He was delirious as well as dying, and his husky and broken ravings were of the cathedral church of Orizaba, and he averred that he saw at the foot of his bed, in that wretched forecastle bunk, the figure of a woman.
"A figure—what is it like?" asked Morley, glancing round in spite of himself.
"A woman enshrined in light. She is clad in blue, with thirteen stars around her head. Ave Maria purissima! Ave Maria purissima!" he cried, and, sinking back, closed his eyes, overcome by weakness and excitement.
It was the image so revered in his innocent childhood, when he and Zuares prayed at their mother's knee; and with this shadow before his visionary eye—the same figure that in dreams had hung over his cradle in infancy—the feet of which he and Zuares had been taught to kiss—the same image, with an aureole of light around its placid face, the Madonna of Orizaba, with her feet resting on the sharp, pale crescent moon, before his glazing eyes, whose last expression was fear and ecstasy—the soul of this inscrutable ruffian passed away!
Then Morley Ashton, who was the last lonely watcher, hastened on deck to report that all was over.
This perpetrator of so many crimes was dead! Ferocity, avarice, cruelty, insatiate lust, unavailing remorse, and all the stormy passions which had, in turn, convulsed that lawless heart, that dark and sombre visage, were gone now. The man was dead and gone—gone as if he had never been!
Before the ship's bell had clanged the last half hour of the morning watch, Noah and Morrison had rolled his body up in the blankets in which he died, and had lashed a couple of shot in a canvas-bag to his ankles.
Then they laid him on a grating to leeward, anxious to have the last rites over before the young ladies came on deck.
The red enamelled cross of San Jago, which Morley had brought from the hermit's cell, was tied up with him; indeed, it was found impossible to take it from his hand, in which it was tightly clenched.
There was mental relief to all on board when the burial of Pedro—the last act of a long and gloomy drama—was over, and when his tall and muscular form—herculean and ghastly it looked, rolled up in blankets, and lashed round with spunyarn—went surging, feet foremost, through the white foam, vanishing for ever, in the deep green sea to leeward, while the ship, as if lightened of a load, flew through the shining waves of the Mozambique.