Told by the Death's Head Part 33

Besides, our charts were not accurate, and our compa.s.s full of whims."

"Must have been a feminine compa.s.s!" jocosely remarked his highness.

"To tell the truth, honorable gentlemen, I am not quite certain if the names I have given you are the ones properly belonging to the portions of the globe we visited. The excellent custom which obtains in all civilized regions, of posting the names of places at the street-corners, had not yet reached those remote corners. I can a.s.sure you, however, that we really met all the s.h.i.+ps I have mentioned, as we were forced to beg our way over the limitless ocean."

"Beg your way!" sarcastically interrupted the chair. "It seems to me that fifty determined men, with small arms and a cannon, and a boat as swift as yours might have overtaken almost any other craft afloat."

"We did overtake a good many, your honor, and all of them very willingly shared their provisions with us when they saw we were in distress."

"Do you remember meeting a merchantman from Bremen?"

"Don't I? Don't I remember the generous gentleman! We met him near the Cape of Good Hope. That point of land hasn't got its name for nothing!

It brought 'good hope' back to us! We were in tatters; the stormy weather; long voyage; and many hards.h.i.+ps had reduced our frames to skeletons, our clothing to rags. When the brave man--blessed be his memory!--came up with us, and saw our nakedness, he took off his own coat and gave it to me--may heaven's blessings rest on him wherever he may be!"

"He tells quite a different story," responded the chair. "On his return home, he complained to the Hansa League that a boat load of pirates was sailing the high-seas, plundering, and levying contributions, from all vessels it met. He also related how the pirates had taken all his, as well as his crew's clothing. This must be true; for no Bremen trader has ever been known willingly to give coat of his to anyone. Bremen is not far away. We can summon the complainant--whose name, I believe, is Schulze--and let him tell his story here--"

"May I beg that your honor"--quickly interposed the prisoner--"will at the same time summon the witnesses who will testify for me? They are, the Spanish merchant Don Rodriguez di Saldayeni, from Badajos; the Russian captain, Bello Bratanow Zwonimir Tschinowink, from Kamtschatka; the Italian, Signor Sparafucile Odoards, from Palermo; the Turk, Ali Baba Ben Didimi Effendi, from Brusa; the Chinese mandarin, Chien-Tsen-Triping-Van, from Shanghai; the Greek, Heros Leonidas Karaiskakis, from Tricala; the--"

"Enough! enough!" roared the mayor clapping his hands to his ears. "I don't want to hear another name. Rather will I believe every word you say! You were sea-beggars, impoverished voyagers--anything but pirates! Will your highness permit us to erase also this indictment from the register?" The prince a.s.senting, his honor added: "Now we will hear how the crime of cannibalism will be disposed of."

"I will first take the liberty to remind the honorable gentlemen of the court, that anthropophagy is not at all times considered a capital crime. The inhabitants of the Fiji Islands look upon it as the only proper method to dispose of a captured foe. The eating of human flesh is a part of the religious cult of the Mexicans; and during the Tartar invasion of Hungary, the people--as Rogerius proves--who had been robbed of the necessaries of life, were forced to eat each other.

To such a condition of starvation we were also reduced, a fearful hurricane having compelled us, while on the Pacific ocean, to throw overboard all our stores in order to prevent the boat from sinking--"

"Now you are telling another story," thundered the chair. "You say you were on the Pacific ocean. If it is a _pacific_ ocean how is it possible that such a storm as you describe raged there? You shall be bound to the wheel, if you don't confess at once that hurricanes never rage on the Pacific Ocean."

Your honor is right--my memory served me ill--there are no such storms on the Pacific Ocean. But there are sharks. The voracious beasts surrounded our boat in such numbers that, in order to prevent them from eating us, we gave them all our provisions, hoping to fall in with a kind-hearted captain who would replenish our larder. But we didn't meet a single s.h.i.+p. For two whole weeks we managed to keep alive by eating our boots, and not until the last pair had been devoured, did we decide to resort to the "sailor's lunch," and cast lots which of us should be served up as such.

My name was drawn, and I made up my mind to die calmly--_pro bono publico_. But, when I began to remove my clothes, the Spaniard to whom I had been chained on the "Alcyona," and for whom I entertained the affection of a brother, stepped forward and said:

"You shall not die, brave rajah. You have a wife--nay, two of them, to whom your life is valuable. Here am I--your brother, who will consider it a privilege, an honor--as did the brave Curtius when he galloped into the abyss to save the republic--to fling myself into these hungry throats!"

With these words the n.o.ble fellow drew his sword, severed his head from his body and laid it before us.

"Did you eat any of him?"

"I was starving, your honor."

"That establishes your crime. The punishment for eating a body endowed with a human soul is death at the stake, you--"

"Hold," interposed the prince. "What portion of the Spaniard's body did you consume, prisoner?"

"His foot, your highness."

"Has the human foot a soul?"

"Why, certainly," answered the chair. "How frequently do we hear: 'His sense or his courage are in his knees'--sense and courage cannot exist without a soul. And, don't we say: 'Honest from his crown to his toes'--whereby we establish that even the toes possess a soul.'"

"These are merely phrases--maxims," returned the prince. "If the soul extends to the extremities, then the man who has a foot amputated loses a portion of his soul also; and it might happen, that one-quarter of a human soul would go to paradise, and the other three-quarters to hades--which it is absurd to suppose could be the case. To my thinking this is so important a question, that only the faculty of theology is capable of deciding it. Until those learned gentlemen have delivered an opinion on the subject, we cannot go on with this case. Therefore, the prisoner is remanded to his cell until such decision shall arrive."

A week was the time required by the learned faculty to discuss the questions: "Does the soul extend to the extremities of the human body?"

If not, just where does it terminate?

The decision was as follows:

"The soul extends to the knees--for this reason man is required to kneel when he prays. Consequently, that portion of the human frame below the knees is a soulless appendage."

"Then," decided the prince, when this decision was read to him, "the indictment for cannibalism may also be stricken from the register."

PART X.

UXORICIDE.

CHAPTER I.

THE SECUNDOGENITUR.

Although my crime has been most generously condoned by your highness, I have not escaped punishment for it. I have suffered severely. After partaking of the unnatural food, all in the boat were seized with frightful convulsions, similar to those exhibited by a dog afflicted with rabies.

The smallest particle of the accursed food is sufficient to make a man experience all the tortures of purgatory. I dare say the reason my sufferings were not so severe as those of my comrades, I ate only the foot. They foamed at the lips; their eyeb.a.l.l.s burst from the sockets; they bit each other, and rent and tore their own flesh. They bellowed, roared, and whined, as dogs do at the moon. Many of them sprang at once into the water and were devoured by sharks.

When my worst torture pa.s.sed, my limbs became cold and rigid as stone; it was the marasmus. I could see, and hear, but I could neither feel nor move. The fierce sun beating on my face threatened to burn out my eyes, but I could not lift my hands to cover them. To seize the horizon and draw it up to the zenith would have been an easier task than to close my eyelids over the burning eyeb.a.l.l.s.

Yet, amid all this horrible pain, I had the feeling as if a faint zephyr from fluttering wings were sweeping across my cheek. It was the white dove perched on my shoulder, my beautiful white dove, who was come to me again in my hour of direst need! She tried with her outstretched wings to s.h.i.+eld my face from the scorching sun, and the blessed shadow brought such relief that I was at last able to close my eyes in sleep.

How long and whither the dismasted and rudderless boat drifted; whether it touched any sh.o.r.e--I cannot remember. I don't know what happened during my madness.

My comrades in misfortune were lost; some drowned themselves to end their agony; some died a horrible death in the boat. I alone was saved by a heavenly providence for further trials. The drifting boat was found by an Indian merchantman bound for Antwerp, and the n.o.ble Christians aboard of her, believing life not yet extinct in my miserable body, worked over me until they brought back the soul to its earthly tenement.

I forgive every enemy I have in the world; but my benefactor on that Indian merchantman, who brought me back to life, I never can forgive.

Had he cast me into the waves instead of resuscitating me, I should now be ambergris, for, as the honorable gentlemen know, that valuable substance develops in the stomach of a shark, and I should have been devoured by one of those voracious beasts. Instead of a wretched criminal on trial for his many misdeeds, I should now, had I been allowed to become ambergris, be swinging in a censer perfuming the altar of a church. The care I received on board the Indiaman fully restored my strength, and when we arrived in the harbor in Holland there was no trace about me of the many hards.h.i.+ps I had endured.

I could hardly wait until I got back to Nimeguen to see my dear wife and child. The child would be running about now--perhaps the mother had taught it to call me by name!

How happy I should be to be home again!--no captain, no rajah, but a father.

Not the consort of a Begum, but the husband of my wife. I blessed the fate which had delivered me from the land of lions, tigers and serpents. Had not I a tulip garden worth all the wealth of India?

I turned night to day in order to reach home as quickly as possible, and sent mounted estafets in advance to announce my coming. My wife, who had increased in weight fully twenty-five pounds, had a splendid repast prepared for me; and flung her arms around my neck when I alighted from the carriage.

After our first transports of joy were over, my first words were: