"I'm blessed if she haint--ay, ay, she's gone sure enough now--weighed anchor and cleared off, and left old Bill alone. Split my wig if I b'aint sorry--she did peach once--but never heed, she loved him more than he deserved! She is gone now, rest her soul, and her faults. Gad, if old Don Ramond seed her now--it were hard lines for her. I guess she mout have sailed over broad lands t'other side o' the Atlantic, heir to many a league, but all's up now. Consarn me if I don't care for your bit child,--God rest you, Tony, you are in port now." With these words the old smuggler and pirate walked off to see about her interment. "It is strange," he said to himself, "ever since she seed the Captain she has drooped; she was a fine creature, I'm blessed if she warn't! If I thought--but no, bad as he is he couldn't hardly! If he had though, he'd better see hisself well away--he'd better give a wide berth to old Bill Stacy--the world warn't sea room enough, but I'd overhaul the devil, wi' his black heart." CHAPTER VI. "He knew himself detested, but he knew The hearts that loathed him, crouched and dreaded too. Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt From all affection and from all contempt: His name could sadden, and his acts surprise; But they that feared him dared not to despise." _The Corsair._ From his earliest years the Captain had given evidence of those evil desires and bold licentious passions which his manlier years had fully developed. "The child is father to the man," is one of the truest proverbs, and in John de Vere's case its truth was wonderfully exemplified. The petulance of childhood had strengthened into ungovernable passion; the desire for self-gratification had swelled into unrestrained pleasure-seeking, combined with great selfishness, which cared not how it injured another, provided it gratified its own wishes. Every other childish failing had grown into enormities of vice, even as the letting out of water, small as the stream may at first seem, increases into the turbulent and maddened torrent that carries everything before its headlong current. From a child he had evinced that cruelty of disposition which, though at first it only exercised itself on the meaner creatures, whose tortures gave the young Domitian pleasure, now that childish days were gone, the same increased to a fearful extent on his fellow creatures. He who as a child shuddered not at the sufferings of a fly, a bird, or even a cat baited by dogs, now shuddered not at the death of a man by sword or bullet, or the sufferings of a woman carried off to gratify his friend, and perhaps got rid of with the same amount of feeling with which he would kick a dog from his door, or slaughter the hound that had ceased to earn his compassion. When as a boy John de Vere amused himself at his home, bird-nesting, cat-baiting, rat-hunting, even cock fights, were a great pleasure.