For a few moments I was paralysed with terror, and then, suddenly springing forward, I ran at the top of my speed. I need not say that my pursuers gave chase heartily. I had no other choice but to run on straight before me; and that, unfortunately, was up a rocky, rugged side of a steep hill, that rose directly from the beach, covered with that abominable vegetable, or shrub, the prickly pear. I was in full view; and, being hailed and told that I should be fired upon if I did not bring to, in the space of a short three minutes, before I was out of breath, I was in the hands of my captors—a prisoner.
I prayed—I knelt—I wept. It was useless. I have scarcely the courage to write what then took place, it was so fearful—it was so hideous. Bounding down the hill, in her night-dress, her long black hair streaming like a meteor behind her, and her naked feet, usually so exquisitely white, covered with blood, came Josephine, shrieking “Ralph, Ralph!” Her voice seemed to stab my bosom like an actual knife. Behind her came running her father, and a number of negro men and women. Before she could reach me, they had flung me into the stern-sheets of the boat.
“Shove off! shove off!” shouted the lieutenant; and the boat was immediately in motion. Like a convicted felon, or a murderer taken in the fact, I buried my craven head in my knees, and shut my eyes. I would not have looked back for kingdoms. But I could not, or did not, think of preventing myself from hearing. The boat had not pulled ten yards from the beach, when I heard a splash behind us, and simultaneous cries of horror from the boat’s crew and those on shore; among which the agonised voice of the heartbroken father rose shrilly, as he exclaimed, “Josephine, my child!” I looked up for a moment, but dared not look round; and I saw every man in the boat dashing away the tears from his eyes with one hand, as he reluctantly pulled his oar with the other.
“Give way! give way!” roared the lieutenant, stamping violently against the grating at his feet. “Give way! or, by God, she’ll overtake us!”
The poor girl was swimming after me.
“Rattlin,” said Selby, stooping down and whispering in my ear—“Rattlin, I can’t stand it; if it was not as much as my life was worth, I would put you on shore directly.” I could answer him only by a long convulsive shudder. The horrible torment of those moments!
Then ascended the loud howling curses of the negroes behind us. The seamen rose up upon their oars, and, with a few violent jerks, the pinnace shot round the next point of land, and the poor struggler in the waters was seen no more. Tidings never after came to me of her. I left her struggling in the waters of the ocean. My first love, and my last—my only one.
I was taken on board stupefied. I was led up the side like a sick man. No one reproached me; no one spoke to me. I became physically, as well as mentally, ill. I went to my hammock with a stern feeling of joy, hoping soon to be lashed up in it, and find my grave in the deep blue sea. At first, my only consolation was enacting over and over again all the happy scenes with Josephine; but, as they invariably terminated in one dreadful point, this occupation became hateful. I then endeavoured to blot the whole transaction from my memory—to persuade myself that the events had not been real—that I had dreamed them—or read them long ago in some old book. But the mind is not so easily cheated—remorse not so soon blinded.