and the booty of the previous night, was distributed in the
+same manner as we have described at the beginning of this tale.
+
+In the meantime the morning dawned more brightly, and the waters of the
+gulf lay smooth and shining before the piercing rays of the morning sun,
+unbroken as they were by the faintest breath.
+
+The heavy sails of the man-of-war were still seen to ascend one by one,
+and fall, as they were spread, heavily against the masts.
+
+They reflected the sunbeams from their white and clear surface, far
+and wide: and amidst the number of vessels in the harbour, the huge
+ship-of-war, with all its canvass spread, and its stern decorated with
+the fiery ensign of England, looked like a gigantic monarch of the sea
+that floated at the head of its smaller subjects.
+
+She was now ready to weigh anchor, and was now evidently only waiting
+for the wind which was certain to spring about the hour of ten in the
+forenoon.
+
+When Appadocca had superintended the division of the spoil amongst his
+followers, he ordered the young midshipman to be brought before him.
+
+That individual, in a few moments, made his appearance. He had scarcely
+as yet recovered from the effects of his torture; he was pale, and
+appeared still weak and emaciated. Yet in his eye there could now be
+read a more earnest seriousness—the fruit of the self dependent position
+in which he had for some time so accidentally found himself, and the
+consequence of the example to whose power he had been exposed, in the
+stern and manly society into which he had been thrown.
+
+From a boy whose yearnings had been continually after excitement and
+pleasure, he was suddenly transformed into a man, whose thoughts began to
+be characterised by the seriousness of purpose which alone can be worthy
+of the highest of the animal creation.
+
+A change was marked on his face, and his demeanour was more subdued and
+more self-possessed.
+
+“Young man,” said Appadocca, as he stood before him, “I set you at
+liberty, you shall have a small boat, which will in a moment be ready for
+you, you will be able to skull to your ship. I cannot, I am sorry to say,
+spare any of my men to help you. I see she is preparing to weigh anchor.
+Take my compliments to the commander himself, and tell him, to take the
+advice of one, who has experienced much kindness at his hands, and by no
+means to move from his anchorage to-day. Ask him to consult a calculation
+which I made on the partition of the cabin in which I was confined, and
+he will know the reason. Before you leave the schooner, ask the officer
+of the watch for a letter which I shall send to your commander’s son.”
+
+Appadocca then descended into his cabin and wrote thus:—
+
+    “DEAR HAMILTON,
+
+    “The consummation of my existence is now fast approaching;
+    I, therefore, write to you, as I fear it will be the last
+    time that I may have the opportunity of communicating with
+    a dear friend, from whose heart I have experienced so much
+    consideration, and from whose hands I have received so much
+    kindness! It is scarcely necessary for me to tell you, that
+    destiny preserved me from the perils from which few could have
+    hoped to escape.
+
+    “I am at the head of my faithful followers once more, and it
+    rejoices me to think that my escape was effected entirely by my
+    own efforts and quite unknowingly to one on whose escutcheon
+    I should not have even virtue itself accidentally to paint a
+    blot. I shall lead the men who have followed me so bravely, and
+    who have served me so faithfully, to some remote spot on the
+    fertile and vast continent that lies on our right, and build
+    them a city in which they may live happily, quietly, and far
+    removed from the world, whose sympathy they cannot hope, and
+    care not, to possess. For myself....
+
+    Receive, my dear Charles, the sincere good wishes of one who
+    esteems you.
+
+                                               “EMMANUEL APPADOCCA.”
+
+    “N.B.—Recollect and prevail upon your father not to set sail
+    to-day. Remember the tempest of which I spoke, it will come
+    within these twenty-four hours.
+
+                                                             “E. A.”
+
+The young midshipman was withdrawn and in a few moments he pushed off
+gladly from the schooner, and was soon seen gradually leaving it behind.
+
+Ten o’clock came, and with it the steady trade wind. The placid gulf
+curled before it—the vessels at anchor in the harbour, swung to and fro
+on their long cables, as they felt its force, and the vessel-of-war
+sheered off under her canvass that swelled and looked full and turgid
+with the wind. The sprays flew about her broad bows, and she was bearing
+straight down on the schooner with the wind on her quarter. Every sail
+that could be hoisted was set, and her commander seemed again determined
+to make another powerful effort, in order to have a chance of bringing
+his batteries to bear against the Black Schooner. As for that vessel
+herself, she remained in the same place where she was, and seemed quite
+indifferent to the movements of the man-of-war.
+
+Appadocca pensively paced her deck, and looked from time to time towards
+the eastern shore.
+
+“The rash and fiery old man,” he muttered, with an expression half
+anxious, half indignant, when he saw the large vessel fall off from her
+anchorage.
+
+When the wind had become fairly settled in, the order was given to set
+sail.
+
+With the usual rapidity, the masts of the schooner became sheeted in her
+ample sails, her small kedges were let go, and she turned gracefully
+to the wind. Her bow pointed to the southern outlet of the gulf—the
+Serpent’s Mouth.
+
+The calm and placid picture which the two vessels presented, as they
+sailed in the same direction, bore in itself but a faint resemblance to
+the fierce passions that might animate their crews, or the bloody deeds
+which might be done if once they came within gun-shot of each other.
+
+The usually quiet gulf smiled under the freshness of the morning: the two
+vessels sailed smoothly on its even bosom. There was no labouring, no
+plunging, no heaving of terrible seas, to call forth any feeling, akin to
+terror.
+
+The dark blue waves appeared through the thin vapours of the morning
+like a landscape in a picture, and the light slender fishing canoes,
+with their feather-like sails, which seemed to play on the waters, like
+butterflies in the beams of a sunny day, added a peculiar and peaceful
+appearance to the scene.
+
+The high and solitary mountain of Naparima, with a few scattered and
+scathed trees on its crown, rose in the distance; while the low sloping
+shores before, seemed entirely to enclose the gulf, and to hem it round
+against the violence of intrusive winds. Upon the whole, a beholder,
+on seeing the two vessels together, with the thousand sailing boats and
+sloops that followed in the wake of the man-of-war in order to witness
+the exciting scene of an action, might have taken them to be the pleasure
+ships of luxurious lordlings, who had launched forth on the deep to seek
+another subject of excitement, in order to cheat monotony of some of its
+victim-days.
+
+The pirate schooner held its course with an indifference that would not
+have led one to believe she was pursued. The watchful chief stood by the
+shroud of the mainmast, with his arms folded on his breast, calm and
+impassable as he was at almost all the moments of his life.
+
+Not so the pursuing man-of-war. Ever and anon, as any of the small
+sailing vessels that navigate the gulf came in sight, signals upon
+signals went up her masts, to intimate that the vessel ahead was a
+pirate, and to command it to be harassed and hindered in its course. But
+all these were lost on the simple skippers of those simple crafts.
+
+The chase continued. The terrible rock that is known by the name of
+the “soldier,” and that true to its appellation, seems to guard with
+unsurprizeable vigilance the passage of the Serpent’s Mouth, was passed.
+Point Icacos, too, was doubled, and the two vessels were now riding on
+the atlantic billows, with the low Orinoco marshes on the right, and the
+rocky and wild coast of Trinidad on the left.
+
+The sun was setting, when, suddenly, as if some monster screen had been
+abruptly raised from earth to heaven, in order to keep one part of the
+globe from the other, the wind fell, and the sails lay like humid sheets
+against the masts.
+
+“Nature will now begin to speak,” said Appadocca to himself, with a
+certain air of contentment now lighting up his stern brow, and then
+looked aloft and around.
+
+At his order, the spars were instantaneously armed with steel spears,
+from whose feet, conducting wires hung down along the shrouds and dipped
+into the sea. At another order, the large jibs, foresail, and mainsail
+of the schooner were stripped from the masts, and in their place, small
+narrow sails, which, from their size, could not have been supposed to be
+capable of having the least effect, were set.
+
+The guns were doubly secured in their places, and the arms were fastened
+with even greater care than usual in their cases, in the bulwarks.
+
+The two vessels now lay on the ocean, that now heaved as if from its own
+convulsions; for the lightest vane hung straight and stiffly down. There
+was not a breath of air. The vessels turned round and round helplessly
+on the seas, and as they rose on this wave, and were beaten athwart, or
+astern by the other, for the billows rolled at this time in no regular
+course, they fell into the troughs, or rose on the brows of the waves
+with such sudden and straining movements, that the wood and iron that
+formed them, seemed scarcely strong enough to hold together.
+
+Night closed in; with it came a darkness that in itself was awful. No man
+could see his hand before him, shipmate could not see even the shipmate
+that stood at his side; which was the sea, which the deck, no one could
+tell, save when some counter-running wave broke suddenly on the side or
+bow of the schooner, and threw up the myriads of shining insects that
+inhabited its full and swollen bosom.
+
+Those that were obliged to move about, clung cautiously to the bulwarks,
+and set one foot carefully before the other, that they might not throw
+themselves over.
+
+The cries of the terror-stricken sea-birds, as they wandered on the still
+and suffocating air, with even instinct failing to lead them to their
+resting place on the shore, sounded hoarse and ominous to the ear.
+
+Not a sound was heard on board the schooner, except the creaks of the
+straining cordage, as the vessel violently and madly plunged.
+
+Now, like molten lead, the rain began to fall in large, heavy, and
+leisurely drops. Then distant sounds, like the groans of a labouring
+world, when earthquakes shake it to its base, were heard. A sudden and
+faint gush of wind, like the fluttering of gigantic wings, came and
+turned the schooner round and round, and passed away, leaving the deadly
+calm as it was before. Flash—flash—the lightning came, and by its lurid
+light, the ocean to the southward shone in one sheet of foam.
+
+“How is your helm?” inquired Appadocca of the steersman.
+
+“Very slack, your excellency. She does not feel it,” the man replied.
+
+The sounds increased; they approached nearer and nearer; they came, and
+like a toy in the hand of a giant, the schooner was suddenly thrown on
+her beam-ends. The water washed one-half of her long deck, and the first
+gust of the hurricane swept with a terrible noise, over the prostrate
+vessel, and seemed to crush her, like a mountain that had fallen from its
+base, and had met some paltry obstacle in its way, while it was rolling
+along to find its level.
+
+“Luff,” cried the chief to the steersman.
+
+“Luff.”
+
+The schooner lay on her side for a few minutes, as if she would never
+right again: at last, like an impatient steed, whose course has been
+arrested by some temporary barrier, after sustaining the violence of
+the gust, she sprang forth into the face of the wind, and seemed like a
+thing of passion and pride, roused to brave the power of the overwhelming
+hurricane.
+
+With the scanty storm sails, which the foresight of Appadocca had had
+bent, she shot through the mountain billows with her usual speed,
+cleaving them through, and throwing the sprays mast high.
+
+On—on, she went, as if actuated by the bold spirit of the man who
+commanded her, she sought to penetrate the very bosom of the hurricane.
+
+Her slender masts bent like willows to and fro, as she mounted the
+mountains of rushing water, that struck and shook her to the very keel.
+
+By the flashes of glaring and frequent lightning, the fierce sailors
+could now and then be seen standing stolidly at their respective
+stations, their red caps drawn far down over their puckered brows, and
+their black beards dripping with spray and rain.
+
+A rope fastened each man to his post, and unmoved, like carved wood,
+they stood in the terrors of the howling winds: the bonds of discipline
+were still on them.
+
+As for Appadocca himself far from evincing any anxiety, he seemed to
+take pleasure in the terrible convulsions of nature. With the dark
+heavens above him re-echoing far and wide with the rolls of the loud
+and never-ceasing thunder; with the balancing ocean below him, and the
+terrifying howls of the devastating hurricane around him, he was the same
+unimpassioned, collected, intrepid man, as when the schooner rode on the
+calmest sea, under the most smiling sky. He seemed to take pleasure—if
+his nature could receive pleasure—in the awe-striking scene. Ever and
+anon he took up his red cap, and pressed his hand over his brow in
+apparent delight.
+
+The schooner still laboured in the seas that now began to grow higher and
+higher, and heavier and heavier. The lightnings came and played about
+her masts, like the spirits of the tempest, that seemed marking her as
+their victim; but the fluid glided down the wires, and lost itself in the
+foaming deep.
+
+Still on—on—on she went. A terrible gust.... She was laid on her beams
+again. The wind was gone: the air was calm and close: not a breath;—her
+narrow sails hung to her masts, and she was tossed about without wind
+enough to feel her helm.
+
+At this frightful interval the echoes of rending broadsides were heard
+towards the north. They were the reports of the man-of-war’s distress
+guns.
+
+“Take in the fore and mainsail,” cried Appadocca, in a voice that seemed
+to sound solitary and lonely amidst the terrors of the night.
+
+“Reef the jib.”
+
+The order was scarcely executed, when the rumbling sounds were again
+heard. It was coming—it was coming; the schooner was thrust forward, as
+if some immense rock had been let to fall against her; her bows were
+dashed through the approaching billows; as she emerged for a moment,
+the same power thrust her backwards; her stern sank under the volumes
+of water that washed over her decks; and then, as quick as thought,
+she was lifted from the surface, and twisted, and twisted, and turned
+reelingly round in mid-air, and was let to fall with a tremendous crash
+again. Crack—crack—her two tapering masts snapt from the deck. They were
+overboard, and the lately resisting schooner was now borne with the
+rapidity of lightning before the hurricane.
+
+“Get up the anchors,” the voice of Appadocca was again heard; as he
+recovered from the concussion of the whirlwind.
+
+The prostrate sailors scrambled from the corners into which they had been
+thrown; the hatches were raised, and the only hope of the schooner,—the
+anchors—were quickly drawn on deck.
+
+The hurricane was now at its height. Like a feather on the overturning
+currents of an overflowing cataract, the vessel was furiously borne away
+before the sweeping wind.
+
+The anchors, with their immense coils of chain-cable were thrown
+overboard, to arrest the progress of the vessel for a time, until
+jury-masts could be rigged.
+
+It was of no avail.—Fast—fast—before the wind the schooner went; and then
+a grating noise, and a dreadful shock;—every man fell on his face—she was
+ashore—on the rocks.
+
+“Save yourselves, my brave men,” the deep-toned Appadocca cried, as he
+stood boldly prominent amidst the surrounding rack and ruin.
+
+The ocean was fringed with foam, as it broke on the rocks of Trinidad,
+on which the once beautiful schooner was at this moment being dashed to
+pieces.
+
+The sailors now thought of saving themselves. The distance from dry land
+was not much, and it might be gained on the crest of the waves, if no
+rock dashed to pieces the daring fugitives in their attempt.
+
+Each bold pirate watched his time, and leapt boldly on the crest of the
+billow, as it came washing by, and in the twinkling of an eye, was thrown
+up high and dry, alive or dead, on the top of the rocks.
+
+Already every man had left the schooner, and had perished or been tossed
+up alive.
+
+Appadocca still stood leaning on the bulwarks, contemplating the sad
+remnants of his once all but animated vessel.
+
+Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy drew together imperceptibly to his sides. They
+stood around him silent, and unperceived.
+
+The schooner was breaking up; still Appadocca stood where he was.
+
+“Will not your excellency go on shore?” Lorenzo at last ventured to say.
+
+Appadocca started slightly, as if awakened from a dream or reverie.
+
+“Yes, Lorenzo; but save yourselves first. Watch the wave; here it is—jump
+in—you, too, Jack Jimmy, quickly, so, so.”
+
+The two men jumped on the billow as it swept by the schooner, Appadocca
+followed, and they reached the shore.
+
+Now the wind suddenly ceased as before.
+
+Appadocca, with Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy, were sitting on the top of a
+lofty rock: they were viewing the last struggles of their vessel.
+
+“A terrible night, this is, Lorenzo,” said Appadocca.
+
+“It is, indeed, your excellency, a frightful night! for——hark! What cry
+is that? It is from the schooner,” cried Lorenzo, as he stood up.
+
+A supernatural shriek fell on the ear. It came from the schooner. Again
+it came—again—and again—as she was battered against the rock.
+
+The three persons were silent.
+
+“Oh, I know,” cried Lorenzo.
+
+“It is the prisoner—I may save him yet—I may save him yet,” said Lorenzo.
+
+They were the shrieks of James Willmington, who was still battened down
+in the narrow torture-room, into which he had been thrown, and was
+undergoing more than a thousand deaths; dying as he was, thus cooped up
+in a dark narrow cabin, and the vessel breaking asunder under him.
+
+The cabin was so close, that his terrified shrieks could not be heard
+before; but now, when the seams were opened, they alone, prolonged, and
+agonizing as they were, were now to be heard in the lull of the wind, on
+the silent, close, and death-strewn air.
+
+Lorenzo rushed down the rock, but ere he could devise a means to rescue
+him, the schooner broke in two, and the unhappy Willmington sank for
+ever, still a prisoner in the torture-room.
+
+The schooner went to pieces, and soon the billows rolled on the rocks
+over her once graceful form.
+
+Appadocca silently watched the gradual destruction of his vessel, and
+silently listened to the shrieks of his father.
+
+When not a timber of her remained above water, he heaved a heavy sigh.
+The first, that Lorenzo had ever heard from him. It was the sigh that
+came from a hurricane of feelings within him, which equalled the raging
+hurricane of nature without.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+    “I ’gin to be aweary of the sun,
+    And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.”
+
+                                             MACBETH.
+
+
+“Lorenzo,” said Appadocca to his officer who had returned to the wreck,
+“that was a good and faithful vessel.”
+
+“Ay, your excellency,” replied Lorenzo, sorrowfully, “she was.”
+
+“All things must end, Lorenzo,” continued Appadocca.
+
+“True, your excellency,” answered Lorenzo.
+
+“If so, Lorenzo, the honours and greatness of men are scarcely to be
+longed after. The pursuits that engross us during an entire lifetime, and
+lead us too frequently, to sacrifice health, happiness, and sometimes
+even drag us into crime, must all—all end in this—in nothing.”
+
+“True, your excellency,” answered Lorenzo.
+
+“You know not, Lorenzo, how different the world appears to me now, from
+what it did when I was a happy student of eighteen. It was then tinged
+with golden hues, and shone in whatever light I viewed it. Greatness:
+oh, greatness, seemed so captivating to me! My nights were devoted to
+its attainment, my days the same. Now, the world is charmless, scarcely
+tolerable, and my beautiful dreams have all passed away like the crystal
+dew before the sucking sun.”
+
+“There is still hope, your excellency,” remarked Lorenzo.
+
+“What among all things seems the most deserving of preservation,
+Lorenzo,” continued Appadocca, “is our honour, our consciousness of
+acting right. How many a mind that is curbed down by misfortune and
+sorrow, finds its own little relief in the simple idea, that it has acted
+up to the dictates of its honor.”
+
+Lorenzo made no reply, he saw that his chief was deeply affected.
+
+“Lorenzo,” resumed Appadocca, after a pause, “there is destiny—there is
+destiny—there is a synchronism of events and a simultaneousness of the
+actings of nature’s general laws that constitute destiny; against which
+no men from the absence of any power to read the future can provide.
+Thus, in the whirlwind, that raises in mid-air the light feather, there
+is to be seen the hand of destiny, for there is the synchronism of the
+feather’s being separated from the bird with the acting of the law of
+nature that produces the wind. It would have been as impossible to the
+bird, granting that its reasoning powers were less limited, to have
+provided against the falling of its feather and the eventual taking of it
+up by storm, as it was impossible to foresee the whirlwind that overcame
+the schooner which was made to pass through every danger.”
+
+“Too true, your excellency,” answered Lorenzo.
+
+“So that it follows,” continued Appadocca, “that since men are subject
+to the former of this destiny, their most strenuous efforts must always
+prove impotent in restraining its action, and that they are liable every
+moment, whether they are good, or whether they are bad, to be subjected
+to misfortune and calamity. And this corroborates what I have already
+said, that the only thing which we are bound to consider in life, is our
+honor, which alone is, or ought to be, the source of satisfaction or
+misery to us.”
+
+Lorenzo assented to the philosophy of Appadocca.
+
+“If ever I should be suddenly overtaken by the hand of this destiny
+recollect, beneath the solitary fig-tree that grows on the Island of
+Sombrero, you will find a treasure. Devote half to the erection of a
+college for abandoned children, and with the rest provide for my men who
+have served me truly. Do not forget that peculiar old servant,” he said
+in a low tone, and pointed to Jack Jimmy.
+
+“Your excellency is growing melancholy,” observed Lorenzo, with some
+anxiety.
+
+“No, no,” replied Appadocca. “Still, who knows how soon destiny may end
+his days.”
+
+“For you, Lorenzo, you have acted towards me in a manner that I have duly
+appreciated,” continued Appadocca, while he grasped his officer’s hand,
+“here is my sword, wear it, and may the time soon arrive when you may use
+it in the cause to which you are pledged, farewell!”
+
+With a spring Appadocca jumped from the rock and threw himself headlong
+into the thundering waves below.
+
+His movement was so sudden that Lorenzo, and Jack Jimmy, who sprang to
+their feet at once, were too late to hold him back and save him.
+
+The little negro silently returned to the spot where he had sat since he
+had come on shore, and hid his face in his hands. Not a word—not a sob
+escaped him. His grief was too deep and strong for tears.
+
+Morning dawned on the devastated scene of the late hurricane.
+
+Like a strong man who is recovering from illness, nature presented a
+smiling, though languid look. The billows still ran high, but unlashed
+now by the wind, they rolled heavily against the rocks.
+
+High and dry lay the bodies of the dead, their pallid faces still locked
+in the grim passions which had attended the departure of life.
+
+The dawn had scarcely come, when Jack Jimmy might have been seen moving
+totteringly along the ruffled beach, with a dead body on his shoulders.
+Away into a solitary recess of the picturesque little bay, he bore his
+burden. He lay it down, and then slowly began to scoop a hole.
+
+Solemnly he worked—his arms rose and fell like his heart—heavily.
+
+But who comes to interrupt the sacred work! Lorenzo! It was Lorenzo. He
+had followed Jack Jimmy to the spot. The officer began to dig, too.
+
+“Tap, massa—tap,” said Jack Jimmy, solemnly grasping his arm—“let me one
+do it.”
+
+The hole was dug:—Jack Jimmy adjusted the uniform and hair of the corpse,
+composed its features, and laid it carefully in it.
+
+His arms again rose and fell as heavily as before:—the grave was closed,
+and made even with the ground. Jack Jimmy knelt at its foot, raised his
+eyes to heaven—his lips rapidly moved, and a heavy tear fell on the
+simple grave of the pirate captain.
+
+It was about this time that a little _fallucha_ came labouring over the
+still perturbed waves under four powerful sweeps. At its stern sat the
+captain and a lady.
+
+Attracted by the signs of the shipwrecked pirates, she drew towards the
+shore.
+
+The tale of the wreck was soon told. The lady raised her hands and held
+her forehead as if it were about to split asunder. She landed, and walked
+along the strand and studied each dead man’s face that she passed by. She
+arrived at the spot where Jack Jimmy was completing the grave, and was
+adjusting each tiny pebble in its proper place.
+
+Her heart sank within her. Quickly she approached the one who was toiling
+in so sad a mood.
+
+“Whose grave is this?” the lady quickly asked.
+
+“My young massa’s,” Jack Jimmy slowly answered, without raising his eye
+from his work.
+
+“What was his name?” again asked the lady.
+
+“Emmanuel Appadocca,” again answered Jack Jimmy, as slowly as before.
+
+“Emmanuel Appadocca!”
+
+The lady raised her hands to her burning brows, and pressed her eyes. She
+remained for a few moments in this position. Then her arms fell languidly
+by her sides, an expression of vagueness spread itself over her face, she
+looked absently around, a ringing laugh broke forth from her lips, her
+jaws then hung mopingly. Feliciana fell mad over Appadocca’s grave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+    “Of that, and all the progress, more and less,
+    Resolvedly more leisure shall express:
+    All yet seems well; and if it end so meet,
+    The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.”
+
+                        ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.
+
+Feliciana was taken to her _fallucha_, which immediately changed her
+course, and returned to Trinidad.
+
+Lorenzo built a camp on the shore for the protection of his men, until
+he should be able to send a vessel to their rescue, and then began to
+traverse the island under the guidance of Jack Jimmy, whose excitability
+had now yielded to a melancholy and dull sombreness.
+
+One evening the sun had set, the twilight was passing away, and gloom was
+settling over the forests, when Lorenzo, exhausted and fatigued, thought
+of going to ask shelter on a plantation, which he knew to be near at
+hand, by the repeated crowings of cocks, that noisely vented their loud
+farewell-clarions to the departing day.
+
+“Jack Jimmy, do you know who is the proprietor of the estate which I
+think we are approaching?”
+
+“No, massa,” answered Jack Jimmy.
+
+“Do you think they would give us shelter for to-night?” inquired Lorenzo.
+
+“Yes, massa,” answered Jack Jimmy.
+
+“Then will you endeavour to find your way to it?”
+
+“Yes, massa.”
+
+In about half an hour, Lorenzo and Jack Jimmy came out amidst a number
+of flourishing gardens, that lay smiling at the back of a village of
+labourer’s houses.
+
+The two travellers quickly crossed there, and opened into a long lane
+that was shaded by tall tamarind and sappodilla trees.
+
+An ecclesiastic was seen calmly pacing this umbrageous retreat, while his
+lips rapidly moved as he pored over the dark and riband-marked breviary,
+which he held open before.
+
+The father was so wrapped up in what he was reading, that he did not
+perceive the two strangers until they had almost met face to face.
+
+The priest started back, as he came on Lorenzo. “Mercy on us! the pirate
+officer!” he cried.
+
+“What, what new deed is it, sir;” he said, after a pause: “which now
+tarnishes your soul again, and draws you to this peaceful and quiet
+retreat?”
+
+“Pirate officer no longer, good father,” answered Lorenzo, “and I bring
+no outrage on your peaceful retreat. My spirit now itself requires too
+much calm to break it wherever it already exists.”
+
+The priest folded his arms across his breast, and looked silently and
+sympathisingly on the unhappy man before him.
+
+“My son,” he said, with a countenance that beamed with charity; “my son,
+there is one above that can relieve our bitterest woes. Seek consolation
+in the afflictions which, press upon your soul from His hand.”
+
+“I am now in your power, good father,” said Lorenzo. “The schooner is
+wrecked on these shores; Appadocca is no more.”
+
+“Is he dead?” cried the priest.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The priest turned towards heaven, and prayed for the soul of the pirate
+captain.
+
+“God forbid that I should ever refuse charity to the afflicted:
+come with me, sir, and my good patron will, I doubt not, afford you
+hospitality.”
+
+The three persons walked up the lane, and discovered a comfortable
+planter’s house, that stood in an open space amidst a number of orange
+trees. They quickly approached the house; and Agnes, who was sitting
+at the open window enjoying the evening breeze, fell senseless to the
+ground, as she beheld Lorenzo.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Accommodate the stranger as soon as possible,” said a fiery looking
+old man, whose gray hair floated over his shoulders, and fell over a
+large and turned-down collar, while the boots which had not crossed the
+threshold for many a day, still shone with heavy and immense silver spurs.
+
+“Accommodate the stranger, and get him a guide as soon as possible,” he
+said, as soon as the priest told him of Agnes’s illness, and had no doubt
+expressed his own surmises.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The time for Lorenzo’s departure approached. He was informed that a
+guide and a mule awaited his leisure.
+
+“I must see the master of the house,” he said.
+
+The servant withdrew, and shortly afterwards conducted the officer into
+the presence of the old man, who stood up as well as he could, bowed, and
+asked Lorenzo to be seated.
+
+“Sir,” said Lorenzo, speaking without any preliminaries; “your daughter
+and I love each other.”
+
+“What, sir! mention my daughter!” cried the old man, furiously, without
+hearing any more. “Sir, the mule and guide are ready.”
+
+But there was a softening balm even for the inflammable spirit of the old
+gentleman. He, like all other men, had the particular point by which he
+could be lead!
+
+The pirate officer immediately disclosed that his real name was not
+Lorenzo, but St. James Carmonte; and that he was the lineal descendant of
+the Carmontes, who fell fighting for the Prince. He went on to explain
+that his people before him had vegetated in a number of corners all over
+Europe; but that he and the others that then survived had been eventually
+expelled from France at the epoch of the great revolution. That he had
+then taken to the sea, there to seek adventures; as he imagined he had
+been long-enough on the enduring side.
+
+“What! the descendant of Carmonte,” cried the old man, who was touched
+in a sensitive part: “Carmonte, whose fathers fought at the side of mine.
+How can you vouch this, sir?”
+
+Lorenzo presented a ring.
+
+“The word, sir.”
+
+Lorenzo said something.
+
+“Agnes, Agnes, come hither, Agnes,” vociferated the old man.
+
+The young lady appeared. She was still pale and emaciated.
+
+“Take her, take her, man,” cried the old cavalier. “May God bless you,
+and preserve you to see the day when the king shall enjoy his own again.”
+
+The priest blessed the union, and Lorenzo, after disposing of Appadocca’s
+followers, lived happy in the retreat of the plantation.
+
+Jack Jimmy served the officer of his young master with fidelity. A smile,
+however, was never seen more on his face; and when the winds howled more
+loudly than usual, the drops calmly fell from his now aged eyes.
+
+In a certain city of Venezuela, Feliciana might be seen in her white
+veil, and her sombre dress, amidst the abodes of the heart-stricken and
+afflicted; she was known as the “Succouring Mother.” Twice a-year she
+might also be seen on her pilgrimage to Trinidad, when she plucked the
+weeds from off his mother’s tomb, and tended the sea-grape tree that grew
+over the lonely grave of EMMANUEL APPADOCCA.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+LONDON: SAMUEL BIRD, PRINTER, BOW STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75314 ***