“Leave me,” he sullenly cried, “leave me, I say; let me die here.” The sailors drew back.
“Come, comrade,” said the officer, “you cannot expect us to let you remain here—remove him, my men.”
The sailors endeavoured again to lay hold of the man, but, with the impulsive strength of death, he brandished his poniard about him and kept them away.
“Let me die here, and be damned to me!” he exclaimed, “I was not Francis’s friend, and I have deserved to be killed this way,” and he churlishly dropped his head on the deck.
The sailors, who stood around the dying man, were surprised and shocked by his confession, for no instance of such base falsehood had ever been known before on board the Black Schooner. A strict sense of honor was maintained among the pirates. This was not only enforced by the stringent laws which existed, but was cheerfully cultivated by the men themselves, from motives not only of obedience, but self-preservation, for they were fully persuaded that the least breach of honesty among themselves, would be the end of their individual security, and the dissolution of their society.
Besides, to men of such dispositions, accustomed as they were to act openly and to hazard their lives boldly, such acts of calculating meanness were naturally disgusting.
It may be said that the very illegitimate pursuit in which they were engaged was itself dishonesty, but it is to be recollected that they considered piracy not in the shocking light in which better and more delicate minds justly view it; but they looked upon it more like adventures, in which men of spirit could engage with as much honor, as in fighting under the banners of stranger kings, for the purpose of conquering distant and unoffending peoples. They viewed, therefore, this act of meanness, on the part of the fallen man, with disgust, and the commiseration which was at first so spontaneously shown as to an unfortunate party in a duel, was immediately withdrawn when the dying man disclosed his crime.
The officer who witnessed the combat, upon hearing the confession, proceeded immediately to Lorenzo and reported the circumstance. That officer heard him with much concern: he knew the extreme penalty that was attached to such an offence, and his heart was sickened at the thought of an execution. He listened to the report of the officer until he had finished, and remained silent for a time, apparently meditating either intercession or some other means of avoiding the fatal punishment which he well knew the crime of the man would entail. Every hope, however, seemed to give way in succession, for, after he had remained silent for some time, he said, shaking his head:
“I wish to Heaven that man had never come on board the schooner, or that he should have died, at least, with his own secret. I shall communicate these things to the captain: but I pity the poor fellow.”
Accordingly he left his cabin, and got access to that of the captain, when he repeated the report of the officer on duty. The captain heard him with the same grave and apparently apathetic coolness which characterised him, and then repeated, in his deep sonorous voice, the fatal sentence—“Let the punishment be executed upon him.”