of him whom he had so strangely assailed. During the evening there was a hot and noisy altercation forward as to whether or not the dog had capsized the boy overboard in anger or boisterous sport. Some, among whom the Portingallo was most vehement, swore with oaths and curses that it was so. Two or three declared that the dog had been shut up aft in the sail-room a full hour before they last saw the missing lad busy with his fishing lines close to the open porthole of a culverin. As for Zanga, he spoke to none, answered none, and none cared to question his grief. Have any of you ever chanced to see a negro’s face turn ashen pale—all the villanous ink of his complexion precipitated from the dry parchment of his skin by the deep inward chemistry of an agonising breast? That night, about eight bells, being toward the end of the Portingallo’s watch on deck, a cry from the still surface of the ocean but a little way off, which seemed to vibrate through the ship’s timbers, roused us from sleep.
We tumbled up from our hammocks and looked anxiously around. Scarce a stone’s throw distant, on the starboard side, in the very track of the moonlight, we saw the jollyboat adrift, and in it the gigantic figure of the negro stooping over something which lay prostrate at his feet. It was the Portingallo, naked to the waist, gagged and bound hand and foot. As we gazed, the negro attached a second rope to one of those by which the Portingallo was already fastened. In the thrilling light of the moonbeams every detail shone distinct and clear as in the picture of a martyrdom lighted by a thousand tapers at high mass. (Crosses himself.) We shuddered as we saw the negro make this rope well fast, while the Portingallo lay writhing in the boat before him. We saw his white teeth glisten again as he grinned in his revenge, and the metallic shine of agony on the Portingallo’s face, and the sweat pouring down him, and the wrinkled anguish of his brow, and the bristling of his hair in the extremity of his terror; and then, last of all, we heard the gentle plashing of the water as the boat swayed with their movement, and the fretting of the rope, and each touch of their naked limbs, and the gurgle in the victim’s throat, and the breathing of the avenger and the doomed.
