The officer leaned his forehead on his hand.
“There, sir,” he said, “your vengeance is satisfied: public justice and morality are vindicated.”
“Scarcely,” muttered Willmington between his teeth, and left the cabin.
Charles Hamilton was deeply affected by the supposed suicide of his friend; recollections of bygone days crowded on his mind. He recalled vividly to himself the happy hours which he and his friend Appadocca had spent together in the lightheartedness and warm fellowship which only students can feel, when strong and mutual sympathy links them, and carries them together through study and through recreation: he pictured to his mind, the ardent and aspiring youth, such as his friend then was, with a mind that was stored with learning, and a heart that was overflowing with abundant benevolence, and then contrasted him with the cold soured, cynical man, whose mind was now entirely engrossed with schemes of death and revenge, and whose heart now beat but in cold indifference, or throbbed with a more active feeling, only when retribution and punishment quickened its action. He then thought of the career which hope would have foretold on the one picture—a career, that like the stars themselves which Appadocca measured, was to be ever bright and brilliant, that might have shed its light on humanity, and might, perhaps, have signalized an epoch of philosophy and certain truth: and he thought, on the other hand, of the actual reality of a life spent in the degrading society of the reputed scum of mankind, with its energies and powers exercised and lost in devising methods for robbing others, and closed at last in immorality and crime.
Such thoughts weighed heavily on Charles Hamilton, and when he proceeded on deck, his step might be observed to be less light, and his eye less quick than they were wont to be.
As for James Willmington he walked on one side of the deck restlessly, and bit his nails.
“The fellow,” he interjected to himself, “to go and drown himself when I expected to have made him feel the consequences of his insolence, in having me put on a cask and set adrift. The villain! to go and drown himself, when the gallows and the hangman’s hand ought to have sent him to his account. Never mind, he is out of the world, and one way is as good as another, there is no fear now of being judged again in the name of nature.”
Willmington smiled satanically.
“He is gone, and that is one blessing, at least, and he will, no doubt, meet those in the other world who will be better able to answer his philosophy than I.”