Sustained honor Part 22

"Step off your ground," added the captain.

"I cannot do it; you do it for me."

"I will do it with you."

The prisoner's hands were tied behind his back, and the captain, taking his arm, walked him off twelve steps, as coolly as if they were only pacing the quarter-deck. The captain then took a blanket, spread it on the ground and told Boseley to kneel on it, and he did so, facing his executioners. The s.h.i.+p's chaplain came and offered a prayer, after which the sergeant asked Boseley if he wished to have his eyes bandaged.

"No; I am not afraid to face my executioners," he answered. It was an intensely solemn occasion, and among all those hardy, rough-mannered sailors, there was not one, unless it was Captain Snipes, who was not deeply affected. The captain's face was flushed, and his breath was strong with brandy, and he seemed but little moved.

"Go ahead, and have this done with," he said to the officer in charge of the affair.

"Are you quite ready now?" asked the sergeant.

"Yes," was the answer in a faltering tone.

"Make ready!" and the twelve glittering muskets were leveled at this sacrifice to the wrath of Captain Snipes.

"Take aim!" and the gunners steadied themselves for the fatal word, to send a fellow being to eternity.

"Fire!" and instantly flashed a volley, reverberating a wild and unearthly death knell among the crags that looked down upon that awful scene. In the clear morning air, the smoke of the guns curled up lazily and hung like a funeral pall over the mangled, bleeding form. Four bullets had pierced his body. He fell on his face and lay motionless for a few seconds. Then he began to slowly raise his head. Fernando came near and stood in front of him. Ten thousand years could not efface that scene from his mind. He continued to raise his head and body without a struggle. He looked the captain in the eye, and his mouth was in motion as though he were trying to speak,--to utter some dying accusation.

Never did human eye behold a scene so pitiful as this dying man gazing on his destroyer, gasping to implore or to denounce him. In an instant a dimness came over his eyes, and he fell dead.

"Oh, Heaven!" groaned Fernando, and he hurried away to the s.h.i.+p. For weeks, he saw that awful face every time he closed his eyes to sleep.

Two years on board the British frigate had made Fernando, Sukey and Terrence tolerably fair sailors. Their hearts were never in the work, and they often dreamed of escape from this life of slavery. Fernando, by judicious attention to business, had never yet won the positive displeasure of the officers. One day the boatswain's mates repeated the commands at the hatchways:

"All hands tack s.h.i.+p, ahoy!"

It was just eight bells, noon, and, springing from his jacket, which he had spread between the guns for a bed on the main deck, Fernando ran up the ladders, and, as usual, seized hold of the main-brace which fifty hands were streaming along forward. When "maintopsail haul!" was given through the trumpet, he pulled at this brace with such heartiness and good will, that he flattered himself he would gain the approval of the grim captain himself; but something happened to be in the way aloft, when the yards swung round, and a little confusion ensued. With anger on his brow. Captain Snipes came forward to see what occasioned it. No one to let go the weather-lift of the main-yard. The rope was cast off, however, by a hand, and, the yards, un.o.bstructed, came round. When the last rope was coiled away, the captain asked the first lieutenant who it might be that was stationed at the weather (then the starboard) main-lift. With a vexed expression of countenance, the first lieutenant sent a mids.h.i.+pman for the station bill, when, upon glancing it over, the name of Fernando Stevens was found set down at the post in question. At the time, Fernando was on the gundeck below, and did not know of these proceedings; but a moment after, he heard the boatswain's-mates bawling his name at all the hatchways and along all three decks. It was the first time he had ever heard it sent through the furthest recesses of the s.h.i.+p, and, well knowing what this generally betokened to other seamen, his heart jumped to his throat, and he hurriedly asked Brown, the boatswain's-mate at the fore-hatchway, what was wanted of him.

"Captain wants ye at the mast," he answered. "Going to flog ye, I fancy."

"What for?"

"My eyes! you've been chalking your face, hain't ye?"

"What am I wanted for?" he repeated.

But at that instant, his name was thundered forth by the other boatswain's-mates, and Brown hurried him away, hinting that he would soon find out what the captain wanted. Fernando swallowed down his heart as he touched the spardeck, for a single instant balanced himself on his best centre, and then, wholly ignorant of what was going to be alleged against him, advanced to the dread tribunal of the frigate. The sight of the quarter-master rigging his gratings, the boatswain with his detestable green bag of scourges, the master-at-arms standing ready to a.s.sist some one to take off his s.h.i.+rt was not calculated to allay his apprehensions. With another desperate effort to swallow his whole soul, he found himself face to face with Captain Snipes, whose flushed face showed his ill humor. At his side was the first lieutenant, who, as Fernando came aft, eyed him with some degree of conscientious vexation at being compelled to make him the scapegoat of his own negligence.

"Why were you not at your station, sir?" asked the captain.

"What station do you mean, sir?" Fernando asked, forgetting the accustomed formality of touching his hat, by way of salute, while speaking with so punctilious an officer as Captain Snipes. This little fact did not escape the captain's attention.

"Your pretension to ignorance will not help you sir," the Captain retorted.

The first lieutenant now produced the station bill, and read the name of Fernando Stevens in connection with the starboard main-lift.

"Captain Snipes," said Fernando in a voice firm and terrible in its sincerity, "it is the first time I knew I was a.s.signed to that post."

"How is this, Mr. Bacon?" the captain asked turning to the first lieutenant with a fault-finding expression.

"It is impossible, sir, that this man should not know his station,"

replied, the lieutenant.

"Captain Snipes, I will swear, I never knew it before this moment,"

answered Fernando.

With an oath, the captain cried:

"Do you contradict my officer? I'll flog you, by--!"

Fernando had been on board the frigate for more than two years and remained unscourged. Though a slave in fact, he lived in hope of soon being a free man. Now, after making himself a hermit in some things, after enduring countless torments and insults without resentment, in order to avoid the possibility of the scourge, here it was hanging over him for a thing utterly unforeseen,--a crime of which he was wholly innocent; but all that was naught. He saw that his case was hopeless; his solemn disclaimer was thrown in his teeth, and the boatswain's-mate stood curling his fingers through the "cat." There are times when wild thoughts enter a man's heart, when he seems almost irresponsible for his act and his deed. The captain stood on the weather side of the deck.

Sideways on an unoccupied line with him, was the opening of the lee-gangway, where the side-ladders were suspended in port. Nothing but a slight bit of sinnate-stuff served to rail in this opening, which was cut down to a level with the captain's feet, showing the far sea beyond.

Fernando stood a little to windward of him, and, though Captain Snipes was a large, powerful man, it was quite certain that a sudden rush against him, along the slanting deck, would infallibly pitch him headforemost into the ocean, though he who rushed must needs go over with him. The young American's blood seemed clotting in his veins; he felt icy cold at the tips of his fingers, and a dimness was before his eyes; but through that dimness, the boatswain's-mate, scourge in hand, loomed like a giant, and Captain Snipes and the blue sea, seen through the opening at the gangway, showed with an awful vividness. He was never able to a.n.a.lyze his heart, though it then stood still within him; but the thing that swayed him to his purpose was not altogether the thought that Captain Snipes was about to degrade him, and that he had taken an oath within his soul that he should not. No; he felt his manhood so bottomless within him, that no word, no blow, no scourge of Captain Snipe's could cut deep enough for that. He but clung to an instinct in him,--the instinct diffused through all animated nature, the same that prompts the worm to turn under the heel. Locking souls with him, he meant to drag Captain Snipes from this earthly tribunal of his, to that of Jehovah, and let Him decide between them. No other way could he escape the scourge.

"To the gratings, sir!" cried Captain Snipes. "Do you hear?"

Fernando's eye measured the distance between him and the sea, and he was gathering himself together for the fatal spring--

"Captain Snipes," said a voice advancing from the crowd. Every eye turned to see who spoke. It was the remarkably handsome and gentlemanly gunner, Hugh St. Mark, who was scarcely ever known to break the silence, and all were amazed that he should do so now. "I know that man," said St. Mark, touching his cap, and speaking in a mild, firm, but extremely deferential manner, "and I know that he would not be found absent from his station, if he knew where it was."

This speech was almost unprecedented. Never before had a marine dared to speak to the captain of a frigate in behalf of a seaman at the mast; but there was something unostentatiously forcible and commanding in St.

Mark's manner. He had once saved the captain's life, when a French boarder was about to slay him. Then the corporal, emboldened by St.

Mark's audacity, put in a good word. Terrence, who had been promoted to a small office, poured forth a torrent of eloquence, and, almost before he knew it, Fernando was free. As he was going to his quarters, his brain in a whirl, he heard Job the cook say:

"He ain't no Britisher! Dar ain't no more Angler Saxon blood in his veins dan in dis chile!"

An hour later, when he stood near a gun carriage, still dizzy from his narrow escape from the double crime of murder and suicide, St. Mark pa.s.sed Fernando. He grasped the hand of the silent gunner, held it a moment in his own and whispered: "Thank you!"

CHAPTER XI.

s.h.i.+PWRECK--ESCAPE AND RETURN TO OHIO.

s.h.i.+p's rules, stringent as they were on the war frigate, and officers severe as were those of the _Macedonian_ could not wholly curb the rollicking spirit of Terrence. His exuberance of spirits constantly got the better of any good intentions he might have formed. Any wholesome dread he may have entertained of that famous feline of nine tails, known to sailors of that day, was overcome by his love of pranks.

What guardian spirit protects the bold and mischievous has never yet been discovered; but it is a well authenticated fact that wild, harum scarum fellows like Terrence Malone seldom come to grief or disaster.

He was always the innocent lamb of the s.h.i.+p, whom no one would suspect of mischief. The chaplain of the s.h.i.+p was not more grave and sanctimonious than he. If the hammock netting were left so as to trip up the dignified captain and throw him on the deck in a very undignified manner, no one could possibly have suspected that the harmless Terrence had any thing to do with it.

The quarter-master was one day snoring in his hammock. Terrence, who was on duty scrubbing the gun deck, had a large tub filled with water, which was unconsciously left just under the head of the hammock of the quarter-master. No one could tell how it happened; but the supports were all cut save two or three, which the swaying of the hammock gradually loosened until, just as the officer went to "change sides," down he came with a frightful splash head first into the tub.

Terrence, who was near, ran to his rescue and quickly pulled him out.

"It's bastely carelessness to lave the water there," cried Terrence.