I don't want you to die—not yet. I want you to live—live—a long time, and remember!"
"Hornigold, I'll make amends! I'll be your slave!"
"Ay, crawl and cringe now, you dog! I swore that you should do it! It's useless to beg me for mercy. I know not that word—neither did you. There is nothing left in me but hate—hate for you. I want to see you suffer——"
"The tide! It's coming back. I can't endure this heat and thirst! It won't drown me——"
"Live, then," said the boatswain. "Remember, I watch!"
He threw his glance upward, stopped suddenly, a fierce light in that old eye of his.
"Look up," he cried, "and you will see! Take heart, man. I guess you won't have to wait for the tide, and the sun won't bother you long. Remember, I am watching you!"
He turned and walked away, concealing himself in the copse once more where he could see and not be seen. The realization that he was watched by one whom he could not see, one who gloated over his miseries and sufferings and agonies, added the last touch to the torture of the buccaneer. He had no longer strength nor manhood, he no longer cried out after that one last appeal to the merciless sailor. He did not even look up in obedience to the old man's injunction. What was there above him, beneath him, around him, that could add to his fear? He prayed for death. They were the first and last prayers that had fallen from his lips for fifty years, those that day. Yet when death did come at last he shrank from it with an increasing terror and horror that made all that he had passed through seem like a trifle.
When old Hornigold had looked up he had seen a speck in the vaulted heaven. It was slowly soaring around and around in vast circles, and with each circle coming nearer and nearer to the ground. A pair of keen and powerful eyes were aloft there piercing the distance, looking, searching, in every direction, until at last their glance fell upon the figure upon the rock. The circling stopped. There was a swift rush through the air. A black feathered body passed between the buccaneer and the sun, and a mighty vulture, hideous bird of the tropics, alighted on the sands near by him.
