I remember perfectly what I saw in my radius of action, not having had, I confess, the courage to isolate myself enough from my personal preoccupations to comprehend this bloody scene.
I was standing at the stern and off the side of the yacht.
A few feet in front of me, at the foot of the mizzenmast, with his back to me, an old sailor worked the helm.
Williams, on his quarter-deck, was giving some orders to a boatswain, who listened hat in hand. Falmouth, mounted on a cannon, holding to the shrouds with one hand, his gun in the other, was looking in the direction of the mystic.
The most profound silence reigned on board the yacht; this was a moment of grave and solemn expectation.
As for me, that which I felt reminded me very much, if I may be excused this childish comparison, of the uneasy emotion that I felt in my childhood when I was waiting minute by minute the shot from a gun fired in the scene of a play.
Then, must I acknowledge another weakness in my character? I had never faced any danger without imagining immediately all its fatal risks for myself. As in the duel of which I have spoken, a maddening duel, I thought not of death, but of the hideous mutilation which might result from a wound. At the moment of the boarding of this vessel, I had the same preoccupation. I saw myself with horror deprived of an arm or a leg, and thus made a repulsive object of pity to every one.
A light touch on the shoulder aroused me from my reflections.
I turned around; Falmouth, without interrupting the "Rule Britannia" which he whistled between his teeth, showed me with the end of his gun something white on the horizon which was gradually approaching us.
I began to distinguish perfectly the mystic.