“O Lord—me thought what pain it was to drown!”
RICHARD III.
Willmington was taken away and confined to the part of the schooner in
which he had been kept since his arrival on board. The crew remained
in profound silence, in the same order, and the captain was silently
studying the paper which he had in his hand, and from the perusal of
which he had a little before raised his head to address the prisoner.
After the lapse of a few moments, he handed it to Lorenzo, and requested
him to have a machine made according to the plan set forth in it.
The chief officer bowed, and took it to the officer of the watch. The
captain then slowly rose, cast a look around him on the ocean and at the
prize-ship, then descended the cabin steps.
The men dispersed, and, in a short time, the deck remained in the
occupation of those only whose duty it was to keep watch at that time.
At the bows of the schooner a carpenter was now to be seen busy at work.
He was labouring in the greatest haste. Before him was a plan, and a
young officer, the one in command, might be observed now and then to
leave the sacred boards of the after-deck, and walk forward to inspect
the thing that the man was constructing.
Two hours had now elapsed since the captain had passed sentence on the
prisoner, and the time had now arrived to execute it.
The moments that completed the two hours had scarcely fled, before
Lorenzo came on deck. He proceeded immediately to inspect the machine
which he had ordered to be made, in obedience to the commands he had
received.
The captain himself, a short time afterwards, made his appearance. The
machine was ordered to be brought to the gangway, where he carefully
examined it. It was made of an empty cask, to which something like the
keel of a ship was attached. This appendage was covered with heavy sheets
of lead, for the apparent purpose of being made to keep downwards, and so
to prevent the machine from rolling over. The upper part was provided
with a wooden seat, made in the shape of a Spanish saddle, the bows of
which rose very high, and were crowned with a piece of flat board, which
seemed intended to answer the purpose of a shelf.
When the captain had examined this machine, he ordered that a few
biscuits should be secured on the shelf above mentioned, and, at the same
time, commanded the prisoner to be led forth.
In the mean time, the deck had become again crowded, for every one
knew what would take place at the end of the two hours, which had just
expired. But the pirates were not now drawn up in the same order as
before. They crowded in the foremost part of the vessel, some lounged on
the bulwarks, others bent over the riggings, watching, in moody calmness,
what was going on. No one dared assist in the preparations except those
who formed the watch of the hour. The captive priest, also, with his
beautiful ward, stood leaning on the taffrail of the schooner, isolated,
as it were, amidst the many that were on board the vessel.
The prisoner was brought forward to the gangway. He was haggard and worn:
the feelings of the two hours which intervened between him and that doom,
which was worse than death, concentrated as they were into the intensest
agony, preyed like gnawing worms upon his body.
“Hear my last prayer, for mercy’s sake!” he cried, with passion, to the
captain, as he threw himself at his feet, “oh! spare me this dreadful
death; give me but life, and I shall give you all I have.—Can you treat
your father in this manner? Oh, my son—my good son—my beloved son! I
shall give you all my property—if—”
“Bind his arms,” said the captain.
The arms of the prisoner were immediately seized; he resisted madly and
violently, and, in the strength of desperation, he shook off the first
pirate that attempted to lay hands on him. But he was quickly mastered,
and his arms were tightly tied with small cord behind his back. The
machine was now supported perpendicularly, and it resembled, as it stood
in that position, a horse ready saddled.
The prisoner became still more agitated and terror-stricken when his arms
were bound, and his cries were more piteous and heart-rending.
“Oh! ask mercy for me, my men,” he cried, imploringly, to the pirates
around him, whose coolness seemed to mock his wretchedness, “I shall make
you all rich; do not—do not throw me into the sea. Holy father, holy
father,” looking towards the priest, “you may succeed, you may move him,
you may curse him; ask mercy for me—do not let me be drowned.”
“Put him on,” the captain said.
The wretched man was lifted bodily, and laid astride upon the cask.
“Curses on you! do not—do not, for your soul’s sake, murder me,” he
cried, and struggled like those who alone can struggle who see death
before them.
But it was of no avail. The pirates seized his legs, and tied them
tightly underneath the cask, so that the miserable prisoner had not the
power of making any other movements except that of inclining his body a
little backwards and forwards.
“Fix the tackles.” The tackles were adjusted.
“Fiends! hell hounds,” he yelled out, as the first strain of the ropes
was felt on the cask, and laid hold of the pirate that was next to him
with his teeth—another strain, and he held between his teeth a shred of
the man’s woollen shirt.
The cask was hoisted up, to be let down overboard. The cries of the fated
Willmington increased still more—he roared franticly. The cask with the
prisoner balanced between the masts of the schooner for a moment, in
cruel suspense, while not a sound was to be heard, except his hoarse,
pitiful, and moving cries.
The pirates looked on with sullen calmness; the captain was the same
imperturbable man. But the priest could not withstand this moving scene;
he threw himself at the captain’s feet, and earnestly begged him to show
mercy:—“mercy,” he added, “that was the most acceptable offering to
heaven.”
“Good priest,” answered the captain, “if you can soothe the end of that
wretched being, do so. But pray not to me, I never change.”
Slowly—slowly—slowly—the cask, with its living rider, who was shrieking
like the damned, was lowered: it reached the water: the tackles were
unfastened, and away, away, it slowly floated on the long high waves that
bore it rapidly from the schooner.
The roars and cries of the prisoner rang over the silent sea. Every eye
was rivetted in awful intentness on the cask and its burthen. The captain
alone was turned away from the direction where his father lay pinioned on
a cask at the mercy of the winds and waves. He cast but one glance on the
cask as it was lowered into the sea, and never looked at it again.
Indifference—indifference, as cold and as icy as death, indifference,
such as nature can admit but only when every fibre of feeling is burnt
into hard callousness by the searing iron of some deep unpardonable
offence, had wrapped its clammy folds around his heart.
Reader, have you ever felt the absorbing love that sank and merged
your existence into that of a cherished object, and have you ever felt
the gall of sneering ridicule from her? If you have, then you know the
feeling that possessed the pirate captain. Have you ever demanded bread
from a parent whom you may have loved to excess and received a stone, or
have you ever asked water from the author of your existence and received
poison? Then you can fancy the captain’s sentiments, or have you ever,
while straining your industry and energy to the utmost, been ground down
to misery and despair by him from whom nature taught you to expect love
and protection, while he himself was rioting in profuse abundance? if you
have, and we trust heaven has always preserved you from such a bitter
experience, you can then realize the feeling which existed in the bosom
of the pirate captain.
“Make sail,” the captain said to the officer of the watch, after he had
cast a glance on the horizon.
The schooner which, during all this time, was lying to the wind under
only a half of her mainsail and jib, was immediately put under the press
of all her sails. She had shot a-head for some yards, when the captain
gave orders to change the course.
“Ready about.”
“Ready about,” was echoed forwards in the firm disciplined tones of the
sailors.
“Hard a-lee.”
“Hard a-lee,” the man at the helm answered.
The helm was put down, and the long snake-like schooner bore up
gracefully to the wind, the sails fluttered for a moment, and she leaned
smoothly on the other tack.
Like a dolphin she cut through the water; the spray played about her
bows, and the waves barely touched her sides as she glided through them.
A signal had been made to the prize-ship, and she, too, was put under
full sail.
Away—away—the schooner went, and left far, far behind, the wretched being
who had been thrown overboard. He could scarcely now be seen, it was but
when the cask rose and fell on the crest of the heaving billows that
a glimpse could be had of him. But his cries still reached the flying
schooner. They gradually grew fainter and fainter; then they came like
the intermittent moans of agony, low, and few, and far between, and then
they were heard no more.
The captain gave his orders to the officer on duty to steer a certain
course and then left the deck.
The day had by this time passed, and the fleeting twilight of the
tropics was yielding to the darkness of night. The crew of the schooner
betook themselves to their respective quarters. But the priest and his
ward still lingered on the deck. Their strained eyes were fixed in the
direction where the cask and its load had disappeared, and fancied they
saw, every moment, the unfortunate Willmington rise, now and then, in the
dim crepuscule. But they watched in vain, and saw not what they imagined
they did. Far, far out of sight was the cask already borne, and Heaven
only knew whether the living being, that rode upon it, still drew the
breath of life.
Saddened by the event of the day, they at length, in melancholy silence,
left the deck, when the darkness had increased and had deprived them of
the power of continuing their useless watch. Night, then, closed over
the Black Schooner; and the faint ripplings of the water as she glided
through, were the only sounds that might fall on the listening ear.