"The captain was sitting with one foot upon the carronade in his outer-cabin, looking through the port at the heavy Indiaman, as she slued about and plunged in the blue surge, with all sorts of ugly ropes hanging from her bows, dirty pairs of trousers towing clear of the water when she lifted, and rusty stains at her hawse-holes. A stout-built, hard-featured man he was, with bushy black eyebrows, and grizzled black hair and whiskers, not to speak of a queer, anxious, uneasy look in the keen of his eyes when he turned to me. However, he got half up on my coming in, and I saw he was lame a little of one foot, while he overhauled me all over with his eye. 'I'm sorry to have to send for you in this way, sir,' said he, rather surprised at my rig, apparently—'very sorry, sir, and no more about it; but I can't help it, confound me—must do my duty.' 'Certainly, sir,' I said. 'In fact,' said Captain Wallis, 'the Admiral ordered us to see after you—him, that's to say—at the Cape, you know.' 'Ay, ay, sir,' said I, watching the Indiaman's poop-nettings through the port over his head, as he sat down. 'Pooh, pooh,' continued he, 'you can't be the man—just say you don't belong to the service—confound it, I'll pass you!' 'Why, sir,' said I, 'I can't exactly say that.' 'I hear you're Westwood of the Orestes, though,' said he; 'now I don't ask you to say no, sir; but everybody knew the Orestes, and I don't like the thing, I must say: so perhaps you're able to swear he is not aboard the Indiaman—just now, you know, sir—just now, eh?'

"This tack of his rather dumfoundered me, seeing the captain of the brig meant it well; but deuced unlucky kindness it was, since I couldn't swear to the very thing he fancied so safe, and his glance was as quick as lightning, so he caught the sense of my blank look in a moment—as I fancied, at least. 'The fact is, sir,' added he,'the surgeon told me just now he knows Lieutenant Westwood well enough by sight so they locked him up! You see we could have made you out at any rate, sir—however, we'll let the doctor stay till we're clear of the Indiaman, I think.' 'Then you take me for the gentleman you speak of, Captain Wallis?' asked I, faintly; for at the same moment I could see a light-coloured dress and a white ribbon fluttering on the Seringapatam's poop, the look of which sent the blood about my heart. 'Twas hard to settle betwixt a feeling of the kind, and fear for Westwood; it struck me Captain Wallis wasn't very eager in the affair, and 'twas on my lips to assure him I wasn't the man. 'Hark'ee,' broke in he, with almost a wink, and a smile ready to break out on his mouth, 'the short and the long of it is, I'll take you! We must have somebody to show in the case; though now I remember, there was someone else said to've gone off with you—but we won't trouble him! If we've brought away the wrong man, why, hang it, so much the better! If you're Westwood, I can tell you, they'll run ye up to a yardarm, sir! Much more comfortable than ten years or so in a jail, too, as—as no one knows better than I do myself.'

"Here the captain's face darkened, his eye gleamed, and he rose with a limp to ring a hand-bell on the table. 'White,' said he to the marine that put his head in at the door, with his hand up to it, 'desire the first lieutenant, from me, to send a boat aboard for this gentleman's things.' 'I'm afraid, sir,' continued he gravely to me, 'you'll have to reckon yourself under arrest—but you'll find the gentlemen in the gun-room good company, I hope, for a day or two, till we make St Helena.' I saw the captain's mind was made up, and for the life of me I didn't know what to say against it; but speak I could not, so with a stiff bow and a sick sort of a smile I turned out of the door, and walked along to the gun-room, which was empty. I could see the boat soon after under the ship's side, dipping and rising as they handed down my couple of portmanteaus to the man-o'-war's men; the young reefer came down again as nimble as a monkey, with some letters in his hand, took off his cap to some ladies above, and sang out to give way; five or six flashing feathers of the oars in the sunlight, and they were coming round the brig's stern.

"The brig was just squaring away her main-yard at the whistle from the boatswain's mates, when the whole run of the Indiaman's bulwarks was crowded with the passengers' and men's faces, watching the brig gather way to pass ahead; I could hear the officers on deck hail the India mates, wishing them a good voyage, the ladies bowing and waving their handkerchiefs to the British Union-Jack. Some sort of confusion seemed to get up, however, about the ship's taffrail, where Rollock, Ford, and some others were standing together; the planter jumped up all at once on the quarter-mouldings nearest the brig, then jumped down again, and his straw hat could be seen hurrying towards the quarter-deck.

"Next I caught a bright glimpse of Violet Hyde's face, as the sun shot on it free of the awnings—her eyes wandering with the brig's motion, I fancied, along the deck above me, till suddenly she seemed to start, and Westwood appeared behind her. The next thing I saw was the black-faced figure-head of the Seringapatam rising below her bowsprit, about sixty yards from the gun-room port where I was, and down she went again with a heavy plash, as Tom Westwood himself leapt up between the knight-heads at the bow, hailing the brig's deck with a voice like a trumpet. 'Ahoy! the Podargus ahoy! For mercy's sake, heave to again, sir!' he sung out. 'I'm the man you want!' 'The Indiaman ahoy!' I heard Captain Wallis himself hail back. 'What d'ye say?' The creak of our yards, with the flap of the jib, and the men's feet, drowned Westwood's second hail, as it came sharp up to windward; the sailors in the Indiaman's bows were grinning at him behind, while the first lieutenant of the brig shouted gruffly that she had no time to wait for more letters; and I heard the gun-room steward say to the marine, on going out with the dirty breakfast-cloth, he wondered if 'that parson cove thought the Pedarkis wanted a chapling,' or was only 'vun of these fellers that's so troublesome to see the French Hemperor.'

"'Well,' said the marine, ''twas pretty queer if he took the Pedarkis for the ship to carry him there. I don't think the captain would let a rat into the island if he could help it' 'Not he,' said the steward; 'plenty on 'em in already, Vite, my man—I do think they used to swim off on board here, by the way our cheese vent.' All this time I never stirred from the port, watching with my chin on the muzzle of the gun till the Indiaman was half-a-mile to windward of us, her big hull still rising and falling on the same swells, topped with clusters of heads; her topsails lowered in honour of the flag, the ensign blowing out half-mast high for the death of Captain Williamson; a long wash of the water ran outside the brig's timbers, surge after surge, and the plunge at her bows showed how fast she began to run nor'-westward before the wind. You may well fancy my state, after all I'd done for weeks; in fact, one scarce knew the extent of what he'd felt, what he'd looked forward to, till he found himself fairly adrift from it; 'twould even have been nothing, after all, could I just have thought of Violet Hyde as I'd done two hours ago, on waking with last night in the river on my mind.

"As it was, 'twould have taken little to make me jump out of the port into the sweep of blue water swelling toward the brig's counter; the Seringapatam being by this time astern. I couldn't even see her, or aught save the horizon, to windward; but at this moment the young second lieutenant came below, and, seeing me, he began in a polite enough way, with a kindly manner about it, trying to raise my spirits. 'I suppose, sir,' said I, rather sulkily I daresay, 'I can have a berth just now?' 'Oh, certainly,' said he, 'the steward has orders to see to it at once. Will you come on deck a minute or two in the meantime, sir?'

"I looked back from the ship astern to the brig-of-war's clean white decks, flush fore and aft, with the men all forward at their stations, neatly dressed in regular man-o'-war style, everyone alike—a sight that would have done me good at another time, small as she was by comparison; but the very thought of the Indiaman's lumbering poop and galleries was too much for me—'twas as if you'd knocked out those two round-house doors of hers, and let in a gush of bare sky instead. The ship-shape man-o'-war cut of things was nothing, I fancied, to the snug spot under those top-gallant bulwarks of hers, and the breezy poop all a-flutter with muslin of an evening, where you found books and little basket affairs stuck into the coils of rope. I thought the old Seringapatam never looked so well, as she commenced trimming sail on a wind, beginning to go drive ahead, with a white foam at her bows, and her whole length broadside-on to us. All at once we saw her clue up courses and to'-gallant sails, till she was standing slowly off under the three topsails and jib; the two lieutenants couldn't understand what she was about, and the captain put the glass to his eye, after which he said something to the second lieutenant, who went forward directly.

"The next thing I saw was the Indiaman coming up in the wind again for about a minute; she had her stern nearly to us, when the moment after, as she rose upon a long sea, you saw something flash white off her lee gangway in the sunlight, that dropped against it into the hollow of a wave. The next minute she fell off again with her topsails full, and the first shower of spray was rising across her forefoot, when the flash of a gun broke out of her side, and the sound came down to us; then a second and a third. The brig gave her the same number in answer, and as soon as the smoke betwixt us had cleared away, the ship could be seen under full sail to the south-westward by west. 'That's her poor skippers hammock dropped alongside, gentlemen,' said Captain Wallis to his officers; 'God be with him.' 'Amen,' said the first lieutenant, and we put our caps on again. 'Set stu'nsails, Mr Aldridge,' said the captain, limping down the hatchway; as for me, I leant I don't know how long over the brig's taffrail, watching the ship's canvas grow in one, through the width of air betwixt us; my heart full, as may be supposed, not to say what notions came into my head of what might happen to her under Finch's charge, ere she reached Bombay. No one belonging to the brig spoke to me, out of kindness, no doubt; and the ship was hull-down on the horizon, to my fancy with somewhat of a figure like hers, when she stood with the cashmere shawl over her head in the dusk. Then I went gloomily down to my berth, where I kept close by myself till I fell asleep, though the gun-room steward was sent to me more than once to join the officers.

"It wasn't till the next day, in fact, when I went on the quarter-deck at noon, wearied for a fresher gulp of air, that I saw any of them; and the breeze having fallen lighter that morning, they were too busy trimming sail and humouring her to give me much notice. I must say I had seldom seen a commander seem more impatient about the sailing of his craft, in time of peace, than the captain of the Podargus appeared to be; walking the starboard side as fast as the halt in his gait would let him, and the anxious turn of his eyes plainer than before, while he looked from the brig's spread of stu'nsails to the horizon, through the glass, which, I may say, he never once laid down. From where the brig spoke the Indiaman, to St Helena, would be about two or three days' sail with a fair wind, at the ordinary strength of the south-east trade; though, at this rate, it might cost us twice the time. I noticed the men on the forecastle look to each other now and then knowingly, at some fresh sign of the captain's impatience; and the second lieutenant told me in a low voice, with his head over the side near mine, Captain Wallis had been out of sorts ever since they lost sight of the island. 'You'd suppose, sir,' said he, laughing, 'that old Nap was his sweetheart, by the way he watches over him; and now, I fancy, he's afraid St Helena may be sunk in blue water while we were away! In fact, Mr Westwood,' added he, 'it looks devilish like as if it had come up from Davy Jones, all standing; so I don't see why it shouldn't go down to him again some day; I can tell you it's tiresome work cruising to windward there, though, and we aren't idle at all!'

"'Did you ever see the French Emperor yourself, sir?' asked I—for I must say the thought of nearing the prison such a man was in made me a little curious. 'Never, sir, except at a mile's distance,' said the second lieutenant; 'indeed, it's hard to get a pass, unless you know the governor. But I've a notion,' continued he, 'the governor's carefulness is nothing to our skipper's! Indeed, they tell a queer story of how Sir Hudson Lowe was gulled for months together, when he was governor of Capri island, in the Mediterranean. As for the captain, again, you'd seek a long time ere you found a better seaman—he's as wide awake, too, as Nelson himself; while the curious thing is, I believe, he never once clapped eyes on Bonaparte in his life! But good cause he has to hate him, you know, Mr Westwood!' 'Indeed,' said I, taking a moment's interest in the thing; and I was just going to ask the reason, when the first lieutenant came over to say Captain Wallis would be glad if I would dine with him in the cabin.

"At dinner-time, accordingly, I put on a coat, for the first time, less like those the cadets in the Seringapatam wore, and went aft, where I found the first lieutenant and a midshipman with the captain. He did his best to soften my case, as I saw by his whole manner during dinner; after which, no sooner had the reefer had his one glass of wine, than he was sent on deck to look out to windward. 'Well, sir,' said Captain Wallis thereupon, turning from his first luff to me, 'I'm sorry for this disagreeable business! I believe you deny being the person at all, though?' 'Why, sir,' said I, 'I am certainly no more the first lieutenant of the Orestes than yourself, Captain Wallis! 'Twas all owing to a mistake of that India mate, who owed me a grudge.' 'Oh, oh, I see!' replied he, beginning to smile, 'the whole matter's as plain as a handspike, Mr Aldridge! But I couldn't do less, on the information.' 'However, sir,' put in the first lieutenant, 'there's no doubt the real man must have been in the ship, or the mistake could not have happened, sir!' 'Well—you look at things too square, Aldridge,' said the captain. 'All you've got to do, I hope, sir, is just to prove you're not Westwood; and if you want still to go out to the East Indies, why, I daresay you won't be long of finding some outward-bound ship or other off Jamestown. Only, I'd advise you, sir, to have your case over with Sir Pulteney, before Admiral Plampin comes in—as I fear he would send you to England.' 'It matters little to me, sir,' I answered; 'seeing the reason I had for going out happens to be done with.' Here I couldn't help the blood rising in my face; while Captain Wallis's steady eye turned off me, and I heard him say in a lower key to the lieutenant, he didn't think it was a matter for a court-martial at all. 'Pooh, Aldridge!' said he, 'some pretty girl amongst the passengers in the case, I wager!' 'Why,' returned Aldridge, carelessly, 'I heard Mr Moore say some of the ladies were pretty enough, especially one—some India judge or other's young daughter—I believe he was in raptures about, sir.' This sort of thing, as you may suppose, was like touching one on the raw with a marling-spike; when the captain asked me—partly to smooth it over, maybe—'By-the-by, sir, Mr Aldridge tells me there was something about a pirate schooner, or slaver, or some craft of the kind, that frightened your mates—that's all stuff, I daresay—but what I want to know is, in what quarter you lost sight of her, if you recollect?' 'About nor'-west by north from where we were at the time, sir,' said I. 'A fast-looking craft was she?' asked he. 'A thorough-built smooth-going clipper, if ever there was one,' I said. At this the captain mused for a little, till at last he said to his lieutenant: 'They daren't risk it; I don't think there's the Frenchman born, man enough to try such a thing by water, Aldridge?' 'Help him out, you mean, sir?' said the luff; 'why, if he ever got as far as the water's edge, I'd believe in witchcraft, sir!' 'Give a man time, Mr Aldridge,' answered the captain, 'and he'll get out of anything where soldiers are concerned—every year he's boxed up sharpens him till his very mind turns like a knife, man! It makes one mad on every point besides, I tell you, sir—whereas after he's free, perhaps, it's just on that only his brain has a twist in it!' 'No doubt, Captain Wallis,' said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as his commander got up and began walking about the cabin, spite of his halt. 'D'ye know,' continued he, 'I've thought at times what I should like best would be to have him ahead of the brig, in some craft or other, and we hard in chase—I'd go after that man to the North Pole, sir, and bring him back! Without once going aboard to know he was there, I'd send word it was Jack Wallis had him in tow!' 'What is Bonaparte like, then, after all, sir?' I asked, just to fill up the break. 'I never saw him, nor he me,' replied Captain Wallis, stopping in his walk; 'but every day he may have a sight of the brig cruising to windward; and as for the island, we see plenty of it, I think, Aldridge?' 'Ay, ay, sir,' said Aldridge, 'that we do! For my part, I can't get the ugly stone steeples of it out of my head!' 'Well,' continued the captain, 'at times, when we're beating round St Helena of a night, I'll be hanged if I haven't thought it began to loom as if the French Emperor stood on the top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea the other way—and I've gone below lest he'd turn round till I saw his face. I've a notion Mr Aldridge, if I once saw his face, I'd lose what I feel against him, just as I used always to fancy, the first five years in the Temple, if he were only to see me, he would let me out! But they say he's got a wonderful way of coming over everyone, if he likes!' After this, Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters, the first lieutenant observing, he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in his way, but nothing to Nelson. 'Don't tack them together, Aldridge!' said his commander quickly; 'Nelson was a man all over, he'd got the feelings of a man and his faults; but I call him, yonder, a perfect demon let loose upon the world! To my mind all the blood those republicans shed, with their murdered king's at bottom of it, got somehow into him, till he thought no more of human beings, or aught concerning 'em, than I do of so many cockroaches! But the terrible thing was, sir, his infernal schemes, and his cunning: why, he'd twist you one country against another, and get hold of both, like a man bending stu'nsail halliards; there were men grew up round him quick as mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted; so one couldn't wonder at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only natural! I can't tell you anything like what I felt,' he went on, 'when I was in Sir Sydney Smith's ship, cruising down Channel, and we used to see the gun-boats and flat-bottoms he got together for crossing the straits; or one night with poor Captain Wright, that we stood in near enough to get a shot sent at us off the heights—the whole shore about Boulogne was one twinkle of lights and camp-fires, and you heard the sound of the hammers on planks and iron, with the carts and gun-carriages creaking—not to speak of a hum from soldiers enough, you'd have thought, to eat Old England up! And where are they now?' 'I don't know, sir, indeed,' said the first lieutenant gravely, supposing by the captain's look, no doubt, that it was a question. 'What, Captain Wallis!' exclaimed I, 'were you with Captain Wright, then, sir?' Of course, like everyone in the service, I had heard Captain Wright's story often, with ever so many versions; there was a mystery about his sad fate that made me curious to hear more of what gave the whole navy, I may say, a hatred to Bonaparte not at all the same you regard a fair enemy with.

"'With him, say you, sir?' repeated the captain of the Podargus, 'ay was I! I was his first lieutenant, and good cause I had to feel for the end he came to, as I'll let you hear. One night Captain Wright went ashore, as he'd often done, into the town of Beville, dressed like a smuggler; for the fact was the French winked at smuggling, only I must say we used to land men instead of goods. I didn't like the thing that night, and advised him not to go, as they'd begun to suspect something of late! However, the captain by that time was foolhardy, owing to having run so many risks, and he was bent on going in before we left the coast; though, after all, I believe it was only to get a letter that any fisherman could have brought off. The boat was lying off and on behind a rocky point, and we waited and waited, hearing nothing but the sound of the tide making about the big weedy stones, in the shadow from the lights of the town; when at last the French landlord of the little tavern he put up at came down upon the shingle and whistled to us. He gave me a message from Captain Wright, with the private word we had between us, saying he wanted me to come up to the town on a particular business. Accordingly I told the men to shove out again, and away I went with the fellow.

"'No sooner did I open the door of the room, however, than three or four gendarmes had hold of me, and I was a prisoner: as for Captain Wright, I never saw him more. The morning broke as they brought me up on horseback in the middle of them, along the road to Paris, from whence I could make out the cutter heeling to the breeze a mile or two off the land, with two or three gun-boats hard in chase.

"'Well, sir, at Paris they clapped me into a long gloomy-like piece of masonwork called the Temple, close alongside of the river, where plenty of our countrymen were; Captain Wright and Sir Sydney Smith himself among the rest, as I found out afterwards. The treatment wasn't so bad at first; but when you climbed up to the windows, there was nothing to be seen but the top of a wall and roofs of houses all round, save where you'd a glimpse of the dirty river and some pig-trough of a boat. One day I got a letter from Captain Wright—how they let me have it I don't well know—saying he was allowed a good deal of comfort in the meantime, but he suspected some devilish scheme in it, to make him betray the British Government, or something of the kind; that he'd heard one of the French royalist generals had choked himself in his prison, but never to believe he'd do the same thing, though every night he woke up thinking he heard the key turn in the door. The next thing I heard of was that Captain Wright had made away with himself, sir!'

"Here Captain Wallis got up again, walking across the cabin, seemingly much moved. 'Well, after that I slept with the dinner-knife in my breast, till the jailer took it away; for I thought at the time that poor Wright had been murdered, though I found cause to change my mind when I knew what loneliness does with a man, not to speak of the notion being put before him to take his own life. For a while, too, Captain Shaw was in the same cell; by which time we had such bad food, and so little of it, that one day when a pigeon lighted on the window, which used to come there for a crumb or two every afternoon, right along with the gold gleam of the sun as it shot over the dark houses to that window, I jumped up and caught it. Shaw and I actually tore it in bits, and ate it raw on the spot; though 'twas long ere I could get rid of the notion of the poor bird fluttering and cooing against the bars, and looking at me with its round little soft eye as it pecked off the slab. But what was that to the thought of my old father that had hurt himself to keep me in the navy, and me able now to make his last days comfortable? or the innocent young girl I had married the moment I got my commission of first lieutenant, expecting to be flush of prize-money? It even came into my head often, when I sat by myself in the cell they afterwards put me into, alone, how that little blue pigeon might have carried a letter to England for me; at any rate it was the only thing like a chance, or a friend, I ever saw the whole time I was there; and foolish as the notion may look, why the window was too high in a smooth wall for me once to reach it.

"'I heard all Paris humming round the thick of the stone every day, and sometimes the sound of thousands of soldiers tramping past below, over the next bridge, with music and such like—no doubt when the First Consul, as they called him, went off to some campaign or other: then I'd dream I felt the deck under me in a fresh breeze at night, till the soul sickened in me to wake up and find the stones as still as before, and now and then hear the sentries challenging on their rounds.

"'Well, one day, a fellow in a cloak, with a slouch hat over his forehead, was let in to try, as I thought, if there was anything to be got out of me, as they tried two or three times at first; some spy he was, belonging to that police devil FouchÉ. What did he offer me, d'ye think, after beating about the bush for half-an-hour, but the command of a French seventy-four under the Emperor, as he was by that time, and, if I would take it, I was free! On this I pretended to be thinking of it, when the police fellow sidled near me, to show a commission signed with the Emperor's name at the foot.

"'In place of taking hold of it, however, I jumped up and seized the villain's nose and chin before he saw my purpose, stuffed the parchment into his mouth by way of a gag, and made him dance round the cell, with his cloak over his head and his sword dangling alongside of him, to keep his stern clear of my foot; till the turnkey heard the noise, and he made bolt out as soon as the door was opened. You'd wonder how long that small matter served me to laugh over, for my spirit wasn't broken yet, you see; but even then, in the very midst of it, I would all of a sudden turn sick at heart, and sit wondering when the exchange of prisoners would be made that I looked for. The worst of it was, at times a horrid notion would come into my head of the French seventy-four being at sea at the moment, and me almost wishing they'd give me the offer over again—I fancied I felt the very creak of her straining in the trough of a sea, and saw the canvas of her topsails over me, standing on her poop with a glass in my hand, till she rose on a crest, and there were the Agamemnon's lighted ports bearing down to leeward upon us, till I heard Nelson's terrible voice sing out, "Give it to 'em, my lads!" when the flash of her broadside showed me his white face under the cocked hat, and it came whizzing over like a thirty-two-pound shot right into my breast, as I sunk to the bottom, and found myself awake in the prison.

"'I don't know how long it was after, but they moved me to another berth, where a man had shot himself through the head, for we actually met his body being carried along the passage; and more than that, sir, they hadn't taken the trouble to wash his brains off the wall they were scattered on. There I sat one day after another, watching the spot marked by them turn dry, guessing at everything that had gone through them as long as he was alive in the place, till my own got perfectly stupid; I was as helpless as a child, and used to cry at other times when the jailer didn't bring me my food in time. I fancied they'd forget all about me in England; and as for time, I never counted it, except by the notion I had been two or three years in.

"'At last the turnkey got so used to me, thinking me no doubt such a harmless sort of a poor man, that he would sit by and talk to me, giving accounts of the Emperor's battles and victories, and such matters. I must say I began to feel as if he was some sort of a god upon earth there was no use to strive against, just as the turnkey seemed to do, more especially when I heard of Nelson's death; so when he told me one time it wouldn't do for FouchÉ or the Emperor to let me out yet, I said nothing more. "Will the Emperor not let me out now?" asked I, a long time after. "Diable!" said the man, "do you think His Majesty has time to think of such a poor fellow as you, among such great matters? No, no, pauvr' homme!" continued he; "you're comfortable here, and wouldn't know what to do if you were out! No fear of your doing as your Capitaine Ourite did, since you've lived here so long, monsieur." "How long is it now, good Pierre?" asked I, with a sigh, as he was going out at the door; and the turnkey counted on his fingers. "Ulm—Austerlitz—Jena," said he slowly; "oui, oui—I scarcely thought it so much—it wants only six or seven months of ten years!" and he shut-to the door. I sprang up off the bed I was sitting on, wild at the thought—I may say, for a day or two I was mad—ten years! ten years!—and all this time where was my poor innocent Mary, and the child she expected to bear when I left Exeter—where was my old father? But I couldn't bear to dwell on it. Yes, Aldridge, by the God above, they had kept me actually ten years there, in that cursed Temple while he was going on all the time with his victories, and his shows, and his high-flown bulletins! Yet he wasn't too high, it seems, to stoop to give out, through his tools, how Wright and I had both killed ourselves for fear of bringing in the British Government—not to offer me a seventy-four in a dungeon—me, a man used to wind and water, that loved a breeze at sea like life. 'Twas the very devil's temptation, sir; but I'll tell you what, both Captain Wright and myself had been with Sir Sidney Smith at Acre, when he was baffled for the first time in his days—that was the thing, I believe from my soul, that he hated us for. I had a right to be exchanged ten times over, though he might have called Wright a spy; but what was my poor wife and her new-born baby, or my old father's gray hairs to him, and his great ambition to make everything his own—and when the very thought of me in my hole at the Temple would strike him in the midst of his victories, where he hadn't time, forsooth, to trouble himself about a poor man like me. The fact was, I could tell how he offered a British seaman, that had had a finger in nettling him, the command of one of his seventy-fours, which he had nobody fit to manage—and that in a prison where I'd be glad even of fresh air.

"''Twas then, in fact, the purpose rose firmer and firmer in me, out of the fury that was like to drive me mad, how I'd get out of his clutches, and spend my life against the very pitch of his power I knew so well about. Till that time I used to look through the bars of the window at the Seine, without ever fancying escape, low down as it was, compared with my last cell. There was a mark in the stone floor with my walking back and forward since they put me in; and by this time I had the cunning of a beast, let alone its strength, in regard of anything I took into my head; often I used to think I saw the end of my finger, or the corner of a stone, more like the way a fly sees them, than a man. The turnkey, Pierre, would never let me have a knife to eat my food with, lest I should do as he said all we English were apt to do—kill myself—which, by-the-way, is a lie; and I think that fiend of an Emperor yonder must have taught them to blame us with their own crime. However, latterly he let me have a fork for half-an-hour at dinner; and for a quarter of an hour every day, except those when he stayed to talk to me as I ate it, did I climb up and work with that fork at the top and bottom of one of the window-bars, taking care not to break the fork, and jumping down always in time to finish the meal. It took me four whole months, sir, to loosen them! Such deadly fear as I was in, too, lest he'd find it out, or lest they moved me to another cell—you'd have thought I was fond of the walls round the place, where hundreds of men before me had scrawled their last words; and the one that shot himself had written, "LibertÉ—anÉantissement! "Liberty—annihilation!" just over where the spatter of his brains had stuck when he laid his head to the spot! If Pierre had noticed what I'd been about, my mind was made up to kill him, and then make the trial before they missed him; but that I had a horror of, after all, seeing the man had taken a sort of liking to me, and I knew he had a wife.

"'Well, at last, one day I had the thing finished; when midnight came I trembled like a leaf, till I began to fear I couldn't carry it through. I tore my shirt and the blanket in strips, to twist into a line, got out the bar by main force, squeezed through, and let myself down. The line was just long enough to let me swing against the cold wall, over a sentry's head going round the parapet below; as soon as he was past, I dropped on the edge of the wall, and fell along it, my fingers scraping the smooth stone to no purpose, till I was sliding off into the dark, with the river I didn't know how far below me, though I heard it lapping against some boats at the other side.

"'For a few moments I was quite senseless from the fall into the water. The splash roused the sentinels, and three or four bullets whizzed into it about me, as I struck out for the shore. Still the night was thick enough to help me clear off among the dark lanes in the city; and the upshot of it was that I found out some royalists, who supplied me with a pedlar's dress; till, in the end, after I can't tell you how many ticklish chances, where my luck hung upon a hair, I reached the coast, and was taken off to a British frigate. At home, sir—at home, I found I'd been given up long ago for a dead man in Bonaparte's prisons, and—and—the old man had been buried seven years, Aldridge—but not so long as my—wife. The news of my taking my own life in the Temple saved her the rest—'twas too much for her at the time, Aldridge—both she and her little one had lain in the mould nine years, when I stood looking at the grass under Exeter Cathedral. I was a young man almost, still; but my hair was as grizzled when I got out of the Temple in 1813, as you see it now, and I'll never walk the deck fairly again. Aldridge,' added the captain of the Podargus, turning round and standing still, with a low sort of a deep whisper, ''tis a strange thing, the Almighty's way of working—but I never thought—in the Temple yonder, longing for a heave of the water under me—I I little thought John Wallis would ever come to keep guard over his Majesty, the Emperor Napoleon!'

"When Captain Wallis stopped, the long send of the sea lifting the brig below us, with a wild, yearning kind of ripple from her bows back to her counter, and weltering away astern—one felt it, I may say, somewhat like an answer to him, for the breeze had begun to freshen: it had got all of a sudden nearly quite dark, too, as is the case inside the tropics, without the moon. 'Let's go on deck, gentlemen,' said the captain, coming to himself; 'now clap on those other topmost stu'nsails, Mr Aldridge, and make her walk, sir'—'No saying,' I heard him mutter, as he let us go up before him—'no saying what the want of the Podargus might do, off the island, these dark nights—with water alongside, one can't be sure. I warrant me if that man's dreams came true, as mine did, he would be at the head of his thousands again, ruining the whole world, with men rotting out of sight in dungeons while the wind blows! Ay, dreams, young gentleman!' said he to me as we stood on deck; 'I'll never get rid of that prison, in my head, nor the way that dead man's brain seemed to come into mine, off the wall! But for my part, off St Helena, 'tis Napoleon Bonaparte's dreams that enter into my head. If you'll believe it, sir, I've heard them as it were creeping and tingling round the black heights of the island at dead of night, like men in millions ready to break out in war-music, as I used to hear them go over the bridge near the Temple—or in shrieks and groans; we all the time forging slowly ahead, and the surf breaking in at the foot of the rocks. I know then who's asleep at the time up in Longwood!'

"The brig-of-war was taking long sweeps and plunges before the wind; the Southern Cross right away on her larboard quarter, and the very same stars spread all out aloft, that I watched a couple of nights before, close by Violet Hyde. The whole of what I'd just heard was nothing to me in a single minute, matched with the notion of never seeing her more. Everything I'd thought of since we left England was gone, even one's heart for the service; and what to do now, I didn't know. I scarce noticed it commence to rain, till a bit of a squall had come on, and they were hauling down stu'nsails: the dark swells only to be seen rising with the foam on them, and a heavier cover of dull cloud risen off the brig's beam, as well as ahead; so that you merely saw her canvas lift before you against the thick of the sky, and dive into it again. 'Twas just cleared pretty bright off the stars astern of us, however, wind rather lighter than before the squall, when the captain thought he made out a sail near about the starboard beam, where the clouds came on the water-line; a minute or two after she was plain enough in the clear, though looming nearly end-on, so that one couldn't well know her rig. Thinking at first sight it might be the schooner, Captain Wallis was for bracing up, to stand in chase and overhaul her; but shortly after she seemed either to yaw a little, or fall off again before the wind like ourselves, at any rate showing three sticks on the horizon, with square canvas spread, and evidently a small ship.

"'Some homeward-bound craft meaning to touch at the island,' said Captain Wallis, telling the first lieutenant to keep all fast; by which time she was lost in the dusk again, and I wasn't long of going below. A fancy had got hold of me for the moment, I can't deny, of its being the Seringapatam after us on Westwood's owning himself; whereupon I persuaded myself Captain Wallis might perhaps take the risk on him of letting us both go. For my part, I felt by this time as if I'd rather be in the same ship with her, hopeless though it was, than steer this way for the other side of the line; and I went down with a chill at my heart like the air about an iceberg.

"Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft on to her starboard quarter, making less way than before it, of course; I heard the captain's voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. The Podargus was running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig's fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn't at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you'd have supposed was the moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvas fluttering across on the yard.

"Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire—no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening—a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks, and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. 'Keep her away, sirrah!' shouted Captain Wallis, and the Podargus surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather-beam. 'God's sake!' exclaimed the captain at last, 'this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.' 'I think not, sir,' said his lieutenant; 'we were against the clear; and if they'd been in danger then, she'd have fired a distress-gun. There couldn't have been much powder aboard, sir—more likely rum, I think!'

'For Heaven's sake!' continued the captain, 'let's look about—she must surely have had boats out, or something, Mr Aldridge! The best thing we can do is to fire a few times as we bear down—see that bow-gun cleared away, Mr Moore, and do it!'

"We might have been about a mile, as was guessed, from where she was last seen, when the brig fired a gun to windward, still standing on under everything. At the second flash that lighted up the belly of the clouds, with the black glitter of the swells below them, I fancied I caught a moment's glimpse of something two or three miles away. It was too short to say, however; and soon after the twinkle of a light, seemingly hoisted on a spar, was seen little more than half-a-mile upon the brig's lee-bow, dipping and going out of sight at times, but plain enough when it rose. Down went the Podargus for the spot, sending the foam off her cutwater; and it was no long time before a wild hail from several voices could be made out almost close aboard. Ten minutes after she was brought to the wind, heaving a rope to the men on a loose raft of casks and spars, as it pitched alongside of her, with the sail hauled down on a spar they had stuck up, and a lantern at the head of it; after which the raft was cast off, and the poor fellows were safe on board.

"Two of them seemed to be half-drowned, the one wrapped up in a wet pilot-coat, his face looking white and frightened enough by the glimmer of the lanterns: the other darker a good deal, so far as I could make him out for the crowd about him, and he didn't seem able to speak; accordingly both of them were taken at once below to the surgeon. The rest were four half-naked blacks, and a little chap with earrings and a seaman's dress who was the spokesman on the quarter-deck to the captain's questions—plainly American by his snuffling sort of drawl.

"'Are there no more of you afloat?' was the first thing asked, to which the Yankee sailor shook his head. She was an American bark, he said, from a voyage of discovery round the two Capes; and he was mate himself, and the skipper, being addicted to his cups, had set a cask of rum on fire; so finding they couldn't get it under besides being wearied at the pumps, on account of an old leak, the men broke into the spirit-room, and got dead drunk. He and the blacks had patched up a raft in a hurry for bare life, barely saving the passenger and his servant who had jumped overboard; the passenger was a learned sort of a man, and his servant was a Mexican. Most of this I found next day, from the gun-room officers; however, I heard the mate of the burnt barque inquire of the captain whereabouts they were, as the skipper was the only man who could use a chronometer or quadrant, and the last gale had driven them out of their reckonings a long way. 'Somewhere south of the Line, I guess?' said he; but, on being told, the fellow gave a bewildered glance round him, seemingly, and a cunning kind of squint after it, as I fancied. 'Well,' said he, 'I guess we're considerable unlucky; but I consider to turn in, if agreeable!' The man had a way, in fact, half free-and-easy, half awkward that struck me; especially when he said, as he went below, he supposed 'this was a war-brig,' and hoped there 'wasn't war between the States and the old country?' 'No, my man,' said the captain, 'you may set your mind at ease on that point; but I'm afraid, nevertheless, we'll have to land you at St Helena!'

"'What, mister?' said the American, starting, 'that's where you've got Boneyparty locked up? Well now, if you give me a good berth for a few, mister, I guess I'll rayther ship aboard you, till I get a better! What's your wage just now, if I may ask, captain?' 'Well, well,' said the captain, laughing, 'we'll see to-morrow, my man!'—and the American went below. 'Set stu'nsails again, Mr Aldridge,' continued Captain Wallis, 'and square yards. Why, rather than have such a fellow in the ship's company, Aldridge, I'd land him without Sir Hudson's leave!'

"For my own part, next day, I should have given more notice to our new shipmates while the brig steered fair before the wind—the blacks and the mate leaning about her forecastle, and the other two being expected by the surgeon to come pretty well round before night, though the captain had gone to see them below; but a thing turned up all at once that threw me once more full into the thought of Violet Hyde, till I was perfectly beside myself with the helpless case I was in. The note Tom Westwood had shown me was still in the pocket of my griffin's coat, though I hadn't observed it till now; and what did I feel at finding out, that, instead of one from her to Westwood, it was a few words from my own sister, little Jane, saying in a pretty, bashful sort of way, that her brother Ned must come home before she could engage to anything! You may fancy how I cursed myself for being so blind; but a fellow never thinks his own sister charming at all—and what else could I have done at any rate? All I hoped for, was to get aboard of some Indiaman at St Helena, and there was nothing else I wearied to see the island again for. I may say I walked the brig's lee quarter-deck till daybreak; but anyhow the look-out from the foreyard had scarce sung out 'St Helena on the weather-bow!' when I was up, making out the round blue cloud in the midst of the horizon, with a white streak across it, like a bird afloat in the hazy blue, with the clear gleam from eastward off our starboard quarter running round to it.