But what was that at the foot of the gibbet? I took a few steps, and the object that I had supposed to be a balk of timber, serving as a base-piece, arose. It was a woman. I was near enough now to see her without the help of the lightning. The glimmering sand yielded sufficient light, so close had I approached the gibbet. She was a tall woman, dressed in black, and her face in the black frame of her bonnet, that was thickened by a wet veil, showed as white as though the light of the moon lay upon it. I say again that I am no coward, but I own that when that balk of timber, as I had supposed the thing to be, arose and fashioned itself, hard by the figure of the hanging dead man, into the shape of a tall woman, ghastly white of face, nothing but horror and consternation prevented me from bolting at full speed. I was too terrified to run. My knees seemed to give way under me. All the good of the rum punch was gone out of my head.
The woman approached me slowly, and halted at a little distance. There might have been two yards between us and five between me and the gibbet.
“What have you come to do?” she exclaimed in a voice that sounded raw—I can find no other word to express the noise of her speech—with famine, fatigue, fever; for these things I heard in her voice.
“I have come to do nothing; I am going to Deal,” I answered, and I made a step.
“Stop! I am the mother of that dead man. Show me how to take him down. I cannot reach his feet with my hands. You are tall, and strong and hearty, and can unhook him. For God’s sake, take him down and give him to me, sir.”
“His mother!” cried I, finding spirit, on a sudden, in the woman’s speech and dreadful avowal; “God help thee! But it is not a thing for me to meddle with.”
“He was my son, he was innocent and he has been murdered. He must not be left up there, sir. Take him down, and give him to me who am his mother, and who will bury him.”
“It is not a thing for me to meddle with,” I repeated, looking at the body, and all this time it was lightning sharply, and the thunder was frequent and heavy, and it rained pitilessly. “It would need a ladder to unhook him, and suppose you had him, what then? Where is his grave? Would you dig it here? And with what would you dig it? And if you buried him here, they would have him up again and hook him up again.”
“Oh, sir, take him down, give him to me,” she cried in a voice that would have been a shriek but for her weakness.
“How long have you been here?” said I, moving so as to enable me to confront her, and yet have my back on the gibbet, for the end of my tongue seemed to stick like a point of steel into the roof of my mouth, every time the lightning flashed up the swinging figure and I saw it.