But the fire was quicker than they. The smouldering smoke that was rising like a pillar of cloud from the fore-hatchway, was now streaked with tongues of red flame, which, licking the masts and spars, ran up and caught the sails and rigging. In an instant, the fire spread to every part of the gear aloft, while the other element, the sea, was also striving for the mastery in the destruction of the doomed vessel; for our shot, or the fall of the carronade into the hold, had started some of the bottom planks, and she was fast settling down by the head. We could hear the water rushing in like a mill stream. The fire increased-her guns went off as they became heated—she gave a sudden heel—and while five hundred human beings, pent up in her noisome hold, split the heavens with their piercing death-yells, down she went with a heavy lurch, head foremost, right in the wake of the setting sun, whose level rays made the thick dun wreaths that burst from her as she disappeared, glow with the hue of the amethyst; and while the whirling clouds, gilded by his dying radiance, curled up into the blue sky, in rolling masses, growing thinner and thinner, until they vanished away, even like the wreck whereout they arose, and the circling eddies, created by her sinking, no longer sparkled and flashed in the red light, and the stilled waters where she had gone down, as if oil had been cast on them, were spread out like polished silver, shining like a mirror, while all around was dark blue ripple,—a puff of fat black smoke, denser than any we had yet seen, suddenly emerged with a loud gurgling noise, from out the deep bosom of the calmed sea, and rose like a balloon, rolling slowly upwards, until it reached a little way above our mastheads, where it melted and spread out into a dark pall, that overhung the scene of death, as if the incense of such a

horrible and polluted sacrifice could not ascend into the pure heaven, but had been again crushed back upon our devoted heads, as a palpable manifestation of the wrath of Him who hath said-" Thou shalt not kill."

For a few moments all was silent as the grave, and I felt as if the air had become too thick for breathing, while I looked up like another Cain.

Presently, about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, men, women, and children, who had been drawn down by the vortex, rose amidst numberless pieces of smoking wreck, to the surface of the sea; the strongest yelling like fiends in their despair, while the weaker, the women, and the helpless gasping little ones, were choking, and gurgling, and sinking all around. Yea, the small thin expiring cry of the innocent sucking infant torn from its sinking mother's breast, as she held it for a brief moment above the waters, which had already for ever closed over herself, was there.-But we could not perceive one single individual of her white crew; like desperate men, they had all gone down with the brig. We picked up about one half of the miserable Africans, and—my pen trembles as I write it-fell necessity compelled us to fire on the remainder, as it was utterly impossible for us to take them on board. Oh that I could erase such a scene for ever from my memory ! One incident I cannot help relating. We had saved a woman, a handsome clear-skinned girl, of about sixteen years of age. She was very faint when we got her in, and was lying with her head over a port-sill, when a strong athletic young negro swam to the part of the schooner where she was. She held down her hand to him; he was in the act of grasping it, when he was shot through the heart from above. She instantly jumped overboard, and, clasping him in her arms, they sank, and disappeared together. “Oh, woman,

whatever may be the colour of your skin, your heart is of one only!" said Aaron.

Soon all was quiet; a wounded black here and there was shrieking in his great agony, and struggling for a moment before he sank into his watery grave for ever; a few pieces of wreck were floating and sparkling on the surface of the deep in the blood-red sunbeams, which streamed in a flood of glorious light on the bloody deck, shattered hull, and torn rigging of the Wave, and on the dead bodies and mangled limbs of those who had fallen; while some heavy scattering drops of rain fell sparkling from a passing cloud, as if Nature had wept in pity over the dismal scene; or as if they had been blessed tears, shed by an angel, in his heavenward course, as he hovered for a moment, and looked down in pity on the fantastic tricks played by the worm of a day-by weak man, in his little moment of power and ferocity. I said something -ill and hastily. Aaron was close beside me, sitting on a carronade slide, while the surgeon was dressing a pike wound in his neck. He looked up solemnly in my face, and then pointed to the blessed luminary, that was now sinking in the sea, and blazing up into the resplendent heavens "Cringle, for shame-for shame-your impatience is blasphemous. Remember this morning-and thank Him"-here he looked up and crossed himself"thank Him who, while he has called poor Mr Handlead, and so many brave fellows to their last awful reckoning, has mercifully brought us to the end of this fearful day; —oh, thank Him, Tom, that you have seen the sun set once more!"

CHAPTER V.

THE SECOND CRUISE OF THE WAVE.

"I longed to see the Isles that gem
Old Ocean's purple diadem,

I sought by turns, and saw them all."

Bride of Abydos.

THE puncture in Mr Bang's neck from the boardingpike was not very deep, still it was an ugly lacerated wound; and if he had not, to use his own phrase, been somewhat bull-necked, there is no saying what the consequences might have been.

"Tom, my boy," said he, after the doctor was done with him, "I am nicely coopered now-nearly as good as new-a little stiffish or so-lucky to have such a comfortable coating of muscle, otherwise the carotid would have been in danger. So come here, and take your turn, and I will hold the candle."

It was dead calm, and as I had desired the cabin to be again used as a cockpit, it was at this time full of poor fellows, waiting to have their wounds dressed, whenever the surgeon could go below. The lantern was brought, and sitting down on a wadding tub, I stripped. The ball, which I knew had lodged in the fleshy part of my left shoulder, had first of all struck me right over the collarbone, from which it had glanced, and then buried itself in the muscle of the arm, just below the skin, where it stood out, as if it had been a sloe both in shape and colour.

The collar-bone was much shattered, and my chest was a good deal shaken, and greatly bruised; but I had perceived nothing of all this at the time I was shot; the sole perceptible sensation was the feeling of cold water running down, and the pinch in the shoulder, as already described. I was much surprised (every man who has been seriously hit being entitled to expatiate) with the extreme smallness of the puncture in the skin through which the ball had entered; you could not have forced a pea through it, and there was scarcely any flow of blood.

"A very simple affair this, sir," said the surgeon, as he made a minute incision right over the ball, the instrument cutting into the cold dull lead with a cheep, and then pressing his fingers, one on each side of it, it jumped out nearly into Aaron's mouth.

"A pretty sugar-plum, Tom-if that collar-bone of yours had not been all the harder, you would have been embalmed in a gazette, to use your own favourite expression. But, my good boy, your bruise on the chest is serious; you must go to bed, and take care of yourself.”

Alas! there was no bed for me to go to. The cabin was occupied by the wounded, where the surgeon was still at work. Out of our small crew, nine had been killed, and eleven wounded, counting passengers-twenty out of forty-two-a fearful proportion.

The night had now fallen.

"Pearl, send some of the people aft, and get a spare square-sail from the sailmaker, and”

"Will the awning not do, sir?"

"To be sure it will," said I-it did not occur to me. "Get the awning triced up to the stancheons, and tell my steward to get the beds on deck-a few flags to shut us in will make the thing complete."

It was done; and while the sharp cries of the wounded,