om the yardarm, and
make an end of it," said Halkett, roughly.

"Not I, faith! He shall live; and, if I can have my will, a long life
too. His own government would take charge of him at 'Irkutsk,' for that
matter, at the quicksilver mines; and they say the diseased bones, from
the absorption of that poison, is a terrible punishment. But I have a
better notion still. Do you remember that low island off the east shore
of the Niger, where the negro fellows live in log huts, threshing the
water all day to keep the caymans from the rice-grounds?"

"The devil!" exclaimed Halkett; "you'll not put him there?"

"I have thought of it very often," said Sir Dudley, calmly. "He 'd
see his doom before him every day, and dream of it each night too. One
cannot easily forget that horrid swamp, alive and moving with those
reptiles! It was nigh two months ere I could fall asleep at night
without starting up in terror at the thought of them." Sir Dudley arose
as he said this, and walked the cabin with impatient steps; sometimes as
he passed his arm would graze the curtain and shake its folds, and then
my heart leaped to my mouth in very terror. At last, with an effort that
I felt as the last chance of life, I secured the papers in my bosom,
and, standing up on the seat, crept through the window, and, after a
second's delay to adjust the rope, clambered up the side, and gained
the deck unobserved. It could not have been real fatigue, for there
was little or no exertion in the feat; but yet such was my state of
exhaustion that I crept over to the boat that was fastened midships,
and, lying down in her, on a coil of cable, slept soundly till morning.
If my boyish experiences had familiarized my mind with schemes of
vengeance as terrible as ever fiction fabricated, I had yet to learn
that "gentlemen" cherished such feelings; and I own the discovery
gave me a tremendous shock. That some awful debt of injury was on Sir
Dudley's mind was clear enough, and that I was to be, in some capacity
or other, an aid to him in acquitting it, was a fact I was more
convinced of than pleased at. Neither did I fancy his notions of summary
justice,--perhaps it was my legal education had prejudiced me in favor
of more formal proceedings; but I saw with a most constitutional horror
the function of justice, jury, and executioner in the hands of one
single individual.

So impressed was I with these thoughts that had I not been on the high
seas, I should inevitab