Chapter 21 - Page 2

Raoul the benefit of a state-room for
his meditations at so awful a moment. His irons, too, had been removed
as useless; though care had been had to take away from the prisoner
everything by which he might attempt his own life. The probability of
his jumping through a port had been discussed between the first and
second lieutenants; but the sentry was admonished to be on his guard
against any such attempt, and little apprehension was felt, Raoul being
so composed and so unlikely to do anything precipitately. Then it would
be easy to pick him up, while the vessel moved so slowly. To own the
truth, too, many would prefer his drowning himself, to seeing him
swinging at a yard-arm.

In this narrow prison, then, Raoul passed the night and morning. It
would be representing him as more stoical than the truth, if we said he
was unmoved. So far from this, his moments were bitter, and his anguish
would have been extreme, were it not for a high resolution which
prompted him to die, as he fancied it, like _un Français_. The numerous
executions by the guillotine had brought fortitude under such
circumstances into a sort of fashion, and there were few who did not
meet death with decorum. With our prisoner, however, it was still
different; for, sustained by a dauntless spirit, he would have faced the
great tyrant of the race, even in his most ruthless mood, with firmness,
if not with disdain. But, to a young man and a lover, the last great
change could not well approach without bringing with it a feeling of
hopelessness that, in the case of Raoul, was unrelieved by any cheering
expectations of the future. He fully believed his doom to be sealed, and
that less on account of his imaginary offence as a spy than on account
of the known and extensive injuries he had done to the English commerce.
Raoul was a good hater; and, according to the fashion of past times,
which we apprehend, in spite of a vast deal of equivocal philanthropy
that now circulates freely from mouth to mouth, and from pen to pen,
will continue to be the fashion of times to come, he heartily disliked
the people with whom he was at war, and consequently was ready to
believe anything to their prejudice that political rivalry might invent;
a frame of mind that led him to think his life would be viewed as a
trifle, when put in the scales against English ascendency or English
profit. He was accustomed to think of the people of Great Britain as a
"nation of shopkeepers," and, while engaged himself in a calling that
bears the brand of rapacity on its very brow, he looked upon his own
pursuit as comparatively martial and honorable; qualities, in sooth, it
was far from being without, as he himself had exercised its functions.
In a word, Raoul