University of Virginia Library

17. CHAPTER XVII.

After the destruction of the Revenue-Cutter, Fitzvassal,
whose mind began to turn upon itself, and brood
over its self-inflicted misery, gave orders to put to sea.
He now, for the first time, had ample leisure for reflection;
for since his return to the scenes of his youth
his thoughts had been in such a whirl of excitement;
such new and untried emotions had possessed him; such
hopes, aspirations, doubts, fears, and misgivings, had
swayed him by turns, in the many new relations which
he held to society, that till now he had been unable
to realise his true position. He was pacing his quarter-deck
wrapped in the gloomiest melancholy.

“Fool!” ejaculated the buccaneer, in the wretchedness
of self-examination, “fool, pitiable, despicable
fool!—in what am I better or happier now, than
when in the miserable abode of my mother?—alas,
poor mother!—I fed upon my own heart and bemoaned
our mutual misfortunes! Better, far better
would it have been for me to have lived contented
with my lot, and earned the daily crust that might
have kept thee from famishing!”

The picture of his mother's sufferings then rose up
before the mind of Fitzvassal in all its horrors, and
the memory of her awful death and her dying words
checked the heartfelt curses as they trembled on his
lips for utterance.

His thoughts were next occupied with the object
of his adoration, and he felt his cheek grow pale, as
he saw her in his mind's eye reciprocate a kiss of affection,
and smile upon Seymour in the abandonment
of love.

Up to the fatal moment when the too faithful
glass let the secret into his heart that Grace was the
lover as well as the beloved of another, Fitzvassal
had indulged the belief that his own passion was returned,—and
on this one pervading, all-absorbing
thought, he had lived and been sustained amidst
every trial he encountered. Had that love been indeed
successful, who shall say how different would
have been the whole course of his after-existence!
But as soon as the hideous reality burst upon him,

that he had deceived himself, and that instead
of the golden dreams he was indulging, nothing but
despair awaited him, deepened and darkened a thousand
fold by the revolting imagination that another—
but we cannot pursue a thought so brain-touching
—let it pass!

From that moment Fitzvassal resolved to fulfil
his destiny. “They prophecy concerning me,” said
he to himself, gloomily and wretchedly enough;
“and yet they tell me that my will can control my
fate. What fate! what destiny! what will have I!
God knows I will to will otherwise—and yet I do
wish to be revenged! I would not injure Grace
Wilmer—and yet if I knew that she were unhappy
on my account, even unto death, I might be glad!
As for her lover,—God! God! had I known that,
would I not have throttled him amidst the waves!
Twice have I saved the life of a viper that even now
coils coldly and venomously about my heart, and
will by and bye sting me to madness! Where am I?
whither am I going? That strange being at Nahant
told me but yesterday, that I would go to sea this day!
And here I am at sea! She told me to avoid every
sail. Had I avoided the Cutter, there would have
been less blood spilt:—was there any necessity for
blood-letting? was it a part of my destiny to murder?
Bah! nonsense! superstition! away with it,
Fitzvassal! it is worse than woman's weakness; away
with it!”

And the infatuated man, with the aid of the bottle
flattered himself that he had overcome a weakness,
when, in fact, he had done nothing but paralyze the
organs of thinking by over-stimulating them. His
mind was oppressed the same as ever, and was waiting
to manifest itself with renewed keenness when
the paralysis should pass away.

A temporary cheerfulness or rather recklessness
spread suddenly over his mind. The gloom that
weighed upon him was departed. The blue skies,
and the white, feathery clouds assumed a new aspect,
and awoke pleasant associations; the waves danced
and sparkled around him, and every thing grew
bright and glorious. The demons of intoxication
had entrapped him, and it was necessary to make
the victim glad till his power of breaking the toils
were destroyed; like the deluded neophyte that has
been led among gardens and roses, and made delirious
with all that enchains the young imagination,
till the black veil descends forever on her innocence!

While in this state of sensual excitement—the cry
of “Sail ho!” sounded from aloft.

“Where a-way!” was the prompt inquiry from below.

“Dead East!” returned the look-out.

“Bear down upon her and let's see who she is!”
said Fitzvassal to his officer; God grant, we have
more work to do!”

“I hope,” said Morgan, “you will either take no
more prizes, or no more wounded passengers; how-somever,
you know your own business; but the deck
of a buccaneer is no place for a hospital, I'm thinking.”

“It's not likely, Morgan,” replied the commander,
“that we shall have any fighting to do,—there's no
such luck for us, I'm afraid.”

“I did n't know you had a notion of going out to
sea in earnest,” said Morgan.

“Nor I neither; as to that—but we'll return before
long. I almost with I had let the Cutter alone—it
never could have done the Dolphin any harm.”

“Not's you know on!” replied the pilot, shaking
his head wisely, and screwing up his eyes with an
expression of deep sagacity—“not's you know on!
That Cutter, if she'd got along-side, or near enough,
might have put a red-hot-shot into your powder-magazine
in no time—howsomever, it's no matter o'
mine.”

“True;” added the buccaneer, “or, in the
chances of war, she might have captured us.”

“Ay,” resumed Morgan, encouraged, because his
notions were adopted by his superior; “I've away of
thinking, that if an eighteen-pounder or two had told
against the Dolphin's masts, in the way our twenty-four
spoke to the Cutter's, we might have had a raking
in our turn.”

“And been carried into Boston chained as pirates.”

“Certainly!” said Morgan, “and been hanged up on
the Neck and by the neck, too. Good again! not so
bad, that!”

“Very agreeable, truly,” ejaculated Fitzvassal,
musing.

“Very,” echoed Morgan; “mighty agreeable to be
dangling within sight of one's own house, after old
Mather had talked you as dry as a corn-cob on the
way to the gallows.”

“It was right,” said Fitzvassal, “to do as we did
with the Dolphin, but I am a little doubtful about
these prisoners.”

“Dead men tell no tales!” whispered Morgan,
looking at the buccaneer with an expression that
seemed to indicate some uncertainty as to Fitzvassal's
disposition.

“Shame! shame! Morgan,” returned the latter, indignantly,
“how can you be so barbarous?”

And the commander of the Dolphin walked away
from the man, as if he dreaded contamination, flattering
himself that he was opposed to an act, which all
the while he wished most heartily were accomplished.

If the best man that walks the earth could see himself
as he really is, he would be scared to distraction.
The heart is stuffed with fragments of the ten commandments;
but while self-delusion has the custody of
that heart, she turns it about to please the imagination;

like a kaleidescope, that by ever moving makes
seeming order and variety out of shapeless and unpleasing
forms, and even perverts the light of heaven
to the irradiation and adornment of lies.

In the meantime, the Dolphin had gained so much
upon the other vessel that her flag could easily be
seen from below, with the assistance of the glass, and
she was reported from the look-out as evidently
an English merchantman of about three hundred
tons.

“Crowd all sail!” was the order immediately
given, on ascertaining the character of the vessel;
“at least we'll get the latest news from England,
possibly a rich booty. The colonists will want
money, and they shall have it.”

At this last idea, as it gained utterance, Fitzvassal
felt relieved, for it seemed to him a palliation of the
crime which he was meditating; so easy is it for
conscience to find a subterfuge in its distress.

The strange sail gradually ascended to the horizon,
and the two vessels were not more than three
miles distant, when the stranger was seen suddenly
to change her course, and press all her canvas for
flight. This only showed that she began to suspect
the Dolphin; while it gave assurance to the
crew of the latter, that the ship was indeed a merchantman,
and it encouraged them to hope for a
prize.

Notwithstanding the efforts which the merchantman

made to escape, the buccaneer gained so rapidly
upon them that in two hours they were nearly
along-side.

“Ship a-hoy!” cried the first officer of the Dolphin,
through a speaking-trumpet, as they came within
hailing distance.

“Ship a-hoy!” reiterated the officer, “where are
you bound?”

But the merchantman returned no answer.

The hailing was again repeated, yet with no other
effect; and but for an occasional movement in the
trimming of her sails, no one could have believed
that there was a person on her deck.

This conduct on the part of the vessel began to
excite the circumspection of Fitzvassal, who gave
orders to beat to quarters; but in the meanwhile the
schooner had run full abreast of the ship, and within
pistol-shot. The call to quarters was the signal to
the stranger to show some signs of animation, for
hardly had the drum sounded, before the plain sides
of the merchantman opened in half a dozen places,
and as many guns running out from her port-holes,
poured forth a broadside on the Dolphin, which
made the splinters fly about her fearfully. At the
same moment at least twenty heads were popp'd
above her bulwarks.

As soon as this was done, the vessel which, merchantman
or not, seemed almost a match for the
Dolphin, endeavored to wear round, and run under

her stern with a view to rake her, while the crew of
the latter came to quarters, and returned the broadside
with interest.

“Run close along-side of her, at all hazards,”
shouted Fitzvassal, “give her another broadside, and
run into her under cover of the smoke; then throw
your grappling-irons and board! Call the boarders
to be ready—I will lead them myself—fire away
now!—Cato, you rascal, here!”

The steward was at his side.

“Mix powder in some rum and hand it round to
the men!—instantly—away!”

The black was off in a moment, seizing a cannon
charge as he passed, from one of the “powder monkeys;”
and he soon returned with a bucket containing
the infuriating mixture. The men had just
time to take a half-pint all around, the cannon in
the meantime roaring like thunder from both sides,
when the bowsprit of the Dolphin ran over the taffrail
of the other, indicating, amidst the dense smoke
enveloping both vessels, that the desired contact had
taken place.

Fitzvassal had already stationed himself at the
head of twelve men by the bow of his own vessel,
awaiting the moment when the contact should take
place. He was armed, as were the other boarders,
in iron caps, made for this especial object, and each
had a pair of pistols, a broad-sword, and a cutlass,
the latter to serve as a guard for the left arm, as well

as for such mischief as it could find opportunity to
do. A short, broad dagger was sticking in the leather
belt that contained the pistols.

Thus prepared, as soon as the buccaneer found
his bowsprit aboard the other, he cried out:

“Now then! boarders follow me!”

At the same time he ran up the bowsprit of his
own vessel, followed by his intrepid band, and before
his victim had time to perceive his intention, he was
with them on the quarter-deck, giving rapid orders,
and calling on his opponents to surrender.

But the boarded vessel was not so peacefully disposed.
She found herself engaged with one she did
not doubt to be a pirate, and though she had been
taken by surprise, she was resolved not to surrender
without disputing every inch of her deck.

The battle now raged, loud and terrible. The
vessels had run in so close to each other, that the
grappling-irons were thrown from amidships of the
Dolphin, and the two drawn close along-side. In
this position, the large guns could not be used at all;
the only available one would have been the long
twenty-four of the buccaneer, but as her commander
and so many of her best men were aboard of the
stranger, it would have been madness to have made
the use of it, which otherwise would have been so
decisive.

The useless state of the cannon soon left the scene
of action unobscured by the heavier clouds of smoke

that had before encompassed it, so that the movements
on board the merchantman could be distinguished
with some precision. The combat was for
the quarter-deck of the vessel. In this contest, Fitzvassal
alternately drove his opponents, and was by
them beaten back again; at one moment the assailants
seemed to have victory on their side, when immediately
fresh vigor appeared to actuate the desperate efforts
of the half-vanquished, and the fortune of the
day, for the time, changed sides. Blood poured from
the scuppers in torrents, and it seemed as if the vessels
were floating on a crimson tide, so ensanguined
were the waters around them. The only use made
of the cannon was to enable the men on both sides to
meet each other the more conveniently arm to arm,
as sitting bestride them, they cut and thrust at each
other furiously. The gunwales of the two vessels
were also lined with men in desperate conflict, each
side endeavoring to make a passage into its antagonist's
vessel, but in vain.

While this was going on, Morgan, who had been
actively engaged repelling those who endeavored to
board the Dolphin, discovered that Fitzvassal was
with his little band in imminent danger. He had met
with a severe repulse, and was on the point of being
surrounded, when, communicating his design to
the first-officer, the word was given, and all those
men who were standing on the Dolphin's gunwale

amidships, suddenly fell back, and at that moment
the long twenty-four was discharged.

The shock was so great that it made a clear passage
on the gunwale of the stranger, when Morgan,
who had formed the plan, instantly calling on all to
follow him who liked, sprang, under cover of the
smoke, on board the enemy, and backed by a dozen
men was along side his commander at the moment
of his utmost need.

“Gallantly done, my friend!” exclaimed Fitzvassal,
“nobly, gallantly done! now then for victory in
earnest!”

On this encouragement, the crew of the Dolphin,
which had been excited almost to madness by the
fiery potion they had taken, resumed the battle with
the more fierce and unrelenting fury. The assailed
began to give way, their number being sensibly diminished.
Hardly men enough remained on board
the buccaneer to load and fire a single cannon, for the
deck of the larger vessel had become the exclusive
scene of action. The decks were strewed with bodies,
some dying and screaming amidst the din and
uproar of battle; others shockingly mangled by the
large shot which had been thrown at the beginning
of the engagement.

Wounded in several places, Fitzvassal conducted
himself worthy of a better cause. On several occasions
he was in imminent peril of his life. Once
while engaged with an athletic man, broad-sword and

broad-sword, he was pressed so hard from behind,
that turning to divide his guard, his foot slipped in
the thick gore, and he fell prostrate on the deck.
The sword of his adversary was already descending
upon his neck, which must have severed his head
from his body, when Morgan, rushing in between,
struck by the deadly aim, and buried his short-sword
in the heart of the gigantic sailor. The man fell
down with a groan right over the prostrate body of
Fitzvassal, whom he almost strangled with the torrent
of his blood.

While in this dreadful situation, Morgan, who
fought by his side manfully, parrying many deadly
thrusts which were aimed at his commander, at last fell
disabled by a pistol-shot, which broke his leg just below
the knee. The man who shot him was in the act of
discharging another pistol at the fallen pilot, when
Fitzvassal, disengaging himself with a powerful effort,
from the bodies which had fallen upon him, sprang
to the assistance of Morgan, and plunged his short,
broad steel to the hilt in his opponent's back. As he
drew out the sword again, the wounded man turned
round, and gazing fora moment on the buccaneer
shrieked out as the blood spouted from his mouth
and nostrils:

“Edward Fitzvassal!—you have murdered your
own father!”

Then raising his hands toward heaven, he fell
backward dead among the slain.

Fitzvassal stood motionless with horror at this announcement,
and had it not been for his friends he
must have been sacrificed in the crowd. He stood
for a while like one suddenly smitten with catalepsy.
Fortunately for him the fight was nearly over. The
officers and the owner of the vessel being slain, despair
seized on the hearts of the sailors and they nearly
to a man ran below, crying and begging for “quarter.”
The flag of the merchantman was hauled
down, and possession at once taken of the vessel.

As Morgan lay helpless among a pile of the dying
and the dead, and had not heard the exclamation of
his foe at the moment he fell before the blade of his
commander, he gazed on the latter with surprise on
seeing him so distempered at the very time he had
reason to rejoice, and reaching forward as well as
he was able, he took hold of Fitzvassal's hand, saying:

“How now, Captain, are you wounded?”

The address of the disabled pilot seemed to restore
animation to the buccaneer, and he inquired:

“Is it you, Morgan?”

“Ay, ay;” replied Morgan, groaning with pain;
“it's me sure enough; but I've got my winter's
wood, howsomever.”

“Morgan!” inquired the commander, pointing to
the lifeless body of Edmund Vassal, “tell me for
heaven's sake! did I kill that man?”

“As sure as I'm Jake Morgan with a broken leg,

you killed him. Why, you ought to know; for you
stuck that skewer of your's between his shoulders,
just as he was about to give me a night-cap for eternity?”

Fitzvassal said nothing more—but he staggered to
the side of the vessel, and leaned on the slippery
gunwale. What thoughts were those that crowded
on him then! As if at the touch of a magician's
wand, the terrible past and the still more terrible present
rose up simultaneously to his mind. He remembered
the curses he had heaped on his parent
at his mother's death-bed—he remembered his oath
of vengeance, he remembered the spectre-scene at
the Spouting-Horn, and last of all he remembered
the warning of Nameoke, and his own stubborn wilfulness
of purpose that would not be guarded nor instructed;
and as he thought of all these, his heart
grew harder than the flint, for he accused heaven of
mocking him, and making him the plaything of destiny.

“Thank God!” he at length exclaimed, starting
from the retrospection in which he had been wrapped,
“thank God, I have done the deed! I swore
to be revenged, and I am revenged. I had the will
to do it, and though I did not know my victim at
the time, he was given to me that I might not tell a
lie!”

“Heave that body overboard, instantly!” said
Fitzvassal, pointing to his slaughtered father—and

the order was immediately obeyed. As it fell into
the water heavily and with a loud plash, the buccaneer
cast his eyes over the gunwale. It had risen
from the short depth to which it had been plunged,
and now lay nearly buried in the waters, the head
turned back, and the unclosed eyes glaring upward
as in the last agony of death.

Fitzvassal shivered with disgust, and sprang
aboard the Dolphin.

“There is one more victim to be sacrificed to thy
shade, unhappy mother!” groaned Fitzvassal, “one
did I say?”

The buccaneer had been thinking of Classon—but
it occurred to him that there might be another sacrifice
required. He called his officer to him, and committing
all things to his charge, under the pretence
of his requiring immediate repose, he consigned himself
to the oblivion he desired.

Alas! there remained no more repose nor oblivion
for the mind of Fitzvassal. “Tired nature's
sweet restorer,” had flown from him forever. It is
true he could force himself to a state when the consciousness
of his relation to the external world was
withdrawn, but so far from its being a state of repose
it was one of exaggerated suffering. His sense of
the sublimely terrible was inconceivably heightened
and his conscientiousness strangely awakened. He
constantly dreamed of hideous black fiends in distorted
human forms, that laughed and hissed at him by

turns—men who could not hurt him, but only scare
him with their threats. He dreamed of his mother,
and she was sitting solitary and in tears, her head
bowed down between her hands, crying, “Edward,
my son! my son!” And when he spoke to her, she
raised her face to look at him, and it was a fleshy
skeleton's, that screamed in his ear “Revenge!” and
then vanished.

The scene would then suddenly change, and he
found himself leaning over the side of his vessel,
looking down into the clear, unfathomable abyss below
him. There were ingots of gold and silver, and
precious stones without number, shining in wonderful
profusion, and as he gazed and longed for it all,
a red mist overspread the dazzling vision, and the
body of his slaughtered father, emerging from the
cloud, rose to the surface of the water, his stony
eyes fixed on his guilty son; and as they gazed upon
him, a voice, unearthly and appalling, shrieked in
his ears “Revenge!” at which he would scream beneath
the oppression of the night-hag, and wake
overwhelmed with dismay.

From such visions, the miserable man was sometimes
a wakened by those who listened to his groans
and heart-rending sighs—and he would come to himself
bathed in the night-dews of agony, and for a long
time refuse again to trust himself to the penalties of
half-oblivion.

Most generally he was haunted in his sleep by the

forms of Seymour and Grace Wilmer—and the vision
of their endearments was more than the bitterness of
death to him. Such was already the abundant fruit
of one crime.

On examining the vessel, it was discovered, to the
great joy of the buccaneers, that she was deeply laden
with gold and silver, which, it was ascertained, had
been taken from the same wreck that supplied the Dolphin.
The vessel was named the Duke of York, and
it was first proposed to take her freight from her and
scuttle her; but when Fitzvassal came to himself, he
decided otherwise, and gave orders to divide the survivors
of the Duke of York and his own crew, which
had been considerably thinned by the contest, between
the two vessels; the command of the prize being unhesitatingly
bestowed on Morgan, for his daring
achievements during the action.

“The time I shirked the stone-jug in a coffin,”
said Morgan on the occasion, “I never dreampt of
commanding a snug buccaneer with three masts and
a cargo of gold. Howsomever, seeing's knowing;
and there's no telling but I may be rear-admiral yet,
since the wind of my luck has shifted.”

But though Morgan was raised to this responsible
office, he was not able to attend to the duties of his
situation for some time, except to transmit orders
from below, where he was confined by his wound;
but it was a source of great comfort to him that it
was now in his power to command the presence of

any one on board his ship, to whom he could spin
his yarns without the danger of their declining the
narrative, or going to sleep during the recital.

After every thing on board the two vessels had
been put in order, the decks washed and holy-stoned,
every trace of the late action carefully removed, and
all necessary repairs completed, Fitzvassal, after
carefully examining every part of both vessels, looked
at Morgan narrowly, as he lay in his berth, and
said:

“I find no wounded men on board—where are
they?”

“Dead men tell no tales!” replied the newly-made
Captain.

“Morgan!” said Fitzvassal, “you are a worse
man than I thought you.”

“And you,” replied the other, “are no better.
Captain, confess to me that you are glad the job is
done! howsomever, we'll say nothing more about it.”

The two vessels were once more on their way to
Boston.