And what said Victor Frankenstein, who has told us, through Walton, that he knew the truth, a truth that made her innocent?
… when I perceived that the popular voice and the countenances of the judges had already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in agony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forgo their hold.
What the accused might have thought about their relative degrees of suffering is not recorded.
It then appears that Justine, like Joan of Arc, under great pressure from her confessor once she had been convicted and sentenced to death, did confess at last. But like the papists' Maid, Justine recanted her confession a few hours later. In Justine's case the recantation, the renewed protest of innocence, came very shortly before her death.
Victor, in Walton's papers, reports that he did at last, after the verdict was in, attempt to argue with the judges. Not, however, that he went so far as to reveal then what he now assures us is the truth.
My passionate and indignant appeals were lost upon them. And when I received their cold answers and heard the harsh, unfeeling reasoning of these men, my avowed purpose (to tell all—B.F.) died away on my lips… thus I might proclaim myself a madman, but not revoke the sentence passed upon my wretched victim.
Of course, the Walton relation exonerates Justine, by presenting the monster as the killer_another agent, who, like Victor, cannot be brought to trial.
When Justine was dead, Victor, "feeling a weight of despair and remorse that nothing could remove," retreated with his surviving family and a friend or two to the family cottage at Belrive, outside the city walls and gates. Regarding the monster, he had "an obscure feeling that all was not over." And so indeed it proved.
One day, walking unaccompanied to the nearby village of Chamounix, Victor experienced his next encounter with the "fiend". But, Sir, the night here grows long and late, and to tell the truth I grow weary of writing about this tiresome and cowardly scoundrel.
I await your instruction, Sir, as to whether I should after all abandon this pursuit, or carry it yet farther; and if so, where.
Yr Obdt Svt,
Ben Freeman
Chapter 11
About January 5,1783_I fear that I have again, as in my sojourn in the Arctic, lost track of days. Somewhere in the mid-Atlantic aboard a smuggler
I write this in the midst of what feels to me like a gale, and not knowing whether this ship will ever see land again or not. Even the most experienced sailors aboard are displaying unmistakable signs of alarm. The winter crossings, I have now learned, are notoriously difficult and dangerous, yet the possibility of profit which they hold out tempts many owners to risk their own fortunes and their sailors' lives in them.
Precisely what cargo we may be smuggling now, I have no idea. Nor am I interested in finding out. The evidences aboard are ell too plain that previous cargoes have been more shameful than any mere dead stuff packed into bales or hogsheads could possibly be. This ship must ordinarily be engaged in the slave trade, that infamous triangular voyaging of valuable loads: trade goods from England to Africa; slaves from Africa to Jamaica or other Caribbean ports; and molasses, rum, and other tropical produce from the Caribbean back to England. Is it possible that Saville himself is the owner of this vessel? For all I know, that may be so.
I had anticipated that, untrained as I am, I might encounter some difficulty in shipping as an ordinary hand. I see now that I might have managed it easily—there is always a need for recruits of any kind. No being in his right mind would choose the life of a common seaman voluntarily, had he any alternative other than starvation. But my lot aboard ship has been far easier than most.
My acquaintance, the sailor who recruited me, told me as we trudged toward our place of embarkation that the smuggler captain had heard of me and wanted me for his personal bodyguard. It was a thin-sounding story but I accepted it. And indeed my position ever since I came aboard has been anomalous—no real surprise to me, as that has been the case throughout that portion of my life which I can remember.
The captain was surprisingly amiable toward me from the start; but it is plain that he needs no bodyguard on his own ship. He impresses me as a businesslike and capable ruffian, quite competent to guard his own back as well as manage whatever affairs he finds in front of him. My thought is that he and his recruiting agent have some quite different use in mind for me later, when we have reached port. Whenever I question him about my duties he remains vague, urging me to "learn the ropes" and be patient. Meanwhile he has no interest in whether I really learn the ropes aboard his ship or not. And it is apparent that he and his officers consider me valuable. No one has sent me into the rigging, though I could probably cope with such acrobatics much more easily than almost any of the poor wretches who are actually ordered aloft in even the foulest weather.
I have visited the crew's quarters, before the mast, and they are horrible enough, but those in which the slaves are ordinarily penned up for the weeks of the westward trip, are almost indescribable. Not cabins, not an open room like the fo'c'sle, nor even cells, but mere shelves, lacking enough space between them for a human, even a child, to do anything but lie flat. The stench of those spaces, even now when they are empty, is overwhelming. There the human cargo must remain, packed together like so many hundred sticks of lumber, with only occasional periods on deck for exercise, during the weeks and months of voyaging. I feel a considerable bond with those poor folk; if any were aboard now, I think I should turn mutineer out of necessity. But on this voyage there are only the empty pens, round which the odor still clings of humanity penned up in a fashion that would be hideously cruel if practiced on the veriest brute beasts.
Not a single slave is aboard now; we are bound for England, and the practice has been declared illegal there, as the captain tells me, with a sprinkling of oaths to indicate his outrage. No law, however, prevents Saville and other Englishmen like him from enriching themselves in the three-way trade.
I have a small cabin to myself, or "cell" might be a better word for it. There are formidable fastenings on the outside of the door, though they are not used now, and I suspect that on some voyages my accommodations have housed particularly interesting, violent, or perhaps diseased samples of the human cargo. Not that diseased slaves are very often transported for any considerable distance, as they are naturally very difficult to sell. It is much more economical to put them over the side, once hope of a prompt recovery has been abandoned.
I have quietly, but I think efficiently, taken steps to insure that the formidable fastenings of the door are not suddenly employed to close me in some night when I am sound asleep. I have taken steps to weaken the door's hinges, using a marlinspike surreptitiously borrowed for the purpose; and I think that come what may, I shall be able to get out.
Most of my time is spent inside my cabin, for I have no real duties, and it is plain enough that most, if not all, of the crew do not care much for my presence aboard. But that attitude is no more than fair, for I do not care much for theirs.
Nor do I fear them. But there is terror in the wind and sea, against which my strength counts for little more than that of the weakest human; and I doubt that I shall live to see my goal.
Franklin. Is he again my goal, as he was in the summer of 1781, when I was determined to help my creator survive his imprisonment? (Saville was willing then to let Frankenstein stew in prison for some months. Teaching him a lesson was the idea, I suppose.) Or do I now seek vengeance only? If so, it will be better found, I think, in London.