oduced.
And, as it did so, the present world and all its concerns, its petty
aspirations, ambitions, hopes, and strivings, dwindled away into the
most contemptible insignificance; his mental vision cleared; he saw how
full had been his life of great and noble possibilities--as are the
lives of all of us, would we but allow ourselves to see that it is so--
and he saw, too, how completely he had missed his mark; how very far his
own evil passions had led him astray from the narrow and seldom-trodden
path which, faithfully followed, leads to that highest possible
attainment of humanity--True Goodness.

Ah! how bitterly he repented him then of all his lost, or rather his
cast-away, opportunities. From his earliest youth he had chosen to
follow evil rather than good; he had turned persistently away from the
right; and now there was neither time nor opportunity left him for
reparation. The utter blankness and uselessness of his life stood
revealed to him as one long, unbroken, unanswerable accusation; and, in
his mad despair, he suddenly dashed aside the two men who held him in
their custody, sprang with a single bound to the rail, and, placing his
hands upon the top of the topgallant-bulwark, vaulted clear over it
before a single hand could be outstretched to restrain him, and with a
yell which evermore rang in the ears of those who heard it, threw up his
hands and vanished for ever into the dark and terrible depths of his
ocean-grave.

The little crowd of spectators stood for a few moments silent and almost
stupefied at this sudden and tragic disappearance of the second mate
from their midst. The occurrence was so totally unexpected that it in a
measure sobered the mutineers, who regarded each other with some such
expression as that of a group of school-boys terrified at the sudden
occurrence of some disaster, the result of their own mischievous acts,
and each anxious to shift the blame and responsibility from his own
shoulders to those of the others.

The first to recover his self-possession was Rogers, who exclaimed with
an obviously forced laugh--

"Well, curse me if that ain't a good un! What, in the name of all
that's foolish, made the man do that? He might ha' _knowed_ as we was
only goin' to frighten him a bit. You'll bear me out, shipmates, that
we was all agreed to go no further than the frightenin' of him a bit,
and meant to let him off arter we'd made fast the rope, and let him
stand with it round his