CHAPTER VII.
“I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?”Merchant of Venice.
“I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?”Merchant of Venice.
“I stand for judgment: answer; shall I have it?”Merchant of Venice.
“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 gravitythan 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 andto 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, withwhich 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 toeach 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 myselfto 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 perjuredsouls, 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.”