CHAPTER XV.
“What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!”Romeo and Juliet.
“What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!”Romeo and Juliet.
“What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!”Romeo and Juliet.
“What noise is this? Give me my long sword, ho!”
Romeo and Juliet.
The period accorded by the friendship of Charles Hamilton to the prisoner, for the acceptance or rejection of his offer to become the means of his escape, had now expired, and the two young friends were sitting together in the cabin-prison in which Appadocca was confined.
“So you will not consent to put aside your insane notions and escape, when I place it in your power to do so?” said Charles Hamilton, dejectedly, and, at the same time, somewhat scornfully, twisting his whiskers.
“No!” replied Appadocca with much decision.
“Then,” replied the officer, “I shall have nothing farther to do with you; they may hang you, quarter you, and do, G—d knows what else to you.”
“As for that matter,” answered Appadocca, affectingsomething like the same satire as his friend had used, “you may exercise your own discretion; but is it not a little absurd that, because I am not willing to sanction the mis-use of the authority which you possess on board your father’s ship, in your allowing me, who have been brought here a prisoner, to escape, that I, on that account, should lose your favor, and cease to be deemed worthy of your notice, even if I should happen to be hanged, quartered, and done G—d knows what else to?” and Appadocca smiled good-naturedly.
“This is the second time, Emmanuel, that you have adverted to my authority on board this ship, and reflected on my conduct in endeavouring to befriend you: I hope it may be the last. You must recollect that I am an Englishman, and an English officer, and I consider that I possess as delicate a sense of honor and as great a knowledge of duty as any gentleman whosoever.”
“And I,” replied Appadocca, “I am an animal,—sub-kingdom, vertebrata, genus homo, and species,—‘tropical American;’ naturalists lay my habitat all over the world, and declare me omnivorous. I do not pride myself on possessing merely such an indefinite thing as sense of honor, or great knowledge of duty; but observation has made me acquainted with the universal laws which nature has imposed upon us in order to secure tous contentment and happiness; and your wishing to make your station on board this vessel subservient to my escape is in opposition to one of those laws, the certain precursor of your own unhappiness, I shall not consent to it. Speak to me no more on this subject.”
“If, Emmanuel, I had considered that my good faith was concerned in making an offer of escape to you, you may rely upon it. I should neither have attempted to lower myself in my own estimation, nor should I have subjected myself to the animadversion of your nice and exquisite philosophy. I shall use the same liberty of speech as you have done, and assume the right of telling you, that His Majesty’s ship, which my father has the honour to command, was built, fitted out, and sent to sea, for the purpose of fighting the enemies of England, and not for the purpose of scavenging for pirates and freebooters: my commission was granted for the same purpose. I consider, therefore, that this vessel ought not to be made the lock-up of accused individuals; nor ought my father be obliged to abet and to assist the malice of hard-hearted planters, or interfere in the actions of strangely arguing sons—I therefore consider myself bound by no honour in this affair; and I am, consequently, free to act as I please. I recognize in you my ancient and respected friend, and I offer you myassistance to escape. You may accept it or not—this is Saxon.”
Charles Hamilton spoke this with considerable warmth and seriousness.
“Bravely spoken, Charles,” said Appadocca, “and, although part of your speech may have sounded harsh to ears more unwilling than mine to hear the truth, still I admire you for it. Why did you not speak out in this manner before. You may depend upon it, man, it is always better to express one-self boldly, throw aside expediency, and bring out the truth, which, though harsh and unpleasant, is, nevertheless, the truth, and must be told. What is there to be feared? A proper man has nothing worth keeping, which he should apprehend to lose, save his honour and his spirit of rectitude. What though interest-seekers quake in their coats lest their smoothly-varnished opinions should not draw the approbation of their fastidious patrons: a man, worthy of the name, must follow out the spirit of his manliness, and that is all. Take the furious bull—society, by the horns, and though its lurid eyes shine fire upon you, nay, though it gore you, shout out your truths still higher than its bellowings; and when its madness-fit is over, your truths shall live, nay, ride it even as a broken-spirited ass.
“Men of such boldness there have been, who, Lycurgus-like, have exiled themselves from all to throw their truths into the world. Society may have branded them, starved them, cursed them, and driven them into hovels, there to perish and to rot, but they have ever re-risen in their thoughts, and now their names receive, on the bended knee, the unbounded veneration of mankind.
“Still I will not accept your proposal.”
“But for G—d’s sake, Emmanuel, speak seriously,” said Hamilton, hastily, “you surely do not intend to let this obstinacy of yours prevent your escape;” and the young officer looked anxiously in Appadocca’s face.
It would appear that, notwithstanding the previous refusal of his friend, he never contemplated but that at the last moment he would avail himself of his assistance and escape.
“Call me obstinate, as you may,” replied Appadocca, “I shall not accept your offer.”
“Then is it possible that you seriously refuse to save your life?”
“Not I, by Heaven,” replied Appadocca.
“Then why not adopt my proposal at once?”
“Because my doing so will not only involve a breach of discipline, but will also compromise your honour,—twosacrifices which we must pronounce disproportioned, when we consider the very small necessity that demands them.”
“Do you recollect that death will be your sentence?” eagerly demanded Charles.
“I do recollect it,” answered Appadocca. “And pray, what is death?”
The latter part of the question was put with such cynical coldness, that Charles Hamilton found himself unwittingly silenced.
He remained tongue-tied for a few moments, and with the greatest embarrassment repeated the question of Appadocca. “What is death, you ask?”
“Ay, what is death, I ask? let your embarrassment repeat the question,” remarked Appadocca.
“Why, death,” replied the young officer, “death is—is—is the—the highest of all—of all human punishments—and sufferings.”
“Remarkably fine,” replied Appadocca, with some satire, “remarkably fine, I once entertained better hopes of you, Charles Hamilton, when you were at College; but now I find, that like all other persons, you have thought, that it was necessary to cultivate the intellect, only during the time when you were at college,—that you were to live in mind, or rather, according to thedictates of your reason, as long as you were there; but that as soon as you became emancipated from your scholastic thraldom, throwing aside convictions, you were to live entirely in body, merely copying the bad habits of most men, which they self-deludingly style instincts. You speak and think absolutely like those animals that are driven above decks there by your orders, and who turn their tobacco in their cheeks, bellow forth their strange and meaningless oaths, and pull the ropes, by precisely the same moving power as one of your guns sends forth its iron and brimstone charge, when fire is applied to the touch-hole. That distinguishing essential which we, with so much complaisance, place on ourselves, to divide us from quadrupeds and our other fellow habitants of this earth—reason, is as much consulted as the stars. You observe the whole of organized life clinging to the idea of preservation, that they may continue for a brief period the state in which they happen to find themselves, and permitting this idea, in sympathy with the herd of men, to grow unreasoned in you, you fancy that I, also, should start from death with the same fear, and consent to depart from the course of conduct which my intellect prescribes to me, for the mere purpose of avoiding it. You do not consider what really is life, and less, perhaps, what is death. If millions ofmen are content to cultivate a sluggish existence, and shrink from ennobling enterprizes, in order that they may avoid this bugbear with which they ignorantly frighten themselves; nay, if they can be worked upon by this terror to compromise the only imperishable part of our nature—the idea of self-respect or honour—you must not fancy that I, my dear Charles, am willing to do so, too!”
“If you are not, I can only say your instincts are ajar,” observed the young officer, who felt himself again unable to answer Appadocca.
“There, you speak of instincts again: I have no instincts. If you mean certain ideas which are the necessary fruits of my organization, I shall observe, that far from their being ajar, they, on the contrary, are the only ones which are in harmony with whatever we know of nature and of its author.”
“Hold, Emmanuel, do not go any further, you will be guilty of irreverence.”
“Irreverence! it is not I who can be guilty of irreverence, it is you, and the rest of the ignorant world, that are ‘guilty of irreverence;’ for, by surrounding death with the terror you do, and by considering it the greatest of earth’s afflictions, you effectually depreciate the goodness and consistency of the maker of all things.”
“In what manner?” inquired the officer.
“Listen to me, and you shall hear. The whole of this globe, you are aware, is animated. Every object here, from the fibrous and silken down that flies about, carrying the seed of some gigantic tree, to the mountains of consolidated rock, is the theatre of life; and that theatre itself possesses a peculiar animation of its own, or laws of self-development. The various forms and shapes which people these things, vary in their periods of existence from centuries to the incalculable and indivisible points of time, which human ingenuity has hitherto deemed it idle to note. You have the birds of the desert, the huge animals whose years are to be counted but by the hundred; you have again the infinitesimal insect, which comes into existence this moment to depart the next; so that in the shortest space of time that man can calculate, nature ushers into life millions of millions of sentient beings, to sweep them away again with the same rapidity with which they are made. This earth on which this process takes place has existed, as far as we can discover with certainty, for several thousands of years, so that millions of millions of beings have continually perished during every short moment into which the numberless days of those thousands of years can possibly be divided. To consider that deathis so dreadful as it is supposed to be, when we find it on such an amazingly extensive scale, and principally, also, among creatures whose only apparent happiness is the mere possession of life itself, is to call the Ordainer of these things cruel—which is untrue, or, as we used to say long ago, ‘reductio ad absurdum.’ What you choose to convert into the horrible and dreadful, is only the working of a wise and general law—that of transition: we live here to-day in one shape, to live to-morrow in a different one. Man has stupidly shut his eyes to this fact as he has done to many other things, and pitifully mourns over the action of a universal and useful law.”
“Emmanuel, I am a plain sailor, and do not pretend to deal in niceties of logical distinction,” replied Charles, “and although it is not my purpose to continue this very peculiar conversation, still I must ask, if our death is merely a transition from one state to another, how is it, that when we have entered into our new condition, we do not retain any consciousness of our previous existence.”
“The answer is plain enough,” answered Appadocca, “when the harp is unstrung the sounds depart: when we change from one condition to another, we necessarily cease to be of the first, else there should be no changeat all: and as our consciousness of that condition was merely a natural consequence or effect of it, it follows, that when the cause ceases, the effect must necessarily cease also.”
Appadocca remained silent for a while.
“And as for the ignominy,” he continued, “of a death on the scaffold, for such a crime as the one which is imputed to me, it is purely ridiculous. It is not because mankind may be eager to alter, by their vote, the nature of things, that these things become intrinsically changed.”
Appadocca stopped, apparently expecting Charles Hamilton to speak; but he, however, was anxiously gazing on the side of the ship, and was apparently intent on listening to some sound that it seemed he heard.
“Did you hear that?” he at last asked, in a low tone.
“What?”
“Hush!—do you not hear that sound?”
“Hum! Perhaps—I think I do; I think—I—I—hum! I—know it,” answered Appadocca, while his face brightened up a little.
The officer drew nearer to the side of the ship to listen—Appadocca remained where he was.
The dull sounds of muffled instruments could now be distinctly heard. From its direction, it could be easily discovered that these instruments were applied to the dead light, which had been carefully battened in for greater security against the prisoner’s escape. The sounds continued, and the sharp point of a large chisel, with which some individual from the outside was endeavouring to wrench away part of the cover, was now seen through the dead light of the ship.
The young officer looked round inquiringly at Appadocca, but met, in the gaze of that individual, only the coldness that characterised him.
“An attack, an attack!” he cried, and rushed out of the cabin. His instincts, as he called them, at once belying the ingenious arguments with which he had lulled his spirit of honor, when his friendship for Appadocca interposed.
He arrived on deck in time to hear the sharp challenge of the marine on duty.
“Who is there?” no answer was made to the challenge.
The guard was called out. The marine fired. In return only a derisive shout arose from a boat that was now moving away in the darkness. One, two, three volleys were fired in succession, when the angry voice of a man was heard from the boat.
“Cowards!” he cried, “come after us, and do not expend your ammunition foolishly.”
It was the voice of Lorenzo.
On hearing the reports of the spies that he had sent on shore, that faithful officer had formed the plan of carrying Appadocca silently away from the cabin in which he was confined. For that purpose, he had waited until the night was far spent, and with a few trusty men had cautiously approached the man-of-war.
The pirate party came in a boat that was greased all over on the outside, and which was propelled by muffled oars.
The men were all dressed in black, and wore for the occasion, dark woollen caps, which were drawn over their heads so as perfectly to conceal their faces. They had boarded the ship for about half an hour, and two men were working away vigorously; the blows of the covered mallet drove their muffled chisels more and more deeply into the chinks of the dead light.
“Have you nearly got through, Gustave?” inquired Lorenzo, the enterprising officer of Appadocca.
“Nearly, senor,” answered the man.
“Thanks to Providence,” muttered Lorenzo, “Appadocca will be rescued.”
O disappointment wherefore dost thou exist? Thewords had scarcely escaped Lorenzo when a splashing noise was heard near the man-of-war.
The sailors, as is customary with them, when their ship is at anchor, in order to improve their opportunities, had hung out a fishing line. As adverse fate would have it, at the very moment when the party of Lorenzo was about completing a breach in the cabin in which their captain was confined, a large shark happened to take the bait. Pricked by the hook, the fish began to swim furiously around the ship, beating about with its huge tail. The water immediately became covered with foam, and the noise increased more and more.
“Jump up, Domingo,” said Lorenzo, when he perceived the imminent danger of discovery which they ran from the noise that the creature was making in the water, “jump up and cut away that cursed thing.”
But it was too late: attracted by the splashes made by the shark, the sentinel looked over the bulwarks, and perceived the man that was just sliding himself down the chains of the man-of-war, after having dexterously cut away the line by which the fish was caught.
The pirates had no alternative but flight, and they were quickly making away when the young officer got on deck.
Part of the crew of the large vessel was called out,the boats were manned, and sent after the mysterious visitors. But it was of no avail: those who had gone in chase shortly afterwards returned, and reported that they could discover nothing of the boat.
The circumstance was duly reported to the commander. After much consideration on such a mysterious adventure, the latter wisely concluded that the party of the pirate captain were in those waters, and that their approach to the ship was for the purpose of attempting his rescue.
Further, on examination, marks of the tools were made out on the deadlight of Appadocca’s cabin. He himself was narrowly questioned, but he stated with perfect truth, that he knew nothing of the matter.
Orders were then given to weigh anchor at the dawn of the next day.
END OF VOL. I.