Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

52 страница из 122

By the time we had arrived at that part of the beach where lay the boat—a large cutter, watched by a couple of seamen armed with cutlasses and pistols—my mind had in some measure calmed down. The degradation of being collared and man-handled was indeed maddening and heart-subduing; but then I was beginning to think this—that first of all it was very probable I must have lost my ship, press-gang or no press-gang, seeing that I could not get a boat to put me aboard her; next, that my being kidnaped, as I call it, would find me such a reason for my absence as Captain Spalding and the owners of the vessel must certainly allow to be unanswerable. Then, again, I was perfectly sure of being released and sent ashore when I had represented my condition to the captain or lieutenant of the frigate; and I might also calculate upon old Tom Martin communicating with my uncle, who would, early in the day, come off to the frigate and confirm my story.

These reflections, I say, calmed me considerably, though my mind continued very much troubled and all awork within me, for I could not forget the horrible picture of the gibbet and the prodigious flash of fire which had delivered the dead hanging son to his wretched mother; and I was likewise much haunted and worried by the thought of the poor woman sitting upon the sand under the gibbet, fondling the loathsome body and whispering to it, and often looking over the billowy waste of glimmering sand, that would now be whitened by the moon, in the direction I had taken, expecting, perhaps, that I should return or send some human soul to help her bury the corpse, that it might not be hooked up again.