That's the very moral on't.
_Nym_.
The gale continued blowing all that night, all the next day, and for two
or three days following. The injured condition of the ship made it
unsafe for her to contend against the force of so strong a wind; and she
was, therefore, kept directly before it. While the _Duchess_ was thus
running before the wind, two of the wounded pirates and three of the
wounded of the ship's crew died, and were committed to the deep. The
man whose arm had been broken by Ada's pistol-shot, and the other two of
the wounded men belonging to the ship's company, recovered before the
arrival of the vessel in port.
A consultation was held in Mr Durocher's state-room, on the day after
the fight, between Mr Durocher himself, Captain Johnson, and John Coe,
to which Billy Bowsprit was also admitted, and in which it was
determined that as soon as the gale should abate, the ship should be
steered for the nearest port in the United States. This determination
was formed, that the ship might receive the necessary repairs, and that
the captured pirates might be surrendered to the Government whose
citizens they were.
On the fourth day after the fight the wind from the west had so abated
that the course of the ship was changed, and she was headed towards the
west. On the fifth day a fresh wind from the north arose; and, impelled
by it, the _Duchess_ made good progress for the American coast.
Meanwhile, the gallant young Marylander had become intimately acquainted
with Mr Durocher and his daughter. He told to them the singular
history of his connection with the pirates, of which Ada had already
given them some particulars. The warm-hearted old French gentleman
became much attached to the brave fellow, upon whom he could not look,
he said, without remembering the awful horror from which he had
delivered his daughter and himself. Besides, he esteemed him as an
impersonation of courage and genius, because, in circumstances in which,
according to ordinary apprehension, it seemed impossible to avoid being
forced to the commission of crime, he had not only overcome his enemies,
saving the penitent, and destroying the hopelessly guilty, but had also
escaped from all the difficulties which had surrounded him, with his own
hands unstained by human blood.
The fair and gentle Louise, too, was not insensible to the merits of her
deliverer; her fervid feelings recognised in him a personification of
the knights of old; and, with the spirit of self-sacrifice which greatly
influences the tender and amiable of her sex, she longed to devote the
services of her life to him in requital for her salvation from a
horrible doom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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