The convent of Hickle-path Hill, which two or three centuries since is said to have presented a very imposing appearance, is now represented by a few tottering remnants of walls, which all of you, I suppose, have often seen on a clear day from the front window. A little beyond them, to the right, are the ruins of a castle, which formerly belonged to the Bassett family.

About the latter half of the fifteenth century, Sir Hugh Bassett occupied the castle, which was then large and strong. He had a daughter called Agnes, an only child, and a beautiful girl. She was the admiration of every one who beheld her, and a standing toast at every feast in the neighborhood. Her hair was said to have been raven-black, her eyes dark, large and sparkling; her cheeks fresh as the leaves of a full-blown rose; her teeth like pearls; her form and figure, “stately, like a queen.” At least she was evidently very pretty; I wont say, for I can’t say, she realized this description, for it seems as if copied from the pages of a modern novel—and we know that there all heroines are alike, superior to any thing ever seen in this world.

She lost her mother at an early age—a loss to a child for which nothing can compensate. The want of maternal care and teaching was no doubt the cause of some little peculiarities in her disposition. Being left much to herself, having none but her father whom she recognized as her superior, she acquired a spirit of independence and of firmness of character which she would not likely have otherwise possessed. But notwithstanding this, she did not want many good and kind qualities; and she had a judgment and discrimination of character by no means common in those times. To the poor of the neighborhood she was always kind, and was much admired by them in return. With many of her own rank she was reserved, although with others she was cheerful and communicative. It was remarked that those whom she seemed to like most were generally more distinguished for character than rank. She seemed, to the wonderment of her father’s friends, to regard many an industrious peasant more than she did some far-famed baron, with “quarterings” on his shield. To her parent she always exhibited affection, and never withheld her respect, even when she reluctantly bestowed him her submission.

Sir Hugh had descended from one who had accompanied William the Conqueror to England. He was as proud as he was powerful. He measured merit by military prowess—virtue, by wealth—and character, by the length of ancestry; peculiarities which, we believe, are not altogether unknown at this day. He loved his daughter more because she was his daughter, than for herself; and he estimated her claim to respect, not so much by her virtues, as by the Bassett blood which flowed in her veins.

The fame of the fair Agnes naturally brought her many admirers and suitors. For a long time her heart seemed untouched by their looks or addresses. But no woman’s heart is impregnable! She may skirmish a great deal, she may act as if about to make a powerful repulse, she may make seeming preparations for a terrible encounter, but, if her opponent has any knowledge of tactics in these matters, and is otherwise unobjectionable, she will sooner or later “give-up,” hang down her head, blush up to her eye-brows, and then, whisperingly utter, “take me, and be happy!” So Agnes drove off suitor after suitor. One she frightened by her freezing looks, which no one better than a woman can assume, when she chooses. Others she dismissed with a flat refusal; while some were driven back by her palpable contempt for their persons. But as time crept on, a close observer might remark a slight blush rising on her cheeks when young Rhoderick Wray made his appearance; and how, by some unaccountable accident, they would be both found, soon after his arrival, standing in close converse in some retired part of the room, or strolling together upon the balcony.

This young man was an adopted son of a neighboring baron and his lady, whose name he bore. His real parents were unknown. His adopted parents found him, while an infant, laid at the foot of an oak, in Anchor-Wood. Having no children, they brought him up as their own; and he never gave them cause to repent of their choice—which is more than many parents, I fear, can say of their offspring. At an early age he displayed unusual sagacity, and a generous disposition. An old friar, who taught him Latin, and the limited course of education then pursued, declared that Heaven intended him for the church; but the Baron thought otherwise, and intended him for arms. His appearance corresponded with his character. He had a manly and a graceful figure, natural and well developed, not manufactured with wadding, not braced up by stays, as I hear fashionable men now are. He had a noble, open forehead, which you always find in a good man, and a frank and kind expression upon a handsome face. At an early age he was sent to the Low Countries, from whence he returned, after the lapse of five years, bringing with him spurs of knighthood, wounds and scars. He had been from his earliest days a visitor at the castle, in company with his adopted parents, and always received by Sir Hugh with cordiality.

From his youth he was a secret admirer of Agnes. Before he had entered his teens—during that romance period of life—he often used to dream of her. He would at times picture a beautiful castle, situate in a romantic spot, surrounded by a lovely garden, interspersed with fountains and grottoes, where he roamed about by her side, with happiness within, and beauty above and around. He would then put eloquently loving language into his mouth, and listen to an imaginary but equally sweet reply. She occupied his thoughts when awake. In his studies, in his devotions, in his walks, she was always next his heart. But delusions, however sweet, are transitory. These beautiful fancies would quickly fade before the substance of reality. The uncertainty of his origin, the pride and prejudices of her father would rise to his remembrance, and tear away all hope of that union which he so ardently longed for. In moments of despondency he would even doubt the love of Agnes—for as yet it had not been asked for or avowed. He sometimes thought, when they walked together upon a hill opposite her residence, or rode together in a hawking party, that she had a feeling deeper than mere partiality toward him; but this cheering supposition was damped by the knowledge of the uselessness of her consent, unless accompanied with her father’s approval. Nevertheless, he continued to hope against hope. It requires a great deal to cause the heart to abandon an object which it has once cherished. He thought that by perfecting himself in his military exercises, by acquiring fame in his intended profession, he might hide the obscurity of his birth, and render himself, in the eyes of Sir Hugh, a fitting husband for his daughter. With this impulse to stimulate he was industrious and zealous in his duties, and obtained his departure for Flanders sooner than his adopted parents had intended. There, he fulfilled his expectations—he obtained fame for his prowess, and admiration for his character.

Upon his return from the Low Countries, he was pleased to find that no rival had apparently supplanted him in her affection. He was equally pleased in observing that her manner had lost none of its wonted cordiality toward him. Her father also treated him with more respect, and his own friends looked on him with pride. But these propitious appearances did not induce him to divulge his secret, but they encouraged him to renew his former intimacy, so that he might with greater safety formally offer himself as a suitor.

With a woman’s penetrating eye in these matters, Agnes early had suspicions of his feelings and his intentions. She liked him before she knew it herself, and she adroitly gave him opportunities for meeting her, as if by accident; and he (but much more clumsily) would, at other times, throw himself in her way, as if by inadvertence. These intercourses, in time, displayed each other’s feelings too plainly for concealment. He offered her his love—she returned him her heart!

This, the most solemn engagement that man or woman can make, (but, alas! how often made lightly and thoughtlessly—how often made in ignorance of its obligations, in the utter want of its requirements!) was no sooner completed, than she thought for the first time about the approval or disapproval of Sir Hugh. Like Rhoderick, she was afraid to have his consent demanded at once; and as her lover seemed growing in his estimation, she deemed delay desirable.

Among the numerous suitors for her hand, was one whom she disliked more than all the others. He was noble in rank, and illustrious by descent. He possessed broad lands and a numerous retinue. Apparently his manner was agreeable, and his disposition good. But cruelty seemed to lurk beneath his mildness, and pride beneath his affability. Such, however, was the impression he made upon Agnes, and such he was known to be, among those who were well acquainted with him.

From his first visit she endeavored to keep him at a distance; but the effort was fruitless. He would intrude himself whenever he saw her with Sir Rhoderick. A dark shade would pass over his countenance, whenever he saw them apparently enjoying themselves. About two months after her engagement, he repeated his former offer, and again received a refusal. He therefore waited upon her father, and attributed his disappointment to Sir Rhoderick.

Upon this information the old knight became highly enraged, not so much for her refusal of the one, as for her acceptance of the other. He stormed and swore, and then assured his lordship that she should accept his hand, or none.

After the departure of the latter, Agnes was sent for by her father. He very angrily communicated the news he had received, and, in an incredulous tone, asked her if it was true? She replied in the affirmative, and then attempted to justify her choice. She tried to urge whatever she could in favor of him to whom she was betrothed, and in disparagement of his rival. But this attempt only added fuel to the flame. He waxed more wroth than before—he heaped abuse upon her, for accepting one whom he called of base blood, and threatened him with death, if he was again found within his castle.

He then entreated for her acceptance of De Burgh. He brought forward, with all the eloquence he could master, his wealth, his rank, his ancestry, his influence—but all in vain. True love is strengthened by opposition. Every request was met with a determined refusal. At length he threatened to send her to a convent if she persisted in her choice, and as she saw no hope of a connection with her lover, she accepted the offer. She felt that “a living death” was preferable to an odious marriage.

The threat was eventually carried into execution. She was sent to a convent not far distant from her home, where she at once entered upon her noviciate. But even there she was not exempted from the disagreeable importunities of De Burgh. He was frequently allowed to visit her, in company with her father, and his entreaties increased with the number of his visits.

Poor Agnes thus led a very miserable life. She was shut up from her few friends, and from all sympathy. She dared not confide to the sisters, because she knew they were in the interest of Sir Hugh. She therefore looked forward to the period which would forever inclose her within her cell, with melancholy satisfaction, as a painful release. Her nights were occupied in tears and prayers; her thoughts were bound up with the object of her affection, and she thus gradually seemed to pine away, like a delicate flower when bereft of sunshine!

Rhoderick heard through a messenger which Agnes had privately sent him, that their betrothal had been disclosed to Sir Hugh, and of his consequent threat and displeasure. The grief this intelligence occasioned him was much aggravated when he also learned that she had been sent to a convent, and that his rival was De Burgh. His adopted parents now became acquainted with the cause of his melancholiness, but they felt that a personal remonstrance with her father was useless, and all they could do, was to try and soothe him for his loss. But sympathy is a poor doctor for sincere grief; she may help to bring hope to the patient, but that only aggravates disappointment when she disappears. The Bible, silence and seclusion are the best balms for an aching heart.

That the great and most cherished object of his life should be snatched away at a moment when he least expected, when all appearances seemed to warrant success, was indeed a terrible disappointment. But with a disinterestedness not oftentimes observable in men, he thought more of her suffering than of his loss. He felt that his life would be richly purchased by the securement of her happiness, and the removal of her suffering. With this object, after one short internal struggle, he induced his father to wait upon Sir Hugh, with a resignation of his claim on Agnes, and a pledge to reside in some foreign land, provided she was released from confinement and from the importunities of his rival. The offer was accordingly made and rejected.

The period of her noviciate was now about to terminate. She had either to become De Burgh’s wife or a nun. But as there was no hope of the former, De Burgh formed a plot to carry her away, and marry her by force.

On the night previous to the one appointed for its execution, one of the men whom he had engaged to assist him, communicated the design to his sweetheart, a former waiting-maid of Agnes, under a solemn promise of secrecy.

I have read, observed Mrs. Scroggins, par parenthesis, in a very interesting book, which has just appeared, entitled “Curiosities of Literature,” by a Mr. D’Israeli, that in looking over some old letters, written during the troublous times of Charles I., he found that those which the writers most strongly urged to be burned were most carefully preserved! And I must say of my own sex, added she, if you want them to spread any news faster than usual, you have only to tell them it is a secret, and beg them not to divulge it. You may then be certain of hearing it in every direction in five minutes afterward. As a matter of course, the maid above referred to had no sooner pledged secrecy to her lover, than she flew to communicate the intelligence to her former mistress—Agnes.

But Agnes, unfortunately, treated the disclosure with disbelief. She said it was wholly improbable that he would attempt it, and he dared not, if he could. She thought it so undeserving of notice that she did not deem it necessary to communicate it to the Lady Abbess.

When night arrived, she departed to rest as usual, without taking any precautions. She had slept about two hours, when she was awakened by a noise on the balcony, and she was surprised by seeing a man open her window without any apparent difficulty, and cautiously approach her bed. It was dark, but she thought at once it was De Burgh. With fear, shame and indignation struggling in her bosom, she grasped a small dagger which hung by the bed, and as he advanced she plunged it into his breast. A cry of pain burst from his lips, and informed her that it was her lover, and not his rival, she had stabbed. She then sprang from her bed, and fell senseless on the floor!

The noise awoke the abbess and several of the nuns, and brought them running to her chamber. With horror they saw the spectacle before them. They then obtained assistance to carry Rhoderick to his home, and obtained a leech for Agnes.

It appears that De Burgh had employed a man to assassinate his rival also, while he enjoyed his customary evening walk on the banks of the beautiful little river Taw. By an accident which providence often interposes, he discovered himself at the moment he was about to strike, and thus enabled his intended victim to disarm and wound him. While writhing from agony, and in momentary expectation of death, he divulged to Sir Rhoderick that he was employed by De Burgh, who also intended to carry away Agnes that night to a distant castle, where she would be confined in a dungeon until she consented to become his wife.

Collecting a few men, he hastily departed for the convent, near which he met his opponent. A conflict ensued, in which De Burgh was killed, and several of his companions. Ascending the rope ladder which they had secured to the wall which supported the balcony leading to her window, he groped his way into her chamber, for the purpose of effecting her deliverance. In that endeavor the fatal mistake occurred.

Shortly after his removal Agnes became somewhat restored, but only to relapse into a worse state than before. In her delirium she would call upon her lover, in a similar way that any other young lady would be likely to do under such circumstances. Very pathetic, no doubt—but as I do not like tragic scenes, nor tragic descriptions, I must pass over this part of my story, and allow you to fancy what took place. However, on the third day of her illness, while relating portions of her history to a favorite nun, she suddenly stopped in the midst of her remarks and gazed intently toward the foot of her bed. She seemed also to be listening, and then, with the words, “Yes, I’m coming,” she suddenly but quietly expired.

The persons who attended Sir Rhoderick’s funeral declared that when his body was about to be lowered into the grave, in the church, a white shadow was suddenly seen to enter the building, and reflect itself upon the coffin. And the nun affirmed it was precisely at this moment that Agnes died!

This remarkable coincidence excited the wonderment of his friends, and they accordingly laid it before a friar who enjoyed a reputation for great learning. He gave it as a reply, that the white shadow was the spirit of Agnes, and that on each anniversary of her lover’s death she would be required, as a penance, to visit his grave, in a white dress!

Tradition says that this duty has been regularly performed—that on the night of the 7th of November—the day on which he died—she may be seen about midnight, walking in this garb toward his grave, with a rosary in her hand.

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A silence of two or three minutes’ duration followed the recital of this legend, when Jane expressed her dissatisfaction with the punishment allotted to Agnes. She declared it was unjust, because Rhoderick’s death was the result of a mistake, and in this opinion she was supported by some others in the room.

I, however, boldly expressed my entire disbelief in ghosts, and in all their species, at the same time complimenting Mrs. Scroggins for the very eloquent manner (as the newspapers say) in which she had narrated her story; for although fearless of spirits, I had great terror of the old lady’s tongue, and was, therefore, careful not to draw down her wrath, by an indiscriminate censure.

Bob, who prided himself upon his enlightened opinions, pompously declared that a belief in such chimeras was the offspring of a weak or ignorant mind.

Mrs. Scroggins hereupon cast on him a very disdainful look, but did not deign to reply.

Mrs. Primrose shook her head, and very mysteriously declared she had seen too many of such scenes in her life, to disbelieve them.

Elizabeth said nothing, but she seemed very much afraid.

The Squire was sound asleep.

A lady named Baker, who had hitherto remained silent, here expressed her opinion that those who most ridiculed the belief in supernatural appearances, in daylight or in company, were the most afraid of meeting them, when alone in any place said to be haunted.

My comrade and myself took this as a challenge. In the presence of their sweethearts young men always feign to be brave. The most modest youth becomes the veriest Falstaff by the side of his lady-love. We therefore felt it to be our duty to reiterate our skepticism in the strongest terms, and to express ourselves ready, if need be, to encounter a whole army of witches, warlocks, hobgoblins, fairies and will-o’-the-wisps, if such things existed.

The offer seemed to spread terror among our listeners, and Elizabeth imploringly begged me to say no more.

We felt we had made a favorable impression of our courage, and as the hour was now far advanced, we made arrangements to rise early on the following morning for shooting, and then went to our respective places of rest, with a higher idea of our bravery than perhaps had CÆsar when he had vanquished Pompey.

We rose about five, and started with our guns, etc. for a noted sporting place, some five miles distant. It was a clear frosty morning, and in the lightness and activity of youth, we briskly paced over our path, and leaped over the gates and hedges which intercepted the way.

Our sport, however, did not equal our expectation. We therefore walked two or three miles farther, where we bagged a few pheasants. We then called upon an acquaintance, with whom we remained until 6 P. M., and as dusk then began to make its appearance, we departed.

It happened that the places through which we had to pass in our return to the Primroses, were noted for their connection with witches, and other supernatural personages. Ruins of old castles, priories, convents and churches, were to be found in every direction, each of which was connected with many marvellous legends. In passing through a lonely spot, “Anchor Wood,” we found it very dark. We had no light to guide us, save a few faint rays of the moon, which glimmered between the trees. As Bob was best acquainted with the place, I followed on his trail, Indian fashion, each having our guns carelessly resting on our shoulders. On we so walked without saying a word. I, thinking upon the anticipated amusement of the party which the Primroses were to give on that evening; and building—like all young minds do—beautiful castles in the air, and imagining fame and fortune in the future. In the midst of these pleasing though delusive reveries, I was startled, all of a sudden, by a terrified exclamation from my companion.

“What is that?” cried he.

“What do you mean?” I replied.

“I mean that tall white object which is standing in front, directly in our path.”

I looked in the direction he pointed, and to my amazement I saw what he described. It seemed like a tall lady dressed in white, and she appeared to be awaiting our approach.

“This is surely the White Nun Mrs. Scroggins was telling us about last evening,” whispered Bob, with a face like a white-washed wall.

I pretended to poh! poh! the conjecture; but I must confess the attempt was rather a failure. My courage was rapidly giving way. At last I said, doubting whether to remain or run, “I’d rather I had not ridiculed that legend last evening;” and with an effort to become philosophical, I added, “that we ought in our present limited amount of knowledge to treat these things at least with respect.”

“Oh, I wish you had then!” stammered poor Bob, whose teeth rattled together like a negro-minstrel’s “bones.”

“Suppose we call out, and ask what she wants?” I suggested.

“You do it.”

“No, I’d rather not.”

It was then agreed that we should call together, which was done; but no reply was returned.

Bob now suggested that we should discharge a barrel of each of our double-barreled guns obliquely toward the object, which was likewise done; but it met no better success.

“There is no doubt it is a spirit, perhaps the Nun in question, who is thus going to upbraid us for our disbelief,” whispered my friend again.

“Ah! I see her move! She is advancing—run,” I cried, flinging away my gun, and setting the example.

That was enough to make him follow. Away we ran over hedges, ditches, amid mud, and brambles, and water; a small river stretched in front, through which we could only now reach our destination. Cold and dark as it was, we did not hesitate a moment, but plunged in, clothes and all, and swam across. Ascending the opposite bank, we started off again, as fast as our legs could carry us, until we reached the Squire’s residence.

We entered, with our garments dripping with water, and our teeth chattering with cold, without our caps, guns, or game—with our eyes dilated from fright, and our faces pale with excitement. The family and guests had been waiting for us; and you may conjecture their astonishment when they saw our condition. Every mouth was accordingly opened with inquiries; but several minutes elapsed before we could reply.

At length I stammered that we had met a ghost, who looked like the nun Mrs. Scroggins had described. This only increased their curiosity, and with a little more delay I gave them a very incoherent narration of what had taken place.

Poor Jane! I saw a tear silently trickle from her eyes while I was pathetically describing our terror and our danger; and I fancied I saw Elizabeth at that moment giving Bob a secret but affectionate squeeze of the hand. All the others were, of course, amazed, and fully believed every word we said.

We then speedily changed our clothes, and (Father Matthew forgive me!) drank a tumbler of good brandy and water, which was considered an infallible remedy against cold. After which we made our re-appearance in the parlor, feeling like true-born heroes just escaped from danger.

At this moment the clergyman of the village arrived. All of us observed something peculiar in his manner, and we inquired if he, too, had seen the nun?

“Why,” said he, “while I was passing through Anchor-Wood, I saw what appeared to be a lady in a white dress. I was somewhat startled at this unexpected appearance, and I hardly knew what conclusion to arrive at. I thought at first I would return home, but on second consideration I determined to proceed. I did so, and to my great surprise and amusement, I discovered it was no lady at all, and that the illusion was nothing more than the moon’s rays reflected from a pool of water!”

A roar of laughter, which might have been heard a mile distant, followed this disclosure. But no laugh came from Bob’s mouth or mine. No poor mortals were evermore crest-fallen than we were. Any one might have pitied us, when they saw how wofully down in the mouth we became. I tried to be gay, to enjoy the joke, to alter the current of conversation—but it was “no go;” only made matters worse. Mrs. Scroggins made sundry cuts at my courage, Jane complimented my running, and the old Squire wanted to know if I usually swam with my clothes on? With mortification and anger and shame, I ran in desperation to my bed-room, never more miserable in my life. For a long, long time after, nothing gave me greater horror than to hear the slightest allusion made to the “White Nun!”

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BY GEO. D. PRENTICE.

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To be very sure of what he is about to say, and to say it in the fewest possible words, are golden rules which every young author should inscribe, in letters of the same metal, upon the most prominent panel of his study. Had the Hon. Henry Coke done this when he stepped out of his stirrup, on his return from his Ride to California, he would have spared himself the painful throes which appear to have attended the commencement of his literary labor—would have spared his readers, too, the triviality and platitudes which deface some of the earlier pages of his otherwise spirited narrative of a most adventurous expedition. We reckon it amongst the remarkable and hopeful signs of the times, that young men of family and fortune voluntarily abandon the luxurious ease of home for such break-neck and laborious expeditions as that whose record is before us. Whatever the faults of the nobles of Great Britain, effeminacy is certainly not of the number.

It is, indeed, from no feather-bed journey or carpet-knight’s tour that Mr. Coke has recently returned. Take the map, reader, and trace his route. From England to Jamaica, Cuba, Charleston, New York and St. Louis, the great and rising capital of the Western States. We omit the minor intermediate places at which he touched or paused. Thus far all was plain sailing and easy civilized travel. The rough work began when St. Louis was left behind. Across the wide wastes of Missouri territory, through the inhospitable passes of the Rocky Mountains, the traveler passed on to Oregon City and Fort Vancouver, thence took ship to the Sandwich Islands, returned to San Francisco, visited the gold diggings, steamed to Acapulco, rode across Mexico, and came home to England after an absence of a year and a half, during which he had been half round the world and back again.

Mr. Coke started from St. Louis with two companions: one an old college friend, whom he designates as Fred; the other “a British parson, whose strength and dimensions most justly entitled him to be called a pillar of the church.” What the parson did in the prairies of the Far West does not clearly appear. He certainly did not go as a missionary, so far as we can ascertain from his friend’s book, and indeed his habits and tendencies were evidently sporting and jovial rather than clerical, although we do catch him reading Sunday prayers to Mr. Coke, when the latter had the chills, and lay wrapped up in wet blankets on the banks of Green River, with a boxful of Brandreth’s pills in his stomach. We regret to believe that instances have been known of parsons employing their time far worse than in an adventurous ramble across the American continent. Mr. Coke, nevertheless, thinks proper to veil his chaplain’s identity under the heroic cognomen of Julius CÆsar, against which distinguished Roman, could he be recalled to life, we would unhesitatingly back the reverend gentlemen to box a round, wrestle a fall, or handle a rifle, for any number of ponies the ancient backers might be disposed to post. A stalwort priest and a powerful was Parson Julius, and is still, we trust, if nothing has happened to him since Mr. Coke left him at the court of his majesty Tamehameha III., at Honolulu, on the eve of setting sail for the island of Owyhee. No better companion could be desired on a rough and perilous expedition; and although his careless friend manages to let his true name slip out before ending his volume, we will not allow that the slip affords grounds for regret, or that there is any thing in his journey of which, as a clergyman, he need be ashamed.

Considerably over-provided with attendants, horses, mules, and, above all, with baggage, the three friends left St. Louis. Their “following” comprised “four young Frenchmen of St. Louis; Fils, a Canadian voyageur; a little four-foot-nothing Yankee, and Fred’s valet-de-champs, familiarly called Jimmy.” The journey was commenced on the 28th of May, 1850, per steamer, up the Missouri. On the morning of the 29th a disagreeable discovery was made. Fils, the guide, had disappeared. The scamp had levanted in the night; how, none could tell. Drowning was suggested; but as he had taken his baggage, and had forgotten to leave behind him the rifle and three months’ advance of pay which he had received from his employers, the hypothesis was contemptuously scouted. Consoling themselves with the reflection that his desertion would have been far more prejudicial at a later period of their journey, the travelers continued their progress up the Missouri (for whose scenery Mr. Coke can find no better comparison than the Cockney one of “Rosherville or Cremorne”) to St. Joseph, which the Yankees familiarize into St. Joe. Here they were to exchange the deck for the saddle; and so impatient were they for the substitution that they actually felt “annoyed at being obliged to sleep another night on board the steamer.” They had yet to learn the value of a coarse hammock in a close cabin. At last they made a fair start:

“3d June.—After much bother about a guide, and loss of linch-pins, fitting of harness, kicking and jibbing of mules, etc., we left the Missouri, and camped five miles from the town. We pitched our tents in a beautiful spot, on the slope of a hill, surrounded by a large wood. A muddy little stream ran at the bottom. To this (with sleeves turned up and braces off trying, I suppose, to look as much like grooms or dragoons as we were able) we each led our horses: no doubt we succeeded, for we felt perfectly satisfied with every thing and every body. The novelty put us all in excellent humor. The potatoes in the camp-kettle had a decidedly bivouacking appearance; and though the grass was wet, who, I should like to know, would have condescended to prefer a camp-stool? As to the pistols, and tomahawks, and rides, it was evident that they might be wanted at a moment’s notice, that it would have been absolutely dangerous not to have them all in perfect readiness. Besides, there was a chance of finding game in the wood. If the chance had been a hundred times as diminutive, we were in duty bound to try it.”

Playing at traveling, like playing at soldiers, is all very well when the campaign is brief. The raw recruit or amateur campaigner plumes himself on a night passed upon straw in a barn. Give him a week’s bivouacking in damp ploughed fields, and he sings small and feels rheumatic, and prefers the domestic nightcap to the warrior’s laurel. Thus with Messrs. Coke and Company. They were in a monstrous hurry to begin gypsying. What would they not have given, a week or two later, for a truckle bed and a tiled roof? The varnish of the picture, the anticipated romance, was soon rubbed off by the rough fingers of hardship and reality. What a start they made of it! Mr. Coke is tolerably reserved on this head; but through his reserve it is not difficult to discern that, unless they had taken hair powder and a grand piano, they could hardly have encumbered themselves with more superfluities than those with which their mules and wagons were overloaded. Many who read these lines will remember the admirable and humorous account given by our lamented friend Ruxton, of the westward-bound caravan which fell in with Killbuck and La BontÉ at the big granite block in Sweet Water Valley. Few, who have ever read, will have forgotten that characteristic sketch;—the dapper shooting-jackets, the fire-new rifles, the well-fitted boots and natty cravats, the Woodstock gloves and elaborate powder-horns, the preserved soup, hotch-potch, pickles, porter, brandy, coffee, sugar, of the amateur back-woodsmen who found the starving trappers dining on a grilled snake in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, and generously ministered to their necessities. With somewhat similar, but still more extravagant provision, did our Jockey of Norfolk, Fred, and Julius CÆsar, go forth into the prairie. Less fortunate than Ruxton’s Scotchman, they failed to retain or enjoy what they had dearly paid for. Sadly altered was their trim, piteous their plight, long, long before they reached the Rocky Mountains. Disasters soon arrived, with disgust and discord in their train. At their first halting-place, five miles from St. Joseph, a pouring rain, pattering on their tent, forbade sleep; a horse and mule, disgusted by the dirty weather and foretaste of rough work, broke loose and galloped back to the town. These recovered, and the new guide, successor to the faithless Fils, having joined, they again went ahead. We may cull from Mr. Coke’s pages a few of the impediments and annoyances encountered at this early period of the journey:

“Nothing could be more provoking than the behavior of our teams; each animal seemed to vie with its yoke-mate in making itself disagreeable. They had no idea of attempting to pull together, and all exertions on our parts were discouraged by the most vehement kicks and plunges on theirs.... The men were as incapable of driving as the mules were unwilling to be driven, and before we had traveled three miles the heaviest of our wagons was stuck fast..... A doubt here arose as to which road we had better take, and I clearly perceived that our guide was deplorably ignorant of his calling, since in the very outset he was undecided as to which route we should pursue..... 7th June.—Started at seven. Roads worse than ever. Heavy wagon, as usual, sticks in a rut, and is nearly upset. Discharge cargo, and find it hard work to carry heavy boxes up the hill..... My black mare, Gipsy, has run away. Take Louis, the Canadian, and go after her. Find her tracks in a large wood, and hunt the whole day in every direction, but are at last obliged to give her up.”

Incidents such as these, and others still more disagreeable, were of daily occurrence. Nothing could tame the wilfullness of the mules, or check the erratic propensities common to them and to the horses. The wagons, overladen, continually broke down. Indeed, so aggravating were most of the circumstances of the journey in this its early stage, and so few the compensating enjoyments, that we believe most persons in the place of Mr. Coke and his friends would have turned back within the week, and desisted from an expedition which had been undertaken solely with a view to amusement and excitement. With extraordinary tenacity of purpose the three Englishmen persevered. Their followers proved terribly helpless, and they were indebted to an old Mormon, whom they met upon the road, for the repairs of their frequently broken wheels. Here is the journal for the 12th June:

“Blazard (the Mormon) repairs our wheels. We three go out hunting in different directions. See the tracks and skin of a deer, also fresh tracks of wolves. Put up a wild turkey—horse too frightened to allow me to fire at it. Killed a large snake marked like a rattlesnake, and shoot a gray squirrel and two wild ducks, right and left, with my rifle. When we came home we made a bargain with Blazard, letting him have the small wagon for fifteen dollars, on condition that he took 300 lb. weight for us as far as the mouth of the Platte. We talk of parting with four of our men, and packing the mules, when we get to Council Bluffs.”

This project was soon put into execution. There the travelers camped, at about four miles from the river; and Mr. Coke and Fred rode over to Trader’s Point, crossed the Missouri, and called on Major Barrow, an Indian agent, who cashed them a bill, recommended them a half-breed servant, bought their remaining wagon and harness at an “alarming sacrifice;” bought of them also “forty pounds of powder, a hundred pounds of lead, quantities of odds and ends, and all the ginger beer!!!” They had previously sent back or sold several hundred pounds’ weight of lead and provisions; so we get some idea of the scale on which the young gentlemen’s stores had been laid in. By this time, Mr. Coke says, “we begin to understand the mysteries of ‘trading’ a little better than formerly; but somehow or other a Yankee always takes us in, and that, too, in so successful a manner as to leave the impression that we have taken him in.” Besides buying their goods a dead bargain, the Major—a remarkably smart man, who doubtless thought that greenhorns capable of taking ginger beer to the Rocky Mountains were fair game—attempted to make money out of them in another way.

“The day cleared, and as we could not start till the evening, the Major proposed to get up a race. He knew of a horse (his own) that could beat any in our ‘crowd.’ He had seen him run a good many times, and ‘just knowed how he could shine.’ Fifty dollars was the stake, and ‘let him what won take the money.’”

Fred volunteered to ride a fast little gray of Mr. Coke’s. Three-quarters of a mile were measured on the prairie. The Major brought out his animal, greased its hoofs, washed its face, brushed its hair, mounted the half-breed upon it barebacked, and took his station at the winning-post. At first the half-breed made the running. Major and friends were cock-a-hoop; but the Englishman was a bit of a jockey.

“They were now about three hundred yards from the post. Fred had never used the spur; he needed but to slack the reins—away dashed the little gray, gaining at every stride upon the old horse. It is our turn to cheer! The Major begins to think seriously of his fifty dollars, when, in an instant, the fate of the game is changed. The little gray stumbles; he has put his foot in a hole—he staggers, and with difficulty recovers himself. The big horse must win. Now for whip and spur! Neck and neck, in they come—and which has won the race? ‘Well, sir!’ said the Major, ‘slick work, wasn’t it? what is your opinion?’ I might have known by this deferential question what his opinion was; but, to tell the truth, I could not decide which horse was the winner, and so I said. He jumped at this favorable decision on my part, and ‘calculated’ forthwith that it was a dead heat. I learned afterward that he had confessed we had won, and thought little of our ‘smartness’ for not finding it out. My little gray was thenceforth an object of general admiration; and the utilitarian minds of the Yankees could not understand why I was not traveling through the States with such a pony, and making my fortune by backing him against every thing of its size.”

Mr. Coke is a good appreciator of the Yankees, and so lively and successful in his sketches of their national traits and peculiarities, that it is to be regretted he does not talk rather more about them. His stay at New York he passes over in a couple of pages.

“I am not ambitious,” he says, “of circulating more American notes, nor do I care to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Trollope. Enough has been written to illustrate the singularities of second-rate American society. Good society is the same all the world over. General remarks I hold to be fair play. But to indulge in personalities is a poor return for hospitality; and those Americans who are most willing to be civil to foreigners, receive little enough encouragement to extend that civility, when, as is too often the case, those very foreigners afterward attempt to amuse their friends on one side of the Atlantic, at the expense of a breach of good faith to their friends on the other..... I have a great respect for almost every thing American. I do not mean to say that I have any affection for a thorough-bred Yankee, in our acceptation of the term; far from it. I think him the most offensive of all bipeds in the known world.”

The English are perhaps too apt to judge a whole nation upon a few unfavorable specimens; also to attach exaggerated importance to trifling peculiarities. This latter tendency is fostered, in the case of America, by those relentless book-makers, who, to point a chapter and raise a laugh, are ready, as Mr. Coke justly remarks, to sacrifice a friend and caricature facts. In our opinion, Englishmen and Americans will like each other better when they see each other more. “All Americans I have met,” says Mr. Coke, “were agreeable enough if humored a little, and perfectly civil if civilly treated.” Brutes and ruffians (like good society) are the same in all countries. At Sacramento, Mr. Coke one day took up a newspaper to read an account of a Lynch execution which had taken place at four that morning.

“I was perusing the trial, when a ruffianly-looking individual interrupted me with, ‘Say, stranger, let’s have a look at that paper, will you?’ ‘When I have done with it,’ said I, and continued reading. This answer would have satisfied most Christians endowed with any moderate degree of patience; but not so the ruffian. He bent himself over the back of my chair, put one hand on my shoulder, and with the other held the paper, so that he could read as well as I. ‘Well, I guess you’re reading about Jim, aint you?’ ‘Who’s Jim?’ said I. ‘Him as they hung this morning,’ he answered, at the same time resuming his seat. ‘Jim was a particular friend of mine, and I helped to hang him.’”

The narrative that follows, and which is rather too lengthy to extract entire, is very graphic and striking—an excellent specimen of life in California. Jim, it appeared, was a “Britisher,” an ex-convict from the penal settlements, a terrible scamp and desperado. His offenses were many, but murder was the crime he suffered for. Here is the horribly thrilling account of his execution, as given to Mr. Coke by the “friend” who helped to Lynch him.

“It was just about daylight. They carried him to the horse-market, set him on a table, and tied the rope round one of the lower branches of a big elm-tree. All the time I kept by his side, and when he was getting on the table he asked me to lend him my revolver to shoot one of the jurymen, who had spoken violently against him. When I refused, he asked me to tie the knot so as it wouldn’t slip. ‘It aint no account,’ said I, ‘to talk in that way, Jim; old fellow, you’re bound to die; and if they didn’t hang you I’d shoot you myself.’ ‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘give me hold of the rope, and I’ll show you how little I care for death.’ He seized the cord, pulled himself in an instant out of the reach of the crowd, and sat cross-legged on the bough. Half-a-dozen rifles were raised to bring him down, but reflecting that he could not escape, they forebore to fire. He tied a noose in the rope, put it round his neck, slipped it up till it was pretty tight, and then stood up and addressed the mob. He didn’t say much, except that he hated them all. He cursed the man he shot; he then cursed the world; and last of all he cursed himself; and with a terrible oath he jumped into the air, and with a jerk that shook the tree swung backward and forward over the heads of the crowd.”

We are cantering rather ahead of Mr. Coke and his friends, whom we left at Trader’s Point, with a long trail before them. Their councils were already divided. The members of the triumvirate could not agree as to how many of their attendants should be retained. Finally, most of them were paid off and sent back. This was a very painful and arduous part of the journey. On the second day after leaving Major Barrow’s station, they reached Elk Horn ferry. It had been broken up by the Indians, and a raft had to be made, and the baggage taken across piecemeal. “The animals were not so easy to get across. Some of us were obliged to swim the river (which was sixty or seventy yards wide) eight or nine times, taking one horse at a time, or driving two or three by flogging and shouting behind them.” The musquetoes were in the ascendant; the rains heavy and frequent; the Sioux Indians, it was reported, had received from the Pawnees intimation of the movements of the Pale-face band.

“All the party rather out of sorts,” writes Mr. Coke on the 26th June. “Our two best men, Louis and Jim, are very unwell. Nelson, a most willing and hard-working fellow, is unused to the sort of life, and wants to turn back. As to Jacob, his utter uselessness is a constant source of provocation to me; and the parson’s indifference, and Fred’s fidgetty disposition, make the chapter of our miseries complete. The mules are not much better off than we are; five of them are suffering from severe back-sores, and all of them object strongly to carrying the packs; they frequently cast themselves in the night, and get their legs badly cut with the picket ropes. It seems after all doubtful how far we shall get. Some of us talk of going on alone.”

Trials of temper are inseparable from expeditions of this kind, and here was a trio manifestly ill-assorted; one of its members rather fanciful and capricious, another too phlegmatic and easy-going, the third—Mr. Coke, could not be expected to set forth his own failings, but we suspect him of being a little irritable and hot-tempered, although evidently a good fellow, with plenty of pluck and perseverance. As yet, however, there was no break-up. The party kept together, often in straggling order, but usually reuniting at evening, to feed on rancid ham, mouldy biscuit, and such flesh or fowl as their rifles had procured them during the day. Nor were fish and reptiles despised when obtainable. Occasional attempts at angling were not very fortunate, the American fish being apparently unused to English flies; but sometimes a fine salmon or two were got by barter, from the Indians who had speared them. And a roast snake is by no means a despicable thing. Both Mr. Coke and the Parson—for whom we entertain an intense respect, as a man of few words but energetic action, a little tardy to move, perhaps, (a slight dash of Athelstane the Unready in his character,) but most effective and vigorous when movement was decided upon—went a snaking now and then. He of Norfolk seems to have been a fair shot at starting, and a first-rate one before he had half got over his journey, and he stalked the buffalo very successfully, shot snakes through the head, and contributed a large quota to the contents of the camp-kettle. The chaplain also was considerable of a sportsman, and ready with his rifle. Fat cow, tender loin, and juicy hump at times were plentiful in camp. Failing those delicate viands, all was made game of that offered itself to the wanderers’ muzzles.

“12th July.—Shot two prairie dogs. Jim killed a hare and rattle-snake. They were all capital eating, not excepting the snake, which the parson cooked and thought as good as eel.”

Following a band of buffaloes, Mr. Coke was charged by a bull, and awaited his onset, but waited a little too long. “My horse never stirred; I had no time for any thing but to take aim, and having fired between the neck and shoulder, I was the next minute, sprawling on my back, with the mare rolling over four or five yards beyond me. Recovering from the shock, I could not help admiring the picturesque group we presented; I rubbing my bruised limbs, and the buffalo looking on, half stupefied and astonished at the result of his charge.” The contents of the rifle’s second barrel roused the bull from his stupefaction, and he moved off. Up came the unfeeling parson and followed the wounded brute, perfectly heedless of his friend’s mishaps. Quite a man of business was this parson. Mr. Coke gives a description of his appearance in the prairies, on the occasion of his purchase of an Indian pony fourteen hands high. “He weighs fifteen stone, rides on a heavy saddle with a heavy pair of holster pistols, carries a very heavy rifle and telescope, a heavy blanket and great-coat, a pouch full of ammunition, a girdle stuck with small arms and bowie-knives, and always has his pockets crammed with et ceteras.”

Not altogether the right costume for a stall in a cathedral, although highly appropriate upon the trail to California.

Incompatibility of taste and temper at last produced a split in the caravan. Fred went on ahead, expecting to march thirty or thirty-five miles a day. Mr. Coke and the parson kept together, proposing to limit their daily progress to twenty-five miles. It was much oftener sixteen or eighteen, sometimes only seven or ten. The men hired for the journey had become so mutinous and discontented, and, upon the whole, were of so little use, that to two of them a share of the provisions were given, and they were allowed to go alone. Two others marched with Fred, the fifth and last went alone, but occasionally joined company with Mr. Coke and the parson, who were otherwise without attendants, and who had eleven animals to drive and look after—“an awful number for two men,” especially when they were unused to horse-driving and to the management of the abominably vicious, obstinate, perverse brutes of mules, which were constantly kicking off their loads, biting their masters, and straying from camp. The first day’s march after the separation was the most unpleasant they had yet had. The rain fell in chilling torrents; a little black mule, the vixen of the party, kicked Mr. Coke to the ground; and a gray one, her rival in mischief, who bit like a dog, made a furious attack upon his calves. The distance accomplished was but six miles. There were worse times coming, however, even than these. The trouble occasioned by the mules and horses was soon diminished by the loss of three or four of them, strayed, stolen, or foundered. The country was barren and inhospitable, and destitute of game, and often grass and water were for long distances unobtainable.

“Our provisions are barely sufficient to last, with the greatest economy, to Fort Hall, even at the rate we are traveling now. Should the horses give up, it will be impossible for us to carry enough food to reach that station on foot... The only way to get out of the scrape was to lighten the burden of the pack-mules, by throwing away every ounce of superfluous weight. Turning out the contents of our bags on the ground, we selected such things only as were absolutely necessary to existence. What with lead, bullets, powder, geological specimens, and old clothes, we diminished our load so as to make one pack out of two, and left the ground strewed with warnings for future emigrants.”

Sand, sage-bushes, and weeds uneatable by the horses, were now the chief productions of the country. Wood for fires was often lacking; raw ham is heating and unsatisfactory food; the sun was blazing hot, and its rays were fiercely reflected from the sand. Mr. Coke lost his appetite, and suffered much from weakness. At last matters mended a little. They came to a succession of small streams; caught some trout, and obtained other fresh provisions; fell in with trappers, and with an express dispatch from Oregon to the States, escorted by twelve soldiers. These had come by the same road the Englishmen were about to travel, and the Boss, or head man of the party, furnished information concerning grass, water, and halting-places. From Fort Hall, he told them, they were still two hundred miles, and from Oregon nine hundred! A trifling distance in railroad-furrowed Europe, but oh! what a weary way in yonder arid wastes, with those fractious mules, and amidst incessant toils and hardships. “No one,” says Mr. Coke, “can form any idea of the real length of one mile till he has traveled a thousand with pack-mules.” By this time, for various reasons, the travelers had given up the idea of going straight to California, and had fixed upon Oregon as their destination.

“October 1st.—This month, please God, will see us through. The animals, I am sure, will not survive another. As for ourselves, we have but few provisions. The season, too, is getting late; and if we are out much longer, I fear we shall suffer greatly from cold. Already a blanket and a buffalo-robe are little enough covering for the nights. My buffalo-robe, which I spread over the blanket, is always frozen quite stiff.... Yesterday I met with a disaster, which distresses me exceedingly; I broke my pipe, and am able neither to repair nor to replace it. Julius has one, the fumes of which we are compelled to share. If this should go, (and it is already in four pieces, and bound up like a mummy,) I tremble to think of the consequences. In all our troubles the pipe is the one and only consolation. 4th.—Oh, how cold it was this morning, and how cold it was in the night! I could not sleep for the cold, and yet I dreaded the approach of daylight, and the tugging at the frozen ropes which it entailed.... Our poor beasts actually cringed when the saddle touched the great raws on their backs; the frost had made them so painful.... It seems as if this sort of life was to last forever. Day follows day, without the slightest change.”

Things got worse and worse. One after the other, the animals perished. By-and-by Mr. Coke found himself a-foot. They had nothing to eat but salt meat and salmon, and little enough of that. “Yesterday I tightened my belt to the last hole; we are becoming more and more attenuated; and the waist of my gigantic companion is almost as delicate as that of a woman.” At last, on the 12th October, in rags, and with two mules alone remaining out of their once numerous team, but still of good courage and in reviving spirits, Mr. Coke and Julius reached the Dalles, a military post in Oregon, where they found Fred, who had arrived two days before them, and received a kind welcome and good treatment from the officers of the garrison.

After a few days’ repose at the Soldier’s House, as the post at the Dalles is called, the three friends, who had again joined company, boated down the Columbia. This was a rather amusing part of their expedition. The boat was manned by a Maltese sailor and a man who had been a soldier in the American army. The only passenger besides themselves was a big officer of the Yankee Mounted Rifles, a regular “heavy,” and awful braggadocio, who boasted continually of himself, his corps, his army and its campaigns. What were the Peninsular campaigns to the Mexican war? Talk of Waterloo! Look at Chepultapec. Wellington could not shine in the same crowd with General Scott. All this vastly amused the Englishmen. What was less amusing was the utter ignorance of seamanship displayed by the soldier-skipper, who, as part owner of the boat, assumed the command. They were nearly swamped by his clumsiness, and Mr. Coke, who has served in the navy, was obliged to take the rudder. The rudder broke, the wind freshened, the river was rough, the boat drifted into the surf and narrowly escaped being dashed to splinters on the rocks. They drew her up high and dry on the beach, lit a fire and waited for the storm to blow over. Wrangling ensued. The Yankee, who had got drunk upon his passengers’ whisky, swore that, soldier though he was, he knew as much about boat-sailing as any midshipman or post-captain in the British navy. The “heavy” backed him, and the military skipper swore he would be taught by none, and wound up with the stereotyped Yankee brag, that “his nation could whip all creation.”

“We had been laughing so much at his boasting that he doubtless thought himself safe in accompanying the remark with an insolent look of defiance. But what was his surprise when the parson, usually a most pacific giant, suggested that if Fred would take the Maltese, I the amphibious captain, he himself would with great pleasure thrash the mounted rifle, and so teach the trio to be more civil and submissive for the future. Whatever the other two might have thought, the ‘heavy’ was by no means inclined to make a target of his fat ribs for the sledge-hammer blows of Julius’s brawny arms; and with a few remarks upon the folly of quarreling in general, and of fighting on the present occasion in particular, not forgetting to remind us of ‘one original stock,’ ‘Saxon race,’ etc., the good-natured ‘plunger’ effected an armistice, which was sealed and ratified with the remains of the whisky-bottle.”

After his recent severe experience, it seemed unlikely that Mr. Coke would soon regret life in the prairies, with its painful alternations of bitter cold and parching heat; its frequent privations, hunger, thirst, fatigue, restive mules, hard labor, and scanty rest. During a seven weeks’ passage between Fort Vancouver and the Sandwich Islands, on board the Mary Dare, a wretched little coal-tub of a brig, he and his companions actually found themselves vaunting the superior comforts of their late land-journey. Confined by constant wet weather to a cabin twelve feet by eight, without a mattress to lie on, but with a superabundance of fleas, rats and cockroaches, they blessed the hour when they first caught sight of the palm-crowned shores of the Sandwich group. Mr. Coke’s account of his stay at the Hawaiian court is lively enough, but of no particular interest; and the sort of thing has been much better done before by Herman Melville and others. After the adventurous journey across the Rocky Mountains, this part of the book reads but tamely, and we are not sorry to get Mr. Coke back to North America. He and Fred landed at San Francisco. A long letter which he wrote thence, after a month’s stay in the country, is here reprinted, having originally been inserted in the Times newspaper by the friend to whom it was addressed. He adds some further particulars and characteristic anecdotes. His account of the diggings, both wet and dry, but especially of the latter, fully confirms the mass of evidence already adduced as to their incalculable richness.

“The quartz rock,” he says, “which is supposed to be the only permanent source from which gold will eventually be derived, extends north and south for more than a degree and a half of latitude. At Maripoosa, a society, possessing several ‘claims,’ have established, at a great expense, machinery for crushing the rock. They employ thirty men, whom they pay at the rate of 100 dollars each a month. This society is now making a clear gain of 1500 dollars a-day. This will show you what is to be expected when capital sets to work in the country.”

Some of the sketches at table-d’hÔtes and gambling-tables are extremely natural and spirited. Mr. Coke and Fred, whilst at San Francisco, lived at El Dorado, the best hotel there; four meals a-day, dinner as good as at Astor’s at New York, venison, grizzly-bear, Sandhill-crane, and other delicacies; cost of board and lodging eight dollars a-day—not dear for California. At the dinner-table they made some queer acquaintances; amongst others a certain Major M., whose first mark of good-will, after his introduction to them by a judge, (judges and majors swarm at San Francisco) was to offer to serve as their friend in any “difficulty” into which they might get. The judge suggested that the two English gentlemen might probably have no need of a “friend” in that sense of the word. The Major’s reply will be our last extract.

“‘Sir,’ said the Major, ‘they are men of honor; and as men of honor, you observe, there is no saying what scrapes they may get into. I remember—it can’t be more than twenty years ago—a brother officer and I were opponents at a game of poker. That officer and I were most intimately acquainted. Another bottle of champagne, you nigger, and fill those gentlemen’s glasses. Very fine that, sir—I never tasted better wine,’ said the Major, as he turned his mustaches up, and poured the gooseberry down. ‘Where was I, Judge? Ah! precisely—most intimate acquaintance, you observe—I had the highest opinion of that officer’s honor—the highest possible opinion,’ with an oath. ‘Well, sir, the luck was against me—I never won a hand! My partner couldn’t stand it. ’Gad, sir, he did swear. But my friend—another slice of crane, nigger, and rather rare; come, gentlemen, help yourself, and pass the bottle—that’s what I call a high old wine, you observe. Where was I, Judge? Ah! just so.—Well, my friend, you observe, did not say a word; but took it as coolly as could be. We kept on losing; they kept on winning; when, as quick as greased lightning, what do you think my partner did, sir? May I be stuck, forked end up, in a ’coon hole, if he didn’t whip out his knife and chop off three of my friend’s fingers. My friend, you observe, halloo’d loud enough. ‘You may halloo,’ says my partner, ‘but if you’d had a full, sir, you’d have lost your hand,’ (an oath.) My intimate friend, you observe, had been letting his partner know what cards he had by putting out a finger for each one; and having the misfortune, you observe, to hold three when my partner found him out, why, sir, you observe, he lost three of his fingers.’”

Between his roguish friend and his ruffianly partner, the Major felt himself in a dilemma how to act.

“‘I think,’ said the Judge, ‘I have heard the story before; but, excuse me, I do not see exactly what relation it bears to these gentlemen, and your offer to serve them.’ ‘That,’ said the Major, ‘if you will give me time, is exactly what I am coming to.—Nigger, bring me a dozen cigars.—The sequel is soon told. Considering my duty as an officer, a friend, and a gentleman, I cut my friend, and shot my partner for insulting him; and if, you observe, these gentlemen shall honor me with their friendship, I will be most happy to do the same by them.’”

Whilst deprecating the good offices of this Yankee O’Trigger in the shooting or cutting line, Mr. Coke and his companion availed of him as a guide to an adjacent faro table, where the gallant Major lost eight hundred dollars with infinite coolness, drank a cocktail, buttoned his coat, and walked away.

As matter of mere amusement, Mr. Coke’s last chapter is his best. It is crammed with diverting stories of “smart” Yankees and other originals whom he encountered in California. The whole book, although in parts a little drawn out, does him credit, and will doubtless be extensively read and well liked. For various classes it has features of attractive interest. The emigrant, the gold-seeker, the sportsman, the mining speculator, the lover of adventure for mere adventure’s sake, will all derive pleasure from its pages, and occasionally glean from them a hint worth remembering.

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BY TRUEMAN S. PERRY.

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The sun had yet scarce tinged the horizon with the first dawn of light, when, with a body hot and unrefreshed, I issued from the door of the hacienda of San Jacinto, to enjoy the cool air of morning, and soothe my limbs with the clear, pure water of a rivulet that coursed past the rear of my last night’s resting-place.

All was yet still around—none seemed to be stirring—and as I glanced over the extensive plains that extended on one side as far as the eye could reach, I could only discern by the misty light a herd of wild horses, as they swept along through the tall, wiry grass that arose above their shoulders. Buckling my pistol-belt around me, I threw my short rifle carelessly across my back, where it hung by its own strap, and rapidly proceeded to descend the steep gully, at the bottom of which the stream, one of the many that descend from the Andes, ran bubbling and boiling, as it glanced over its rocky bed. Uneven and stony, with the footing concealed beneath thick matted grass and small stunted brushwood, I found my task any thing but an easy one, and almost regretted that I had not gone round by the path used by the people of the hacienda. Yet, as I swung from rock to rock by aid of the rank herbage, I felt that the course I had chosen was most in consonance with that wild, reckless spirit that had conducted me over so many lands.

As I reached the bed of the gully, the sun showed itself above the horizon, and the misty haze that filled the deep valley was riven and dispersed in eddying vapor before the warm breath of day. The curtain risen, there lay before me a wide level space of the finest alluvial soil, over which, it would appear, the stream at times extended, when swollen with the melting snows of the Andes; but it was now confined to narrow limits in the centre, now and then extending into large water-holes, where the softer soil had been washed away, or a diverging bend of the stream had given more power to its waters.

The scene was calm, happy nature illuminated by the glow of a tropical sunrise, for it was December, and the sun had almost attained the tropic of Capricorn. But my uncomfortable limbs, twitching with the effects of numberless musqueto bites, would not permit me to enjoy, for any lengthened time, the beauties of nature; so, divesting myself of my apparel, I took my position on a flat rock in the stream, and plied my person with frequent showers of water that I cast over myself, by the aid of a large vessel I had brought from the hacienda.

At the spot where I stood, the stream nearly approached the opposite side of the gully to that on which the buildings were erected, and during a pause in my occupation, my attention was drawn to a rustling noise among the low brushwood that lined the face of the precipitous descent. They were times of danger and peril; vast numbers of Indians were known to be scattered over the pampas, and so daring had they become, by a large accession of numbers from the tribes of the lower Sanquel river, that they had even taken and plundered several villages along the foot of the mountains, in the direction of the route to Paraguay. Accustomed to caution, therefore, the rustling sound was not passed unnoticed, but with a keen glance I scanned the direction whence the sound had proceeded; but naught told of the existence of any living thing, much less danger.

Again, therefore, I sought the comforts afforded by the cool water being thrown over my limbs, for I was afraid to trust myself into deep water, on account of the many venomous reptiles that usually infest the South American streams. Suddenly a cry of alarm startled me; I slipped from the stone on which I stood, and fell at full length into deep water beside me. As I fell, I felt a sharp twinge on my left thigh, and by the color of the water became aware that I was wounded. It was all the work of a moment, quick as thought; and when I turned my eyes to the spot whence I had first heard the rustling noise, there stood, in the very act of having discharged an arrow, and with bow yet elevated, an Indian warrior, with his war-lock ornamented with a few bright feathers, and his dark body entirely divested of clothing, with the exception of a deep fringed leathern belt, fastened round the loins, and descending mid thigh. Before he had time to draw another arrow from his quiver, and fit it to the bow. I sprang from the stream on the bank, seized my rifle, poised it, and fell on one knee close under a rock, which protected me from the aim of my enemy, and at the same time afforded full opportunity to try the effect of my rifle on his warlike form. But rapidly as he had appeared and attempted my life, he disappeared yet more quickly; he seemed to have sunk into the very rocks on which he had been standing; but my knowledge of the Indians made me well aware he had only concealed himself under the thick brushwood, which, although it would afford him shelter when in a crouching posture, yet would be no screen to him if attempting to leave the spot. So, reserving my fire, I merely covered the spot with my rifle, where I knew him to be, calmly awaiting the first good opportunity to try my aim.

At the furthest I could not be sixty yards from my enemy; the cry I had heard, and which had saved my life, proceeded from one of the rancheros, who had arisen, disturbed by my leaving the building, and followed to the edge of the gully to demand some orders of me. Not wishing to risk his neck in the descent, and considering the path too far round, he had composedly stretched himself on the edge of the precipice to await my return, amusing himself in the meanwhile by observing my motions.

Whilst so doing, his eye had chanced to alight upon the Indian, who had been concealed previously, in the act of discharging the arrow. The alarm had disturbed his aim and saved my life, the wound being only a slight flesh one.

The shout of the ranchero had aroused all within the buildings of the hacienda, and the face of the precipice was now crowded with numbers hurrying down to my assistance as they best could; among the foremost were my own companions of travel.

Each moment rendered the position of the Indian more critical; for on the arrival in the flat of the many that were now rushing down its sides, he would be exposed to a fire from which he would have but little chance of escape.

With the instinct of his race, the warrior of the pampas seemed fully aware of his danger, for, before any had reached half-way to where I lay, his dark body sprang from the cover that protected him, and with rapid bounds he sought to reach the summit of the gully. A fierce and prolonged yell told of his attempt, and several shots were fired, but ineffectually, on account of distance. I alone was within good shot; covered with the rifle, whose aim had been so often proved, I felt his life was in my hands; for a moment I hesitated—but the nature of my position overpowered all thoughts of mercy—the mouth of my piece poured forth its small sheet of flame, and before the sharp report had ceased to reverberate, the body of my enemy was tumbling, a lifeless mass, from rock to rock, forcing its way through the tangled, matted grass and brush-wood.

Congratulating friends, and startled tenants of the hacienda soon surrounded me, and the body of the Indian being dragged to the bank of the stream, two friendly Indians of the party pronounced it to be that of a powerful chief of one of the southern tribes, who were said to be committing the depredations in the villages under the Andes.

What brought the chief away from his tribe, and in the neighborhood of the hacienda, remained unexplained, until some of the guides who had been dispatched at the first alarm, to bring in the few horses that remained unturned out the previous night, joined the party, and informed us that they had seen three other Indians issue from the gully, some short distance down, and, mounting horses that had been in charge of two companions, dash across the plain with a led horse, in the direction of the mountains.

This news caused no inconsiderable stir amongst the motley assemblage, and we returned to the hacienda to decide what course we were to adopt.

Ten days previous, with three companions, all Englishmen, three guides, and four rancheros as attendants, we left St. Jago with the intention of proceeding by land to Buenos Ayres. The reason of our employing the rancheros was, that they had a short time previous accompanied a Valparaiso merchant from St. FÉ to St. Jago, and had been most useful to him on the route. Absent from their own country they were glad of an opportunity to return, and we secured them for a comparatively small recompense.

The guides were the usual adjuncts to all travelers, and indispensable in order to pilot us on our way, and catch horses for us, when those we rode were knocked up. The previous evening we had arrived at the hacienda of San Jacinto, after having two days before descended from the Andes, whence it was distant some ninety miles.

A kind of station-house was here for the guides, where they changed: those who had conducted us across the precipices and defiles of those eternal snow-clad mountains, giving place to others who were to conduct us to the settled districts of the Buenos Ayrean plains, where their services would be no longer required. It was also used as a place of refreshment, where the usual Pampa fare was to be obtained, with some most execrable peach brandy, and a little bad wine.

Several other houses stood in the neighborhood of the hacienda, inhabited by cross-bred herdsmen, almost as wild as the stock they were in charge of, and a few women their companions in the wilderness, and an odd child was also visible.

Several other travelers had arrived the same evening as ourselves, but none traveling in our direction, and no European. Having consulted, and the majority being of opinion that the Indians who had alarmed us were merely a scouting party at some distance from their tribe, it was resolved that all should proceed on their journey. Against this almost unanimous decision, one of our companions, a mercantile man from St. Jago, rebelled, and chose rather to return in company with the chief body of travelers, who were proceeding across the Andes, than face the danger of meeting the hostile Indians with our small force. Remonstrance to change his resolve was of no avail, so, as soon as fresh horses had been obtained, with my two companions and attendants I pursued my way, leaving all around the hacienda in anxious preparation to receive any attack that might be made on them by the Indians in revenge for the death of one of their chiefs.

Under the suggestion of the guides we refrained from at once striking across the plains the way our road lay, in order to deceive any one who might follow, and descending into the bed of the gully by the path, followed its course some fifteen miles before we ascended to the level plains, and struck into the Pampas across which our journey was to be performed.

When once on level soil we urged our horses to their utmost speed, and when two hours before sun set we halted to refresh ourselves, it was considered that a space of at least sixty miles divided us from the scene of the morning adventure. Around naught could be seen but the undulating bosom of the Pampas, as the tall, wiry grass that covered its face, bent beneath a slight breeze that fanned our heated temples.

The guides soon cleared a large circular space, for our night’s resting-place, of the parched grass, and a fire being kindled, a cup of coffee, with some dried beef and a few biscuits, revived our wearied frames.

In consequence of the circumstances of the morning, all the horses were retained and made fast to pegs taken from the Spanish saddles of our guides, who carried them for such emergencies.

Our course had lain eastward all day, and the sun was fast sinking to the western horizon, whence we had come, when an exclamation from one of the rancheros, who had risen to see to the perfect security of the horses, drew our attention to a point whither he directed our view, by a motion of the arm. Long and intense was the gaze, but our European eyes could discover nothing, till a telescope was obtained from the traveling case of one of my friends, which soon satisfied us that a large body of horsemen were advancing rapidly along the very track we had come.

It was a moment of deep anxiety—what was to be done? Were we to wait and take the chance of its being a friendly tribe of Indians or travelers? We could not have a chance of escape on the jaded horses we had so hardly tasked during the day, so, from inevitable necessity, we determined, friend or, foe, to await them where we were. Rapid were the preparations made to fight, in case they proved to be enemies. The horses were saddled, some spare arms furnished to the guides, and rifles and pistols being looked to, each man beside his horse, and drawn up in line, we awaited the result. Nearer and nearer they approached; the lower edge of the sun had dipped beneath the horizon, and anxiously we prayed for darkness, when the guides pronounced the advancing party to be strange Indians. Still clear light remained, and onward yet they came. Their very number was appalling; sixty at least were in view, and as they bent forward over their horses, and urged them on, the wild gestures of their arms seemed to announce our doom, and to forewarn us that our bones would bleach on the wild Pampas of Central America.

It was no time, however, for reflection. Their yells sounded in our ears, and they advanced in a dense body within two hundred paces of the position we had taken. Then came a halt, and out from the main body rode a single Indian. The savage strode his horse without saddle or any other appurtenance than a raw hide strap, formed into a bridle, with which he managed his steed. His arms consisted of a bow and arrows, slung across his back, with a long hunting-knife and heavy tomahawk suspended from his belt; his followers were mounted and armed like their chief, none possessing fire-arms.

Slowly he rode forward some hundred yards nearer than his people, till he paused in a position where the rifle of any of the party could have ended his days. But we were in no position to commence hostilities, so we wisely refrained from such a useless sacrifice of life. We still had a hope that the tribe in whose presence we were, formed no part of that whose chief fell in the morning; and, in order to ascertain the fact, one of the guides addressed the chief in a patois of the Indian tongue, but—although the attempt was renewed by the two others, it called forth no response. He still continued calmly gazing at us.

Suddenly, as if actuated by a passing thought, he wheeled his horse round, and joined his followers. Then, indeed, his voice was heard, clear and distinct, and, from his commanding gestures, it was apparent that he exercised supreme sway over the assembled warriors. At his word the crowd dissolved, and keeping without the range of our rifles, they formed a circle around us. It was no time for indecision; so, mounting our horses, we formed a double line, back to back, each man with his rifle or pistols ready. Then, indeed, imagination alone can depict the fierce war-cries that issued from all around us, the rush of horses, and the cloud of arrows that threatened annihilation to all. One of my English companions fell from his horse at the first discharge. We returned the fire with some effect, and, as a last hope, each for himself, dashed fearlessly on the line as they closed upon us.

Darkness was just setting in, so our hope was to escape singly, and make the best of our way back to the hacienda, if successful. The rush was fearful. The bright knives of two enemies, on whom I dashed, glared in my eyes; but fire-arms again proved their superiority: one fell, and the stroke of the other but wounded my horse. Maddened with the pain of the wound it had received, the noble horse I rode plunged forward, and, at a tremendous speed, swept me in a moment beyond reach of a few stray arrows aimed at me.

Still, yet still, I had a chance for my life. I thought of my companions, but darkness hid every thing, beyond the space of a few yards, from my view. On, on I dashed, plunging the long spurs, with which my heels were armed, into the side of my willing steed. I could perceive, by the voices behind, that many were in pursuit, and after a mile or so had been passed over, I clearly discerned the voices gaining on me, and from an occasional stagger of my horse, ascertained, but too truly, that loss of blood was making him faint.

By this time it was completely dark, day having passed away with usual tropical rapidity, and my resolve was made. Throwing myself on my feet, I struck the noble brute that so far had saved me, and abandoned him to his own head. Relieved of my weight, I depended on his keeping on some distance before he could be overtaken by my pursuers. At the same time, placing myself on my face, I trusted to being passed over undiscovered—concealed, as I was, by the long grass. A minute had but elapsed, when at least a score of horsemen rushed past, on either side of me, inflicting no injury, but evidently urging, in the pursuit, their comrades by voice and gesture.

When their voices could no longer be heard, I arose from my reclining posture, and struck off at an angle from the course they had gone. I toiled, with difficulty, through the long pampa-grass, encumbered as I was, and had not proceeded more than a couple of miles, when voices again drew near, and I had to conceal myself as before. Once more they passed, but at some distance; and I then concluded they had overtaken my horse, and discovered the escape of its rider. This nerved me to further exertion, as I felt satisfied the strictest search would be made, particularly as I was known to be an Englishman—and in those wild regions that name is almost universally connected with wealth—so that, for the sake of plunder alone, no exertion was likely to be spared to effect my capture.

Onward, therefore, I forced my way, pushing aside the rank, dry herbage, and, attracted by a sudden bright glare, casting my eyes behind, the appalling fact was at once apparent, that the pampas had been fired by the Indians, for the purpose of destroying myself and any others that might have escaped the first onslaught.

To such a number of men as the attacking party consisted of, the firing of the long, dry grass would offer but little danger; for, before so doing, it is the habit of the Indians to clear a large space of the herbage, and every thing that would afford fuel for the flame, in the centre of this a safe retreat could be found until the fire had exhausted itself on all around, leaving nothing but the naked blackened plains. For a single individual there seemed no hope that I could clear by unaided exertions, any such space as would afford a hope of safety; so, in despair, still onward I recklessly rushed.

The night was still and calm; but there the fire was to be seen, extending with fearful rapidity, as the expansion of the air by heat, swept its sparks over the surrounding grass, dry as tinder.

All hope seemed fled. I was apparently doomed to die a fearful death by fire, when, by the aid of the light yielded by the vast blaze, yet distant some miles, I discerned the carcass of the gallant horse who had so lately borne me from amongst my enemies. Further it was useless to fly; the relentless element would soon overtake me; so I determined to make here one more effort for my life.

The animal was dead, and it required but one look to assure me that he bore many marks of tomahawk wounds, inflicted by the Indians in their first moment of disappointment. Beside the body, also, lay a heavy weapon of that kind, and on seeing it, my mode of proceeding, to effect my safety, was resolved on.

With a case-knife I always carried about me, I cut or tore away the herbage and grass for a short distance round the body; but my utmost exertion enabled me only to do this to the extent of a few feet, when the nearer approach of the fire warned me to other things. So small, indeed, was the space thus cleared, that I felt satisfied it would be impossible to exist, without other shelter, when the fire surrounded me. That protection the carcass offered; so, seizing the tomahawk, I rapidly ripped up the body with that and my knife, and tore from the inner part the yet warm entrails.

The few minutes so occupied had brought the fire within a few hundred yards, and, as I crushed myself within the reeking carcass, and covered my exposed limbs with masses of the disgusting offal, I could scarce turn my fascinated sight from the appalling scene.

As far as the eye could extend, on either side, nought was to be distinguished but one bright mass of flame—some twenty feet high—above which hung, in dense clouds, dark black smoke; while, yet higher still, light white vapor floated and rose into the heavens. Around, all was as bright as day, and the long, wiry grass could be even discerned bending before the fearful element, as it advanced to annihilate. No breeze swept over the plains; but yet the fire roared and raged, as if hurled along before the breath of a hurricane. The fleeting instants of suspense that elapsed before the fire reached the spot where I lay, looked almost like long hours. My fate hung in the balance, and uncertainty was worse than death. Years have since passed away, but when lying on my calm and quiet bed, I yet start with alarm: the shadows of the past flit over my memory, and I fancy myself yet awaiting the moment that would enclose me in that fearful flaming sea. The agony of suspense was passed; fire was around, beside, within me, as I swallowed the hot, furnace breath of the atmosphere. Oh, God! my very vitals were dried up, and my brain seemed ready to burst, as my swollen blood-vessels distended to the utmost. Oh, thus to perish!—in the spring of life: friends, home, early days, for an instant crossed my mind Oh! but to die by fire!—frightful, fearful!—“Oh, great God, save me!”

The struggle seemed over; although the fire could not reach my body, covered as it was, yet the intense heat seemed to destroy life, and for a time rendered me insensible. When consciousness returned, the fire was little more than visible on the horizon, and the cold and clammy flesh and entrails pressed upon my burning, parched limbs. A violent thirst actuated me, and in order to allay it, I was reduced to the necessity of cutting a large mass of flesh from the buttock, and sucking the blood and moisture therefrom; till then I could scarce breathe; the heated air I had swallowed so parched and dried up my mouth and throat, that the thick skin peeled off when touched by my tongue.

Revived by my application, once more my thoughts reverted to my position, and the chance of escape. It was improbable that the Indians would make any search over the plains till daylight made such comparatively easy, and up to morning I calculated on safety.

Of the locality I knew but very little, merely what had been learned from the guides; but of one thing I felt satisfied, that I should be sure to be captured if I attempted to return in the direction of San Jacinto. The guides had stated that for some distance to the southward, many deep gullies, with streams in their beds, ran out for a great distance in the Pampas, many of them in a straight line from the Andes, at the foot of which they commenced. This determined me to strike off in a southerly direction, guided by the stars, and endeavor to reach one of these before daylight would leave any stray Indian to discover me with little difficulty on the blackened, naked plains, where not even a rock for concealment existed.

But when I attempted to walk, I found I could do so with great exertion only; yet it was the last chance, so, abandoning my rifle and all other things of any weight, except my pistols, and a small junk of horse-flesh, I tottered along as I best could. Hour after hour I struggled on; morning came, yet nothing was to be seen but one black, scorched surface, as far as the eye could reach. Not a living thing was in sight, not even the hum of an insect enlivened the atmosphere; all was drear and desolate. Anxiously, from time to time, I glanced around the horizon, but friend and enemy seemed alike absent.

The sun had risen into the heavens, three hours had elapsed since daylight, when my sight was cheered by the distant view of a few shrubs and verdure, which, on a nearer approach, I found to be growing along the far side of a steep, narrow gully, at the bottom of which, as usual, ran a stream. The fire had burned up all on one side, but the water had effectually stopped its progress to the other, so here at last was a good cover afforded me.

The wants of nature were first allayed—I drank long and heartily, and, careless of all reptiles, actually rolled myself, clothes and all, in the bed of the stream. Hunger I did not feel, thirst alone had afflicted me, and in the course of my night’s journey I had sucked the piece of horse flesh till it was as dry as my scorched boots themselves.

No time was lost, when I had revived myself, in following up the course of the creek, now and again ascending to the edge of the plains, to ascertain if pursuers were in sight; but I traveled on, mile after mile, without seeing the glimpse of any living thing on the side whence I had a right to look for the Indians. All that side of the creek or gully bore evident marks of the late conflagration, which in no part extended to the side I was now on.

I was quite uncertain whither I was proceeding; I only felt satisfied that in some days I should reach the neighborhood of the Andes, by pursuing the course I had taken, and there I hoped to find some village or hacienda.

As day declined, however, I felt the calls of nature, and hunger made powerful demands upon me; but I had nothing wherewith to satisfy it. Throughout the day there had not appeared either horses or wild cattle, from which it was to be inferred that they had been driven far from the banks of the creek by the appearance of the fire on one side; so that thus the small chance of being able to surprise and bring down a wild calf, with my pistols, was taken away for the present.

Yet although at least thirty miles of ground were traversed from daylight to sunset, I partook of no nourishment but the cool water beside which I was traveling, and at night, overcome with fatigue, made my bed with some grass I had pulled, beneath an overhanging rock, without tasting food for twenty-four hours, notwithstanding my extreme fatigue during that period.

Long and soundly did I sleep, but the damp, cold air of morning chilled me, and disturbed those slumbers an hour or so before daylight, when, in order to infuse warmth into my limbs, and make some progress on my way, I pursued my path along the bed of the creek, without waiting for the rays of the sun to direct my steps. Again for weary hours, under a burning sun, I struggled on, till about mid-day nature became exhausted from sheer want of food, and I sunk, unable to proceed farther, at the side of the stream.

Starvation stared me in the face, and threatened my existence, with the same certainty the fire had appeared to do such a short time before; neither birds nor beasts showed themselves; roots there were none to be found, and again despair overshadowed my soul, when I observed a large water-snake issue from the stream, and leisurely trail its dark body along toward the crevices of some rocks near at hand. It was the work of a moment to hurl a large stone at it, which broke its spine, and a stroke of a knife finished the matter. I then deprived the animal of its head, in which I was aware any poison it possessed was contained, and collecting a few pieces of dry kindling, of which plenty was scattered along the plain, a fire was soon kindled, and the body of the Pampa snake being broiled, afforded refreshment to the exhausted traveler, such as he never had obtained from the primest eels of fatherland; intense hunger made the food, disgusting at other times, more than palatable on that occasion.

Invigorated by this food, after a short rest I pushed forward, taking with me the remains of the snake, all of which I had cooked in order to prevent the necessity of kindling a fire, the smoke of which might attract the attention of the Indians, if in my vicinity. My caution still continued, and in most convenient spots where the ascent was easy, I still continued to seek the edge of the prairie, and carefully scan its surface. It was during one of these reconnaisances that I first caught sight of a scattered party of Indians, advancing at full speed along the plains, on the other side of the gully, close by its edge. Fortunately I was near to a buffalo track that had been formed by these animals to the water, and along this I crept on all fours, till I had gained some high thick grass, where I stretched myself in complete concealment.

Whether the Indians were a portion of the party who had attacked us I was not aware, but they seemed to take but a cursory view of the creek as they passed rapidly along; they did not at all descend to its bed; so I was in no danger of having my trail discovered. I could hear the tramp of the horses as they swept along over the blackened, parched ground; but I did not dare attempt to get a near view of them, lest their keen vision should detect my lurking-place. When they had some time passed, cautiously I arose, and scanned the horizon, to discover if any straggling child of the wilderness was yet in view; but it appeared the wearied traveler was alone in the scene.

My journey was renewed, but this time along the edge of the plain, as I feared lest the Indians might suddenly come up when I should not perceive their approach from the bed of the creek.

Another night, another day was passed, during which my only food was the remains of the snake I had grilled. The gully gradually increased in width, and a diverging branch of it, on the northern side, had intercepted the progress of the fire in that direction; so again, on both sides of the gully, nothing was to be discerned but the long waving grass of the plains, with, as I left the scene of the conflagration behind, occasional herds of wild cattle, and horses, which frequently allowed a near approach before they fled.

On the fourth day I succeeded in surprising and shooting a young buffalo, which, with many others, was standing in the water of the stream, to endeavor to preserve themselves from the myriads of flies and musquetoes that filled the air, and inflicted their stings without cessation. Although brought down by the first shot, yet I saw considerable danger from the remainder of the herd, who charged me, and I only saved myself by taking refuge on the summit of some steep rocks, in the side of the cliffs, which the enraged animals could not reach. A second shot dispersed the herd, and they fled up the side of the gully and across the plains till out of sight; whilst some thin steaks, cut from the flank of the prize I had obtained, fully rewarded success. When broiled and washed down with pure clear water, they satisfied appetite, and strengthened my frame for further exertion.

Taking some beef with me, I pursued my weary journey, yet my spirits did not fail; although at times my weary limbs flagged, hope was mine, and that buoyancy of feeling, and presence of mind, which had conducted me through so many trying scenes, never forsook me on this occasion for a moment.

On the morning of the eighth day, I had reached a position close under one of the spurs of the Andes, and was following up a track that I had fallen across, and which I imagined might lead to some village, when my ears were saluted with the pleasing sound of mule bells.

Joyous, indeed, were then my thoughts, and when in a few minutes I joined a party of muleteers, conveying hides and tallow to the small town of San Julianna, my thanks were many and fervent to that Supreme Being who had preserved me through many dangers.

Having a few specie dollars about me, I procured every assistance from the party I had so providentially fallen in with, and afterward journeyed on to the town whither they were bound. Here, having obtained what ready money I required on one of my St. Jago letters of credit, I procured assistance, and set forward to the hacienda, where all my troubles had commenced.

On the way, at another hacienda, I fell in with two of the rancheros, both suffering from severe wounds received in our action with the Indians, but who nevertheless had escaped by the speed of their horses, and the neglect of all pursuit beyond a short distance, by the Indians, who seemed to have turned all their exertions toward securing the Europeans of the party. The other two rancheros, the guides, and my two companions, had not been heard of, and were supposed, as I myself had been, to have been killed in the attack, or to have perished in the flames.

A subsequent visit to the spot, and the calcined remains of seven bodies, satisfied me that my friends were no more; the Indians who had fallen seemed to have been removed, and all that now points out the scene of that bloody deed, is the raised mound that covers those of our party who there fell.

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BY ESTELLE ANNA LEWIS.

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BY H. MILNOR KLAPP.

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In the year 18—, just as the U. S. frigate Constitution was about leaving Leghorn on a cruise, a large Italian ship arrived from Genoa, stripped of every thing valuable by a piratical schooner in the Gulf of Spezzia. Two English men-of-war and a Frenchman were lying in port at the time, and obtaining all the information they could from the master and crew of the plundered vessel, all four set sail on the same day in search of the daring marauder. Her usual fortune, however, attended the American frigate, for, on the morning of the fourth day after leaving port, she fell in with the fellow off the northern point of the Island of Sardinia; and after a long chase—in which the schooner was considerably cut up, the wind dying away to a calm—her capture was at last effected by the boats. After removing the remainder of her crew, a breeze sprung up at daylight, and the Constitution and her prize made all sail for the bay of Naples.

The evening after we passed the Straits of Bonifacio, a difficulty occurred between two of the elder midshipmen, which, but for the timely interference of an old master’s mate, a great favorite in the ship, would have inevitably resulted in an exchange of shots on the first convenient occasion. The parties were bosom friends and near relatives, which, of course, made the matter more difficult to adjust; however, the mate was able to effect it, as, from some circumstances attending his own history, he had more influence with them both than any other man on board. In some untoward affair, long before he entered the service, he himself had killed his man, and although he never spoke of the encounter, it was believed by the mess that he bitterly regretted its occurrence. He had been unusually grave and quiet after the capture of the schooner, which was more noticed, for the reason that, in general, he was as ready-witted, frank-spoken a fellow as ever felt salt spray on his cheek. The truth was, he was one of that unfortunate class of seamen who, well-connected and educated with care, have, nevertheless, spent the best of their days alternately in ship’s forecastles and drinking-shops, after having run upon some rock or other in their youth. It is a matter of notoriety that there are too many such men to be found afloat, but the peculiarity in Miller’s case was, that at some period of his wild life he must have mustered resolution enough to overcome his passion for strong drink. To have seen him on the decks of the frigate, or at the mess, you would never have suspected that he had once sunk so low in the scale of creation, had you not been better informed by that sort of malice which is ever ready to hiss on the track of an altered man. As it was, I may mention that he had entered the navy through the hawse-hole and worked his way up to a master’s mate’s berth, where, of course—according to the rigid rules of the service—he stuck. Great confidence was reposed in him by the quarter-deck, and not one of the mids but would have shared the last dollar of his pay, or fought to the last gasp for old Harry, if he had ever needed a friend at a pinch. His fine, off-hand way, and thorough seamanship, made him a great favorite with the men, as was once rather awkwardly shown when some trouble occurred in another frigate, on a former cruise. In fact, there was a degree of kindliness about the man, which, combined with his good looks and weatherly qualities, was well calculated to make him a general favorite—to say nothing of a tinge of romance which, it seemed, neither Neptune nor Bacchus could entirely wash out of him. No officer in the ship had the same dashing way of laying a boat along-side in a rough sea, or was better qualified to take charge of the deck on a sudden emergency; and although you might have heard nothing of him before this cruise, you soon felt compelled to yield the palm of seamanship to him, when you once caught his quick, unembarrassed glance, or heard his deep voice answering the quarter-deck on a dark night, in a squall, with a clear ring in its pitch, which the men used to say was worth a dozen trumpets. With all this, you felt that he ought to have been something more than a mere master’s mate, never doubting by his ways that he had commanded crafts of some sort in his time. The truth was, that he had abused or slighted his opportunities; though having been well brought up, not all the wear and tear of a hard life in every part of the globe, together with the slough which he had waded through, could prevent the thing from shining out. Apart from his seamanship—of that class which embraced all varieties of crafts and services—he possessed a knowledge of books, and a strength of imagination, which made you wonder still more at the subordinate post he held in the ship. As Guy Willful, one of our mess, afterward expressed himself—“though we all knew Harry Miller to be a gentleman, it was not until that blessed night when I knocked little Dick Afterblock into the lee-scuppers, that we found out the pinch of diamond-dust in the mate’s composition.”

On the evening in question, after seeing the two friends shake hands, the party had seated themselves quietly round the mate, who had offered to spin a yarn that should last out the watch, when a voice from the forecastle sung out, that there was a large whale close aboard of the ship. Sure enough, there he was, close under the main chains, sending up a succession of regular old-fashioned spouts, for all the world, the true originals of those which every reflective reader will remember to have once viewed with wonder and awe among the prints of his spelling-book. These were attended by loud respiratory sounds, which were heard fore and aft the deck.

Old Ironsides was jogging along before a lazy wind, which barely kept the sails asleep; and the whale, after again expelling the vitiated air from his blow-holes, having nothing more attractive to engage his attention at the time, from a feeling of fellowship perhaps, kept way with the ship. Some old heads on the forecastle soon hailed him for “a finner,” bound on his travels to the Ionian sea, and forthwith predicted, at the peril of their eyes, that we should see him “down flukes” and off on a wind, before another bell had gone. There was little sea running at the time, and the moon shining fairly on his track gave us some idea of his gigantic proportions, which, to tell the truth, these same veritable Tritons were in nowise disposed to curtail. However, it was agreed among the mids, debating the matter in council with the mate, that from his broad flukes to the small triangular fin on the ridge of his back, and thence, from his spout-holes to the arch of his lower jaw, he ran not less than an hundred feet. It was also estimated that he would outweigh a drove of, at least, two hundred fat oxen. His age, they unanimously declared, was a question to be left to the learned professors. Even the bearded Nestors of the forecastle, wise as mermen in aught appertaining to the sea—albeit they claimed him for an old acquaintance—did not pretend to settle that point. He might have been fourscore-and-ten, or he might have blown brine from his nostrils, coasting undiscovered shores, long before the grand cruise of Columbus.

Mr. Willful, the reefer before referred to, took occasion to indulge in a lofty flight of fancy, as he announced his adherence to the opinion which measured the creature’s days by the scale of centuries.

“And I,” squeaked another, fresh from school, “whatever anguish of spirit it may cost me—‘sink or swim’—I avow myself of the same faith with the honorable gentleman whose eloquence has electrified the ears of these venerable sheet-anchor-men.”

“Come,” said Dick Afterblock, reseating himself on the spars, “keep a small helm, you featherheads, and let’s hear Mr. Miller’s yarn.”

The master’s mate was standing in the moonlight, seeming to watch the freakish light, as it danced far away in the whale’s smooth wake, or wandered among the barnacles on its rough noddle—or peered dubiously into the wide curvature of its nostrils—or showed the living eye on the crest of the weltering wave, twenty feet from where you looked to find it—or rode triumphantly on its flukes, or upon the ridge of its back-fin. You might have seen, then, by the stern, abstracted look of the man’s face, that his mind was busy with something, which you felt it was like groping in the dark to attempt to fathom. Then, as the midshipman spoke, the old weatherly look came back, slowly though, as if it cost him a struggle; and after a thoughtful turn or two on the deck, reseating himself upon the spars, he commenced—

“I was once, gentlemen,” he said, “cruising near Cape Musseldon, in command of an armed grab, in the service of the Sultan of Muscat, when, one squally morning, in a part of the Persian Gulf where the navigation is particularly intricate, we fell in with a large whale-ship, showing American colors. When we first made her out she had one boat down, waiting, apparently, for the whales to come up.

“Those seas were then famous feeding-grounds for the white whale, and although we felt sure there was a shoal close by, some wonder was expressed in the grab, at the boldness of the Yankee skipper, in sending his men off in the face of the fresh squall then rising over the land. However, as we neared her the shoal rose, and they fastened. We could see him lower another boat, which pulled to leeward of the ship, when the squall struck the grab, and we lost sight of them all at once. The weather continued rough for several days, with fog and rain, and although I felt great anxiety for the safety of the ship and her boats, as we were almost embayed by banks and shoals, I heard nothing of their fate, until sometime after my arrival at Muscat.”

Here the mate paused and walked to the rail to take another look at the finner, still close aboard, heading with the proud old frigate, and blowing away, from time to time, or lifting his sharp back half out, as if he had a notion to speak us. You could see the white spray, mingled with condensed air and mucus from his seething nostrils, rising, in two divergent branches, straight up from the shifting gleam of the soft swells, into the clear moonlight, from whence it faded, before you could wink an eyelid, into the greenish mass of foam to leeward of his track, between him and the ship. Two bells struck a moment after, and as the clang died away in the lee rigging, and your ear caught again the natural sounds of the craft, making her way through the water, the mate returned to his place and resumed.

“I was so thoroughly disgusted with the illiberal manner in which the British officers had acted in a late expedition against the pirates of the Gulf, and with the servility of Syed Seeyd bin Sultan, himself, to the agents of the East India Company, that I resigned my commission in his service when the cruise was up, and had already taken passage in a merchant dow, for Zanzibar, when the very whaleman I had seen in the Gulf, came into the cove of Muscat to recruit, and changed my plans in an unexpected way.

“I had been on the water that morning, in company with an Arab chief of high rank, following in the wake of Muscat Tom, a large finback, which haunted the harbor, coming in regularly at sunrise, and making an offing at night, for fear that the current, which sets in shore at certain seasons, might catch him asleep. He was as tame as a bull of the pastures, and we used to arouse ourselves watching the fishermen paddling after him, to pick up the fish which he killed, as he drove through shoal after shoal—his mouth gaping like the after-hatchway, and the pouch under his jaw as full as a herring-net. Had he lived in the old days, they had certainly set up his shrine and paid adoration to him, as he scared away the sharks from the harbor, and did no mischief, beyond the playful capsizing of a boat when it pressed somewhat too closely on his track. There is no doubt, gentlemen, that the ancients would have made a very respectable sea-god of him.

“It was rather a curious sight to see him lying at rest in the cove, spouting the brine in air, with the sun blazing on his back, while his gray pellucid eye moved sluggishly after you, as your boat shot past the angle of his jaws; or, stranger still, to watch him scooping up the affrighted fish in his bone-net, while the brine poured off of his enormous lips in two seething streams; and once and awhile, if you managed the thing right, you might catch a glimpse of his immense tongue, behind the long hairy slabs of bone, licking his prey down by the scores. It made me feel rather antediluvianish, at times, I confess.

“However, as soon as we made out the starred flag at half-mast, in the offing, we left Tom to follow his game, and Halil, spreading out his turban to catch the breeze, while I plied the oars, we were speedily under her counter—a huge, lumbering ship of eight hundred tons, with six boats at the cranes, and ten short twelves mounted on a side, as a defence against the Toassemes. She was very deep, being full of sperm oil to the grindstone-tub; and although she was, as I hinted before, all in a lump, yet as her skipper had knocked his lubberly tryworks to pieces, set up his rigging, and crossed his lighter spars, besides giving her a fresh lick of tar and paint, she looked, as the Scotch quarter-master said of the fellow we fell in with off the Western Isles, ‘just no that bad, for a tallow-strainer.’

“I offered my services to pilot her in to a berth, and we were civilly received by her skipper, who, to tell the truth, was not exactly the man I expected to find on the weather side of her quarter-deck.

“You must figure to yourselves, gentlemen, a long-sparred, well-built, Spanish-looking personage, dressed in a blue frock-coat, and spotless drilling pantaloons, and a sombrero as big round as the capstan-head, shading his dark face—the strip of crape round his hat fixing your eye at once, in connection with the ensign at half-mast, until you found that, besides losing a boat’s crew on the day we saw her in the Gulf, his wife, who had made the voyage with him, had slipped over the stern one night in a calm, and been drowned, in spite of every effort to save her. The man’s features, though somewhat roughened by continual exposure, and blackened by the sun, were as regular as if cut out of stone by some master hand, from the broad brow and aquiline nose, to the square jaw and finely modelled chin, fringed by a beard as glossy and wavy as our first captain’s of the maintop. Every thing about him contrasted oddly enough with his ragged and slovenly crew, and the patched and greasy canvas over his head, until you would almost have sworn, from his mustache, the eye-glass at his button-hole, and the narrow strip of black ribbon, which fell across the snowy mouth of his watch-fob, that he was some whimsical Monsieur on his travels in the East. There was a courteous ease in his address, and a silver twang in his voice, which indicated, rather unpleasantly, that in spite of the bit of crape and the mourning flag, Captain Catherton had banished black care from his end of the ship. Somehow or other, I felt, after the first ten minutes’ interview, that there was a lurking devil behind his smile, sweet as it was, and, with all his civil chaff, it was precious little he would have done to serve me in my wish to reach home, had he not chanced to want a mate to suit his purposes, in place of the man that was lost in the boat.

“As soon as he discovered that I had commanded the grab, he at once pressed me to take the chief officer’s berth, remarking of the other five, that he would hardly trust them in charge of the deck, with the cargo he had under hatches.

“To tell the truth, I was glad of the chance at the time; for, besides that the place was too hot for a Ghebir—the thermometer standing at midnight at 110° on the forecastle of the grab, then lying off the mouth of the passage between Muscat Island and the main land—I was anxious to leave the coast before a conspiracy, which I knew was forming to dethrone the Sultan, should explode. The cholera, too, was sweeping off the Arabs like flies, and in the very thick of it I had my life twice attempted on shore, for naught that I could conjecture, except that I had peremptorily refused to join the plot. So, as you may suppose, thinking to be on the open seas in a few days, I stepped into the mate’s place at once.

“I found the people at odds with the captain, and all at sixes and sevens about the missing boat, which some of them seemed to think Catherton had lost by design. However, the more words I heard flying up the forecastle scuttle, the more I felt inclined at first to set this down as mere sea-babble, together with some story about Mrs. Catherton’s death, which I could not get hold of for a spell.

“You see, the fellows had been hard at work on the last cruise, cutting in and trying out to their hearts’ content, as the skipper had been very fortunate in finding white whales among the islands of the Gulf, where I have seen immense shoals of them myself going in among the passages to feed upon the eight-armed squids, which the pearl-divers, at some of the fisheries, dread almost as much as the sharks. The Tartar’s boats had been very successful, and now that the ship was full and the anchor down, her crew were resolute to make amends for their precious outlay of labor, regular whaleman fashion, by grumbling at every thing abaft, and getting up an occasional quarrel with the boat-steerers—deeming it otherwise a hardship to turn out to their meals, or to a game of cards on their chest-lids.

“In fact they were altogether—excepting the second mate, the old carpenter, and a few old sea-dogs—as green a set as ever stared at an island of weed; and perfect torture it was, Mr. Afterblock, to see the lubbers crawl out of the forecastle to make a voyage to the scuttle-butt, or a long cruise, like so many tortoises, fore and aft the deck. Two score and more of young, able-bodied men they were, to be sure, strong enough, I dare say, to tow a raft of whales alongside in any latitude. But the mischief of the thing was, that instead of the oil getting into their joints and making them supple, it seemed to have soddened brain and limb, until it fairly went against your stomach to ask them a question, or to call them aft to hoist up a boat to the cranes. Of course I did not expect them to equal our dying top-men, or the nimble Arabs from Darra, of whom my crew were mostly composed in the grab—especially as the mates hardly knew enough to put the ship about. But, after having been twenty months at sea, I did look for them to know one end of the ship from the other; and considering the heat of the weather and the number of desperate wretches roaming in the harbor, it was not too much, you’ll allow, to have them keep anchor-watch, or to wash down decks at daybreak.”

“I wish, Mr. Miller,” said Dicky, “that we had a few of the slowest of ’em here. Green’s nigh to blue; and the higher you mount up in a squall, the sooner you’ve got to come down. Why, the lubbers would have blessed the service to their dying days, for making men of them.”

“Ay,” resumed the master’s mate, “I’ve seen the same thing again and again. However, the captain, who spent most of his time on shore, at the house of an old Parsee merchant, to whom he had letters from some port where he had touched in the Persian Gulf, checked me more than once, intimating that it was best to let them have their own way, until we got into the open seas again, which, he said—although I saw no indications of it—would be in a few days, as soon as he had finished some business which he had with the old Parsee. He had seemed all along to have something deeper in his eye, and, in fact, told me in confidence, the very next evening, that he had been offered a large sum in hand to land at a small port a short distance from Muscat, a beautiful Circassian slave of the Sultan’s, named Zuma, and the departure of the ship was only delayed until the woman could make her escape from the castle. This gave me some uneasiness, as I had heard that Zuma had passed from the old Parsee’s household into that of the Sultan; and apart from the difficulty of baffling the black eunuch who had charge of Syed Seeyd’s harem, I dreaded being involved in the plot I have alluded to, to depose that monarch in favor of his cousin, whose father Seeyd had put to death with his own hand at some castle near Rostak. Moreover, I had good reasons for knowing that my friend, the Arab chief, Halil ben Hamet, who was deeply engaged in the conspiracy, was the favorite lover of Zuma. However, as it was Catherton’s affair, of course I could do nothing but look about me the sharper, and see all ready to go to sea at the shortest warning.”

At this moment some one interrupted the mate by calling out that the whale was off at last.

“Something must have gallied him,” said the man; “yonder he goes, head out, like a channel-packet steaming against wind.”

“It was Darby Rattlesnake’s hanged ugly figure-head,” observed the gruff captain of the forecastle, who was standing within ear-shot of the group—“d—n me, if he be’n’t ugly enough to shear the whole coast of Greenland.”

Having thus seriously hurt the feelings of the honest old tar, who was quietly looking out to windward, the petty officer winked at his fellows, screwing his own mahogany visage, polished as it was by the moonlight, into a miniature maelstrom of wrinkles, which commenced at the caverns of his fierce, pertinacious eyes, and wriggled gradually off at the tail of his beard.

The mate started up just in time to catch a glimpse of the whale’s back, with the flukes in full play, and a long line of white water behind it. He was going at a tremendous pace straight in the wind’s eye, and, while the mate followed him with his eye, suddenly plunged sheer down where the dazzle was brightest; and before the man could draw a second breath, had disappeared. It was impossible to say what had started him; but the old seamen declared that these large solitary whales always steer a course as duly as a ship; and that, having satisfied himself that the frigate was the Old Ironsides, and nothing else, he was now only making up for lost time, in resuming his course. For my part, I thought it possible that, as he wallowed on his side, or raised his head from the hollow of a swell, his eye might have caught a glimpse of the canvas with the moonlight on it, as he was at one time so close to the ship’s side, that a smart harpooner might have darted an iron into his back from the chains. Be that as it may, off he was, and as Miller turned from gazing on his long dim track, and the stir created by his sudden disappearance sank, an unusual degree of quiet seemed to settle down from aloft, over rigging, spars, boats and batteries, and indeed over every spot of light and shade on the frigate’s deck. In the midst of this you could plainly hear the murmur of voices in the tops, and an occasional flap of the lighter duck, as some loftier sail stirred and was at rest again, like a living thing in a dream—while every shadowy port and silent gun on the spar-deck, appeared for the time, by the soft witchery of moonlight, the abode of peaceful repose.

The fact was, the breeze was gradually failing from aloft, and we were going to have a flat calm, as was easy to see from the hazy look of the sky where the land lay, and the sluggish heaves of the sea, growing shorter and shorter, as if to put us in mind of the far-famed bay to which we were bound; while, as you thought of this, something of the “dolce far niente” came over you, and walking across the deck to glance at the pirate schooner to leeward, it became difficult to connect the view with the stirring scenes of the chase, until the eye, aided by the night-glass, distinguished the ragged white streaks in the side of the prize, and turning round again, you saw the sentry at the dark hatchway, listening, as he shifted arms, to the groans which rose, as it seemed, from the very depths of the ship.

“There were only a few antique-looking dows,” continued the mate, “the grab-brig and one Arab man-of-war moored in the gap where we lay, which, in my opinion—melted out of me, as I may say—is the hottest place in the round world in the same parallel of latitude; being shut in by a wall of glaring granite—two hundred feet high—on one hand, and a rampart of rough rocks—rising high above the Tartar’s royal truck—on the other. You hardly felt a breath of air come on deck when you might; and it really seemed to grow hotter and hotter, as the disease spread in the town; the sky, all the time, like glowing steel by day, and so clear and close at night, that you turned away from the stars and the sickening light of the moon, longing, as you panted for breath, for the least mutter of thunder.

“However, it was some comfort that as yet the disease had not boarded the craft.

“The Tartar was on old ship, as rickety as a county bridge of our grandsires’ times, though having been a regular tea-wagon in her best days, she had known little crowding and banging. There was still a deal of wear and tear in her leewardly black hull, though I couldn’t say much for its model, which was as near like one of those large Pennsylvania wagons as might be, considering that one was rigged for crossing the seas, and the other the mountains. She had a respectable look, however, if it were only for her size, with her ten gun-ports on a side, her high rails, and a whale-boat on each bow, waist and quarter, except the larboard one, where the mate’s had hung. She was well sparred, her standing rigging being entirely new that voyage, and her ground-tackle of the very best. I noticed this from the first, not dreaming at the moment, that I should have greater cause to remember it afterward. She had two cabins between decks, both of which, as I understood, had been occupied by the captain and his deceased wife—the mates sleeping in the house under the poop, while the boat-steerers, as is the custom in these ships, messed in the steerage. The mulatto steward, who had been several voyages with the captain, slung his hammock in the sail-room. Since the unfortunate death of the lady, the after-cabin had been closed, the doors being locked, and the keys, as I was told, in the steward’s possession. The long cabin in which we dined, and which was separated from the steerage by an unusually strong bulk-head partition, had two small sleeping-berths in it, and over each of which was a star of pistols. A number of boarding-pikes and ship’s cutlasses were ranged round the mast, and a double stand of short muskets gave the midship bulk-head—set off as it was with a few krungars^[4] and Malayan kreeses—a very warlike appearance. In the sail-room, which was partitioned off from the for’ard cabin, were ranged in order, in their sheaths, the instruments used in capturing and cutting up the whale, consisting of harpoons, long steel-headed lances, fluke-spades, two-edged boarding-knives, and heavy cutting-spades, all kept in excellent order. In showing these implements to me, the second-mate remarked that, as their legitimate work was done for that voyage, it was well enough to have them under his eye, particularly as there were several desperate characters in the ship.

“This second mate was an active, stirring young fellow, certainly an exception to the others. From him and the old Kennebunk carpenter, I afterward learned many particulars of the cruise, which were not set down in the log. The former, at first, appeared to regard me with some dislike, which was natural enough; coming unexpectedly, as I did—it was hard to tell from where—between him and the chief officer’s berth, to which, of course, on the mate’s death, he felt himself entitled. It was just as these jealous notions had worn off, and we were beginning to feel fair and above board toward each other, that the captain sent the steward up one evening, after supper, to say that he wished to see me below.

“‘Mr. Miller,’ said he, in a low voice, as soon as I followed the mulatto down; ‘there is a friend of yours in the after-cabin, who wishes to see you on particular business.’

“He pointed to the door as he spoke, and observing that it was open, and a light shining within, I entered at once; when, to my surprise, I found my friend, the Arab chief, Halil Ben Hamet, disguised as a fisherman, seated before a table covered with papers; his scimetar and a brace of pistols lying within reach of his hand. He saluted me after the Arab fashion, by taking my hand and placing it on his head; and perceiving that Captain Catherton had followed me in, I stood in silence, awaiting an explanation, which, to say the truth, I dreaded. However, his business with me after all was not exactly what I expected, knowing him to be one of the conspirators.

“It seemed that Halil had already reason to fear spies on his track, and anticipating some treachery which might involve the life of Zuma the Circassian, had made arrangements to remove her from the harem to the ship, on the night fixed for the rise. It was useless to gainsay him in this, as he had already settled the thing with the captain, and I knew that he was strongly attached to the female, for whose sake he had run repeated risks under the very eyes of the eunuch. Moreover, he had saved my life when I was beset by assassins near the old Portugese chapel; and I had been his confidant in his intrigue with Zuma, having more than once kept guard at the foot of the castle-wall, while one of the Sultan’s household, who was in Halil’s interest, had admitted him within a secret gate. Accordingly, as soon as he had opened his plans to me, I readily agreed to be at the small rift of sand under the castle an hour after midnight, on Saturday evening—this being Thursday—for the purpose of bringing off the woman; Halil having, by the help of some of his friends on shore, already arranged matters, so that—even if the plot should fail—the search for Zuma would be diverted in an entirely different direction.

“‘But, gentlemen,’ said I, in Arabic, looking at Captain Catherton, who understood something of the language, ‘we must look sharp. That black villain is as cunning as the old serpent himself, where women are concerned. He’ll have the ship searched from truck to kelson, if it were only for the chance of getting me in a scrape—depend upon it.’

“‘Well,’ answered the captain in English, while his dark face grew a shade paler by the lamp, ‘it’s worth some risk, and I am determined to run it. I’d go after the lady myself, only I think you can manage the thing better, knowing every nook of the cove and the ground about the castle as well as you do. Besides,’ he added, in a way which made me glance round the cabin—where, by the way, I had never been before—‘it’s a true love-affair; and by the rules of blue-water, you know, we’re bound to help them out.’

“‘I am ready,’ I replied, ‘to risk my life twice over for the chief, and to circumvent that accursed eunuch; but I don’t like involving the Tartar.’

“‘I shall sail on Sunday evening,’ interrupted he, with something of the manner in which he lorded it over the other mates. ‘The English frigate goes to sea to-morrow, as one of her lieutenants told me in the Bazaar this morning; we’ll take her berth as soon as she weighs, and the next day but one, we’ll be off with the land-winds.’

“‘Very good, sir,’ I answered, turning round to return to the for’ard cabin, while he went on to explain what had passed to the chief.

“How the latter came on board unperceived, even in his disguise, was a mystery to me, accustomed as I was, by this time, to the ways of the country. I had been on deck nearly all day, with my eyes pretty much about me, and the crew had strict orders to prevent any strangers coming into the ship without my consent, on account of the disease prevailing on shore. However, he might have been smuggled into the Tartar at night, and been on board more or less, for a week, for aught that I knew to the contrary, as I had not seen or heard of him myself, since he made his last attempt to induce me to join the conspiracy, the very day on which the whale-ship came in. In fact, I remembered the moment I had leisure to think, that the canoe in which Captain Catherton usually paddled himself on shore, had been missed from the mizzen-chains for some hours a few nights before. I had been apprehensive that the chief would renew his solicitations for me to take part in the plot, as he seemed to set an unnecessary store upon it, having all along ascribed the late attempt upon my life as having originated with the Sultan; who, he said, had taken umbrage at my leaving his service in the hasty manner which I did. I knew this to be a mistake, for reasons which it is immaterial to mention; and, believing Syed Ben Seeyd, apart from his toadyism to the English, to be a wise and just prince, as the customs of the east go.

“I had always refused to have any concern in the business. I had now good cause for fearing that the scheme was about to explode on the heads of those who devised it, especially after the captain beckoned me back, and I found that Halil was to meet the ship at a point on the Arabian coast, where a brother of his commanded a fort.

“It was impossible to resist his appeal to assist him, with the scimetar, as it were, hanging over both their heads; accordingly, I pledged my faith to bring her off to the ship, provided she could get safely out of the castle, the captain undertaking to secrete her on board, in spite, as he said, of devil or eunuch. I could not help, however, renewing my caution to Halil, whom, Catherton said, he could conceal at the same time, if the conspiracy should be discovered.

“However, the chief appeared to be pretty confident, and our plans being settled, after drinking a glass or two of Muscadene, I made my salaam and went on deck. The night was as hot as usual, the land-wind blowing like a fire-blast, or as the captain—who had been in the Brazils, and who soon followed me up—said, like the breath of an engenho, during crop-time. In fact, in the silence of the harbor, the dim wall of rocks on either side of the passage seemed glowing with heat, until one almost fancied that he saw the very lights on shore dancing in the tremulous motion of the air, just as he had seemed to see the stones and bushes at noon; while every now and then, a bat, as large as a pigeon, wheeled past your ear, and some sort of sand-piper, common on that coast, sent up its whistle, in two mellow, plaintive notes, as if it were too hot for even the birds to sleep. Whether it was fancy or not, the place seemed to smell like a vast charnel-house, still as it was at that hour—the disease still spreading in the town, and having even boarded one or two of the Arab craft, as I knew. However, Catherton, I must say, appeared to stand it easily enough, sitting under the awning on the poop, with his broad breast bare, and a sheroot in his teeth. Boats were passing from the English frigate to the town, which was out of sight from where we lay, and after some remarks about her going to sea the next day, Catherton quietly asked me, if I had ever heard an opinion expressed on shore, respecting the beauty of Zuma, the Circassian.

“‘She is uncommonly handsome, I suppose,’ said he, seeing that I hesitated to answer his question.

“‘So report says,’ I replied; ‘though, as you may suppose, few can boast of having seen her face.’

“‘They say,’ continued he, pursuing the subject, ‘that she cost the sultan a round sum; for she is not his wife, as I understand from the old Parsee, but only his favorite slave. It is natural enough for her to hate him, as they say he has four wives already.’

“‘Why,’ said I, getting into a gossiping strain myself, to relieve my mind of more serious thoughts, as it were, ‘Syed Ben Seeyd is too strong-minded, and has too keen a sense of his own interests, to suffer any fair face of them all to make a fool of him. His last wife, the daughter of the Shah of Persia, he married, of course, purely from policy, though it is well known that he has no issue by any of the rest.’

“‘However,’ said Catherton, ‘he is likely to make short work with Zuma, if she should be caught in flagrante delicto, as the lawyers say; the sack, or the bowstring, or the scimetar, I suppose. But, do you your part in bringing her off, and I’ll hide her from the eunuch, even if his eyes were sharp as the wise old Greek’s, when he found out Achilles beneath his petticoats.’

“I was not surprised at language like this; for I had already discovered that Catherton had been educated above his present condition; it was rather something in his manner that struck me, quiet as it was, as if under an air of confidence—which the chief’s business naturally created between us—he wished to get at something uppermost in his mind, without my suspecting aught.

“He said little more worthy of repetition, and after a while, I turned in, leaving him still smoking on the poop.

“The next morning he went on shore, as usual, after giving me orders on what he wished to have done in the ship. At daylight we commenced breaking out a portion of the cargo, to get at a leak—the ship having touched on a reef on the late cruise. The carpenter was lucky enough to find this, and after stopping it, the cooper and his mates were driving some of the old casks, when a difficulty occurred between a boat-steerer and some of the people. In putting an end to this, I found the fellows were determined to see the sort of man they had to deal with, some of them using mutinous expressions, and finally making a rush for the poop to rescue a rascally Portuguese, whom the mates had placed in irons. Driven for’ard of the mainmast, three or four of the worst of the scoundrels attempted to turn a gun inboard, when the second mate and I, well seconded by the rest, and the five harpooners, dashed in among them with the capstan bars, and after cracking a few crowns in true merchantman’s style, drove the rest pell-mell down the scuttle. We then secured a few more of the ringleaders, and turned all hands to again, not a man daring to refuse work in a full ship, which, as the second mate remarked, showed that they had some dim glimmering of their own interests, after all. The English frigate went to sea with the first of the land-wind, and we began to weigh as soon as I saw that her anchor was a-peak. According to orders, I warped close to the mouth of the passage, anchoring, with the stream, a little astern of the Englishman’s old berth, and carrying a hawser to the rocks. This brought us ahead of the grab and the Arab corvette, and so near to the entrance as to prevent any craft which might come in from taking a berth so as to crowd us should we wish to tow out suddenly; nevertheless, we were still lying within the shadow of either shore, with an eye to the secret business which the captain had on hand.

“After we were all snug, I examined our stock of water, and found enough to last us to the Cape of Good Hope, or to St. Helena, as Catherton had said something of touching there. There was a strong prejudice in the ship against using the water from the wells of Muscat, and, accordingly, the captain had resolved, if the quantity was sufficient to reach a half-way port, to go to sea with the stock on hand.

“After dinner, while smoking our sheroots on the poop, the second mate, for the first time, spoke in very decided terms of the detention of the ship, dropping at the same time certain mysterious hints, which I determined that he should at once unravel.

“‘But, Mr. Parker,’ said I, accordingly, in answer to one of those dubious remarks, ‘Captain Catherton keeps matters pretty close, and to my notion, he is not exactly the man to answer a straight-forward question, even if you had made up your mind to ask it.’

“‘You may swear to that, sir,’ answered he, coming near the point at once—‘that is, to his having cause to keep things close. To tell the plain truth, sir, I’ve had my doubts of him, more or less, the whole v’y’ge; especially,’ continued he, sinking his voice, ‘since we lost the mate in the way we did—and since his wife’s spirit has haunted the ship.’

“I scarce knew what to think of this, as the man spoke quite seriously, glancing warily round the poop, and dropping his voice to a whisper, which had something of genuine awe in its cadence.

“‘Come, come, Mr. Parker,’ said I, ‘no ghosts, if you please. We will leave them to the old carpenter and his crony. I should like to hear, though, how you lost that boat’s crew.’

“‘Well, sir,’ he replied, doggedly, ‘as you please—but as for the spirit—’

“‘Pooh, pooh, man!—never mind that!—tell me how you came to lose the boat. We will have the spirit after supper, if you insist on it.’

“‘Why,’ said he, with a sort of sigh, dropping the ghost with evident reluctance, ‘I had to cut my line in that same squall, for it was in running down to pick up my boat that the ship lost sight of the mate.

“‘You see, sir,’ continued he, after a pause, during which he looked me full in the face in a half shrewd, half wistful way, as I thought, ‘it is best to begin at the right end of a tangled yarn, if you want to unravel it. Some of the boat’s crew-watch heard a splash under the counter one moonlight night in the Gulf, and when the rest opened their eyes and went aft, the poop was empty, and the lady not to be found in the ship. One fellow saw her standing by the head of the after-cabin stairs, when he went aft to strike the bell a moment before—another heard the splash—but when the boats were dropped, nothing was to be seen on the long, dazzling swell of the sea but the back-fin of a large blue shark, veering slowly round between the boats and the ship, as if he had missed his prey—except it were a gull asleep, with its head under its wing—or the fresh branches of a tree, drifting toward the mouth of the Gulf, on the current of the dry monsoon. As she was not to be found in the ship, it was almost certain that she had been leaning over the counter, watching the shark, perhaps, and losing her balance, had perished before she had time to utter a single cry—at least so the captain professed to think. However, it was the next day but one after that, just as the lookouts were going aloft at daybreak, we raised a large shoal of half-grown whales, crossing the ship’s wake, about two miles off, between Gigot and the low island of Ippoo. It was a likely place to meet with whales coming down the Ippoo passage at this season, and as soon as the captain got a look at the spouts from aloft, we wore round at once. The sea was too rough to make them out from deck before they peaked flukes^[5]; and as the ship was under single-reefed topsails at the time, he must have noticed the fresh squall rising over the land before he sent away the boats. To be sure, two forty-barrel bulls would have filled us up. And after the accident to the lady, every soul in the ship, as you may suppose, was anxious to see the tryworks hove in the sea, and sail made for home. Be that as it may, when the word was given to back the main-yard, instead of the captain sliding down a backstay, in his hurry to be first, Mr. Jinney, the mate, came slowly down the rigging, and kicking off his shoes, without a word, got into his boat. He steered to windward about a mile, allowing for the Tartar’s drift, and then peaked his oars, paddling from time to time, to keep his place, head to sea—the wind fresh’ning all the while, and the clouds rolling together over the land, while the swells got up so fast between the high bluff of Gentoo on the larboard hand, and Divers’ Bank on the other, that we could only see the mate and his harpooner, standing up on the lookout, when the boat rose on the top of a sea. I was looking every minute for the order to hoist the recall signal—as we use no ‘waifs’ in this ship—when the infernal whales rose close to the boat, and almost as soon as we knew they were up, the male was fast. The shoal ‘squandered’^[6]—some running toward Gentoo, and some coming down toward the ship. I was so eager to head off these last, when the captain sung out to me from the crosstrees to lower away, that I forgot all about the weather, thinking only of the fish, as you may easily understand, if you have any notion of the heat into which things of this sort put a whaleman. However, it was not until I had my whale spouting his last to leeward of the ship, that the squall came down on us sharp as a knife—cutting off the heads of the seas before it, and nearly swamping the boat, as we labored to keep her close under the whale’s lee. After he turned up we kept head to sea, until the ship came driving down in the thick of it, with her three topsail-yards on the caps, and luffing up to the gust, brought us close under her lee, so that we managed to hook on and scramble inboard, just as the rain came down in a solid sheet.’

“‘You saw no more of the mate, then?’ I asked, as he stopped short, jerking the stump of his sheroot into the scum which floated round the rudder, and staring at the birds which darted after it, and then at the Arab cruiser, in an earnest, yet vacant way, which showed that his mind, being full of his tale, or something at the bottom of it, took no more note of the craft, at the moment, than if she had been up the Ganges.

“‘No, sir,’ he answered slowly, ‘for it was thick and squally for a day or two afterward, and we had nearly lost the ship the same day, on a coral-reef. There was a grab-brig in sight to windward at the time, and we had hopes that she might have picked up the mate’s boat, only that Captain Catherton swore that he saw the whale run it under before the squall shut them in; which, as the third mate, who was aloft at the time, afterwards said, showed that his glass must have had devilish sharp eyes.’

“‘Well,’ said I, as he stopped short again, with a world of meaning in his sharp face, ‘I commanded that grab, and I must say your ship was handled well to have steered clear that time. We saw no more of you after the squall struck us, and really it seems to me that Captain Catherton did the best he could under the circumstances; since if he had kept his luff, instead of bearing away before it, it’s more than probable he would have lost two boats’ crews, in place of one.’

“‘Very true,’ said he, in a negative sort of a way; ‘but then, I doubt the truth of the captain’s report that the whale took the boat under. The third mate was on the topgallant-crosstrees, with his glass fixed on the boat, when they put their helm up in the ship, and he says that the fish never sounded at all. No man in his senses would have sent away a boat in such weather; and it was the very first time on the v’y’ge that the starboard quarter-boat—the captain’s own—hung at the cranes, and the main-yard aback for a shoal of whales within half a mile of the ship.’

“‘He was fond of the sport, then?’ said I.

“‘Ay,’ he answered, ‘he is famous for making short v’y’ges, and a bolder whaleman never went over a ship’s side—though he wasn’t bred to the work, either. He never let the chance slip before of having the first dash at a shoal, setting great store on a trick of his own, of pitchpoling a lance, that was very certain. He has killed two whales to the mate’s one, for the v’y’ge—though his boat was oftener under the carpenter’s hands—as he had a slap-dash way of laying on to a whale, which suited no other harpooner in the ship, but the wild islander who steers him.’

“‘He believed in the South-Sea-slogan,’ said I, ‘a dead whale, or a stove boat.’

“‘Just so,’ he replied, apparently beguiled of deeper thoughts, for an instant, by a natural interest in his profession; ‘and his boat’s crew were all pretty much of the same creed. Two of the fellows we had in irons below belong to it; and more troublesome rascals are not to be found in the ship. However, the difference between the captain and the mate in their boats, was this: the one was too headstrong, the other too cautious. Once within dart of a shoal, the captain would have three or four fish spouting blood, before the mate could clear away his lance; though Jinney was always more sure to get on to a single whale—an old schoolmaster, for instance—if you only gave him time; and he rarely had his boat struck. However,’ continued he, recurring to the point which, I could see, troubled him most, ‘I never dreamed that Jinney, cunning as he was, would have died in the strange way he did.’

“‘Why, Mr. Parker,’ said I, glad to find him falling back to his starting-point, ‘I have heard nothing, so far, to justify your suspicions of the captain. The ghost is out of the question, and as Catherton got along very well with his mate for two successive voyages as you say, I cannot see his motive for wishing Jinney out of the ship in the damnable way you point at.’

“‘Ay,’ said he solemnly, ‘but there was a motive—and a black one. Nothing will ever convince me to the contrary, but that the poor lady had foul play between the three of them—I mean her husband, the mate, and the mulatto steward.’

“‘The devil!’ I broke out, staring him full in the face, with a confused remembrance of some strange thoughts of my own in my mind. ‘What on earth put that horrid notion in your head?’

“The lines deepened on the second mate’s shrewd face, and a doubtful look wrinkled his narrow brows, as his eyes watched mine, as if to fathom how far he might trust me in such a matter. It would not do, however, and I saw that he felt compelled to speak, at all risks, like a frank fellow, as he was, who had strong doubts of dark deeds done in the craft—he could not tell exactly how—and was taking the first good chance that turned up, of easing his mind. There was a look of honest trouble about his twinkling blue eyes, and beardless swarthy cheek, which, combined with his Yankee shrewdness—setting aside the stuff about the ghost—made me repeat the question in a sharper tone, as my mind again reverted to something I had heard before.

“‘The truth is, sir,’ said he, ‘I was convinced from the first, that Mrs. Catherton came on board against her will. Something seemed wrong between them from the start; for I remember, just after she was getting over her sea-sickness, I began to observe the traces of tears on her face, as she often came hurriedly up on the poop, when he was in the after cabin. It was even a matter of talk for’ard, before the blacksmith’s forge was off deck,^[7] that he treated her ill; and as this belief gradually worked aft, from that end of the ship, before we had harpooned a single whale, you may swear that it was true. I heard him, myself, from the sail-room, one morning when he made sure I was asleep in the house on deck, twitting her with her want of faith toward him, and telling her how smoothly she had carried it on for years, while he was at sea—she praying and moaning all the time, and calling on God to witness her innocence; while the very sound of her voice—to say nothing of her tears and her prayers—was enough to move the heart of a Turk to believe her. She could not abide the sight of the mate; and the worst of it was, he seemed to know well enough in his heart what it was for—in short, sir, I had sailed with Jinney before, and had ought to know him. As sure as every man’s conscience is an inward comforter or a scourge of scorpions in this life, according as he listens to its voice or not, so sure that man hated himself as he went about the decks. It was noticed by all hands that he never spoke to her, nor she to him, although she used to sit, for hours at a time, on the poop, with a book on her knees, watching, as we drove along, something you could not see in the wake of the ship, or it might be a gull, hovering over the track of foam; or a Mother Carey’s chicken walking the sprays. All this time we were taking whales, and as the captain showed nothing of the tyrant in his usage of the crew, and the Tartar was a better found ship than I ever had the luck to have been in before, the people had nothing to grumble about, except the matters aft, which, to be sure, was no concern of theirs. Either Captain Catherton, or Jinney, or the mulatto, were always watching the poor lady on the sly, so that it must have been when the boats were off, and the steward at the braces with the shipkeepers, that she managed to stow away the letter that I found in my pea-jacket pocket nearly a week after she disappeared. It was addressed to some friend of hers on shore, and she must have watched until she discovered where the jacket hung, and risked the chances; for the letter was wrapped up in the blank leaf of a book, with a few words in pencil-mark on the margin, begging me to deliver it to the address, if ever I had an opportunity to do so. She was lost a week before I found the letter, and though it looks something like it,’ continued he, while his blue eyes glistened, ‘I’ll never believe that she drowned herself, as she never complained aloud; but just grew thinner and thinner, day by day, until it was plain to the dullest head in the ship, that she was pining to death. It’s my settled belief that she had other reasons for thinking her end was near, and that the spirit that haunts the ship is hers. But be that as it may,’ said he solemnly, ‘if Jim Parker ever lives to see the States again, he will travel to the ends of the earth to deliver the letter. Now, if there’s trouble ahead, Mister Miller, thank God, I’m ready to meet it with a clear conscience.’

“‘Mr. Parker,’ I said, still believing the story to be an exaggeration, in spite of the horrible twist he had given it; ‘your counsel is safe with me; but if you’ll take my advice, you’ll say nothing more of the captain’s wife, or the mate, until the voyage is up. If there has been foul play, depend upon it, it will come out.’

“‘Just so,’ said he, ‘and if you had not been the kind of man I take you for, I should not have broached a word to you, seeing that you are a stranger to me, and seem to have met with Captain Catherton before.’

“‘The truth is,’ I answered, ‘I have been haunted with such a notion, ever since I boarded the ship in the offing; but as I have repeatedly racked my memory in vain to account for the impression, I begin to think that we must have met in a dream, or that my mind has been misled by a fancied resemblance to some one else, whom I have forgotten. However,’ said I, by way of a finale, ‘if he has murdered his wife and the boat’s crew in the way in which you suspect, depend upon it, he is as certain to swing in the wind, as a ship to her anchor, in a tide-way. In the meantime, it is best to say as little about the matter as possible—and you may as well turn the people too, and have the head-sails unbent.’

“‘Very good, sir,’ answered Parker, and down the poop-stairs he went, while I dove into the sail-room.

“While the crew were sending up new sails in place of the old top-sails and courses—worn as thin as sere leaves, blackened with the sooty smoke of the try-works, and marked in fifty places, from the yard-arms down, with gurry—the captain came off, with the old Parsee in company. I, immediately, made my report to him of the difficulty which had occurred in the morning, which he seemed disposed to treat lightly, informing me in turn, that Halil Ben Hamet had gone ashore before daylight, and had arranged every thing for the escape of Zuma on Saturday night.

“‘The blow is to be struck,’ he whispered, ‘at midnight, and on Sunday evening we weigh.’

“He then went below, and in a few minutes afterward, as I stood in the gangway, overlooking the preparations for sea, the two came up on the raised deck, for the sake of the current of air, which was felt or fancied under the awning of the poop. They were both in high spirits; the captain laughing and making the best use of his Arabic, with an occasional fragment of Persian, which he had picked up in his cruises; while the grave, ghostly Parsee—whose thin, bloodless face, and attenuated figure, seemed to set the boiling-point at defiance—sat under the awning, cosily ensconced in a bamboo arm-chair, his back at a luxurious angle, his slippered feet nestling in a sort of carved stool, which wheeled from beneath, and the bowl of his crooked pipe resting on the hot, white deck. He had exchanged his high, purple cap, embroidered with white flowers, for another of lighter make and smaller dimensions, the peak of which overhung and contrasted oddly with his orange cheek; and as the men swaying on the buntlines, squinted oft at his collarless white tunic, and calm, passionless face, with the scented smoke curling up in blue wreaths from the thin mustache, to the gurgle of his hookah, you’d’ve almost thought the fellows took the old Tartar’s poop for some odd corner of the eastern paradise.

“I was dreaming of some such thing myself, when I was suddenly startled by a half-smothered shriek from aft, coming, as it seemed to me, from the cabin under the raised deck. The mulatto steward, who happened to be passing along to the galley, dropped his basket of dishes with a crash, while Catherton himself, grew pale as death, sitting still on the poop, as it appeared, without the power to move a limb. The steward, however, without waiting to count the fragments of his dinner-plates, ran precipitately down the cabin stairs, while the second mate, who was standing near the break of the deck, speaking to the men on the mizzen-topsail-yard, slued half-round, turning as white as the canvas. Catching my eye, he stood fast again, continuing his orders; though both he and the men aloft, who heard the cry distinctly enough, were sufficiently startled to show what they thought of it. One great, clumsy fellow, slipping off the foot-ropes in his fright, when, doubtless he would have made a ghost of himself, had not a boat-steerer caught him by the breast of his duck-frock, and jerked him up on the yard again. For my part, seeing the superstitious fears of the rest, and noticing the change on the captain’s face, a strong contrast to his look a moment before, when he was carrying it off so pleasantly, I did not know what to make of it, thinking one instant of Catherton’s deceased wife, and the next of the Circassian Zuma, who, it flashed upon me, might have been brought on board without my knowledge. In a few moments, however, the steward came up on the poop with the monkey clinging to him, and told the captain, that one of the mutinous rascals whom we had confined below, had worked off his irons, and breaking open a small slide between the steerage and the store-room, had frightened master Jocko into hystericks. I caught the second mate’s eye seeking mine again at this; and Catherton called out from where he sat, to release the men, and turn them to with the rest.

“This was done, and nothing more said of the occurrence at the time, for a breeze suddenly sprung up, bringing in another of the sultan’s cruisers, which had been in sight in the offing all day, with a fleet of dows in convoy. She was a heavy frigate, with an English name, which I have forgotten. She came to anchor on the flood, abreast of the palace at the bottom of the cove, while the great, clumsy dows, moored in the passage astern of the grab-brig.

“The Parsee merchant went on shore just after dark; and being engaged on deck until late in the evening, I had no particular conversation with the captain that night. Awaking from an uneasy sleep about midnight, I went on deck.

“The harbor was still as death. The hot breath of the land-wind had failed. Not a cloud was to be seen on the sky, where the moon and the stars shone with resplendent beauty. The heat was excessive, the least exertion causing the perspiration to stream from the pores. All at once, as I leaned over the quarter, listening to a stir which sprung up on board of my old brig, which had been dismantled and turned into a floating hospital, it struck me that I heard a low murmur of voices, proceeding from the galley of the Tartar. My curiosity being sharpened by the shriek, which had so confused Captain Catherton and the steward, and set Parker and I off on opposite tacks—he thinking of a ghost, and I of the Circassian—I walked slowly for’ard on the larboard side of the deck, anxious to know what was going on.

“I soon discovered that the two steerage cronies, the carpenter and the cooper, with the sable master of the coppers himself, were engaged in a solemn conclave. The two whites were great friends; though no two men could appear more unlike in person and character. The carpenter, a Kennebunk man, was short and thickset, as slow and heavy in his motions as an elephant, with a broad, solemn face, as beardless and bare of expression as a plain of sand, with the nose like a ruined obelisk, rising out of it; while the hooper of staves, as straight and thin as a lath, with sharp features, restless, ferrety eyes, and a nose like a cockatoo’s upper mandible, was the very impersonification of an old blue presbyter, on a cruise. These two fellows were the chief manufacturers of the legends set afloat in the ship; nothing escaping the cooper’s eyes and ears, which was deemed worthy of being poured into the carpenter’s brain, from whence, by the slow process of infiltration, it was given in its strength, drop by drop, as it were, to the crew. This I had learned from the second mate; and as the slide of the galley door was partly open on the side facing Muscat Island, as if to let out the smoke of their pipes, and of some mess the cook was coddling in his stew-pan, I could not resist the temptation of turning eaves-dropper for once, and accordingly, sat quietly down on the spars to listen.

“The man of chips was speaking, with the slow gravity of an oracle, and as his dull, dogged voice met my ear, I could not but think it fortunate that I chanced to light upon the party at the very moment I did.

“‘You think now, my lads,’ said he, ‘that you have made a prime v’y’ge, with forty-five hundred b’rr’ls sparm ile in the ship, and the tryworks down—you, Bungs, with a good lay^[8] and no finger in the slop-chist—and the doctor, with his ten b’rr’ls of slush extra, besides his perquisites for washing the mate’s clothes for twenty odd months—wait till the anchor’s down in Bedford Bay, before you crow, my lads. For my part, unless some lucky chance, as you knows nothin’ of now, turns up, I no more looks to see home in this ship than I looks for to see the new mate to turn missionary, or the skipper to kneel down to the sun with the old Parshee—and eyther aire a long way from my thoughts, I kin tell you. Isn’t the ship haunted in the cabins; and ar’n’t there two Jonases, at least, on board—and another that I knows of—not to speak of him that’s gone to his reckonin’, with murder on his soul, as sartin as we three be settin’ here, as helpless as so many gonies with fish-hooks in their beaks.’

“‘What kin a man do, Chips?’ answered the cooper, apparently much moved with this pleasant prospect of his crony’s. ‘If we stir tack or sheet, in the way you seem to pint, it’s mutiny—and we all know what that leads to. If we makes a complaint to this here bashaw, or sultan, or whatsoever he calls hisself, ten staves to a whitlin’, that the skipper, or the old yaller nabob with the Teneriffe-cap—as they say kin do a great deal here in his way—turns it all into gammon. If you, old head, can see through this traverse, why don’t you say so at once—all among friends—instead of bullragin’ a feller about a matter as he kin no more work out of than a suckin’ whale kin stem a strong current?’

“Here I could hear him whiffing his pipe in high dudgeon, while the other, lowering his voice to a true sea-croak, answered him all the cooler; feeling his way, as I thought, to some plan of his own, which I was doubly anxious to get at, as both men, from their stations in the ship, had considerable influence with the crew.

“‘Thar be some things so dark, d’ye mind,’ said the oracle, ‘that no man kin see through ’em till the Lord’s own time—and some as no man—not even them as is concarned the deepest—kin give a reason for, no more than you kin tell me why a whale always dies with his head toward the sun. As I takes it, this matter about the mate and the skipper’s wife be of this sort.

“‘Hows’iver, this much be sartin—eyther we must git rid o’ the two Jonases, which is left, or the old Tartar are a doomed craft—ship and cargo. Now, for the steward—t’other one once out of the way—his hash is soon settled. I’d think no more of fetchin’ him a clip with my adze than of strikin’ a shirk with a head-spade. I mistrusted the villain iver since I fust sot eyes on the yaller frontispiece of ’im, with his two gray toplights shinin’ like a cat’s in the dark. He’s as deep in as t’other, and without his reason, it may be—hows’iver, to the pint—look ye, I says there’s only one man in the ship which can manhandle the bloody skipper, if he’s once put to the stumps.’

“‘Dat be Frank, de man-o’-war-man, I reckon,’ observed the cook.

“‘Or the Portagee,’ said the cooper, ‘or, if I’m to have a second guess, nearer the mark, the Kanacker, John Kapooley.’

“‘John Kapooley be d—d! and the rest, too,’ said old Kennebunk, scornfully. ‘I see it’s all lost time, as the students say at Cambridge, to teach a nigger a logic, or a bung-driver to sarcumvent any thing but hoops, heads and staves,’ he muttered, pushing the galley door farther open to empty his mouth, though, luckily, he did not see me, as I sat close abaft.

“‘I say, mates, there’s but one man which kin help us in this quandary—and that’s the new mate.’

“‘Why, Chips,’ said the cooper, ‘Lord love you, he’s hand and glove with him you knows of. ’Taint no manner of use of countin’ on him. He’d no more listen to our story than the old Turk at the paliss yonder. Besides, he’s used to sailin’ in other sort of crafts altogether, and sticks up his nose at us whalemen. He’s jist the same sort as the Jonas hisself, and they two is bound to stick togither this cruise—blow high, blow low—till wind and wave parts ’em.’

“‘Dat bin ’xactly my notion, too,’ said the black, ‘him too much an out-an-out sailor to go agin de captin.’

“‘Well, Bungs,’ answered the carpenter, ‘it’s many a long day since you’ve been to sea afore this cruise, and you speak accordin’ to your lights, I dare say. As to the doctor, why I can’t expect much better of him, seein’ that he’s not long out of the bonds o’ iniquity. (The cook was a runaway slave.) But, you see, I’ve talked the whole matter over with Browning, and Shadduck, and Frank, the man-o’-war’s-man, as stands for the whole o’ the starboard-watch—and says I to them, says I, what’s to come o’ it, my lads, s’posin’ we does get the ship out o’ this blessed mess—a ghost aft, the cholery, the Turks and the tiffoons—and the bloody skipper runs away with her, craft and cargo, after all—and leaves us in some foreign port to go to grass with the greenhorns.’

“‘Why, where on airth could he run her to, I want to know?” said the cooper. “If her invoice were drugs and spices, now—or teas and silks, as in her old days, you might talk; but, as I take it, old head, it would be hard to find a market in any quarter of the world, barrin’ Europe and the States, for sich a cargo of sparm ile as we’ve under hatches.’

“‘So you think, my lad,’ retorted the carpenter, coolly, ‘’cause, old as you are, you ar’n’t up to half the deviltry afloat now-a-days.’

“‘Mayhap, now, you ha’n’t forgot that old nob, with the powdered head and the long cue, which were as thick as three in a berth, with the skipper, at Pernambuke?’

“‘Lord love you, no, Charley,’ answered his crony. ‘I remembers him well enough, by reason of the half-doubloon which he give the boat’s crew for pickin’ up three of his niggers, when wild Frank capsized their canoe in the harbor.’

“‘Well, then,’ continued Charley, ‘Don Josey Maria were his name, and the richest senor he were, they said, between the Recife and the Rio.’

“‘Well, Chips, what then?’ asked the cooper.

“‘Why,’ answered the other, as coolly as before, ‘it’s my belief, growin’ in me, the whull v’y’ge, out of things as has turned up, one arter another, that ship and cargo were as good as sold to that aire old Portagee, afore we left the bloody Brazil coast behind.’

“‘Why, Charley, man,’ said the cooper, in a startled voice, ‘sure, you don’t mean to say that now, and you niver broached a thought of it afore.’

“‘Why, you see, my hearties, I were watchin’ all along to see how the cat jumped, seein’ that the skipper be nyther one to be skeared out of his course by a trifle, nor fathomed with a bit o’ dry yarn like a pump-well. I’m cock-sure of it now—but, hark’e in your ears—one word from me, when we gits up with the Cape, will block his game, deep as he is, and sot that aire manhandlin’, pirate-huntin’ Mister Miller—as he calls hisself—at t’other one’s throat like a Bingal tiger.

“‘Hows’iver, jist travel aft, Bungs, an’ strike the bell, whiles the doctor hands out the grog and the prog—I reckon by that aire screechin’, which aire none o’ the pleasantest, that the cholery’s set his claws on more o’ the heathen.’

“I kept my seat while the man went aft and struck the bell, the dismal echoes of the rocks drowning, for a moment, the faint cries to which the carpenter had alluded. Just as the man came back three or four heads were thrust in succession up the forecastle ladder, and as many of the larboard watch clustered round the opposite door of the galley. The fellow who had broken into the cabin was among them, and recognizing the others as old hands, I sat close for a few moments longer, although almost despairing now of learning the magical word by which old Charley was to set the captain and I by the ears.

“However, little of moment was said at first—the talk turning chiefly on the heat, and the cholera, and the prospect of getting to sea. One fellow was beginning a story about the fever on the African coast, when suddenly the carpenter asked the captain’s stroke-oars-man, about the ghost he had seen in the cabin.

“‘You see, mate,’ said Kennebunk, ‘the story they made up aft about the jackanapes be all in my eye; and if Frank, here, be of a mind, he can give us the rights of it.’

“‘That be blowed!’ said the man-of-war’s man in his wild way. ‘If it weren’t the monkey, with a table-cloth round him, as the steward said, it might have been a ghost, or the devil hisself, for all I care. Pass the pannakin this way—here’s sweethearts and wives, any how!—and no malice to the new mate, for the clout on the sconce with the capstan-bar.’

“‘Ay, ay,’ rejoined the carpenter, ‘you men-of-war’s men are all of one mark; you know one another, meet where you may, jist as a shoal o’ whales comes togither, arter a squanderin’.’

“‘B—t me!’ said Frank, ‘if ever I sot eyes on him afore he joined this ship, howsomever it may be with you, Chips.’

“Why,’ said Charley again, ‘may be I have, and may be I haven’t—I’m not goin’ for to say now. Only so much, d’ ye see—he’s the very man to take the old craft home, in case of any thing had happenin’ to the skipper. If we do go to sea on Sunday, as is give out in the ship—what I want you lads of the larboard watch to do, is to keep a small helm till we once gits in the Cape latitudes. If the skipper lays her course for the Brazil coast, then—leave the rest to Charley Toppin.’

“‘Well,’ answered Frank, ‘we’re all of one mind, Chips; and if the soft-sawderin’, murderin’, buccaneerin’ thief tries his hand at that game, more than half t’other watch’ll jine with us. You see, lads, fair play’s a jewel, and I did promise the steward to say nothin’ about what I seed in the after-cabin to-day—hows’iver, as all hands is concarned—and you all heerd the screach—why, sink me, if it’s a man’s part to keep back the truth:—Either the ship’s haunted by the captain’s wife’s ghost—or else he’s got a live missus stowed away in the cabins.’

“There was a regular burst of top-gallant oaths and exclamations at this, until the carpenter took the word in a sort of triumph.

“‘I knowed it—I knowed it—I told you all the same thing—and who was most ready to laugh at the spurrit but Frank—and now you hear him.’

“‘I only tell what I saw, shipmates,’ rejoined the man-of-war’s man; you may believe what you like.’

“‘But let’s hear the rights of it, Frank,’ said the cooper.

“‘Well, then, you see,’ said Frank, after a pause, ‘when I slipped off my irons and got into the pantry, looking for something to eat—for the rum dying in me made me as ravenous as a wolf—the thought comed into my head, somehow, to have a look at the Bluebeard-chamber, as we calls the after-cabin all along. I knowed the mates were busy on deck, and the skipper ashore—and I heers the steward go up with his dishes, afore I slipped back the slide—so, mates, I walks like a cat in a game-preserve, past the skipper’s berth, through the for’ard cabin—and lays my hand on the nob of the door between. Sure enough it were locked fast, and I outs sheath-knife to pry back the bolt—and blessed if that very minute the lock doesn’t turn from the inside. This here you see, sets me all in a tremble, and I stands still for a second, doubtin’ what to do, and more nor half a mind to go back, as the thought of this here ghost of the carpenter’s comes over me strong. Hows’iver, ‘here’s venture,’ thinks I—and in I bolts. What with the deadlights down, and something over the bulls-eyes, it were as dark as a dungeon at fust; but, as I feels my way in, somebody moves on the poop—the light shoots down in a stream—and I sees the wheel cabin pretty well, with a rack full bottles and glasses between the doors, and the two ship models we made on the fust cruise, standing on their ways, safe enough on the transom. I steps up to see what sort o’ stuff might be inside the bottles, and never sees sign of monkey, nor nothing else, ’till I give a look in a big looking-glass, when blessed if I doesn’t see the door of the starboard aftermost state-room open, and a woman in white standin’ inside, lookin’ straight at me. I slues round at this, and she gives the scream as some on you heerd—and vanishes in a jiffy. Well, mates, while I stands dumbfoundered at this, shakin’ worse nor afore, the steward comes down the companion-way like a hot shot, and shoves me back into the pantry—and away he drives agin like mad. In less than a minute he comes back, quiet enough, with a tumbler of grog in his fist—and ‘Here,’ says he, ‘take this down, and say nothin’ to nobody about a ghost at all—and I’ll lay it on the monkey.’ I nods and swallows the stuff, and makes sail back to the steerage, where the third mate comes down a minute arter, and takes off the other chap’s bracelets, and tells us all to turn to.’

“‘And now, mates,’ said he, ‘it’s all Bible truth, jist as it took place; and whether it be a ghost or no, it looked wonderful white and thin—and as much like the poor lady, as if it were her picter, full size, and done by some great painter—you know.’

“‘The Lord have mercy on us!’ exclaimed the cooper; ‘the likes of that I niver ’spected to hear in this ship. But murder will out—and haunt the cabins and the poop it’s sartain to do, as long as there’s a Jonas left aboard.’

“‘Why,’ said another, ‘I’ve a notion to cut and run from this here cussed craft to-morrow.’

“‘And lose your ile?’ suggested one fellow.

“‘And die of the cholery, among rig’lar heathens,’ said the carpenter. ‘No, no, Jack; I’ll teach you a better way nor that. Ye see, lads, while the spurrit sticks to her end of the ship—’

“Here the ship’s bell struck one, and I went aft at once. Not a soul was to be seen, though I walked up on the raised deck, and then straight down to the wheel, above which the clapper of the bell hung, without the least motion that I could perceive. I was puzzled myself, and as for the fellows in the galley, they never stirred for the ten minutes which I stood there, by the watch in the binnacle. At length, one of the boldest made shift to get as far as the mainmast, when, seeing me in my shirt-sleeves, he took fright and ran for’ard again. I then went below, more than half-inclined to leave the ship myself, from what I heard; but determined, nevertheless, to search the cabins myself, on the very first occasion before we went to sea.

“The next morning we went on bending new sails fore and aft, the captain going on shore in the canoe after breakfast.

“He had not been gone an hour, when a barge came off to the ship, with the Sultan himself, the Ouale^[9] of Muscat, and a few officers of his household—among the rest my sable friend, Hadji Hemet, looking blacker than a fetisheer, under a new Syrian turban, with a jeweled krungar hanging at his girdle, and pearls of price in his ears. Though they took us by surprise, I had the sides manned, and the ship’s guns fired, and after showing Syed Ben Seeyd down into the cabin, where, to my annoyance, the steward was not to be found, at the request of the sultan—after apologizing for the absence of the captain—I showed him and his officers through the ship. He seemed particularly interested in the examination of the instruments used in capturing the whale, and paid great attention to the construction of the boats, asking many questions through the interpreter, most of which I left the second mate to answer. When we returned to the long cabin, the steward had the doors of the after one thrown open, the decks swept, and the dead-lights up. After partaking slightly of the refreshments prepared, and making some inquiry into the amount of capital invested in the whaling interests in the United States, the party went into the after-cabin, where their attention was immediately fixed on the two ship-models on the transom. While they were examining these, I tried the doors of the state-rooms. That on the starboard aftermost side was locked, the captain, as the steward said, having the key in his possession.

“I said nothing more at the time, knowing it to be the one which Mrs. Catherton had formerly occupied, and the mulatto, by his manner, seemed quite as well satisfied to be rid of the subject. In a few moments more, the sultan and his attendants went up on the poop, when I found the ship decked out in all the flags she could muster, and the crew rigged in regular liberty trim. We gave his mightiness nine cheers and a salute of twenty guns when he left: the last sight which I saw through the smoke, being the eunuch’s black face, looming, like a fiend’s, out of the barge, from under his checked turban.

“As soon as the men shifted and turned to again, I went down into the cabins, when, lo! the doors of the after one were closed and locked as before. I thought this a good chance to fall regularly foul of the steward, when the fellow closed my mouth at once, by saying in a submissive way, that it was Captain Catherton’s orders, after his wife’s death, that the doors should be kept closed. Of course, I could say no more.

“We went on with our work aloft, and being strong-handed, after taking in a few sheep and goats, were ready to go to sea by meridian, when in the very noon-day glare and piercing heat of the sun, the Soliman Shah, the Arab corvette, changed her berth also, finding the little strait too hot for her at last, with ten deaths on board of her the night previous, and as many more new cases in her sick bay.

“However, new life seemed to have inspired our men. They worked with a will, notwithstanding that the terrific rays of the sun beaming upon the awnings, or reflected from a thousand points of the rugged rocks, made the gap like a gigantic oven. The land-wind was rising when the captain came off, and the men, in running up the boats for the night, broke out into a hearty song, the chorus of which opened the Arab’s eyes and did one’s soul good to hear, as if the prospect of getting to sea at last made them set the blue cholera itself, and all other evils which menaced the ship, at defiance. There was another meaning in this, in connection with what I had overheard the night before, which caused me to look narrowly at the face of old Charley who started the song, and those of one or two of the others, to see how far they were to be trusted, or feared at a pinch; when suddenly averting my eyes I saw that Catherton, who stood on the poop, was watching me narrowly, though he turned away the moment his eyes met mine, gazing, with a frown on his brow, from the ship to the frigate, as if something in the clamorous notes of the men displeased him. It struck me that, whatever his plans were, carrying it off in this way must seem natural enough to the Arabs, accustomed as they were to the ways of English seamen. He said nothing, however, even after listening attentively to my report of the Sultan’s visit, turning the conversation upon the plan for bringing Zuma off to the ship.

“I did not doubt but that I should be able to bring her on board, but I feared that she could not be concealed should suspicion be directed to the vessel. I had watched the faces of the sultan and his attendants as closely as I could, and remarked nothing to alarm me. Syeed’s demeanor was as mild and gracious as usual; nevertheless, knowing something of the policy in the East, I could not divest myself of the thought that we were watched. Hadji’s black face, with the wiry mustache and the checked turban over it, seemed to haunt every dark corner of the ship as the day waned. Catherton, also, could not entirely conceal his anxiety. He had been taking his grog freer than usual for the last two days, and as he was by no means what is termed a hard drinking man, this tended, as I thought, to unhinge his faculties in some degree, and give his cheek an ashy hue foreign to its natural deep bronze. He smoked incessantly, the sheroot being never out of his mouth, and his frequent change of position, when every one else felt indisposed to stir after the decks were cleared, showed a degree of restlessness which, under other circumstances, would have been hard to account for. I thought it my duty, notwithstanding, to give him another hint of the danger he was running the ship into, and choosing my opportunity, accordingly spoke out pretty plainly.

“‘I tell you, Captain Catherton,’ said I, ‘you can have no idea of the means which that accursed eunuch has of obtaining information. He has spies every where—perhaps in this very ship, and I know him too well not to feel certain that, should any of the ship’s company be found in any way implicated in the plot, you and I in less than an hour afterward would be tenants of the same dungeon, with a fair prospect of being kept prisoners for life, or perhaps put to death in some diabolical way.’

“‘Mr. Miller,’ he answered quietly, ‘I command this ship. Do you bring the woman off safely, and I’ll stake my neck on the rest.’

“And without another word he walked down into the cabin. This was decided enough, so I remained standing by the mizzen-rigging, endeavoring to forget my presentiments of evil by watching the motions of Muscat Tom, who had been cruising in the cove all day. By this time, though the sun was behind the mountains, it wanted still an hour and more of dark, when the second mate called my attention to the large flocks of birds flying confusedly in from the offing and disappearing among the rocks. A dirty, yellowish cloud suddenly obscured the air, making it still more oppressive, if possible, and causing you to wonder if the day was not nearer its end than you had deemed. The atmosphere was insufferably hot and oppressive, the little air astir coming from the land, like the breath of a furnace; you could see through the stifling gloom that the thin strips of haze were melting away from the peaks and small watch-towers in sight from our present berth: a swell, too, was getting up with the tide, and, presently, we could hear from seaward a low, indistinct, appalling sound—which every seaman knows full well—rising, stealthily, as it were, over the hum of living voices in the harbor. It was the moan of the Arabian Sea awakening from its long sleep, and the swell was the forerunner of the heavy surf which it sometimes sends in on the rocky coast, before a severe squall. All at once, as we were noting these ominous signs, the whale, with a flap of his flukes that was loudly reverberated by the rocks, threw half his length clear, and then setting his stem-propeller and side-paddles in play, commenced making an offing, slowly at first, but gradually increasing his speed, until, before he was out of sight, the water was all in a foam behind him. A moment after the gloom suddenly deepened, till Parker’s face at my elbow seemed dusky as an Indian’s—a few large drops fell upon the awning, and looking aloft we saw again, over our heads and to the north, the glaring, vivid blue sky with nothing between, as if the demon of the storm had flapped his wings at our mast-head, and then sailed swiftly away, to wreak his wrath on more defenseless heads. The land-wind, more like the breath of a flame than a current of air, coming as it did from the sandy plains of the interior, was less strong than usual; while the swell continued to rise with the tide, the water lapping with a dull splash against the whaleman’s bends, and the low, aweing, ominous sound still falling upon the ear at regular intervals.

“When the captain came on deck, while the steward was setting the table in the cabin, we got our heavy anchors all ready to let go at a moment’s warning, and secured our boats inboard, though the Arab frigate did not appear to take the alarm. In fact, Captain Catherton did not think it advisable, under circumstances, to send down his upper spars, while the heavy frigate rode to a single anchor, with boats towing astern, and royal yards across. As for the corvette, she was hidden in her present berth by Muscat Island.

“After supper, the land-wind died entirely away; the stars came shimmering through the blue ether; the haze settled about the granite peaks again, and, with the exception of the low, murmuring sound to seaward, and the almost imperceptible rise of the swell, the night bid fair to be as calm as the last.

“About nine in the evening I went below to get, if possible, a wink of sleep. I had strong doubts of the weather, it being now near the time for the setting in of the dry monsoon, although I thought it probable that a day or two might pass before it took a decided change, having seen the same signs prove false tokens before in this very harbor, the land-wind sometimes filling the atmosphere with minute particles of dust, and the whale regularly making a stretch to sea at sundown for fear of the currents, which here, of all coasts in the world, are the most shining and treacherous. The dust-cloud, too, might have driven the birds to cover sooner than usual, and, in fact, the only sign to be relied on was the distant moan of the sea, reaching the ear it was hard to tell how, as there was not the least flutter of a breeze to be felt. The tide, too, which rises here about six feet, was higher than usual, and what with thinking of this, and of the stories I had heard about the captain, to say nothing of the heat and the adventure before me that night, it was long before I fell asleep.

“When I awoke, I knew, if it were only by the dull glimmer of the cabin-lamp, and the capers the rats were cutting along the deck, that it must be near the hour when Captain Catherton had settled to call me himself. Looking across the cabin to his berth I saw that it was empty, and feeling sure that he was on deck, I again closed my eyes against the light. However, the mood was past for the time, and between the smell of the oil, the rats and the roaches, and the captain, as I supposed, walking the deck over my head, I found it useless to close an eyelid. So, gentlemen, I lay wide awake listening to the tramp above, as of some one in a spell of deep thought, and watching the pranks of the long-tailed gentry as they manoeuvred around the stands of arms on the bulkhead, or marched in squads under the berths; the boldest of them climbing up repeatedly into the foot of mine, and plumping down again when I stirred, as if they were bent upon rousing me out for some end of their own, which, as I afterward discovered, was for free admission into a cabinet of marine curiosities, which the mate, who was dead and gone, had been collecting for some scientific gentlemen of the Granite state. Where the rats came from should have been submitted to these same savants, when, as I heard afterward, they boarded every ship which come into Bedford Bay for months after the Tartar was expected home, inquiring after their curiosity-box, then lying snugly enough at the bottom of the cove of Muscat.

[Conclusion in our next.

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Scimetars.