n burst into a laugh, wild as a wild sea-wave.

"Lodge informations! You a law-maker! May I never spin another yarn, but
ye are precious timber! Shiver and blazes! haven't ye with your palaver
and devilry worked harm enou' aboard our ship, but ye want me to be
pickled up, or swing from the yard-arm! No, no, master; I'll keep off
such a lee-shore. I've no objections in life to a--any thing--but ye'r
informations. Ah! ah! ah! what sinnifies a hundred such as that," and he
kicked at the bloody head, "or such as you," pointing to Sir Willmott,
"in comparison to the bold Buccaneer! Look here, master--whatever ye'r
name be--they say the law and the pirates often sail under false
colours; and blow me but I believe it now, when sich as you have to do
with one of 'em. Bah! I'd cry for the figure-head of our ship, if she
had sich a bridegroom."

"You shall not escape me, villain!" exclaimed Sir Willmott, rendered
desperate by his adverse fortunes, and springing towards the
seaman.--"But stay," he added, drawing back, "you," hesitatingly, "you
are honest to your captain: well, there is something you could do for
me, that----" He paused--and the sailor took advantage of the pause to
say,--

"A farewell and foul weather to ye, master! Look, if you could make ye'r
whole head into one great diamond, and lay it at my feet, as that
carrion lies at yours, may I die on a sandbank like a dry herring, if
I'd take it to do one of the dirty jobs ye're for ever plotting!"

Oh, what a degrading thing it is to be scoffed at by our superiors! How
prone we are to resent it when our equals meet us with a sneer! But when
the offscouring of society, the reptiles that we could have trodden
under foot, may rail at and scorn us with impunity, how doubly bitter,
how perfectly insupportable must it be! The very ministers of evil
scouted him, and sin and misery thought him too contemptible to deal
with! Burrell gnashed his teeth and struck his temples with his clenched
fist--the room turned round--the bloody head of Jeromio uplifted itself
to his imaginings, and gibbered, and cursed, and muttered, and laughed
at him in fiendish merriment! If Zillah could have seen Burrell at that
moment, she would have pitied and prayed for him: the strong man
trembled as a weak girl in the shiverings of a mortal fever--his heart
shuddered within his bosom--he lost all power of reasoning, and it was
not until huge drops of perspiration had forced their way along his
bu