The negroes confined in the hold of the Maraposa, frantic from their confinement and suffering, and finding the crew had left her, succeeded in breaking their bonds, and rushed on deck, wild with delight at being loose, and burning for revenge, they threw overboard the few men left in charge of the schooner, and hearing the conflict on the brig, some sixty of them, armed with handspikes, iron belaying-pins, monkey-tails,[[1]] and whatever they could pick up, came tumbling on board, and falling upon the rear of the slavers, with unearthly and savage noises, they threw them into great disorder, and created a diversion in favor of the man-of-war’s men, which they were not slow in taking advantage of, and with a loud hurrah, they charged over the Maraposas, and thought the day was already theirs; but the negroes, who had only attacked the slavers because they met them first as they came over the bow, knew no difference in the white men; and as the brig’s crew came within their reach, were assaulted as fiercely as the slavers; and not until every African had been slain, or forced overboard, was the brig once more in the possession of her own crew.
The Maraposa, after the men in charge of her were thrown overboard, had forged clear of the brig, and was now drifting about, sometimes with her sails full, and then all aback, some quarter of a mile off—the negroes dancing, jumping, and fighting on her deck like a drove of monkeys.
Willis, who, looking around when the slaves first fell upon his men to see what was the matter, had received a severe blow on the back of his head from a cutlas. His hat turning the edge, he was only stunned by the force of the blow, and gradually recovering his senses, he raised himself on his elbow. At first his mind wandered, and he did not recollect where he was; but soon the familiar faces of many of his own men, and the bodies of the English sailors who lay around him, covered with ghastly wounds, and stiff in the cold embrace of death; the groans of the wounded, as they were borne past him, on their way to the cockpit, recalled vividly to his imagination his melancholy situation.
Rising to his feet, and looking around, he found that, for the present at least, his position was nearly hopeless. Scarce half a dozen of his men had escaped with life, his vessel out of his reach, and he a prisoner to those from whom he did not expect civil treatment; then with the certainty, nearly, of the dangling noose, and foreyard-arm in the future.
A few months previous it would have caused the slaver’s captain not a moment’s uneasiness, had he been in even a greater strait. If the gallows-rope had been quivering over his head, its noose gaping to receive his neck, it would not then have caused a difference in his pulse, or a pang of sorrow in his heart—for he was then both brave and reckless; and knowing when he entered his present life that the penalty was death, he would but have thought the deal had been against him, the game lost, and he, of course, must pay the stake. For what is life worth without an aim—an object; living but to eat, drink, and toil. With nothing to look forward to in the future but a cessation from monotony, is worse than death. And Willis, driven from the field of honorable ambition, at enmity with his relations, and loving or beloved by no one, had little to fear from death or disgrace.
But now, his feelings were altered. Love, that all powerful passion, had brought about a change; not that he now feared death, but the manner of it; and the thought that the last Francisca would hear of him, as the condemned felon, who had paid the penalty of the law without even repenting of his course, was harrowing. And he had thought, too, that time, which brings about the most apparently improbable things, might so arrange events, that he would not always be the outcast he now was; and even in the dim future he had pictured to himself Francisca as being his.
It seemed, however, as if his course would now soon be run, and his hopes blighted; and, steeped in intense agony of mind, he was insensible to aught around, when he was aroused by a rough grasp on the shoulder, and a sailor asked if he was not the captain of the schooner.
He answered in the affirmative, and was told the captain of the brig wished to see him. Following the sailor, he was led to the cabin. Coming from the light of the sun, it was comparatively dark, and at first Willis did not observe that any one was in it; but becoming accustomed to the light, he discovered the figure of De Vere, pale and attenuated, lying on a sofa.
At first Willis was somewhat shocked; for he thought that De Vere had been killed in the duel, which belief was confirmed by not seeing him on deck during the fight; but knowing, now, that he had been only wounded, he quickly regained his look of quiet composure, and fixing his eye on De Vere’s, he stood silently before him.
A smile of gratified hatred was playing over De Vere’s white face; and the sight of Willis, knowing him to be completely in his power, seemed to afford him so much pleasure, that, gloating on him with a sparkling eye, he did not break the silence for some moments.