as
ascending, his life would in all probability have been the sacrifice;
but once upon the deck of his own ship, he was indeed a sea-king! For an
instant he stood proudly before Jeromio; then, presenting his pistol to
the head of the Italian, who trembled violently, he said as calmly as
if he were in the midst of friends,--

"One moment's prayer; and thus I punish traitors----"

There was a breathless silence; one might have heard a pin drop upon the
deck; the very air seemed to listen within the furled sails. Jeromio's
pistol fell from his grasp; he clasped his hands in agony, and falling
before the Buccaneer, upon his knees, uttered a brief prayer, for well
he knew that Dalton never recalled a doom, and he felt that all had been
discovered! In another instant a flash passed along the ship, and danced
in garish light over the quiet sea! The bullet shattered a brain ever
ready to plot, but never powerful to execute. With unmoved aspect Dalton
replaced the weapon, and planting his foot upon the prostrate dead, drew
another from his belt. Springall was still by his side, ready to live or
die with his commander.

"Come on! come on!" said Dalton, after surveying the small and trembling
band of mutineers, as a lion of the Afric deserts gazes upon a herd of
hounds by whom he is beset. "Come on!" and the sentence sounded like the
tolling of a death-bell over the waters, so firmly yet solemnly was it
pronounced, as if the hearts of a thousand men were in it. "Come on! Are
ye afraid? We are but two. Or are ye still men; and do ye think upon the
time when I led ye on to victory, when I divided the spoil of many lands
among ye? Ye are friends--countrymen of this--that was a man; yet if ye
will, ye shall judge between us. Did I deserve this treachery at his
hands? Can one of ye accuse me of injustice?"

A loud, a reiterated "No," answered this appeal, and the mutineers
rushed forward, not to seize on, but to lay down their weapons at the
feet of their captain.

"Take up your arms," said Dalton, after casting his eye over them, and
perceiving at a single glance that they had truly delivered them all.
"Take up your arms: ye were only beguiled; ye are too true to be really
treacherous."

This most wise compliment operated as oil on the tumultuous sea: the
ship-mob fancied they were acting according to the dictates of reason,
when they were really under the influence of fear, and then they aroused
the tranquillity of the night,