“I need not now call it to your recollection,” he said, “that I am your son. Your memory, which all along was so unfaithful on that point, seems to have suddenly improved, when you saw me in the cabin of the ship which I had taken, and then you remembered well that I was your son. By your own confession, therefore, I am saved the trouble of proving for my satisfaction the natural connexion which exists between us. It is, therefore, undoubted and settled, that I stand towards you in the relation of son to father, or, in other words, speaking more scientifically, I am your immediate progeny. This is clear. Now, by certain feelings which are implanted in us, and which are considered the laws of the Creator, written on the heart of man at his creation, we are admonished that the care of those who spring immediately from us, is one of our principle duties. But, as we are so apt to mistake habits for innate feelings, perhaps it will be better and safer, not to proceed on this one, however strong or indisputable it may appear. Let feeling, therefore, or instinct, be entirely eliminated, and let us appeal to Nature herself in her manifestations—to Nature that never errs. You admit that I am your son—your offspring; you owed me as such offspring, at least, protection until I was strong enough to provide for myself and to avoid injuries. Contrast now your conduct with your duty. You are aware, that from the hour of the birth of this, your son, up to this, you have never taken the trouble even to inquire what had become of the being of whose existence you were the secondary cause; whether the mother, of whom he was born, had survived to nurture him; whether he was exposed, in the helplessness of infancy, to the privations which overwhelm even maturer age; or, worse still than all, whether he had fallen into stranger’s hands, to be the humble object of capricious charity. You did not trouble yourself to learn whether the cold winds froze him in the very beginning of life; whether he was a prey to the beasts of the woods, or whether the vultures of the air had pecked or torn him, or had fed upon him; he was forsaken, and left unprotected by the person who had given him life—life, which with kindness is made happiness itself, but which by unkindness is rendered worse than the bitterest misery. The tiger will tear to pieces the bold intruder that menaces, nay, that approaches its cubs, and, fiercely fighting, will die for the protection of its young. The solitary bird of the desert will open its vein, and make its parched young ones drink of its life blood, then die; the venomous serpent will writhe and twist under the fiercest foe for its hatchling; but you, unlike the tiger, the bird, or the serpent, not resembling even the most ferocious brute, or the lowest reptile that crawls upon this earth, you cast away from you, and shut out from your mind and heart, until a cowardly consideration for your own safety made remember it, the blood of your blood, and the flesh of your flesh, which even the common affection that you have for yourself—your very essential selfishness itself—should have made you love and cherish; or, at least, feed and water. I am your son; I charge you with having abandoned me from childhood; what defence can you make? I give you ten minutes to reflect and to answer.”
The pirate captain then ceased: his eyes were fixed on the deck, his arms were crossed over his breast, and his features were locked in cold but firmest determination, and he had the air of one, who was resolved to go through a prescribed form with patience and precision. The men embraced the opportunity afforded by this pause to interchange looks one with the other. Their usual ferocious character of mein was heightened for the history which their chief had just partly related, no doubt recalled to the greater part of those men who stood that morning on the deck of the Black Schooner, the injustice, whether real or merely supposed, with which they had been treated by others. Victims to wrongs and injuries which others had heaped upon them, they had permitted their feelings to become cankered. Accustomed for the most part to the circumstances of an easy, and as far as some of them were concerned, an estated position, they could not in the hour of adversity, bend to the petty pursuits of life, while their pride, at the same time, would not let them lead a different sort of existence among those who were either their companions or their inferiors in their better days.
Turning their backs on pretended friends and unkind kindred, they had fled to the protection of the sea, where they could enjoy the doubtful comfort of their misanthropy to the full, and feed at pleasure on their own griefs; while their sword was ready to be used as well for pleasure as for booty, against the whole world to which they at the same time boldly and fearlessly gave defiance. The recollection of other days, however, fell upon their spirits, and how scared soever their sensibilities might be by a thousand scenes of blood, how hardened soever by long familiarity with misery, still those impressions to which in the day-dreams of their youth they had fondly bound their happiness, could not but be awakened by the tale that seemed to hold up to each of themselves the fleeting reflection of their own hopeful, but long since spoilt and blighted existence.
It was resentment, so strong as to have primarily germinated disgust in their hearts, and next a distaste for the society of their species, that had made them separate themselves from mankind and wander misanthropically about, until they eventually found themselves combined with others as unfortunate, as unenduring, and as proud as themselves; it was resentment of injustices of a similar nature to the instance to which their chief was a victim, that had changed their lot, and hating still the causes of their unhappiness, they were eager to wreak vengeance upon any individual to whom they could bring home any such offence. They interchanged fierce looks with each other, cast now and then dark and boding glances on the prisoner, and portentously stroked their dark and flowing beards. As for the prisoner himself, he appeared confounded; still there was not that vacant appearance of embarrassed simplicity about him which we generally observe in those that are innocent when unhappy circumstances put them at a loss. His was a distressing confusion—the confusion that conscious guilt, too clear to admit of even the shifts of equivocation and falsity had produced—a confusion that was doubled by the mortifying, degrading, and overwhelming fact, that his accuser, the witness, and the sufferer from his offence was his own son. The guilty father therefore stood dumb before the son—the judge.
The ten minutes had now elapsed, the captain raised his head, and said,
“Do you then say nothing in your defence?”
“I—I—I do not understand what all this means,” at last Willmington falteringly said.
“So much the worse” dryly observed the captain.
“You charge me with an offence,” continued Willmington, “which you make worse than it is; you must remember men are not punished in society for such offences, and I do not see why I should be ill-treated on its account, when others are not.”
An indistinct smile played about the lips of the captain, as he answered,