The Buccaneer - A Tale

"You shall not escape me, villain!" exclaimed Sir Willmott, rendered

desperate by his adverse fortunes, and springing towards the

seaman.--"But stay," he added, drawing back, "you," hesitatingly, "you

are honest to your captain: well, there is something you could do for

me, that----" He paused--and the sailor took advantage of the pause to

say,-"A farewell and foul weather to ye, master! Look, if you could make ye'r

whole head into one great diamond, and lay it at my feet, as that

carrion lies at yours, may I die on a sandbank like a dry herring, if

I'd take it to do one of the dirty jobs ye're for ever plotting!"

Oh, what a degrading thing it is to be scoffed at by our superiors! How

prone we are to resent it when our equals meet us with a sneer! But when

the offscouring of society, the reptiles that we could have trodden

under foot, may rail at and scorn us with impunity, how doubly bitter,

how perfectly insupportable must it be! The very ministers of evil

scouted him, and sin and misery thought him too contemptible to deal

with! Burrell gnashed his teeth and struck his temples with his clenched

fist--the room turned round--the bloody head of Jeromio uplifted itself

to his imaginings, and gibbered, and cursed, and muttered, and laughed

at him in fiendish merriment! If Zillah could have seen Burrell at that

moment, she would have pitied and prayed for him: the strong man

trembled as a weak girl in the shiverings of a mortal fever--his heart

shuddered within his bosom--he lost all power of reasoning, and it was

not until huge drops of perspiration had forced their way along his

burning brow, that he at all recovered his faculties. He gazed around

the small apartment; but the man was gone. The lodge window that looked

on the road was open, and the knight's first effort was to reach it. The

pure air of heaven, breathing so sweetly upon his pale and agonised

countenance, revived him for the moment, and his energetic mind in a

short space was restrung and wound up to fresh exertion. He resolved to

set some of his own people to watch about the grounds, in case Zillah

should attempt to obtain entrance; and though he felt assured they

would do but little for him, yet he knew they would do much for gold,

and that he resolved they should have in abundance. The marriage once

over, he fancied himself safe--safe from all but the Buccaneer. Hope is

strong at all times, but never more so than when we are roused from

despair. He turned from the window, and his eye fell on the bloody head

of the traitor Jeromio. He knew that, if the porter saw it, there would

be an outcry and an investigation, which it was absolutely necessary,

under existing circumstances, to avoid; for old Saul was one of those

honest creatures who hold it a duty to tell all truth, and nothing but

truth, to their employers. He therefore wrapped it carefully in the

napkin in which it had been originally enveloped, and then covered it

over with his own kerchief. After another moment of deliberation, he

summoned the old man, and directed him to bear it to the house.