Morley Ashton; A Story of the Sea

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...that solitude so impossible to find on board ship, he ascended into the fore-rigging, and sat there, amid a whirl, a chaos of thought, endeavouring to consider his prospects and position noiv! Could he have been mistaken? Impossible! The likeness had been too deeply impressed upon his memory since that awful night at Acton Chine; so he needed not to go between decks again, and, moreover, he dared not, lest Morley should awake and recognise him. How came he to escape death at the Chine? How to be sailing on the sea, and hereabout too? thought Hawkshaw. Oh, strange, and most accursed fatality! But for me, perhaps, we might have passed that piece of wreck--passed it unseen by all on board; but Fate is retributive; I was the first to descry, the first to be anxious to visit it. For a moment, but a moment only, there came into his soul a gleam of joy, with the conviction that he was not, as he had so long remorsefully considered himself, the destroyer of a fellow-creature. His victim--Heaven alone knew how!--had escaped, and was here alive and safe on board the Hermione. The ever-present idea of crime, with the word that had seemed ever before his eyes, on his lips, and in his heart--that shone in his dreams like those letters of flame that flashed on the vision of Belshazzar, could be a terror to him no longer. The proverbs, that Murder will out; that God's retribution will fall upon a murderer; the law, that Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, would haunt him no more, --for this crime at least. Such were his ideas for a moment; but the next, cold, selfish fear resumed its sway, and reason showed him that he was yet an assassin by intent--one whom his intended victim would expos...