“I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?”
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
As soon as the sun had risen the next morning, the crew was again
summoned to the main deck. They appeared, as on the day before, in their
best costume, and fell into the same order.
The seamen, who belonged to the prize-ship, together with the master
fisherman and his men, were placed by themselves, while the priest
and the young lady were, as a mark of distinction, accommodated with
deck-stools apart.
As soon as the men had assembled, the captain made his appearance on
deck. He was appareled in the uniform, which it would appear he always
wore when he was out of his cabin: the deep red cap, with the skull and
cross bones, also covered his head. The expression of his features, if
possible, was that of even more gravity than usual, and the melancholy
cast which stamped that gravity was, perhaps, somewhat more deepened. He
seated himself immediately on a chair, which was ready there for him, and
ordered the prisoner who, the day before, had been dragged away to close
confinement, to be brought forward.
This individual was immediately escorted from the forward part of the
vessel, and placed in the space reserved within the two lines of pirates,
and face to face with the captain.
The prisoner was a man somewhat above the ordinary height, of a demeanour
which might have once been, to a great extent, commanding, but which
seemed to have parted with whatever of native dignity it possessed, in
proportion, as the spirit of excellence and elegance, which usually
imparts character to the exterior, gave place to thoughts either of
sordid pursuits, or to mean and selfish cares. He was now slightly bent,
more, perhaps, from carelessness to his gait than with age: for his
years could not have been very many. His hair, that still grew thick and
bushy, was only just beginning to show a silvery tinge. His features were
marked and manly, and must have been, at one time, very handsome, though
now they were stamped with a disagreeable appearance of coldness and
selfishness, which was calculated to arouse, at once, in a stranger’s
mind, a strong prejudice against the individual; while his sharp,
twinkling, cozening eyes, in particular, that shone from under a veil of
shaggy eyebrows, that flew from object to object, that rested on no man
for a moment, nor dared meet the glances that they encountered, conveyed
immediately an idea of the lack of that firm, unequivocating honor which
is essentially necessary in the constitution of a proper character.
When the prisoner was placed before him, the captain fixed upon him a
deep, penetrating, and earnest look, that made him cower, and then slowly
and solemnly pronounced these words:—
“James Willmington, before God, and in the presence of these men, and
in the name of Nature, I accuse you of having violated one of the most
sacred and most binding of her laws; of having abandoned your offspring;
of having neglected the being whose existence sprang from yours, and for
whom you were bound by a holy obligation to care and provide.”
The captain paused for a moment, and still kept his penetrating and
unaltering eye fixed on the prisoner. The latter, on hearing this charge,
raised his eyes in affrighted surprise, but quickly looked down as he met
those of the pirate captain, while his color came and went.
“You shall be witness against yourself: because, although I lately took
proper measures to make myself certain, that you were the individual
who was indicated as the person that was my father; still, not having
ever known you, and not possessing any tender instincts to guide me with
regard to you, I should have always felt some slight doubt about your
identity, if your fear, and miscalculating cunning had not, the day
before yesterday, unwarily betrayed you into an avowal which, I must
admit, I was not ready to hear from your lips. These men shall be your
judges. You will be permitted full liberty to express yourself, at the
proper time, as freely as you may think proper, omitting nothing that you
may believe to be conducive to your safety. I shall reserve to myself the
part of passing sentence upon you and of directing its execution; and I
promise you, that whatever defence you may be able to make shall weigh as
heavily as lead in your favour: for I should be loath to punish you if
even you can contrive to justify yourself.”
“But what is the meaning—?” the prisoner began to inquire.
The captain pressed his finger firmly on his lips, and Willmington was
daunted into silence. The pirate captain then went on:
“I need not now call it to your recollection,” he said, “that I am your
son. Your memory, which all along was so unfaithful on that point,
seems to have suddenly improved, when you saw me in the cabin of the
ship which I had taken, and then you remembered well that I was your
son. By your own confession, therefore, I am saved the trouble of
proving for my satisfaction the natural connexion which exists between
us. It is, therefore, undoubted and settled, that I stand towards you
in the relation of son to father, or, in other words, speaking more
scientifically, I am your immediate progeny. This is clear. Now, by
certain feelings which are implanted in us, and which are considered the
laws of the Creator, written on the heart of man at his creation, we
are admonished that the care of those who spring immediately from us,
is one of our principle duties. But, as we are so apt to mistake habits
for innate feelings, perhaps it will be better and safer, not to proceed
on this one, however strong or indisputable it may appear. Let feeling,
therefore, or instinct, be entirely eliminated, and let us appeal to
Nature herself in her manifestations—to Nature that never errs. You admit
that I am your son—your offspring; you owed me as such offspring, at
least, protection until I was strong enough to provide for myself and to
avoid injuries. Contrast now your conduct with your duty. You are aware,
that from the hour of the birth of this, your son, up to this, you have
never taken the trouble even to inquire what had become of the being of
whose existence you were the secondary cause; whether the mother, of whom
he was born, had survived to nurture him; whether he was exposed, in the
helplessness of infancy, to the privations which overwhelm even maturer
age; or, worse still than all, whether he had fallen into stranger’s
hands, to be the humble object of capricious charity. You did not trouble
yourself to learn whether the cold winds froze him in the very beginning
of life; whether he was a prey to the beasts of the woods, or whether the
vultures of the air had pecked or torn him, or had fed upon him; he was
forsaken, and left unprotected by the person who had given him life—life,
which with kindness is made happiness itself, but which by unkindness is
rendered worse than the bitterest misery. The tiger will tear to pieces
the bold intruder that menaces, nay, that approaches its cubs, and,
fiercely fighting, will die for the protection of its young. The solitary
bird of the desert will open its vein, and make its parched young ones
drink of its life blood, then die; the venomous serpent will writhe and
twist under the fiercest foe for its hatchling; but you, unlike the
tiger, the bird, or the serpent, not resembling even the most ferocious
brute, or the lowest reptile that crawls upon this earth, you cast
away from you, and shut out from your mind and heart, until a cowardly
consideration for your own safety made remember it, the blood of your
blood, and the flesh of your flesh, which even the common affection that
you have for yourself—your very essential selfishness itself—should have
made you love and cherish; or, at least, feed and water. I am your son; I
charge you with having abandoned me from childhood; what defence can you
make? I give you ten minutes to reflect and to answer.”
The pirate captain then ceased: his eyes were fixed on the deck, his arms
were crossed over his breast, and his features were locked in cold but
firmest determination, and he had the air of one, who was resolved to go
through a prescribed form with patience and precision. The men embraced
the opportunity afforded by this pause to interchange looks one with the
other. Their usual ferocious character of mein was heightened for the
history which their chief had just partly related, no doubt recalled to
the greater part of those men who stood that morning on the deck of the
Black Schooner, the injustice, whether real or merely supposed, with
which they had been treated by others. Victims to wrongs and injuries
which others had heaped upon them, they had permitted their feelings to
become cankered. Accustomed for the most part to the circumstances of an
easy, and as far as some of them were concerned, an estated position,
they could not in the hour of adversity, bend to the petty pursuits of
life, while their pride, at the same time, would not let them lead a
different sort of existence among those who were either their companions
or their inferiors in their better days.
Turning their backs on pretended friends and unkind kindred, they had
fled to the protection of the sea, where they could enjoy the doubtful
comfort of their misanthropy to the full, and feed at pleasure on
their own griefs; while their sword was ready to be used as well for
pleasure as for booty, against the whole world to which they at the same
time boldly and fearlessly gave defiance. The recollection of other
days, however, fell upon their spirits, and how scared soever their
sensibilities might be by a thousand scenes of blood, how hardened soever
by long familiarity with misery, still those impressions to which in
the day-dreams of their youth they had fondly bound their happiness,
could not but be awakened by the tale that seemed to hold up to each of
themselves the fleeting reflection of their own hopeful, but long since
spoilt and blighted existence.
It was resentment, so strong as to have primarily germinated disgust
in their hearts, and next a distaste for the society of their species,
that had made them separate themselves from mankind and wander
misanthropically about, until they eventually found themselves combined
with others as unfortunate, as unenduring, and as proud as themselves;
it was resentment of injustices of a similar nature to the instance to
which their chief was a victim, that had changed their lot, and hating
still the causes of their unhappiness, they were eager to wreak vengeance
upon any individual to whom they could bring home any such offence. They
interchanged fierce looks with each other, cast now and then dark and
boding glances on the prisoner, and portentously stroked their dark and
flowing beards. As for the prisoner himself, he appeared confounded;
still there was not that vacant appearance of embarrassed simplicity
about him which we generally observe in those that are innocent when
unhappy circumstances put them at a loss. His was a distressing
confusion—the confusion that conscious guilt, too clear to admit of even
the shifts of equivocation and falsity had produced—a confusion that was
doubled by the mortifying, degrading, and overwhelming fact, that his
accuser, the witness, and the sufferer from his offence was his own son.
The guilty father therefore stood dumb before the son—the judge.
The ten minutes had now elapsed, the captain raised his head, and said,
“Do you then say nothing in your defence?”
“I—I—I do not understand what all this means,” at last Willmington
falteringly said.
“So much the worse” dryly observed the captain.
“You charge me with an offence,” continued Willmington, “which you make
worse than it is; you must remember men are not punished in society
for such offences, and I do not see why I should be ill-treated on its
account, when others are not.”
An indistinct smile played about the lips of the captain, as he answered,
“That is no defence.”
“Beside,” Willmington went on to say, “what right have you to constitute
yourself my judge?”
“The right,” answered the captain, “of an injured man, who avenges the
wrong done to himself, and also to one who was his nearest and dearest
blood, and whose memory demands justice.”
“But, by the laws, a man cannot redress his own wrongs,” said
Willmington.
“By what laws?” inquired the captain.
“By the laws of the land,” answered Willmington.
A sneer was to be traced on the rude lineaments of every pirate’s face,
when this answer was given.
“Look up there, man,” said the captain, as he pointed to the black flag
that was floating gracefully from the half lowered gaff, “while that
flies there, there is no law on board this schooner save mine and great
Nature’s. Look around you, on the right and on the left, you see those
who know no other laws but these two, and who are ready to enforce
them. Look still farther around, you see but a waste of water, with
no tribunals at hand, in which complaints may be heard, or by which
grievances may be redressed. Place no hope, therefore, on ‘the laws of
the land.’ Have you any thing more pertinent to urge?”
“I have to request,” replied Willmington, still more embarrassed, “to be
landed with your other captives, that is all.”
“Is that all?” coolly observed the captain; then turning to his men, he
said, “my men, you have heard my accusation against this man. He seems
unable to defend and justify himself. It is my intention to punish him
by making him suffer that which I have had myself to undergo. Be you
witnesses that I have given him a fair and open trial.”
“Bravo, bravo!” ran in deep, but subdued tones along the ranks of the
pirates.
“Listen to your sentence, James Willmington,” continued the captain, “you
are guilty, in my opinion, of the greatest crime which an individual, as
a man and a father, can commit. You have prostituted the law of nature
to your own selfish gratification, perjured yourself, and given that
life for which you neglected to provide and care. I have afforded you
an opportunity of showing yourself innocent—if you could—of this grave
charge. You have not been able to do so. The punishment I design you is
this: you will be cast adrift on the ocean; you will have an empty cask
to rest upon; you refused me bread—I refuse you shelter on board of my
schooner; you are guilty of what we all on board this vessel abhor; you
are, therefore, no proper companion for us, and you must be thrust forth
from among us. I shall, however, take care that you should survive as
long as possible, that you may be the more able to realize the pangs of
that famine which I endured by your heartlessness. In two hour’s time
the sentence shall be executed. Prepare to meet your Creator. Lead him
hence.”
“Good God,” now cried the prisoner, his eyes seeming to be about to fall
from their sockets with fear, as the full extent and reality of his
danger, now clearly struck him, “good God, surely you do not mean to
murder me: have mercy on me, I beseech you.”
The captain did not raise his eyes from a paper which he had taken
from the breast of his uniform, and which he was then reading. “But,”
continued the prisoner, as the pirates prepared to drag him away,
“remember, I am your father, you owe me honour and respect—how dare you,
raise your hand against your parent?”
The captain at these words suddenly raised his head, and cast an angry
and steadfast look on the prisoner, and after the lapse of a few seconds,
during which he kept his eyes still rivetted on him, he said, with biting
scorn—
“Remember that you are my father! you ought to ask me to forget it. It
is because I remember you are my father that I shall now prepare for you
your just measure of suffering. It is very probable you never expected to
be called one day to account by the son who was the fruit of a delightful
indulgence, but which was to be considered no longer than during the
short space which it afforded you pleasure. Very little do you, and such
as you think, when in the turpitude of your perjured souls, you delude
the confiding and helpless things who sin from too great a confidence in
your protestations of honor, or rather, are too innocent to detect your
falsehoods, that the beings to whom you may give life are things who
like yourselves may possess feelings, and who may one day seek to avenge
the treachery practised on their mothers. Selfish man! your selfishness
pursues you at the very moment when your existence is in all probability
about to end. You crouched to me, and sought to propitiate me by a show
of paternal sensibility, when you saw me enter with my friends the cabin
where you stood writhing in your terror, and to-day you again remind
me that I am your son. Now your paternal feelings are very strong, and
your memory remarkably faithful when you expect to save your life by
remembering me. But you, of course, recollected nothing of me, nor were
you so feelingly sentimental when I once wrote to you for the mite, which
you would never have missed from your treasures. Your selfish artifice
shall avail you nothing here. In two hours, as I have said, you will be
cast adrift on the ocean. Men, lead him away.”