away like the summer gossamer, and our masts and spars, crackling before his fury like dry reeds in autumn, were blown clean out of the ship, over her bows, into the sea.

Had we shown a shred of the strongest sail in the vessel, it would have been blown out of the bolt-rope in an instant; we had, therefore, to get her before the wind, by crossing a spar on the stump of the foremast, with four men at the wheel, one watch at the pumps, and the other clearing the wreck. But our spirits were soon dashed, when the old carpenter, one of the coolest and bravest men in the ship, rose through the forehatch, pale as a ghost, with his white hairs streaming straight out in the wind. He did not speak to any of us, but clambered aft, towards the capstan, to which the captain had lashed himself.

"The water is rushing in forward like a mill-stream, Sir; we have either started a but, or the wreck of the foremast has gone through her bows, for she is fast settling down by the head."

"Get the boatswain to fother a sail then, man, and try it over the leak; but don't alarm the people, Mr Kelson."

The brig was, indeed, rapidly losing her buoyancy, and when the next heavy sea rose a-head of us, she gave a drunken sickening lurch, and pitched right into it, groaning and trembling in every plank, like a guilty and condemned thing in the prospect of impending punishment.

"Stand by, to heave the guns overboard."

Too late, too late-Oh God, that cry!-I was stunned and drowning, a chaos of wreck was beneath me, and around me, and above me, and blue agonized gasping faces, and struggling arms, and colourless clutching hands, and despairing yells for help, where help was impossible; when I felt a sharp bite on the neck, and breathed again. My Newfoundland dog, Sneezer, had snatched at me, and dragged me out of the eddy of the sinking vessel.

For life, for dear life, nearly suffocated amidst the hissing spray, we reached the cutter, the dog and his helpless master.

For three miserable days, I had been exposed, half naked and bareheaded, in an open boat, without water, or food, or shade. The third fierce cloudless West Indian noon was long passed, and once more the dry burning sun sank in the west, like a red-hot shield of iron. In my horrible extremity, I imprecated the wrath of Heaven on my defenceless head, and shaking my clenched hands against the brazen sky, I called aloud on the Almighty," Oh, let me never see him rise again!" I glared on the noble dog, as he lay

dying at the bottom of the boat; madness seized me, I tore his throat with my teeth, not for food, but that I might drink his hot blood - it flowed, and, vampire-like, I would have gorged myself; but as he turned his dull, grey, glazing eye on me, the pulses of my heart stopped, and I fell senseless.

When my recollection returned, I was stretched on some fresh plantain leaves, in a low smoky hut, with my faithful dog lying beside me, whining and licking my hands and face. On the rude joists that bound the rafters of the roof together, rested a light canoe with its paddles, and over against me, on the wall, hung some Indian fishing implements, and a long-barrelled Spanish gun. Underneath lay a corpse, wrapped in a boat-sail, on which was clumsily written, with charcoal,-" The body of John Deadeye, Esq., late commander of his Britannic Majesty's Sloop, Torch.”

There was a fire on the floor, at which lieutenant Splinter, in his shirt and trowsers, drenched, unshorn, and deathlike, was roasting a joint of meat, whilst a dwarfish Indian, stark naked, sat opposite to him, squatting on his hams, more like a large bull-frog than a man, and fanning the flame with a palm leaf. In the dark corner of the hut half a dozen miserable sheep shrunk huddled together. Through the open door I saw the stars in the deep blue heaven, and the cold beams of the newly risen moon were dancing in a long flickering wake of silver light on the ever-heaving bosom of the ocean, whilst the melancholy murmur of the surf breaking on the shore, came booming on the gentle night-wind. I was instantly persuaded that I had been nourished during my delirium; for the fierceness of my sufferings was assuaged, and I was comparatively strong.—I anxiously inquired of the lieutenant the fate of our shipmates.

"All gone down in the old Torch; and had it not been for the launch and our four-footed friends there, I should not have been here to have told it; but raw mutton, with the wool on, is not a mess to thrive on, Tom. All that the sharks have left of the captain and five seamen came ashore last night. I have buried the poor fellows on the beach where they lay as well as I could, with an oar-blade for a shovel, and the bronze ornament there (pointing to the Indian) for an assistant.' Here he looked towards the body; and the honest fellow's voice shook as he continued.

"But seeing you were alive, I thought, if you did recover, it would be gratifying to both of us after having weathered it so long with him through gale and sunshine, to lay the kind-hearted old man's head on its everlasting pillow as decently as our forlorn condition permitted."

As the lieutenant spoke, Sneezer seemed to think his watch was up, and drew off towards the fire. Clung and famished, the poor brute could no longer resist the temptation, but, making a desperate snatch at the joint, bolted through the door with it, hotly pursued by the Bull-frog.

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Drop the leg of mutton, Sneezer," roared the lieutenant, drop the mutton-drop it, Sir, drop it, drop it." And away raced his Majesty's officer in pursuit of the canine pirate.

After a little, he and the Indian returned, the former with the joint in his hand; and presently the dog stole into the hut after them, and patiently lay down in a corner, until the lieutenant goodhumouredly threw the bone to him after our comfortless meal had been finished.

I was so weak that my shipmate considerately refrained from pressing his society on me; and we, therefore, all betook ourselves to rest for the night.*

A trifling error of the press in the foregoing Chapter, when it first appeared, brought forth the following characteristic letter to the Editor of Blackwood's Magazine.

"TO COMMODORE CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

"DEAR OLD GENTLEMAN,

"Your chief devil has got me into a terrible mess by a misprint in last Chapter confound my cramp fist—regarding which old Splinter (erst of the Torch) has ever since quizzed me very nearly up to gunpowder mark.

"To the matter-The said imp makes me say, in page 78, standing on the bowsprit, that 'the spray from the stern was flashing over me, as it roared through the waste of sparkling and hissing waters.' Now, I don't dispute the roaring of sterns-in season. But,―――me, if you or any other man shall make Tom Cringle's stern roar, out of season, on compulsion. I wrote STEM, the cut-water of the ship, the coulter as it were-the head of her, not the tail, as the devil would have it. And again, when the privateer hauls his wind suddenly to let the Torch shoot past him, and thereby gain the weather-gage, when old Splinter should sing out, as it was written-but, confound the fist once more-' Give her the stem'—that is, run her down and sink her, the stem being the strongest part, as the stern is the weakest, he, Belzebub, judging, I presume, of the respective strength of the two ends from his own comparative anatomy, makes him say, 'Give her the stern,' as if he were going to let drive at her with that end. 'Poo, nonsense-it don't signify.' But it does signify, old man.

"To touch you more near-you yourself have been known to get fou and pugnacious on great occasions-the visit of royalty, for instance—it is on record. A mountain foreigner from Ross-shire engages you, for some unknown insult, in single combat, and, leagued with John Barleycorn (let us imagine an impossibility), floors you by a peg on the gnomon-the wound is in the front

your snout is broken, but your honour is whole. Would it be so, were the Gael to allege, that 'her nainsell had coupit you by a pig kick on her preach ?' By all the gods, he of the laconic garment, the thousand hill man,' would have been careering on a cloud after his 'freen' Ossian, with the moon shining through him, within that very hour.

"Still I would not have bothered you; but I know his Most Gracious Majesty King William, God bless him! (who can forget poor Burns's Tarry Breeks?') either has noticed it, or will notice it, the instant he comes to that part of the Log. Now this, without explanation, is inconvenient, trowsers being likely to come as high up in these days as pantaloons, and I have some claim on him, seeing that my uncle, Job Cringle, some five-and-forty years ago,. at Jamaica, in the town of Port-Royal, had his head-rails smashed, the neb of his nose (stem) bitten off by a bungo, and the end of his spine (stern-post), that mysterious point, where man ends, and monkey begins, grievously shaken in a spree at Kitty Finnans, in Prince William Henry's company.

"Poo, nonsense.' Indeed!-Why the very devil himself, the author of the evil, shall be convinced that there is much peril in the transposition of ends. I will ask him- What is a sternutation?'-(words being his weapons) -'What is a sternutation?' He shall answer learnedly by the card-' A sneeze,' the nose or stem being the organ. Then he shall ask Jem Sparkle 'What is a sternutation?'-You laugh, old gentleman; but your devil's 'mistack' looks every inch as queer to a sailor as our topman's answer would sound to you.

"Yours will all cordiality, notwithstanding,

"THOMAS CRINGLE."

CHAPTER IV.

SCENES ON THE COSTA FIRME.

"Here lies a sheer hulk, poor Tom Bowline."

I was awakened by the low growling, and short bark of the dog. The night was far spent ; the tiny sparks of the fire-flies that were glancing in the doorway began to grow pale; the chirping of the crickets and lizards, and the snore of the tree-toad, waxed fainter, and the wild cry of the tiger-cat was no longer heard. The terral, or land-wind, which is usually strongest towards morning, moaned loudly on the hillside, and came rushing past with a melancholy sough, through the brushwood that surrounded the hut, shaking

off the heavy dew from the palm and cocoa-nut trees, like large drops of rain.

The hollow tap of the woodpecker; the clear flute-note of the pavo del monte; the discordant shriek of the macaw; the shrill chirr of the wild Guinea fowl; and the chattering of the paroquets, began to be heard from the wood. The ill-omened gallinaso was sailing and circling round the hut, and the tall flamingo was stalking on the shallows of the lagoon, the haunt of the disgusting alligator, that lay beneath, divided from the sea by a narrow mudbank, where a group of pelicans, perched on the wreck of one of our boats, were pluming themselves before taking wing. In the east, the deep blue of the firmament, from which the lesser stars were fast fading, all but the "Eye of Morn," was warming into magnificent purple, and the amber rays of the yet unrisen sun were shooting up, streamer-like, with intervals between, through the parting clouds, as they broke away with a passing shower, that fell like a veil of silver gauze between us and the first primrosecoloured streaks of a tropical dawn.

"That's a musket shot," said the lieutenant. The Indian crept on his belly to the door, dropped his chin on the ground, and placed his open palms behind his ears. The distant wail of a bugle was heard, then three or four dropping shots again, in rapid succession. Mr Splinter stooped to go forth, but the Indian caught him by the leg, uttering the single word " Españoles."

On the instant, a young Indian woman, with a shrieking infant in her arms, rushed to the door. There was a blue gunshot wound in her neck, from which two or three large black clotting gouts of blood were trickling. Her long black hair was streaming in coarse braids, and her features were pinched and sharpened, as if in the agony of death. She glanced wildly behind, and gasped out, "Escapa, Oreeque, escapa; para mi, soi muerta ya.' Another shot, and the miserable creature convulsively clasped her child, whose small shrill cry I often fancy I hear to this hour blending with its mother's death-shriek, and, falling backwards, rolled over the brow of the hill out of sight. The ball had pierced the heart of the parent through the body of her offspring. By this time a party of Spanish soldiers had surrounded the hut, one of whom, kneeling before the low door, pointed his musket into it. The Indian, who had seen his wife and child thus cruelly shot down before his face, now fired his rifle, and the man fell dead. "Siga mi querida Bondia -maldito." Then springing to his feet, and stretching himself to his full height, with his arms extended towards Heaven, while a