"Let us wait until to-morrow," he said.
He himself could not have told what he expected to gain by waiting. It was for one of those strange chances, which sometimes prevent a great crime, and which, when they intervene, are called the interposition of Providence.
He waited in vain. On the fourth day, the question, which they had not dared to ask had to be confronted:
"Should the prisoners be shot?"
The murmurs were increasing, and the evil was growing. The soldiers might at any moment throw themselves upon the prisoners, and thus lend an appearance of revolt and assassination to that which was in reality an outcome of the necessities of the case.
The sentence was unanimous, with the exception of a single vote. One of those present did not vote at all. The unfortunates were to be shot.
Bonaparte hastened from his tent and gazed searchingly out to sea. A tempest of human emotions was surging in his breast. He had not at that period acquired the stoicism born of numerous battlefields. The man who later looked upon Austerlitz, Eylau, and Moscow without moving a muscle, was not sufficiently familiarized with death to throw such prey to him at one fell swoop without a tremor of remorse. On the vessel which had conveyed him to Egypt his pity and compassion had astonished everybody. During such a journey it was impossible to avoid occasional accidents, or that some men should not fall overboard. This accident occurred several times during the crossing on board the "Orient." At such times only was it possible to compass all the human feeling in Bonaparte's heart.
As soon as he heard the cry, "Man overboard!" he would dart up on deck if he were not already there and order a boat to be lowered. From that moment he would not rest until the man was found and saved. Bourrienne had orders to reward with great liberality the men who had undertaken the task of rescue, and if there were among them a sailor who deserved punishment for neglect of duty, he pardoned him and rewarded him with money besides.
One dark night the splash of a body falling into the water was heard. Bonaparte as usual rushed from his cabin to the deck, and ordered a boat to be lowered. The sailors, who knew that not only were they doing a good deed, but that they would be rewarded for it afterward, threw themselves into the boat with their customary activity and zeal. After five minutes of ceaseless questioning on Bonaparte's part, "Has the man been saved?" he was rewarded with a shout of laughter.
The man who had fallen into the water was a quarter of beef from the store-room.