Beadle's Dime Novels, No. 11 — page 117: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE DEVIL! THE DEVIL! 115 “No, no—but stop—I see the crown of your head—yes, yes, the shaven head, and the rosary, and the robe ;” and here began a confession, now and then coherent—at times too shocking ‘for human hearing, but still the shrinking girl lis- tened in the strange silence that was not silence, for the waves, as they washed up, answered the sick man’s moan. At last he came to his later life. “Father,” he said, “listen. I wanted . the girl, and I was promised a fabulous sum if I secured her to the old general, her uncle. But I was cunning,” he added, in a tone of triumph; “I made them pledge the money to me, and, after all my planning and theirs, I meant to marry her myself, and secure the fortune. Half should have gone to the church, holy father, so I should be absolved. I put her on the vessel, I carried her to Cuba, and there the fiends got me. See!” he cried, for the confession had gone from his mind, and his raving grew so fearful that Minerva was obliged to waken both the steward and the captain. Their tardy steps were, however, too late; the state-room was empty, and the black nurse sat crouched up in a heap, her eyes glittering with terror while she cried, “O captain! the devil! the devil !” The man at the wheel averred that something, either man or ghost, came up the cabin-stairs and’ flung itself over the ship’s side. In an instant every measure was taken, every effort made to recover the ill-fated Cuban—the tool of worse men than himself—but all in vain; the miserable man had gone to the bottom in the midst of his iniquity, with all his sins on his head. < comicbooks.conm