The critical moment was now at hand when the miserable Thomson’s state of torturing suspense was to cease, when he would know for certain whether these men were actually relentless, or whether, having already wreaked an ample vengeance upon him, they would be content to ignore the remainder of his sentence; which, after all, he was more than half-inclined to believe was nothing but a cruel hoax, arranged beforehand for the purpose of giving him a good fright.
Hopeful as he was, however, upon this score, he could not help feeling terribly anxious; and it was with the utmost difficulty that he controlled his quaking nerves sufficiently to replace his clothing without assistance. During the time that he was thus engaged, the circle which hemmed him in was maintained unbroken; the mutineers watching his motions with strong interest, and indulging freely in jocular comments and jeering encouragement as he winced and shrank at the chafe of his clothing on his lacerated back and shoulders.
At length he stood once more before them, fully clothed, his eyes glowing like carbuncles, his visage blanched, and his whole frame quivering with pain and the tensity of excitement and suspense.
“Wery good, Thomson; wery good indeed,” remarked Rogers approvingly; “you’ve showed a great deal more pluck than any of us have ever give you credit for—so far. If you only behaves as well for the next ten minutes, we shall feel quite a respec’ for y’ur mem’ry. Now, shipmates, and pris’ners all, for’ard we goes, to carry out the second part of the sentence.”
At the word, two of the mutineers stepped forward, and, placing themselves one on each side of the second mate, linked their arms in his and led him forward, halting him just beneath the fore-yard; the remainder of the crowd following in a body and forming in a circle round him as before. Then, at Rogers’ command, one of the mutineers separated himself from the main body, and in the course of a minute or two was seen leisurely ascending the fore-rigging with a tail-block in one hand and the end of a coil of light line in the other.
Thomson glanced upward at this man, and like a lightning-stroke the conviction flashed upon him that his doom was indeed sealed—that the death-sentence passed upon him was no grim and ghastly piece of jocularity, no hoax practised upon him to test his courage, but that it was spoken in cruel and bitter earnest. For a second or two his heart stood still, his head swam, his sight failed him, and a feeling of horrible nausea oppressed him. He realised at last that he was about to die; that, standing there on that reeling deck as he did in the full strength and prime of lusty manhood, with all his energies mental and physical at their best, the sands of his life had so nearly run out that the few last grains were even now falling in the hour-glass of his fate. Then, in a single instant, the whole of his past life rose up before him, with every thought, word, and deed clearly and sharply reproduced. And, as it did so, the present world and all its concerns, its petty aspirations, ambitions, hopes, and strivings, dwindled away into the most contemptible insignificance; his mental vision cleared; he saw how full had been his life of great and noble possibilities—as are the lives of all of us, would we but allow ourselves to see that it is so—and he saw, too, how completely he had missed his mark; how very far his own evil passions had led him astray from the narrow and seldom-trodden path which, faithfully followed, leads to that highest possible attainment of humanity—True Goodness.
Ah! how bitterly he repented him then of all his lost, or rather his cast-away, opportunities. From his earliest youth he had chosen to follow evil rather than good; he had turned persistently away from the right; and now there was neither time nor opportunity left him for reparation. The utter blankness and uselessness of his life stood revealed to him as one long, unbroken, unanswerable accusation; and, in his mad despair, he suddenly dashed aside the two men who held him in their custody, sprang with a single bound to the rail, and, placing his hands upon the top of the topgallant-bulwark, vaulted clear over it before a single hand could be outstretched to restrain him, and with a yell which evermore rang in the ears of those who heard it, threw up his hands and vanished for ever into the dark and terrible depths of his ocean-grave.
The little crowd of spectators stood for a few moments silent and almost stupefied at this sudden and tragic disappearance of the second mate from their midst. The occurrence was so totally unexpected that it in a measure sobered the mutineers, who regarded each other with some such expression as that of a group of school-boys terrified at the sudden occurrence of some disaster, the result of their own mischievous acts, and each anxious to shift the blame and responsibility from his own shoulders to those of the others.
The first to recover his self-possession was Rogers, who exclaimed with an obviously forced laugh—
“Well, curse me if that ain’t a good un! What, in the name of all that’s foolish, made the man do that? He might ha’ knowed as we was only goin’ to frighten him a bit. You’ll bear me out, shipmates, that we was all agreed to go no further than the frightenin’ of him a bit, and meant to let him off arter we’d made fast the rope, and let him stand with it round his neck a minute or two. Now, ain’t them there the facts o’ the case?”