But, merciful Heaven! what an
object met our eyes! Drawing aside the curtain that concealed a sofa
fitted into a recess, there lay, more dead than alive, a tall and most
beautiful girl, her head resting on her arm, her clothes disordered and
torn, blood on her bosom, and foam on her mouth, with her long dark
hair loose and dishevelled, and covering the upper part of her deadly
pale face, through which her wild sparkling black eyes, protruding from
their sockets, glanced and glared with the fire of a maniac's, while
her blue lips kept gibbering an incoherent prayer one moment, and the
next imploring mercy, as if she had still been in the hands of those
who knew not the name; and anon, a low hysterical laugh made our very
blood freeze in our bosoms, which soon ended in a long dismal yell, as
she rolled off the couch upon the hard deck, and lay in a dead faint.
Alas the day!--a maniac she was from that hour. She was the only
daughter of the murdered master of the ship, and never awoke, in her
unclouded reason, to the fearful consciousness of her own dishonour and
her parent's death.
The _Torch_ captured the schooner, and we left the privateer's men at
Barbadoes to meet their reward, and several of the merchant sailors
were turned over to the guardship, to prove the facts in the first
instance, and to serve his Majesty as impressed men in the second,--but
scrimp measure of justice to the poor ship's crew.
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