The wretched man was lifted bodily, and laid astride upon the cask.
“Curses on you! do not—do not, for your soul’s sake, murder me,” he cried, and struggled like those who alone can struggle who see death before them.
But it was of no avail. The pirates seized his legs, and tied them tightly underneath the cask, so that the miserable prisoner had not the power of making any other movements except that of inclining his body a little backwards and forwards.
“Fix the tackles.” The tackles were adjusted.
“Fiends! hell hounds,” he yelled out, as the first strain of the ropes was felt on the cask, and laid hold of the pirate that was next to him with his teeth—another strain, and he held between his teeth a shred of the man’s woollen shirt.
The cask was hoisted up, to be let down overboard. The cries of the fated Willmington increased still more—he roared franticly. The cask with the prisoner balanced between the masts of the schooner for a moment, in cruel suspense, while not a sound was to be heard, except his hoarse, pitiful, and moving cries.
The pirates looked on with sullen calmness; the captain was the same imperturbable man. But the priest could not withstand this moving scene; he threw himself at the captain’s feet, and earnestly begged him to show mercy:—“mercy,” he added, “that was the most acceptable offering to heaven.”
“Good priest,” answered the captain, “if you can soothe the end of that wretched being, do so. But pray not to me, I never change.”
Slowly—slowly—slowly—the cask, with its living rider, who was shrieking like the damned, was lowered: it reached the water: the tackles were unfastened, and away, away, it slowly floated on the long high waves that bore it rapidly from the schooner.
The roars and cries of the prisoner rang over the silent sea. Every eye was rivetted in awful intentness on the cask and its burthen. The captain alone was turned away from the direction where his father lay pinioned on a cask at the mercy of the winds and waves. He cast but one glance on the cask as it was lowered into the sea, and never looked at it again.