Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/269

 better, and when Gordon looked in his face, on receiving the respite, he saw his fate.

"Mr. Marshal, then there is no hope?" he asked.

"Not the slightest," replied Murray.

There was no lack of effort, however, to save the pirate. Even on the last day of his life, one of his attorneys telegraphed that the Governor of the State had appealed to the President, and asked for a delay for a reply, but Murray explained that an arrangement had been concluded with the President by which no telegram from any source whatever should interfere.

Nor was that all that was done to save him. Threats were made that a rescuing mob to storm the jail would be raised — threats that were really ominous, for that was a day when innocent negroes were hanged to lamp-posts by a'New York mob.

But a guard of eighty marines from the navy-yard filed into the yard of the city prison on the morning of February 21, 1862, and there loaded their muskets with ball cartridges, and fixed their bayonets. And that ended the possibility of mob attacks.

Meantime Gordon had passed the early part of the night in writing letters. At one o'clock in the morning he went to sleep and slept for two hours. On waking he managed to swallow a dose of strychnine he had obtained for the occasion. As it began to work he gnashed his teeth at the guards and shouted,

"I've cheated you! I've cheated you!"

But he was mistaken, for physicians saved him alive and conscious for the gallows. Two or three notes were written by him after his recovery from the poison, and then, just before the noon hour, the Marshal came to the cell and in the usual course read the death