The officer had exhibited the greatest solicitude on behalf of the fair captive from the moment she came on board the schooner; and now, when she stood on deck, weak and nervous, he might have been observed, from time to time, stealthily to give her as much assistance as the rules of the vessel permitted, and to pay her, perhaps, more attention than even the commands of his chief could have been intended to require of him.
When the priest and young lady stood before the captain, he spoke but very few words to them.
“You will be landed,” he said, as he looked at the two persons, “with the others, on the nearest cape.”
He waved his hand, and the captives were led away.
Lastly, the man who was found in the cabin of the captured ship, armed with a musket, and who had called the captain his son, was then led forward. Unlike the other prisoners, he was strictly guarded, and seemed to be treated with a severity that was the very opposite of that moderation which had been so generally and unexpectedly shown to the other prisoners that were in the same situation with himself.
The captain cast a stern and penetrating look on him, as he was brought before him, and said, in his stern indifferent manner:
“Prepare, to-morrow, for your trial; you know your crime.” As he said this, he waved his hand.
The prisoner seemed tongue-tied for awhile, his countenance betrayed the most despondent fear; he seemed to become conscious, at once, of some great offence, under whose weighty recollection his whole faculties appeared overwhelmed.
He stood before him whom he called his son, and seemed to entertain for him more fear than any of the stranger prisoners who could claim no relationship or parentage to move his pity or secure his forbearance. He could not utter a word for the short moment that he stood before the captain, but when the pirates, who guarded him, laid their hands roughly upon him, to pull him away, the fear, the surprise, the consciousness which, till then, had deprived him of speech, lost their power under the influence of the terror that now seized him.