“I wonder will she know me!” said Jack, after a pause. “You certainly did not at first.”
“Nor, for that matter, did you recognize me.”
“Ah, but I did, though,” said Jack, passing his hand over his brow; “but I had gone through so much, and my head was so knocked about, I could n't trust that my senses were not deceiving me, and I thought if I make any egregious blunder now, these people will set me down for mad. That was the state I was in the whole time you were questioning me. I promise you it was no small suffering while it lasted.”
“My poor fellow, what trials you must have gone through to come to this! Tell me by what mischance you were at Ischia.”
With all a sailor's frankness, and with a modesty in speaking of his own achievements just as sailor-like, Jack told the story of the storm at Naples.
“I had no thought of breaking the laws,” said he, bluntly. “I saw ships foundering, and small craft turning keel uppermost on every side of me; there was disaster and confusion everywhere. I had no time to inquire about the morals of the men I saw clinging to hencoops, or holding on by stretchers. I saved as many as I could, and sorry enough I was to have seen many go down before I could get near them; and I was fairly beat when it was all over, or, perhaps, they 'd not have captured me so easily. At all events,” said he, after a minute's silence, “they might have let me off with a lighter sentence, but my temper got the better of me in court, and when they asked me if it was not true that I had made greater efforts to save the galley-slaves than the soldiery, I told them it might have been so, for the prisoners, chained and handcuffed, as they were, went down like brave men, while the royal troops yelled and screamed like a set of arrant cowards; and that whenever I pulled one of the wretches out of the water I was half ashamed of my own humanity. That speech settled me; at least, the lawyer said so, and declared he was afraid to say a word more in defence of a man that insulted the tribunal and the nation together.”
“And what was your sentence?”
“Death,—commuted to the galleys for life; worse than any death! It's not the hardship or the labor, I mean. A sailor goes through more downright hard work on a blowy night than these fellows do in a year. It is the way a man brutalizes when vice and crime make up the whole atmosphere of his life. The devil has a man's heart all his own, whenever hope deserts it, and you want to do wickedness just because it is wickedness. For three weeks before I made my escape, it was all I could do not to dash the turnkey's brains out when he made his night round. I told my comrade—the man I was chained to—what I felt; and he said, 'We all go through that at first; but when you 're some years here you 'll not care for that or anything.' I believe it was the terror of coming to that condition made me try to escape. I don't know that I ever felt the same ecstasy of delight that I felt as I found myself swimming in that fresh cold sea in the silence of a calm starry night. I 'm sure it will be a memory that will last my lifetime. I thought of you all,—I thought of long ago, of our happy evenings; and I pictured to my mind the way we used to sit around the fire, and I wondered what had become of my place. Was I ever remembered? Was I spoken of? Could it be that at that very moment some one was asking, where was poor Jack? And how I wished you might all know that my last thoughts were upon you; that it was the dear old long ago was before me to the last. I was seventeen hours in the water. When they picked me up I was senseless from a sun-stroke; for the corks floated me long after I gave up swimming. I was so ill when I landed that I went to hospital; but there was little care given to the sick, and I left it when I was able to walk, and came on here. Talk of luck; but I ask you was there ever such a piece of fortune befell a man?”
L'Estrange could not speak as he gazed on the poor fellow, over whose worn and wasted features joy had lighted up a look of delight that imparted an almost angelic elevation to his face.
“But can I go back like this?” asked he, sorrowfully, as he looked down at his ragged clothes and broken shoes.