The earnestness and nature with which Raoul spoke were not without effect.  Could Sir Frederick have had his way, the prisoner would have been acquitted on the spot.  But Lyon was skeptical as to the story of love, a sentiment about which he knew very little; and there was a spirit of opposition in him, too, that generally induced him to take the converse of most propositions that were started.  The prisoner was dismissed, and the court closed its doors, to make up its decision by itself, in the usual form.

We should do injustice to Cuffe, if we did not say that he had some feeling in favor of the gallant foe who had so often foiled him.  Could he have had his will at that moment, he would have given Raoul his lugger, allowed the latter a sufficient start, and then gladly have commenced a chase round the Mediterranean, to settle all questions between them.  But it was too much to give up the lugger as well as the prisoner.  Then his oath as a judge had its obligations also, and he felt himself bound to yield to the arguments of the Judge Advocate, who was a man of technicalities, and thought no more of sentiment than Lyon himself.

The result of the deliberation, which lasted an hour, was a finding against the prisoner.  The court was opened, the record made up and read, the offender introduced, and the judgment delivered.  The finding was, “that Raoul Yvard had been caught in disguise, in the midst of the allied fleets, and that he was guilty as a spy.”  The sentence was, to suffer death the succeeding day by hanging at the yard-arm of such ship as the commander-in-chief might select, on approving of the sentence.

As Raoul expected little else, he heard his doom with steadiness, bowing with dignity and courtesy to the court, as he was led away to be placed in irons, as befitted one condemned.

CHAPTER XIX.

     “The world’s all title-page; there’s no contents;
     The world’s all face; the man who shows his heart,
     Is hooted for his nudities, and scorned.”

     Night Thoughts

Bolt had not been tried.  His case had several serious difficulties, and the orders allowed of a discretion.  The punishment could scarcely be less than death, and, in addition to the loss of a stout, sinewy man, it involved questions of natural right, that were not always pleasant to be considered.  Although the impressment of American seamen into the British ships of war was probably one of the most serious moral as well as political wrongs that one independent nation ever received at the hands of another, viewed as a practice of a generation’s continuance it was not wholly without some relieving points.  There was a portion of the British marine that disdained to practise it at all; leaving it to the coarser spirits of the profession to discharge a duty that they themselves found repugnant to their feelings and their habits.  Thus, we remember to have heard an American seaman say, one who had been present on many occasions when his countrymen were torn from under their flag, that in no instance he ever witnessed was the officer who committed the wrong of an air and manner that he should describe as belonging to the class of gentlemen on shore.  Whenever one of the latter boarded his vessel, the crew was permitted to pass unquestioned.