In the mean time, let us turn for a moment to the bedside of Captain Robert Bramble, for it is long past midnight, and, weary in mind and body, he had retired to that rest which he most certainly needed.  But sleep is hardly repose to the guilty, and he was trebly so.  Phantoms of all imaginable shapes flitted across his brain, pictures of suffering, of misery and of danger, to all of which he seemed to be exposed, and from which he had no power to flee.  Alas, how fearful the shadows that haunt a bad man’s pillow.  He writhed like one in physical pain, tossed from side to side, while the cold perspiration stood in big drops upon his brow and temples.

Now his dreams carry him back, far back a score of years, to his childhood at Bramble Park, when all was innocence, and then, with leaping strides, he finds himself, years after, even as to-day, bearing deadly witness against his brother.  His dead father seems standing by his bedside, pointing at him a warning finger, and sadly chiding his fearful want of feeling.  He tosses and turns and writhes again, then leaping from the uneasy bed, looks bewildered around, and half grows alarmed.  Quickly he wraps a dressing-gown about him, and hastily walks back and forth to still the agony of feeling and the bitter phantoms of his dreams.  How haggard and wild he looks by that dim candle-light.

Once more he throws himself upon his bed, and, after a while, is again asleep, if such unconsciousness can be called sleep.  Again he tosses, and turns, and sighs like one in a nightmare until at last, towards the breaking of day, the quick, startling breathing ceases, and subsides into a regular and equal respiration, and he lies still.  Nature overcomes all else, and he now sleeps, indeed, but not until he has passed through a fearful purgatory of dreams, all too real, too trying.—­His brother, with soon the prospect of a disgraceful death on the gallows, had not suffered thus.  No, he was repentant for the wrong he had done, and had already resolved to completely reform if the opportunity were offered to him; but Robert Bramble was outraging the laws of nature and of God.

CHAPTER XV.

The escape.

Charles Bramble found himself playing a dangerous part.  It was true that Leonard Hust had freed his hands from those shackles that had confined them so long, and had pointed out to him the way to retreat and escape; but he must run the gauntlet of dangers in order to do so.  This, however, he was prepared to do; as to fear, it was a sensation he knew not; but prudence was much more requisite in this instance than any especial degree of courage.  As is always the case on board a man-of-war, especially when lying in port, where the escape to the shore is easy, sentinels were placed at stem, stern and waist of the English ship, at all hours, pacing their allotted round of the deck, and keeping watchful guard over every avenue of exit from the vessel.