The first use Jensen made of his triumph was to bring over to the island
from the wreck everything that he believed to be needful for the comfort
and adornment of his person and the persons of his following. All the
arms and ammunition that his malign thoughtfulness had provided, all the
fine clothes that he had hidden away, all the store of wines and strong
waters that still remained upon the ship were carefully disembarked and
brought to Early Island. He dressed himself and his followers up in the
smart clothes that we had seen, called himself king of the island, made
his companions take a solemn oath of allegiance to him and sign it with
their blood, and then they all gave themselves up to an orgie.
For, bad as all this was to tell and to listen to, there was still worse
to be told and heard. To treachery and bloodshed were added treachery
and lust. The cup of Jensen's iniquity was more than full. It ran over
and was spilt upon the ground, crying out to Heaven for vengeance.
There were, as you know, women among our colonists--not many, but still
some, the wives of some of the settlers, the daughters and sisters of
others. None of these were hurt when Jensen and his fellow-fiends made
their attack--none of them, unhappily for themselves, were killed. My
cheeks blazed with shame and wrath as I listened to what the parson had
to say, and if Jensen had been before me I would have been rejoiced to
pistol him with my own hand.
The women were parcelled out among the men as the best part of their
booty. There was not a wickeder place on God's earth at that hour than
the island, and its sins, as I thought, should be blotted out by a
thunderbolt from Heaven.
Yet there is something still worse to come, as I take it. In all this
infamy Jensen reserved for himself the privilege of a deeper degree of
infamy. For he told Hatchett, it seems, that he must give up Barbara,
and when Hatchett laughed in his face Jensen shot him dead where he
stood and took her by force. Such was the terror the man inspired that
no one of all his fellows presumed to avenge Hatchett, or even to
protest against the manner of his death. As for the woman, as for
Barbara, she was a strong woman, and she loved Hatchett with all her
heart, and she fought, I believe, hard. But if she was strong, Jensen
was stronger, and merciless. He had everything his own way at the
island; he had his arts of taming people, and the parson told me that he
had tamed Barbara.
I have had to set these wrongs down here for the sake of truth, and to
justify our final deeds against Jensen and his gang. I have set them
down as barely and as briefly as possible, for there are some things so
terrible that they scarcely bear the telling. I cannot be more
particular; the whole bad business was hideous in the extreme, with all
the hideousness that could come from a mind like Jensen's--a mind
begotten of the Bottomless Pit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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