The Buccaneer - A Tale

"Dalton, you are safe! it may be that I perish: I knew you would never

sacrifice your ship for your own life, so I have done it for you. Go

with the Jewess, your daughter, and the Preacher, immediately to Cecil

Place, to the small passage leading to the purple chamber, and demand

admittance. You are pardoned--and all the rest may leave the island,

provided they depart before the hour of one."

The Buccaneer apparently heard it not: the communication made no visible

impression upon him; he stood in the same position as before. Even

Springall spoke no word, although his feeling of attachment to Dalton

was rendered sufficiently obvious by his creeping close to his side, and

grasping his arm with a gesture which said, "I will not be separated

from you."

At this moment a cry arose from the beach, and, though the flames were

fading, it could be seen that several of the men had rushed to the

water's edge, and assisted a creature to the shore who was unable to

struggle longer for himself; soon, however, he contrived to mount the

cliff on which Dalton still remained a living statue of despair, and

faint, dripping, unable to utter a single word, Robin stood, or rather

drooped, by the side of the Buccaneer. He came too soon; Dalton,

irritated, maddened by the loss of his ship, was unable to appreciate

the risk which the Ranger had run, or the sacrifice he had made. He

thought but of what he had lost, not of what he had gained; and saw in

Robin only the destroyer of his vessel, not the obtainer of his long

sought-for pardon. Urged by uncontrollable frenzy, he seized his

preserver with the grasp and determination of a desperate man, and,

raising him from the ledge, would have hurled him over the cliff, had

not one, weak and gentle, yet with that strength to which the strongest

must ever yield, interposed to thwart his horrid purpose. It was

Barbara, who clung to her father's arm: feeble as she was, the

death-throes of the gallant vessel had frighted her and her companion

from their retirement, and she now came, like the angel of mercy,

between her parent and his ill-directed vengeance. When the Buccaneer

found that his arm was pressed, his impulse was to fling off the hand

that did it; but when he saw who it was that stayed him, and gazed upon

the bloodless face and imploring eyes of his sweet daughter, he stood a

harmless unresisting man, subdued by a look and overpowered by a touch.

Barbara never was a girl of energy, or a seeker after power. She

considered obedience as woman's chief duty--duty as a child to the

parent--as a wife to the husband; and, perhaps, such was her timidity,

had there been time to deliberate, she would have trembled at the bare

idea of opposing her father's will, though she would have mourned to the

end of her days the result of his madness; but she acted from the

impulse of the moment. Nothing could be more touching than the sight of

her worn and almost transparent figure, hanging on her father's dark and

muscular form, like a frail snow-wreath on some bleak mountain.