Hourly afflict:”
Measure for Measure.
When the men of the man-of-war pulled on board, after their young officer had been entrapped into the schooner, and reported the occurrence to the commander, notwithstanding the great command which, considering his life and avocation, he had over himself, he flew into a violent passion. The success which had, up to that time, attended the pirates, either in flying from him, or in outwitting him, had already tried his patience to the utmost. To have met an enemy equally armed, to have tried the fortune of a fight with him, and to have been beaten would not, perhaps, have had such a mortifying effect on the mind of the old commander as to have been subjected to the tantalizing deceptions and mocking cunning of the pirates.
He walked the deck as furiously as his gouty old limbs would carry him, and spoke to himself in a voice that was hoarse with passion.
“First,” said he, “the blackguards waited until I was just about to give the order to fire, and then sprang out of my reach. Then their d—n—d schooner sailed so fast, and this tub of a thing was so slow, that by G—d, by making the masts creak again, I could not force her to move faster; while all the time those d—n—d villains were playing about me, and amusing themselves at my expense: the devil take them. Then the rascals went, and took down their own sails, and rigged themselves up in a brig’s canvass, and passed by me—fool as I was. I showed the blackguards bunting, instead of sending a broad-side into them at once, d—n them; and now, at noon-day, when the sun is high in the heavens, when every man can see fifty miles before him, I have let those rascals come almost alongside, and kidnap one of my officers. D—n them, d—n them.
“I tell you what it is, Charles,” continued the old gentleman, red in the face with rage, “the weight of a feather in my mind would make me hang—by G—d, yes—hang at once that astronomical friend of yours; hang, I say, on one yard-arm, and that d—n—d rascally looking father of his on the other: for it is these fellows, d—n them, that have been the cause of my being insulted and duped by a set of ruffianly cut-throats,” and the old man walked the deck even still more violently than before.
His son, who had listened to this explosion, was too prudent to interrupt it or to reply to it.
He knew his father: he knew that, like the generality of persons of a warm, generous, frank and open disposition, his outbreaks were as furious and unmeaning, while they lasted, as they were short-lived; he, therefore, remained silent, and permitted the fit to exhaust itself.
“Hark you,” continued the commander in a tone that indicated a subsiding of the paroxysm, “let the course of the vessel be changed immediately, and let us go to Trinidad. I shall not be lumbered with rascally pirates, and villainous planters, on board my ship. My vessel was made to fight better foes than these scurvy sea-thieves. Crowd on canvass, crowd on canvass, and let us steer for Trinidad at once, and deliver these foul fellows into the hands of the lawyers. But first, call up that friend of yours: a fine companion for a British officer, Mr. Charles—a very fine companion!”