“If I do, may I be——­”

“Peace,” said Wilder.  “The black would speak to me.”

Scipio had turned his looks in the direction of his officer, and was making another feeble effort towards extending his hand.  As Wilder placed the member within the grasp of the dying negro, the latter succeeded in laying it on his lips, and then, flourishing with a convulsive movement that herculean arm which he had so lately and so successfully brandished in defence of his master, the limb stiffened and fell, though the eyes still continued their affectionate and glaring gaze on that countenance he had so long loved, and which, in the midst of all his long-endured wrongs, had never refused to meet his look of love in kindness.  A low murmur followed this scene, and then complaints succeeded, in a louder strain, till more than one voice was heard openly muttering its discontent that vengeance should be so long delayed.

“Away with them!” shouted an ill-omened voice from the throng.  “Into the sea with the carcass, and up with the living.”

“Avast!” burst out of the chest of Fid, with an awfulness and depth that stayed even the daring; movements of that lawless moment.  “Who dare to cast a seaman into the brine, with the dying look standing in his lights, and his last words still in his messmate’s ears?  Ha! would ye stopper the fins of a man as ye would pin a lobster’s claw!  That for your fastenings and your lubberly knots together!” The excited topman snapped the lines by which his elbows had been imperfectly secured, while speaking and immediately lashed the body of the black to his own, though his words received no interruption from a process that was executed with all a seaman’s dexterity.  “Where was the man in your lubberly crew that could lay upon a yard with this here black, or haul upon a lee-earing, while he held the weather-line?  Could any one of ye all give up his rations, in order that a sick messmate might fare the better? or work a double tide, to spare the weak arm of a friend?  Show me one who had as little dodge under fire, as a sound mainmast, and I will show you all that is left of his better.  And now sway upon your whip, and thank God that the honest end goes up, while the rogues are suffered to keep their footing for a time.”

“Sway away!” echoed Nightingale, seconding the hoarse sounds of his voice by the winding of his call; “away with them to heaven.”

“Hold!” exclaimed the chaplain, happily arresting the cord before it had yet done its fatal office.  “For His sake, whose mercy may one day be needed by the most hardened of ye all, give but another moment of time!  What mean these words! read I aright?  ‘Ark, of Lynnhaven!’”

“Ay, ay,” said Richard, loosening the rope a little, in order to speak with greater freedom, and transferring the last morsel of the weed from his box to his mouth, as he answered; “seeing you are an apt scholar, no wonder you make it out so easily, though written by a hand that was always better with a marling-spike than a quill.”