The pure wax tapers that burnt in chaste and elegant candlesticks of solid silver, shed a cheerful and soft light around. The faint music of a small fountain that played hard by, fell soothingly on the ear, as it grew louder and louder, or fell fainter and still fainter, according to the direction and strength of the lulling breeze that seemed to sport with its jets. The old family pictures that hung on the walls looked down fiercely and frowningly, or smiled upon the happy and quiet group, according to the stern and warlike disposition or the benignant characters of each.
The servants had all retired for the time to their own apartments; and Willmington sat quietly smoking an exquisite cigar, and sipping from time to time the crystal iced water that stood in a tumbler by his side.
“I shall now tell you,” he said, “the succession of accidents which has brought me back to Trinidad,” and he began to relate the particulars of the capture of the merchant vessel, the distribution of the shares, his trial, his being thrown overboard, the agony that he suffered on the cask, and finally his providential rescue, the capture of the pirate captain and his supposed suicide. He narrated circumstance on circumstance, quickly passed over the alleged causes of his sufferings, and mentioned Appadocca as one who claimed to be his son.
“Confound his impudence,” cried the youth of eighteen. “I wish I had been there, I should have caned his insolence out of him. The idea! to call my father, his father, vile cut-throat as he was. I wish I had him now. But do you know anything at all of him? How came he to claim you as his father, sir?” he inquired, after a time.
“Do not interrupt me;—do not interrupt me,” was the only answer Willmington made to this home and embarrassing question.
Time had flown during his long narrative. The clock had already struck eleven—a late hour in the tropics—when he was concluding.
“Yes, my children,” he said at the end, with great solemnity, endeavouring to make the contemplated impression, “there is one above to punish evil doers.”
“Ay, and he never slumbers,” replied a deep sonorous voice from without, and in a moment afterwards the pirate captain stood before James Willmington.
The cigar fell from his jaws, that palsied with terror, now gaped asunder. His hands trembled, and threw over the glass of iced water towards which it was being stretched, his silvery hair seemed to stand on end, and with a sudden bound, Willmington started from his seat and reeled over his chair towards a corner of the apartment.
“Get out of my sight, get out of my sight, accursed, damned spirit; in the name of Christ, I conjure you!” he cried, while his eyeballs glared, and large drops of sweat trickled down his forehead that was almost green with fear.