We should do injustice to Cuffe, if we did not say that he had some
feeling in favor of the gallant foe who had so often foiled him. Could
he have had his will at that moment, he would have given Raoul his
lugger, allowed the latter a sufficient start, and then gladly have
commenced a chase round the Mediterranean, to settle all questions
between them. But it was too much to give up the lugger as well as the
prisoner. Then his oath as a judge had its obligations also, and he felt
himself bound to yield to the arguments of the Judge Advocate, who was a
man of technicalities, and thought no more of sentiment than
Lyon himself.
The result of the deliberation, which lasted an hour, was a finding
against the prisoner. The court was opened, the record made up and read,
the offender introduced, and the judgment delivered. The finding was,
"that Raoul Yvard had been caught in disguise, in the midst of the
allied fleets, and that he was guilty as a spy." The sentence was, to
suffer death the succeeding day by hanging at the yard-arm of such ship
as the commander-in-chief might select, on approving of the sentence.
As Raoul expected little else, he heard his doom with steadiness, bowing
with dignity and courtesy to the court, as he was led away to be placed
in irons, as befitted one condemned.
CHAPTER XIX.
"The world's all title-page; there's no contents;
The world's all face; the man who shows his heart,
Is hooted for his nudities, and scorned."
_Night Thoughts_
Bolt had not been tried. His case had several serious difficulties, and
the orders allowed of a discretion. The punishment could scarcely be
less than death, and, in addition to the loss of a stout, sinewy man, it
involved questions of natural right, that were not always pleasant to be
considered. Although the impressment of American seamen into the British
ships of war was probably one of the most serious moral as well as
political wrongs that one independent nation ever received at the hands
of another, viewed as a practice of a generation's continuance it was
not wholly without some relieving points. There was a portion of the
British marine that disdained to practise it at all; leaving it to the
coarser spirits of the profession to discharge a duty that they
themselves found repugnant to their feelings and their habits. Thus, we
remember to have heard an American seaman say, one who had been present
on many occasions when his countrymen were torn from under their flag,
that in no instance he ever witnessed was the officer who committed the
wrong of an air and manner that he should describe as belonging to the
class of gentlemen on shore. Whenever one of the latter boarded his
vessel, the crew was permitted to pass unquestioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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