Sambo now produced a heavy iron chain, with which the boat was speedily fastened to the ring.  It was secured with a large padlock, the key of which Ole placed in his pocket.

This being satisfactorily accomplished, they returned to the place of ambush.

“Now, Mister Gascoyne,” observed Thorwald, with a grim smile, as he sat down beside his men and pulled out his watch, “I will await your pleasure.  It is just half-past eleven; if you are a punctual man, as Jo Bumpus led me to believe, I will try your metal in half an hour, and have you back in your cage before one o’clock!  What say you to that, Sambo?”

The faithful native opened his huge mouth wide, and shut his eyes, thereby indicating that he laughed; but he said nothing, bad, good, or indifferent, to his master’s facetious observation.  The other natives also grinned, in a quiet but particularly knowing manner, after which the whole party relapsed into profound silence, and kept their midnight watch with exemplary patience and eager expectation.

At this same hour the pirate captain was seated in his cell on the edge of the low bedstead, with his elbows resting on his knees and his face buried in his hands.

The cell was profoundly dark,—­so dark that the figure of the prisoner could scarcely be distinguished.

Gascoyne did not move for many minutes; but once or twice a deep sigh escaped him, showing that, although his body was at rest, his thoughts were busy.  At last he moved, and clasped his hands together violently, as if under a strong impulse.  In doing so, the clank of his chains echoed harshly through the cell.  This seemed to change the current of his thoughts; for he again covered his face with both hands, and began to mutter to himself.

“Aye,” said he, “it has come at last.  How often I have dreamed of this when I was free and roaming over the wide ocean!  I would say that I have been a fool did I not feel that I have more cause to bow my head and confess that I am a sinner.  Ah, what a thing pride is!  How little do men know what it has cost me to humble myself before them as I have done! yet I feel no shame in confessing it here, where I am all alone.  Alone?—­am I alone?”

For a long time Gascoyne sat in deep silence, as if he were following out the train of thought which had been suggested by the last words.  Presently his ideas again found vent in muttered speech.

“In my pride I have said that there is no God.  I don’t think I ever believed that; but I tried to believe it, for I knew that my deeds were evil.  Surely my own words will condemn me; for I have said that I think myself a fool, and does not the Bible say that ’the fool hath said in his heart there is no God?’ Aye, I remember it well.  The words were printed in my brain when I learned the Psalms of David at my mother’s knee, long, long ago.  My mother! what bitter years have passed since that day!  How little did ye dream, mother, that your child would come to this!  God help me!”