They were watchful, vivid, fierce as those of a wild cat brought to bay, seeking in its desperate quickened brain for some mode of escape not yet visible, and in all probability never to become visible to the hopeless creature in its supreme agony.
Without a motion of his head, he was perceiving and taking in everything while he lay bound at the bottom of the boat.

A sailor sat by his side, who had been hurt by a blow from him.

The man held his head in his hand, moaning; but every now and then he revenged himself by a kick at the prostrate specksioneer, till even his comrades stopped their cursing and swearing at their prisoner for the trouble he had given them, to cry shame on their comrade.

But Kinraid never spoke, nor shrank from the outstretched foot.
One of his captors, with the successful insolence of victory, ventured to jeer him on the supposed reason for his vehement and hopeless resistance.
He might have said yet more insolent things; the kicks might have hit harder; Kinraid did not hear or heed.

His soul was beating itself against the bars of inflexible circumstance; reviewing in one terrible instant of time what had been, what might have been, what was.