Casement felt very uneasy about the boy; he grew more and more uncomfortable at heart, and it was the talk of the ship that the problem of Billy was weighing on the “old man” like a hundredweight of bricks. The whole business preyed upon him unceasingly and he dreaded each passing day that brought the execution ever nearer. Billy kept him sleepless in the steaming nights; Billy faced him like a spectre at his solitary board; Billy’s face blurred the pages of the books and magazines he had laid up for these dreary days in the Solomons. Casement visited his prisoner twice a day, against the better judgment that bade him keep away and try to forget him. He never said much after his first two ineffectual attempts to wrestle with Billy’s stereotyped phrase and to extort further information; but, chewing a cigar, he would stare the black creature out of countenance for ten minutes at a time, with a look of the strongest annoyance and disfavor, as though his patience could not much longer withstand the strain.
The officers were not a whit behind their captain. Billy’s artless ways and boundless good humour had won the whole ward-room to his side; and his grim determination to die, at once bewildered and exasperated every soul on board. The strange spectacle offered of a hundred men at work to persuade their prisoner to recall his damning confession, and on pins and needles to save him from a fate he himself seemed not to fear. The captain as good as told Facey that if the boy would assert his innocence he would scarcely venture to shoot him; and this intelligence Facey handed on to his client, and, incidentally, to the whole ship’s company. Never was a criminal so beset. Every man on board tried in his turn to shake Billy’s obstinacy, and to paint, in no uncertain colours, the dreadful fate the future held in store for him. One and all they retired discomfited, some with curses, others on the verge of tears. They swore at him for a fool; they cajoled him as they would a child; they acted out his last end with all fidelity to detail, even to a firing platoon saying “Bang, bang!” in dreadful unison, while a couple of seamen made Billy roll the deck in agony. The black boy would shudder and wipe his frightened eyes; but his fortitude was unshaken.