"Are you the Malignant of whom he speaks?" inquired the stern colonel.
"He is the unhappy father of that murdered girl," interposed Constantia.
"Whoever refuses to seize him deserves a traitor's death," reiterated
Sir Willmott.
The troopers stood with their hands on their swords, awaiting their
officer's commands.
The Buccaneer turned fiercely round, still pressing his child to his
bosom with one arm, and holding a pistol within the other hand.
"I am," he said in a bold and fearless, but not an arrogant tone, "I am
he whom that accursed villain names. But ye had better not rouse a
desperate man. Dare not to touch me; at your peril stay my course.
Colonel Jones, tell the Protector of England, that Hugh Dalton craves no
pardon now. This, this was my hope--my pride; for her I would have been
honest, and well thought of! Behold! she stiffens on my arm. She is
nothing now but clay! Yet, by the God that made her! no churlish earth
shall sully this fair form. She was as pure as the blue sea that cradled
her first months of infancy; and, mark ye, when the rays of the young
sun rest upon the ocean, at the morning-watch, by my own ship's side, in
the bosom of the calm waters, shall she find a grave. I will no more
trouble England--no more--no more! Gold may come dancing on the waves,
even to my vessel's prow, I will not touch it. Cromwell may take me if
he will, but not till I perform for my good and gentle child the only
rite that ever she demanded from me."
Even as the tiger-mother passes through an Indian crowd, bearing the
cherished offspring of her fierce but affectionate nature, which some
stray arrow has destroyed--terrible in her anguish and awful in her
despair--her foes appalled at her sufferings and the bravery of her
spirit, though still panting for her destruction--their arrows are on
the string--yet the untaught, but secret and powerful respect for the
great source of our good as well as of our evil passions--Nature--works
within them, and she passes on, unmolested, to her lair:--even so did
Dalton pass along, carrying his daughter, as she were a sleeping infant,
through the armed warriors, who made way, as if unconscious of what they
did;--some, who were themselves fathers, pressed their mailed fingers on
their eyes, while others touched their helmets, and raised them a little
from their brows.
"Colonel Jones," exclaimed the enraged Burrell, "you will have to answer
for this to a high power. The Protector would give its weight in gold
for the head of that man; and the weight of that again for a knowledge
of his haunts."