Such scenes might well make an impression on those who looked on; and even the rough weather-beaten sailors, to whose eyes nature may have long grown familiar, stood leaning on spar or anchor viewing the awe-inspiring scene.
Among those on deck stood also James Willmington: and what were his feelings, he whose memory had been so recently recalled to deeds which could not render him an easier-minded man, if they had not had the effect of making him a better one? Nature is itself an accuser! To the bosom where all is not right, she speaks in terror. The trembling of a leaf, the sudden flight of a startled insect, the gliding of a lizard appals the guilty conscience. Could the man on whose head the crime of huge injustice pressed heavily—the man whose cruelty had blasted the life which he gave, and who was at that moment conducting to the gallows, the child whom he had begotten—could such a man mingle the stirred sentiments of his soul with the sublime grandeur of nature, and send them forth with the voice of the mighty proclaimer, in mute veneration to the throne of God. No! nature is not cruel, nature deserts not its humblest offspring, she, therefore, could receive no sympathy from the heart of such a man.
Let us now go to the cabin of Appadocca. He was sitting on the rude accommodation which had been afforded him, with his arms crossed over his breast, and his earnest eyes fixed on the mountains of Paria, which he could see on the right, through the port-hole that admitted air and light into his cabin, and which had now been opened, inasmuch as it was considered a matter of impossibility for him to escape, while the ship was under sail on the high seas.
He was absorbed in deep thought; and he watched the neighbouring mountains with more and more earnestness, as they rose higher and higher to the view, on the gradual approach of the vessel. Twilight came, and threw its mellow hue around. It soon departed, and the scene, which was but a short time before enlivened by the powerful sun, was left in gloomy silence.
As the ship approached the little islands of the Bocas, nothing could be heard but the roars of the lashing surges, as they broke at regular intervals on the rocks.
Night came, dark and dreary. The ship approached the largest of the three small outlets. Every one on board was fixed in silent attention to his duty. The senior officer stood at the shrouds, trumpet in hand, with the aged commander by his side. Every man was at his post, awaiting in anxiety the command to trim sails, in order to enter the difficult passage.
That was always a moment of anxiety in every vessel going through it; for such was its narrowness, and the strength of the current that swept down the channel along the Venezuelan coast, that if a ship once went but a yard further down than where she ought to trim her sails, and luff up through the passage, it became a labour of many weeks to beat up against the wind and current to the proper place.
The critical moment came; the ship was within the Dragon’s Mouth; she trembled as if she had been lashed by the tail of some sea-monster, ten times larger than herself, as she mounted the cross chopping seas, which always run high and heavy at that entrance to the Gulf of Paria.
“Lee braces all,” the commanding officer trumpeted forth.
“Luff.”