ce awakened from its long torpor, and, acting upon his
excited imagination, conjured up a thousand frightful punishments
awaiting him. He writhed, he groaned, he uttered the most frightful
curses, and then, in the same breath shrieked for forgiveness and mercy.
It was perfectly appalling; even his comrades--those who had shared
with him in the dreadful deeds about which he raved--found the scene too
trying for their hardened and blunted feelings; and such of them as had
their hammocks slung in the same dormitory abandoned them and slept in
the open air rather than remain to have their souls harrowed by his
dreadful utterances.

This terrible state of things existed until the afternoon of the
following day--rather more than twenty-four hours after he had received
his injuries--and then the fever subsided, but only to leave the once
powerful man in the last stage of exhaustion. So completely prostrate
was he that he had no power to so much as lift his hand, and he was only
able to speak in the merest whisper. Now was the time when all Lance's
skill was most urgently required. Fagged as he was by his long night of
watching, he tended his patient with the most unremitting assiduity,
administering tonics and stimulants every few minutes; and racking his
brain for devices by which he might help the man to tide over this
period of extreme prostration. But it was all of no avail; the poor
fellow gradually sank into a state of stupor from which all Evelin's
skill was unable to arouse him; and at length, about eight o'clock in
the evening, after a temporary revival during which all the terrors of
death once more assailed him, his guilty soul passed away without
opportunity for repentance; prayers and curses issuing from his lips in
horrible confusion up to the last moment of his existence. His death
was witnessed by several of his companions in crime; and, while some
tried to laugh and scoff away the unwelcome impression which the scene
produced upon their minds, there were others who went into the open air
and wandered away by themselves to ponder upon this miserable ending of
a crime-stained life.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

ALARM AND DISASTER.

Lance's long and fatiguing watch beside the death-bed of the unfortunate
armourer of course delayed to some extent Captain Staunton's reply to
the suggestion which Dickinson had made on behalf of himself and certain
of his comrades. But the skipper had, to save time, discussed th