The better to achieve his dastardly project, he volunteered to attend them on this night between decks; and his offer, though it excited some surprise, was at once accepted by Dr. Heriot, who gave him several directions as to the small quantities of food and diluted wine they were to receive, if they required nourishment.
So Hawkshaw drank deeply, mixing brandy and sherry, to nerve himself for the dark purpose he had conceived; and, to conceal his pallor, his restlessness and wretchedness, he secluded himself in his own berth, and strove to sleep; but there was no sleep for him.
Thoughts maddened him, and he muttered to himself inaudibly, while, with a hot and trembling hand, he wiped the bead-drops from his aching brow.
"Why should I waver or shrink now?" he asked himself—not aloud, for fear of being overheard; "what may I not dare, who have dared everything, I who have risked all? For the past I have no compunction now. Another might have done all those things as well as I, for I did not create myself, neither did I scheme out my own accursed destiny. Is there a demon within me, or is there one presiding over me—some fiend, some angel of darkness, whom I cannot see, but to whose whispers I am compelled to listen? Why does this wretched boy cross my path again? Why does the sea—why does the grave—give up its dead, as if to haunt, to tempt, to goad me into crime on one hand, if I would not lose name, honour, consideration, respect, and, it may be, Ethel and affluence, on the other? I had thought to be good, and loyal, and true for her sake, even though she loves me not; but all in vain. Ethel to marry me? Oh, that would be like a white moss-rose entwined with the deadly hemlock! Had Heaven not impelled or abandoned me, and had Hell not allured and prompted me, perhaps I had not been the creature I find myself to-night. Caramba! it is a game of desperation between this Ashton and me. The ball is yet at my foot, and shall I not strike it? Yes, and with a vengeance, too!"
Watch after watch was called; the half-hourly bells of the ship seemed to be rung every five minutes, instead of every thirty.
The night, solemn and starry, approached more swiftly than he could have wished; and yet he longed that the fatal time was past—that the terrible deed he had to do was done.
Thus he lay on his bed, almost perspiring with mental agony and with criminal sophistry, gradually nursing himself into the conviction that the first law of nature—self-protection and self-preservation—rendered that deed imperative, needful, and requisite.
He almost consoled himself by the idea that there was but half a life to crush out; for was not Morley nearly half dead already?
Darkness had set in, before he missed daylight, so completely had his mind and thoughts been abstracted and turned inward; thus he received a species of electric shock, when the curtain of his berth was withdrawn by Heriot, who said:
"Now, then, Mr. Hawkshaw—come, tumble up, old fellow—eight bells have struck; it is twelve o'clock, and you have not been 'tween decks yet to look after these men."