“Is that all?” coolly observed the captain; then turning to his men, he said, “my men, you have heard my accusation against this man. He seems unable to defend and justify himself. It is my intention to punish him by making him suffer that which I have had myself to undergo. Be you witnesses that I have given him a fair and open trial.”
“Bravo, bravo!” ran in deep, but subdued tones along the ranks of the pirates.
“Listen to your sentence, James Willmington,” continued the captain, “you are guilty, in my opinion, of the greatest crime which an individual, as a man and a father, can commit. You have prostituted the law of nature to your own selfish gratification, perjured yourself, and given that life for which you neglected to provide and care. I have afforded you an opportunity of showing yourself innocent—if you could—of this grave charge. You have not been able to do so. The punishment I design you is this: you will be cast adrift on the ocean; you will have an empty cask to rest upon; you refused me bread—I refuse you shelter on board of my schooner; you are guilty of what we all on board this vessel abhor; you are, therefore, no proper companion for us, and you must be thrust forth from among us. I shall, however, take care that you should survive as long as possible, that you may be the more able to realize the pangs of that famine which I endured by your heartlessness. In two hour’s time the sentence shall be executed. Prepare to meet your Creator. Lead him hence.”
“Good God,” now cried the prisoner, his eyes seeming to be about to fall from their sockets with fear, as the full extent and reality of his danger, now clearly struck him, “good God, surely you do not mean to murder me: have mercy on me, I beseech you.”
The captain did not raise his eyes from a paper which he had taken from the breast of his uniform, and which he was then reading. “But,” continued the prisoner, as the pirates prepared to drag him away, “remember, I am your father, you owe me honour and respect—how dare you, raise your hand against your parent?”
The captain at these words suddenly raised his head, and cast an angry and steadfast look on the prisoner, and after the lapse of a few seconds, during which he kept his eyes still rivetted on him, he said, with biting scorn—
“Remember that you are my father! you ought to ask me to forget it. It is because I remember you are my father that I shall now prepare for you your just measure of suffering. It is very probable you never expected to be called one day to account by the son who was the fruit of a delightful indulgence, but which was to be considered no longer than during the short space which it afforded you pleasure. Very little do you, and such as you think, when in the turpitude of your perjured souls, you delude the confiding and helpless things who sin from too great a confidence in your protestations of honor, or rather, are too innocent to detect your falsehoods, that the beings to whom you may give life are things who like yourselves may possess feelings, and who may one day seek to avenge the treachery practised on their mothers. Selfish man! your selfishness pursues you at the very moment when your existence is in all probability about to end. You crouched to me, and sought to propitiate me by a show of paternal sensibility, when you saw me enter with my friends the cabin where you stood writhing in your terror, and to-day you again remind me that I am your son. Now your paternal feelings are very strong, and your memory remarkably faithful when you expect to save your life by remembering me. But you, of course, recollected nothing of me, nor were you so feelingly sentimental when I once wrote to you for the mite, which you would never have missed from your treasures. Your selfish artifice shall avail you nothing here. In two hours, as I have said, you will be cast adrift on the ocean. Men, lead him away.”