‘I could tell a story Would rouse thy lion-heart out of its den, And make it rage with terrifying fury.’
‘Thomas Garth, sir,’ responded a convict, standing near the prisoner who had broken out.
The doctor stared for a while in the direction of the man as though waiting to see if this extraordinary offence of interruption would be repeated. The convict was clear within my view; he was the tall, dark, handsome man whom I supposed, and, indeed, rightly supposed, to be the tragedian that one of the soldiers had told me was amongst the prisoners. After an interval of two or three minutes, all remaining quiet, the doctor resumed; but scarcely had he pronounced a dozen words when I saw the actor throw up his right arm, and, whilst he brandished his left fist, making the strangest, maddest faces in doing so--and at this moment I see the lunatic fire in his eyes as he rolled them along the line of us who stood at the break of the poop--he burst out:
‘Oh, dismal! ’Tis not to be borne! Ye moralists! Ye talkers! What are all your precepts now? Patience! Distraction! Blast the tyrant, blast him! Avenging lightnings, snatch him hence, ye fiends! Nature can bear no more.’
‘Seize that man!’ roared the doctor, who seemed instantly to understand what had come to the unhappy wretch.
But a man who goes on a sudden raving-mad is not very easily seized. This convict was immensely strong; his chest, bulk, and stature were assurance of that. All in a moment half a dozen prisoners were rolling upon the deck, beaten down by the madman’s fists and elbows as though they had been children. With agility that might be possible only to such madness as was in him, the man sprang, grasped the top of the barricade, and with a kick of his feet vaulted into the gangway between. He ran a few yards forward, sprang upon a scuttle-butt and gained the bulwarks, on which he stood erect, holding by nothing, swaying his fine figure with the movements of the ship, laughing the shocking laughter of madness and shaking his clenched fists at the poop.
‘Seize him!’ shrieked the doctor, nearly throwing me as he rushed to the poop-ladder.
‘Come down!’ roared the sentry on the forecastle, and the bayonet flashed as he swept his piece from his shoulder to level it.