Fair play : $b a novelSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
Fair play : $b a novel
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
American fiction -- 19th century
He left him and went to one of the caverns where articles rescued from
the wreck were kept, and looked up a set of fetters, consisting of
handcuffs and anklets, such as are often kept on board East Indiamen for
the restraint of a possible mutineer or other criminal. He had brought
them off the wreck, not with the most distant idea that he should ever
be obliged to put them to their legitimate use, but for the same reason
that he saved every portable piece of iron that he could find—namely,
because he knew that it would be valuable on their desert island, where
they might remain for years, or for life, cut off from all supplies from
without.
Having found the fetters, he returned to the grotto, and, stooping down,
fastened them upon the wrists and ankles of the sleeping pirate.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CAGED TIGER.
When Captain Spear awoke his rage knew no bounds, but Justin firmly made
him acquainted with the state of affairs, whereupon the captain became
sulky and refused to take any food, saying that he preferred to die and
that his death would be laid at the door of Justin, who would meet his
due reward when his crime was discovered.
Next morning he had so far relented as to drink a cup of Judy’s tea,
given with reluctance by the Irishwoman, who vowed that hanging was too
good for him.
In the course of a few days he came sulkily out of his cavern and crept
about through the groves and by the streams, or along the seashore of
the beautiful island. He had a limited use of his fettered limbs—enough
to help himself in all absolute personal needs; for instance, he could
walk slowly, wash his face, or feed himself; but he could not inflict
the slightest injury upon either of the women, if he happened to meet
them together or singly in his rambles about the island.
Whenever he met Judith, she mocked him.
When he met Miss Conyers, she returned his greeting kindly. If the arch
enemy of God and man had been their prisoner she could not have treated
him unkindly.
Justin always used him humanely, and encouraged his companions in exile
to do likewise.
“The man has forfeited his life by every law of every civilized land!
but we are not warranted to become his executioners. We have only to
deprive him of the power of committing more crime, and then to treat him
with Christian charity,” he argued.
Justin Rosenthal was now a very busy man. In the two years that he and
his friends had spent upon the island he had made what progress was
possible in “making the wilderness to bloom and blossom as the rose.”
The first few months had been spent in the stupendous labor of getting
the stores, the animals and the furniture from the wreck over the long,
rugged, almost impassable reef of rocks to the island.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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