Instead of exciting pity, his terrible situation drew forth a shout of derision, mingled with expressions of hatred and satisfaction, from the line of avenging faces that surveyed him over the bulwark. He hung thus for fully five minutes, for he was a powerful man, of great strength, muscle, and bulk.
I have no doubt this man was as brave as it is possible for a ruffian to be; but the prospect of an immediate death—a death, too, from which there was no escape—terrified him.
His glance of hate toward us turned to one of wild and earnest entreaty.
"Mercy!—pardon!—in the name and for the love of the Almighty!" he exclaimed in Spanish, in a tone of intense earnestness; but he was heard by us with fierce derision in that moment of just triumph and too long delayed vengeance.
Twice the Eugenie gave a lee lurch, and each time the feet and knees of the wretched Cubano were immersed in the waves.
Beneath him was the abyss of water that rushed past the side of the brig. He panted rather than breathed; and through the dusk we could see how his aching hands turned white as his face; and that the points of his fingers were blood-red. His eyes grew wild and haggard as terror chilled his coward heart and agonized his soul; and yet through the surge the fleet craft flew on!
Every moment increased the weight of his body and the weakness of his hands and wrists.
At last it was evident that his powers of endurance could be no longer taxed; he uttered a half-smothered shriek, and closed his eyes as he clung to that slender spar, and it swayed to and fro while the close-hauled brig flew on!
There was a crash!
The iron hook in the bulwark on which the studding-sail boom was hung, gave way under the double weight of the spar and of his body. There was a shrill cry of despair, like the parting shriek of an evil spirit, on the skirt of the gusty blast, as the boom, and the wretch who clung to it in blind desperation, vanished into the black trough of the sea, and, like a cork or a reed, were swept amid the salt foam to leeward.