Both cognac and rum-bottle were repeatedly tasted, until the strong frame of the Coromantee gave way to the stronger spirit of the alcohol; and, muttering fearful threats in his gumbo jargon, he at length sank unconscious on the floor.
There, under the light of the lard lamp—now flickering feebly—he lay like some hideous satyr, whom Bacchus, by an angry blow, had felled prostrate to the earth!
Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Five.
The Mysterious Motive.
The original motive of the myal-man, in conspiring the death of the Custos Vaughan, would have been strong enough to urge him on without this new instigation. As we have seen, it was one of deadly revenge—simple, and easily understood.
Not so easily understood was that which actuated the Jew. On the contrary, so secretly had he conceived his purposes, that no living man—not even Chakra himself—had been made privy to them. Up to this moment they may have appeared mysterious; and the time has arrived when it becomes necessary to reveal them. The explanation will show them to be only natural—only in keeping with the character of this crooked and cruel old man.
It is scarce necessary to say that Jacob Jessuron was no type of his race; nor, indeed, of any race. A German Jew by birth, it was not necessarily this that made him either slave-dealer or slave-stealer. Christians have taken their full share in both branches of the nefarious trade; and equally with Jews and Mohammedans have they been guilty of its most hideous enormities. It was not, therefore, because Jacob Jessuron chanced to be a Jew that he was a trafficker in human flesh and blood—any more than that he was a villainous man; but because he was Jacob Jessuron—a representative of neither race nor nation, but simply a character sui generis.
Without dwelling upon his general demerits, let us return to the more particular theme of the motives which were instigating him to make a victim of his neighbour Vaughan—a death victim: for his conversation with Chakra showed that this was the very starting-point of his intentions.