Oliver Ellis

CHAPTER LVI.

KNUCKLEDUSTER'S STORY.

"I was first in the smuggling line, and many are the good cargoes of Nantz and Geneva I have run ashore all along the coast between Hartlepool and the Spurnhead, in the bights and bays, clefts and creeks, known only to ourselves and our friends on shore; till once, after a hard chase, our sloop was sunk by a twelve-pound shot that took her between wind and water, from a king's cutter, commanded by old Cranky, who was then in the Preventive Service. This was in Brellington Bay, off the coast of Yorkshire, and down she went, with all her brandy-kegs, and what was worse, all her hands aboard, at least, all except me; so I was taken and condemned to serve seven years in a man-of-war.

"I deserted in the West Indies, and joined some lads of the knife and pistol, who manned a long, low, sharply-prowed polacca, that carried by turns at her gaff-peak the flag of every nation on earth, and had a long brass eighteen pounder amidships, that did some mischief, I can tell you, along the shore of the Spanish Main.

"Tiring of that, I sewed a thousand doubloons, the general stock of the crew, who were all drunk at the time, in the waistband of my trowsers, and shoved off in a whale-boat, on a dark night, when the polacca was creeping under easy sail near the high headlands of Dominica, and worked my way home on board of an old sugar-ship. In England, between Jews and girls about Portsmouth, my doubloons melted like snow on the sea, and I was glad to take the keepership of Sandridge Light, to save me from the press-gang.

"We had some rare doings in that lighthouse, for a night seldom passed without stupid craft being lost; for, d'ye see, the machinery of the lamps often went wrong—at least, so we said—and the devilish lights went out, at the very time they were most wanted. Well, we were burned out of that, as you know; and though I escaped to Compton Rennel, Broken-nosed Bill and Mother Snatchblock, an old girl who was very fond of me, were shrivelled up like a couple of castanas on the hob of the galley fire.

"One night I found myself at Hull, entered as a foremast man aboard of a Quebec timber-ship, when there rose an outcry in the docks that press-gangs of the West-India fleet were out, and that the gates were all guarded by lobsters from the barracks. You know all about that too, for by you I was taken; and I may tell you plainly that for many a day after that I vowed to be revenged for the trick, though I suppose you only did your duty, my young cockerel. You know, also, how I was taken prisoner and employed by that false devil of a French colonel at Martinique, and all about his pretty little wife.

"Well, within a week after the storming of La Fleur d'Epée, a smart French sloop that lay in the carenage of Los Santos was taken by Sir George Grey, of the Boyne, to use as a despatch-boat, and on board of her he sent the gunner's mate, with four hands—of whom I was one—to convey letters back to Martinique.

"The devil, who has always taken the greatest interest in me, had surely the entire arrangement of this affair; for the gunner's mate was the man, of all on board the fleet, whom I hated most, for three times he had caught me borrowing his rumbo, and had me triced up to the gangway for a dozen—three dozen for three glasses of grog! Once he missed a purse, and as its alleged contents were found in my hammock by the three fellows who were now shipped with me, I received four dozen, well laid on with a pickled cat, and fainted; but was well soused by buckets of salt water to bring me round again; then I forfeited all pay and prize-money for six months. No sooner did the sloop put to sea, than all these things came crowding into my memory, and my mind was soon made up to skewer the gunner's mate and his three men, to plunder the sloop, run her ashore on the first land I came to, and then trust to Fortune and old Davy for whatever might turn up next.

"Catch me under a commodore's broad pennant again, thought I, if I can get this craft into my own hands, and make a clean run for it!

"We bent new canvass on the sloop in the carenage, and passed through the Rade des Saintes just as the morning gun was fired from La Fleur d'Epée and the union-jack went up where the tricolour had come down a week before. While bending the canvass we had a carpenter's gang aboard from the frigate, and from one of their chests I took the loan of a fine sharp axe, made like an Indian tomahawk. This I hid in my belt, and buttoned my jacket over the blade. We had a fine run all day after leaving Los Santos; the wind was not quite aft; but this all the better suited the trim of a fore-and-aft rig like that of the cutter.

"Evening was closing, and already the Point Jacques of Dominica was visible, and bearing a point or two on our lee-bow. We had the jib and staysail, the squaresail, the fore-and-aft mainsail, and the gaff topsail set. The little cutter skimmed along like a flying-fish, and I had the tiller, when the gunner's mate—who was a handsome young fellow, by the way—came up from the cabin, and swore that I was not keeping her full enough.

"I said something in reply—I don't know what—belike it was 'Belay your jawing-tackle,' not being in a particularly pleasant mood; but he snatched the coil of a rope off a belaying-pin, cast a knot upon it, and laid it across my back five or six times, saying,—

"'D—n you! you rebellious lubber; do you dare to reply to me? Look out, sir, or by —— I'll have you keelhauled from the yardarm, to teach you to keep your eyes open!'

"I knew that the gunner's mate was a tearing, swearing fellow, who did his duty well, and valued no man a quid of tobacco; so this time I did not reply; but I thought much, and, slipping my right hand into the breast of my pea-jacket, felt the sharp edge of my little hatchet, and whistled with quiet satisfaction, while the gunner's mate, after giving a glance aloft, descended into the cabin.

"On peeping through the skylight, I could see that he was writing by the glimmer of a ship-lantern, and he often paused to look at a portrait. It represented an old lady—his mother, as I afterwards learned. He cut off a lock of his hair with his clasped knife, and put it on the table, to send home to the old Woman, no doubt. At this moment two of my messmates were below; the third was sitting in the lee-bow, smoking quietly, so I lashed the helm with the tiller-rope, and stole softly behind him.

"'Jack,' said I, 'do you think that is Point Jacques of Dominica, for I have my doubts about it?'

"He started, and turning to me, asked if I was unwell, and offered to take the helm, or ask a glass of grog for me; there was something in my eyes or face which startled him, and I felt that they had an expression scarcely human. Yet my tone and manner were calm and collected, though my heart was raging like a hell within my breast.

"'Look!' I repeated; 'is that Point Jacques with the sulphur mountain over it!'

"He turned his eyes towards the coast.

"At that moment I swung my axe aloft—it crashed into the back part of his skull, and Jack fell prone with his face upon the gunnel; I grasped the axe with my teeth, seized him by the legs, and shot him over into the sea, where he sank like a stone.

"This made some noise, however, and one of those below put up his head inquiringly from the fore-hatch; just as he did so, I rushed at him with a yell, and by one blow of the axe cleft him to the nose! He sank to the foot of the ladder on the deck below. On seeing this, his messmate, supposing that the cutter was boarded by French or Caribs, came rushing up with his cutlass, but I met him with one fell swing of my weapon. Missing his head, it fell on his collar-bone; his sword-arm dropped; he sank against the combing of the hatchway, and glared at me with a ghastly and bewildered expression; but as he attempted to crawl on deck, I soon despatched him by repeated blows—for now when I saw blood, mine was boiling like liquid lava.

"With another yell of mad triumph I dragged his body to leeward, shot it into the sea, and it vanished amidst the white foam that smoked under the counter of the cutter, as she flew from wave to wave.

(At this point of his dreadful narrative, Knuckleduster's face glowed purple with excitement; his eyes glared like two hot cinders; his thick coarse nostrils were dilated, and he bit his swollen lips to repress the passionate triumph of the infernal fury he seemed to feel again.)

"As he fell into the sea, my axe dropped with him. If the gunner's mate came up with cutlass or pistols, a death as sudden as any I had bestowed would be my reward! I thought of dropping a cold shot on his head through the skylight, forgetting for the moment that the cutter was unarmed. Then I caught up a handspike from the windlass, and was rushing aft just as he stepped on deck. The first view he had of me, and the blood with which I was covered, seemed to explain everything. He glanced round for a weapon, and then sprang forward, as full of confidence as a frigate with a free sheet, and tried to grapple, barehanded, with me; but retiring a pace or two, to give the handspike full swing, I hurled it again and again on his head and shoulders till he sank powerless and motionless at my feet. Then I tore a ring from his finger, and a watch and purse from his pocket, as being things that were of no use to him or the fishes either; and as he was too heavy for me to lift, I triced up the lee quarter-board, and shoved him through it into the sea.

"Dead men tell no tales—and the fourth deed was done!

"I was alone in the cutter—alone on the sea!

"To be alone was to be independent; to be independent was to be free. I felt no compunction for what I had done; these men were my enemies, and I could have slain them all over again had the double deed been to do.

"I descended to the little cabin, where the lantern was still burning. On the table lay the letter which the gunner's mate had been writing, and the ink was yet wet on it. It was to his old mother at Greenwich, saying all his back pay and prize-money were lodged to her account in London; to keep her heart easy and be jolly, as she would have him by her side again, and as Sir John Jervis had promised him promotion for his conduct at La Fleur d'Epée; that all he could send home was a lock of hair for her and Emmy, and a great deal more bosh of the same kind; so I laughed as I read, and tore it to fritters.

"What! you groan, do you, Mr. Ellis?—groan like the wind sighing through a lee scupper or the galley funnel! Why, you swab of a sojer, we are both fighting men, only that you fight for honour and humbug, I for plunder and pay!

"In a locker I found a bottle of brandy, two case-bottles of skiedam, and some wine; so I set to, and drank from them all in succession—raw, with the jacket off, none of your grog for me—till the whole cabin seemed full of cloven heads, gashed faces, and gunner's mates; and then sinking on the deck, I remembered no more of that night, or it may be of the next day—or, for aught I know, of the next after that.

"On recovering, I found myself in the dark, and half in the water. Thirst—thirst, as if the flames of that hot place the parsons preach about were in my throat, and in my lower spirit-room, assailed me. I groped about for some time without being able to comprehend my circumstances, or where the deuce I was. By the motion and sounds I knew that I was on board some craft, and at sea; but how—for her strange position puzzled me. I groped about, half gasping, the while for air, and, as I felt with my hands the details of the woodwork around, gradually, but surely, a horrible conviction came over me. I was still in the cabin of the sloop, but its position was inverted; the upper deck was below me, and the lower deck above! I was in mirk darkness, and felt the water rising above my knees. There was a sucking, gurgling sound with every heave of the sea; but this could be easily accounted for by the air, which was confined in the hull of the cutter, and had no means of escape.

"I now understood the whole catastrophe!

"While I had been in a state of stupor, a breeze or squall, mayhap the same squall that foundered your ship, had arisen. Left to herself, the cutter's sails had been thrown aback, her main-boom had jibed; she had been capsized, and was now floating, keel upmost, in the sea; floating, I knew not where, with me imprisoned helplessly and dying of hunger, thirst, terror, and suffocation, (but I cannot add remorse,) in her dark, inverted, and waterlogged cabin!

"I felt the fishes, cold and slimy, darting about and touching me. What, if a shark, even of the smallest size, found its way up the companion hatch into my dreadful floating tomb! The idea nearly drove me mad. Amidst water which I dared not drink, I endured the most maddening thirst, and envied the dead body of my second victim, which, or shall I say whom, I supposed to be floating in the forehold.

"How long I had been in this wretched condition there were no means of determining, neither could I distinguish day from night. I searched about for the bottles that were left on the cabin table, resolving to drink myself into a state of stupefaction, from which I might never wake more; but sought in vain. I found the locker like everything else, inverted, and, of course, empty.

"My thirst was an overwhelming agony; moreover, I endured great cold; my limbs were cramped, and hideous faces, smeared with blood, winked their goggle eyes and grinned at me, amid the dense obscurity which was almost palpable.

"At times it seemed as if the capsized cutter sank deeper in the water; and on these occasions I dared neither move, breathe, or think; for though I had recklessly slain others, I was haunted by an awful dread of dying there.

"Once I thought that the jaws of a huge shark yawned beside me, and in a paroxysm of terror, I swooned, as they seemed to engulf me.

"On recovering, some time after, half-choked and half-drowned, I started up with a howl of despair, and beat madly against the cabin wall with my clenched hands, till they were covered with blood and bruises. Was I deceived, or was it reality? A sound outside seemed to reply.

"I heard a kind of grating noise without, and then the blows of some instrument—an axe or hammer—rang again and again like thunder in my excited ears.

"The blows were redoubled, and I continued to knock and to shout. At last a plank of the inner sheathing was started in the side of one of the starboard berths, and a vivid stream of light burst blindingly into the darkness around me. Springing to it, I thrust up my head and found alongside a boat full of men, who had seen the capsized cutter from their vessel, and had come off to reconnoitre. They had fortunately heard me shouting or hammering in my prison, and by means of a hatchet proceeded to investigate the cause of this noise.

"They drew me out, and then judge of my horror, when the first man whose eyes encountered mine, was the gunner's mate, sitting pale as death in the stern-sheets of the boat with the tiller-ropes in his hands.

"On beholding him, I tried to leap into the sea, but was seized and lashed to the boat-thwarts by a rope, and while the foundered cutter, on the air escaping as if with a heavy sigh, from her cabin, filled and sank out of sight, I was conveyed on board the vessel of my deliverers. She proved to be the George Third of Bristol a privateer brig armed with sixteen 12-pounders, and her crew had picked up the gunner's mate a quarter of an hour after I had chucked him overboard, stunned but not killed.

"I knew that my life was not worth a tester now unless I played a desperate game, and I played it well; for I performed so many pranks, that conceiving they were produced by insanity and remorse, instead of reeving me up to the foreyard-arm as the gunner's mate urged, the privateersmen marooned me on the first land they came to, my old enemy only obtaining leave to bind me well to the stump at which you found me; and now, as I am thirsty after this precious yarn of blood and desperation—this long talkee-talkee as the niggers call it—I shall have one more suck at my old toddy-tree, and then turn into my hole for the night."

Such was the bare narrative of crime related to me by Knuckleduster. He was certainly a pleasant companion to have on that lonely island, and I had no reason to doubt the veracity of his atrocious revelations, for he was too inebriated to invent—if he had the power of invention—and situated as we were, on that wild Caribean isle, he cared nothing for me or my opinion of him.

CHAPTER LVII.

A SAIL IN SIGHT!

I had been more than a month and a half in my solitude when the time of my deliverance drew near.

Miserable though my situation had been when alone on the island, on consideration I believed myself more comfortable than with such a companion. His aspect now annoyed, his conversation disgusted, and his bearing at times enraged me.

I remember him telling me of a mutinous seaman, who had been marooned by pirates on a lonely island in the great Gulf of Mexico. There he lived for years, till hope had died within him, till his hair became grey, and he had long ceased to look for a passing ship.

One morning when gathering nuts and herbs for his usual repast, he stumbled over a mound of earth—or what appeared to be a grave—a newly-made grave; for the mound was freshly heaped up. He rushed breathlessly to his look-out place on the highest eminence of his isle, and swept the sea by an anxious and haggard glance.

No ship was visible upon its waters—no boat was near the coast, and the Mexican isle was as solitary and voiceless, as it had been for many long and weary years.

Full of strange thoughts and superstitious fears, he returned to the grave or gathered heap upon the shore, and, after long consideration, scraped the loose mould aside by Lis hands, and there, about three feet below the surface, he found the body of a young girl, of great beauty, clad in the dress of the living, but interred without coffin or shroud. Her face was covered only by her rich auburn hair, which was in great profusion, and she had a gold wedding-ring upon the usual finger of the left hand.

What terrible mystery was this! how had she been brought there, and by whom interred? The marooned man never could discover either, but he sighed bitterly and wept, as he covered up the grave of the beautiful unknown. Her sad pale face haunted him from that hour by day and by night, so that ultimately he became insane, and when found by the crew of a vessel from Tortugas, bound for the Bay of Honduras, he refused to leave the island, "and perhaps is there still, for all that I know," added Knuckleduster, most of whose stories were extremely the reverse of lively.

Conceiving himself quite my equal—as we were beyond the pale of all discipline—he behaved in such a manner at times, that I felt inclined to knock him down; but prudently restrained the impulse, as he was more powerfully-built, and more matured in form and years than I, and was also skilful in the art of "bruising," a science of which I was totally ignorant. If I spoke briefly or haughtily when he bored or wearied me, he would retort by an oath, or make such a reply as this—

"Come, come! no quarter-deck airs here, my sojer officer. I'll teach you that Jack is as good as his master, and better, perhaps, for the matter o' that. Oh ho; we are indignant are we! A little pot gets soon hot; but don't forget how I ropesended you, when you were in the lighthouse, like a young bear, with all your sorrows to come."

His whole thoughts ran on the sunken wreck; the idea of leaving the island, without conveying in some manner its hidden treasures with him, never left his avaricious mind for a moment; and, ere long, I could perceive how jealously he regarded me as the discoverer of the vessel, and the partner or sharer of the secret of her character and existence. Often when awaking suddenly, in the alternate watch, which we agreed to keep on the summit of the cliff, I found him regarding—not the ocean, but me, with a sinister and strange expression in his eyes, which made me thankful for the foresight that led me to secure his knife, which I constantly wore in my breast pocket.

For several days about this time, the wind blew a hurricane, and I was not without hopes, that it might send some vessel to our relief.

Innumerable trifles seemed to confirm my suspicions of Knuckleduster, and to indicate the necessity of being on my guard; while the tales of blood and piracy he related with such perfect coolness and equanimity, haunted me continually, and made me feel bitterly the humiliation of sharing my solitude with a wretch so vile.

If dreams are meant to be the forerunners of events, or to serve as warnings to us, I was not without them.

I remember falling asleep under a plantain-tree, on the summit of the cliff, as we sat there together one afternoon, on the look-out as usual.

I dreamt that he and I were taken off the island by a ship; but the joy inspired by this release was considerably lessened on my discovering that she was a pirate, and manned by ruffians who were his friends and former messmates.

As we bore away to sea, I saw them in close conversation; I heard their ominous words, and saw their scowling eyes fixed furtively on me, while Knuckleduster told them, that I alone could reveal to the world, where the Spanish treasure lay, and unanimously they resolved to throw me overboard. In vain did I struggle, intreat, offer bribes, and promise to relinquish all interest in the sunken ship or her millions of pieces of eight! Strong hands were upon my arms—and huge, bony fingers clutched my throat. I was hurried to the ship's side, and saw the white foam running under the counter to leeward, as she swept along with a spanking breeze upon her quarter. And now, methought that Knuckleduster, with a refinement of cruelty peculiarly his own, ordered me to be sewn up in a hammock and buried alive in the sea.

No sooner was this proposed, than amid brutal shouts and jests it was done; my body was straightened, lashed, round with a rope, tied up like a mummy, and while the pirate's black flag, with its skull and cross-bones, was waved in mockery over me, I saw two 32-pound shots taken from the combing of a hatchway and tied to my heels. I shall never forget the agony of that fancied peril! The beads of perspiration were rolling from my brow.

A mock burial service was read over me. I heard the solemn words pronounced, which until the resurrection consigned my body to the deep!

A dozen of hands now seized the grating whereon I lay, to cast me overboard to leeward, when the report of a cannon, which the pirates fired as a signal, made me bound from the turf on which I had been sleeping.

I was now awake—quite awake on the green turf; but as if to continue the dream and perpetuate its agony, I heard distinctly, at the instant of endeavouring to rise, the boom of a real cannon tingling in my ears, and felt the hard coarse hand of Knuckleduster on my throat—his knee upon my chest, and saw his fierce and murderous eyes glaring into mine, like those of a cobra capello.

A ship was off the coast, and now the double time of deliverance, or of death, was at hand!

During my sleep and my terrible dream, this ship had been approaching, and, as the wretch, my companion, watched her, he resolved to silence me for ever, that I might neither reveal his crimes or the secret of the sunken galleon to others, and having no weapon, had resorted to strangulation by the savage strength of two powerful hands and arms.

The bewilderment caused by my recent dream was still upon me, and rendered my resistance feeble at first. Already he had clutched all that remained of my tattered neckcloth, and given it a fierce wrench by his muscular right hand; then, when my head was turned round by the agony of this compression, as if to increase the bitterness of dying helplessly at the mercy of such a wretch, I could see from the summit of the cliff, about four miles off on the blue evening waters, a large frigate under a full spread of canvas, approaching the island.

To perish thus in sight of relief—to be destroyed as it were, on the threshold of home—after all I had endured, endued me, though little more than a lad, with an unnatural strength; thus I struggled wildly and madly, but bravely, with my would-be assassin.

Unlike my bearing in my recent dream, I neither entreated, threatened, nor promised secrecy, or mercy; but summoned every energy to defend and preserve my life! Raising me by the throat, he strove to dash my head upon the earth to stun me; but in attempting this, he over-balanced himself, fell, and in a moment I was above him!

He kicked, wrestled, bit, and howled like a fierce animal, as we rolled together down the back of the cliff out of sight of the coming ship, and there the wild shrubbery among which we floundered pell-mell, separated us; but after breathing for a moment, we arose and approached each other to grapple again, and, as it proved, on the giddy verge of a deep chasm in the rocks—a rent by which, in some stern throe of Nature, this tall cliff had been split from its summit to its base below the waters of the sea.

If the partial strangulation had enfeebled me, the blows and buffets under which I smarted—the love of life, and above all, my anxiety to make some signal to the nearing ship, lest she might alter her course and bear away, endued me with a courage and determination of which my ignoble enemy was altogether destitute. He could steal upon me when asleep, but I could perceive that he now shrank from the expression of honest defiance and resolution that flashed in my eyes and glowed in my face.

We grasped each other!

Not a word was spoken, and no sound was heard, but our suppressed breathing.

We were near the verge of the chasm, and more than ever was the struggle now for life or death! By sudden jerks; by bending backward and thrusting forward, he strove to place me between it and himself, with the intention of tossing me into its black and terrible depth; but I grasped him with a death-clutch, resolving that if it came to such an issue, we should perish together.

The struggle was frightful; but it was too much for me, as his strength overmatched mine.

I felt the failing of my powers, and my heart grew sick, though the imminence of my danger caused me to make efforts against him, which I now consider superhuman.

He rapidly forced me backward; and now he began to shout and laugh, for only three yards of thick and furzelike herbage lay between us and eternity. He was gathering all his vast strength for one decided effort, when a decayed gourd was crushed to pulp under his right foot—he slipped, and fell forward with violence towards the chasm, while I rolled in the other direction; and before I arose, he had uttered a wild shriek, and vanished!

For a moment, I could scarcely realize the truth; but found that he had fallen through the luxuriant fringe of creeping plants, wild vines, and yellow gourds which hung over the brow of the chasm; but having caught a tough vine tendril or branch in his descent, he swung by it over the black profundity, clinging with seamanlike tenacity by both hands, and uttering the most piteous cries for mercy, or for that succour which I was totally unable to render, even had I been disposed to do so.

Cautiously I drew near and surveyed him.

The chasm was about twenty feet wide. Its walls descended sheer into profound obscurity below, for a hundred feet and more—perhaps, for aught man can learn, into the bowels of the earth.

About five feet from the side on which I stood, the wretched Knuckleduster swung by the vine-branch, which he clutched as tenaciously as before he had clutched me, with his felon hands. His face was alternately pale as death, or flushed with crimson, as the blood rushed backward from heart to head.

My face and mouth were covered with blood; my limbs ached with bruises; my throat had been compressed in that ruffianly struggle to the verge of suffocation: thus my heart boiled with rage; I was pitiless as a tiger, and heard his entreaties—his offers to be my slave for life, with loathing and with laughter; but they ended in a howl of mingled fury and despair, when I drew from my breast-pocket his large clasped knife, and opened it with grim deliberation.

"Abandoned wretch, the odds are now in my favour," said I; "you are helpless—I have no power to save you, even if I would; but I may hasten the fast-running sands of your evil life. The time has come when you must taste of that bitterness you have so freely dealt out to others—the bitterness of death! So, villain, receive the fate you were about to accord to me!"

At these words I slashed the sharp knife across the tough tendril of the gourd-vine. It parted, and Knuckleduster at once vanished into the awful profundity below, and with the scream of a despairing spirit. To what depth he fell, I know not, for no sound followed his disappearance.

My hair seemed to bristle up, and heavily the hot bead-drops rolled over my brow!

I thanked Heaven for my narrow escape—for the retribution thus placed in my hands, and turned away with little more regret than if I had dealt a finishing blow to an expiring reptile. I had already fought my way over too many slain heaps of good and gallant hearts, for the impression made upon me by the fate of this man—or the mode in which I had hastened it—to be very lasting or very profound.

Hurrying to the summit of the cliff on which he had assaulted me, breathless lest I should be too late to signal the ship whose appearance had caused this conflict and unforeseen catastrophe, I looked around for her in an agony of suspense.

CHAPTER LVIII.

SAVED!

A large double-banked frigate was now shortening sail about a mile from the coast, and a boat left her side as the mainyards were backed, and the courses hauled up. Thus, I believed she was merely shortening sail, to permit a party of explorers to visit the island, and this surmise proved in the sequel to be a correct one.

On looking again, as she swung round, and the sunshine fell full upon her shivering maintopsail, I recognized a patch made in the sail where a ball from Fort Royal had pierced it, and by this mark knew her to be my old friend and habitation, the Adder.

The boat was soon midway between her and the beach; the bright blades of its sixteen oars were flashing like silver in the sunlight, as it sped along the rippling waves.

Such was the double emotion caused by the effect of my recent fierce excitement, and joy at the prospect of release from my miserable seclusion, that my limbs trembled with feebleness, and my eyes were so full of tears, that I could scarcely descend the cliffs to meet the crew, and was without voice to hail them, as they ran their boat into a little creek, laying in the oars in true man-o'-war fashion; and then a number of young officers, bent on a "lark" or ramble about the island, sprang ashore with boisterous glee and laughter, and all armed with ship-muskets or fowling-pieces.

At last I gathered strength to utter a shout that seemed to come from my inner heart, while descending a wooded bank to the beach, where the recently-landed group stood gazing at me with astonishment expressed in all their faces.

Though the tattered remains of my uniform, my uncombed hair and shaggy beard, were somewhat fantastic, my aspect was too wild, haggard, wasted, and forlorn, to excite laughter, while hurrying toward them.

"Now, in the name of old Davy, who, or what are you?" asked one, whom I knew to be the first-lieutenant of the Adder.

"One who has the pleasure of knowing you well enough, Mr. Percival," said I, stretching out my hands to him.

"This is a deuced queer rencontre! are you sailor or soldier, Carib or what?"

"Come, come, Percival; surely I am not so altered as to be taken for a Carib, though I have lived like one for many a day. Thanks be to Providence, you have come to my rescue! Cannot you remember me—Ellis of the Scots Fusiliers—Lieutenant Ellis, who sailed from Guadaloupe and Los Santos in the prize privateer Etna on a special duty?"

"With Ned Stanley—remember you, my dear fellow, of course!" said he, grasping his hand, as his companions, now assured that I was neither a satyr, an Orson, a Casper Hauser, or likely to eat them, came round me; and the joy I felt on hearing their voices, and seeing their open, honest, and weatherbeaten English faces, was so great in my swelling heart, that it almost amounted to pain.

"How came this about—that we find you here and alone?" asked Percival.

"We encountered a hurricane——"

"Ah—whereabout?"

"Off the isle of Avis, or the tail of the Avis Bank—the ship foundered—capsized and went down."

"With all hands on board?"

"All, French passengers and every one."

"Never mind the French," said one, "but poor Ned Stanley——"

"He was swept off the maintopsail-yard, when the mast was lying horizontally in the water, and so was drowned with four others who clung to it."

"And you——" they inquired with one voice.

"After long drifting in the sea, and being driven hither and thither by waves and wind, I was washed ashore with a spare mizentopsail-yard, and have lived here like Robinson Crusoe ever since."

"A strange story!" said one.

"It is deuced fortunate for you," said Mr. Percival, "that during the last day or two, the gale was so stiff that we were driven thus far out of our intended course. Having sighted this island by our glasses, a few of us came off to have a lark with the Carib girls, if there were any, and a shot at the monkeys, or anything else that might turn up."

"Were you cruising?"

"Yes, in search of any French craft we might find; but there is not a tricolour pennant to be seen in these waters, so to-night we haul up for Guadaloupe again."

"What are the news from that quarter?"

"Bad enough," replied several shaking their heads.

"How—the yellow fever, I suppose, has broken out among the troops?"

"We have not wanted for that either," replied Percival, "but the French have retaken La Fleur d'Epée, and played the devil with your 43rd Regiment; however, you shall hear all about this after. Meantime, a meal such as befits a Christian, and a glass of good wine, will not be unacceptable I presume, so come off to the frigate at once. Gentlemen," he continued, addressing his party, "you can remain ashore, while I take Mr. Ellis off to the ship—but remember to assemble here the moment she fires a gun or displays her ensign."

He kindly assisted me into the boat, and now my emotion was such, that I almost sank down in the stern-sheets.

"In fenders—out oars," said he, assuming the tiller-rope; "and now give way, lads—give way with a will!"

But the injunction was scarcely required. In their anxiety to place me on board, the brave fellows bent to their oars with such vigour, that by every stroke the long, sharp boat was actually lifted clean out of the water, and we surged through it with the speed of a race-horse. Then, when again I found myself alongside the noble old frigate, and saw her triced-up ports, with their tier of artillery peering through them—her swelling "wooden wall," that towered like a bastion from the water—her well-squared yards and tapered masts, that towered away to the long whiplike pennant that streamed on the wind—I say, when seeing all this, and hearing the sounds of English voices, of a fiddle and scraps of a song or two from the idlers between decks—then, more than all, the soldierly aspect of the smart marine sentinel on the poop in his red coat and well pipe-clayed belts—I felt myself at home indeed, but with the fear that all might prove another dream.

On computing dates, we found that I had been exactly one month and eighteen days on the island.

Once away from it, my past existence there seemed really like a dream, which I could scarcely recall.

CHAPTER LIX.

CAPTAIN CRANKY.

I was received with considerable kindness by Captain Cranky, who, with all his roughness and tyranny, was not without some redeeming points of character. He conveyed me at once to his cabin, furnished me with proper refreshments, clothing, and with that which was of some importance in the days when George III. was king, shaving apparatus, for of all these items I was greatly in need.

After living so long in the open air, I had a sensation of oppression and suffocation in his cabin, and the combined odours of the ship were also overpowering. Afterwards, when at lunch, the captain and Mr. Percival, heard the relation of my adventures on the island, and detailed for the information of Admiral Jervis my account of the loss of the Etna.

I was then informed of the events which had taken place at Guadaloupe in my absence.

The brave old General Dundas—that sturdy specimen of a Scottish gentleman and soldier of the old school—had died there of yellow fever, and my regiment, the Fusiliers, had suffered considerably by that scourge of the Antilles.

The general was scarcely interred, when a French expedition consisting of several sail of the line, with frigates armed en flute, and transports with two thousand troops on board, had suddenly arrived and assailed fort La Fleur d'Epée. Landing in thirteen boats, they stormed the works, after a hard struggle driving out our 43rd light infantry, under Colonel Drummond, who, finding his strength reduced to only one hundred and fifty rank and file, abandoned the place, and embarking them in two large boats, set sail for Basse Terre, leaving the foe in possession of one half of the island, which is divided in two by a narrow channel. The French in following them up, had nearly captured the Earl of Kildonan and his young countess, who had arrived from Britain, and both of whom had been on a visit to Colonel Drummond, when La Fleur d'Epée was so unexpectedly attacked and retaken. In crossing the Riviere Salee the two boats were exposed to a fire of grape from the French galloper guns, and the countess had her dress torn by the balls, and her face covered by the blood of a corporal who was killed by her side.

All this had occurred on the 5th of June, and Sir Charles Grey was now taking measures to drive these temporary victors into the sea.

"We shall haul up for Guadaloupe to night," said Captain Cranky, "and rejoin old Jack Jervis—for we know there were at least nine large ships in the squadron which retook the fort, and I would not, for a thousand guineas, miss the chance of overhauling the parleyvoos, d—n them! Take some more wine, my good fellow, or would you prefer grog? D—n my eyes! to think of living on greens and cold water for nearly two months. I consider our ship-biscuits bad enough, when full of these maggots and weevils that whirlwind Tom—'tis a name we have for the devil aboard ship—is always putting into them; but sink me! even a week on that island—a week of banyan days, would have been the death of old Tom Cranky."

While the captain ran on thus, and forced me to drink glass after glass of wine, I could scarcely repress a smile, on remembering the terror I had of him when on board the Leith pressing-tender.

As soon as the party came off from the island, which they did with their boat laden with yams, tortoises, and fruit, we set sail for Guadaloupe, and, to my surprise, my oldest friend could not have exceeded Captain Cranky, in his continued kindness and attention to me.

After the squadron left the West Indies, he served with great distinction in the Mediterranean, and afterwards in the Baltic. When in the latter sea, with the combined fleets of Britain and Russia, then under the command of Admiral Viscount Duncan, a curious anecdote was related of him, which was well known in those days.

The Adder, requiring to be refitted, was put into the harbour of Memel, where the Emperor of Russia, the hapless Paul I. (who was strangled in 1801) was then residing with the King of Prussia, Frederick William II., as they were in alliance with us against France.

It happened that the two monarchs, attended by a few gentlemen, were walking along the mole to survey the new fortifications, when they met Captain Thomas Cranky; and his peculiar aspect, his battered visage, and old cocked hat, his periwig, pea-jacket, and brass-hilted hanger, attracted their attention. Then Paul I., perceiving a Russian military order dangling at his lapelle beside a boatswain's whistle, which Cranky was never without, inquired politely when he got it.

"Last year, for my services at the blockade of Ancona," replied Cranky briefly, and was moving on, as he hated all foreigners with a hearty old English hatred, viewing them as a Skye terrier does rats.

"Oh, you served with the allied Russian, Turkish, and British squadrons?" continued the emperor.

"Belay, you lubber, and overhaul your speech again; don't name the British fleet last," said Cranky, totally ignorant of whom he was addressing; but the Emperor Paul laughed heartily.

"Take care, sir," said Frederick William, smiling; "you are addressing His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias."

Confounded on hearing this, Cranky drew back, blushed very red, and taking off his rusty cocked hat, made a profound sea bow.

"And this gentleman," added the emperor, who was very much amused, "is his Prussian Majesty, Frederick William II."

On hearing this, Cranky conceived that they were bantering him; so he stuck his cocked hat fiercely over his solitary eye, and sputtered out,—

"'Vast, you lubbers! I don't choose to be made game of by you, or such as you,—so sheer off, or I'll trounce you both, for insulting the captain of a British frigate!"

And so he swaggered off, with his left hand upon the brass hilt of his old hanger.

Poor Tom Cranky has long since been at rest from his labours by sea and land; but he lived long about Greenwich, where he was a great authority upon all matters pertaining to ships and salt water,—the lion of a little naval club, and was wont to boast,—

                                                            That enjoying
Half-pay for life made mankind worth destroying.

CHAPTER LX.

THE YELLOW FEVER.

The heat of the atmosphere was now so great, that one might have imagined, as Cranky said, "that there was only a sheet of paper between the Adder's cabin and another place."

As the months of May, June, July, and August, are the most fatal for the yellow fever, it now broke out on board; the sick-bay was soon full; many officers were confined to their cabins, and a day seldom passed without some one being sent to his long home at the bottom of the great deep, with a thirty-two pound shot at his heels; and ere long I bade fair to become one of its victims.

The excitement so long and so recently undergone,—the sudden change of food, raiment, and quarters, after the total alteration of my system and habits, during the time that I had lived like Nebuchadnezzar on the Isle of Tortoises.—now began to tell fearfully upon me; and I was assailed by that scourge of the Antilles, the yellow fever. When the conviction of this came over me, I had but one emotion,—devout thankfulness that it had not fallen upon me while lonely and desolate, helpless and friendless, on the island.

On the third day after we bore up for Guadaloupe, I was seated at mess in the ward-room of the frigate, enjoying the tempered atmosphere of the evening as it passed the open ports, through which we could see the waves of the blue sea as the Adder sped on, with the wind upon her quarter, when first the symptoms of the dread pest assailed me; and from all I knew of it, I made up my mind to prepare for the worst.

A wine-glass dropped from my hand and shivered on the deck, as the general premonition, a cold and violent fit of shivering, came suddenly over me. Then I remember Percival, the first lieutenant, starting up, and exclaiming,—

"The fever, by Jove! Sentry, pass the word for the doctor—quick, the yellow admiral is here!"

In ten minutes after I was undressed and in bed, ill with the confirmed pestilence. How long and weary were its hours of agony, thirst, and lassitude, which followed that fatal evening!

After the shivering fit, there usually succeeds a violent fever, with acute pains in the head, back, and limbs; an intense dejection of mind; an agonizing thirst, with a tongue so dry, that it rattles in one's jaws like a kernel in a shell; and then comes the frightful yellowness of complexion, from which the fever takes its name.

Though I have seen some who, after it abated, became cold as ice, and remained thus, with a tolerably sedate mind, and expired after twelve hours or so,—others who died after violent bleeding from the nose,—others who departed raving mad,—in me it took the form of continued delirium, in which, as I was afterwards told, I raved of the lonely island, renewed my struggle with Knuckleduster, and nearly killed a poor marine, who acted as my servant; then I laboured to raise the wreck of a treasure-ship, and believed myself again and again to be in a great cavern, till total prostration of mind and body succeeded, and a long stupor came over me.

* * * * *

A sea-going frigate of the year 1794 was somewhat different in many respects from a ship of similar rank in the present age of rifled cannon and screw-propellers; and hence the odours that came from the ship's stores, the bilge, the sick-bay, and the cockpit, when a fierce West-Indian sun was blazing overhead, making the pitch boil between the planks of the main deck, were anything but consolatory or refreshing to the unfortunates on whom the grim pestilence had laid his yellow and shrivelled hand.

When awaking, as it were, from a long lethargy, I found myself slung in a hammock near an open port, through which the blessed breeze of Heaven, as it came over the dancing waves, blew upon my wan and fevered cheek, and refreshed me.

A marine, who had charge of me, now placed a pewter flagon, filled with water-gruel, in my trembling hand. I drank thirstily, and then sank back with a sigh of mingled weakness and satisfaction. Youth made the elements of life strong within me; and hope returned with consciousness, though twice or thrice daily I saw a dark object fall heavily and endlong past the open port—plash into the sunlit sea and disappear!

Then would I close my eyes, and strive to pray, and to remember some of the little lessons my mother taught in purer and happier times; for these dark objects were the bodies of my fellow-sufferers, who were thus consigned to the waters from the deck above.

Ere long I was able to ask the marine whereabout we were, and he said,—

"The isle of Nevis bears about ten miles distant on our lee bow,—the top of the hill (for the island is only a great conical hill) is in sight."

"Then how far are we from Guadaloupe?"

"Ten miles from Nevis, sir, will make us one hundred and forty from Guadaloupe," replied my accurate informant.

As health returned, I longed for the shore, and for active life. The dull routine of days and nights of sickness anywhere, soon palls upon the excited senses; but nowhere so soon as in the narrow limits of a little cabin. The sea is certainly an everchanging and beautiful object; but when the port-lid was closed, my eyes had nothing to rest on but a 24-pound carronade slued alongside, and then it seemed as if every avenue to nature was closed too.

I had nothing near or around me to give pleasure or suggest pleasing thoughts; and then it is in such a mental and bodily prison, that "the small still voice" comes home to the heart and soul, and we seem to think, reflect, and feel, all the more deeply and earnestly, because soul and heart are both thrust back upon themselves.

The breeze which had hitherto been fair, now freshened and blew right ahead; so we had to beat to windward against it, and four days after, when becoming convalescent, I heard the booming of the Adder's guns, as she saluted the flag of Admiral Sir John Jervis, when, under a press of canvas, we ran into the roadstead of Basse Terre, in the island of Guadaloupe.

CHAPTER LXI.

I REJOIN THE REGIMENT.

I now experienced somewhat of that miraculous cure which restored Bruce of ours to health, before we landed in Martinique. Excitement and pleasure at the prospect of soon rejoining the regiment and seeing my old friends, endued me with new strength; and in spite of all that Captain Cranky, Percival, or their surgeon could urge, I insisted on going on shore next day, and on shore I accordingly went.

War and pestilence had made such havoc in my dear old corps, that, on the 1st of July, only two days after my landing, I found myself parading as captain of the third company, vice Gordon of Ardgilion, who had been shot in the first attempt to retake La Fleur d'Epée.

I was not yet twenty years of age!

Once again in Guadaloupe, the entire half of which was possessed by the enemy, I had every prospect of seeing a good deal of fighting; and the fire of ambition to which my rapid success bent every impetus, glowed anew within me; though somewhat tempered by the horrors of the yellow fever, which thinned our ranks so fast that the bear-skin caps of the poor Fusiliers lay thicker in the barrack-yard and in the ditches of Basse Terre, than I had ever seen them in action; till at last an order was issued to burn all the gear of the dead.

I was not permitted to remain long idle, for while Sir George Grey, the commander-in-chief, was preparing to recapture Grande Terre, as one half of the isle is named, I was detached with my company on a special service against a body of armed slaves who were in revolt; and while acting by turns as Gens du Roi, as French republican citizens, and as men of colour struggling to erect a free community, committed outrages too horrible for narration upon the French planters, the white troops of Victor Hugues, and all British soldiers who unfortunately fell into their hands.

The regiment was on its morning parade in the ancient citadel of Basse Terre, when the Earl of Kildonan rode to the group of officers, who were gossiping and bantering each other, in the usual way, before the bugle sounds "Fall in," and announced the duty which was before me.

"These rascals," said he, "are in arms in the mountains, and are such a common nuisance to all, that Sir Charles Grey has already conceived the idea of inviting the co-operation of our enemies the French, for the extermination of all revolted blacks."

"Who leads them?" I inquired.

"Scipio, a leader of the revolted blacks in Hispaniola—the same African savage who destroyed the family of Monsieur du Plessis and abducted his daughter. After suffering, within a short but bloody month, many reverses from the arms of the French colonists, he fled by sea, and reaching Guadaloupe, has incited the slaves of a wealthy planter, named Monsieur George de Thoisy, some eight hundred in number, to revolt, and carry off their master, whom they intend to put to a barbarous death; at least, so I am informed by Lady Kildonan, who is residing with his family. Since then many mulattoes and quadroons have joined him; thus his band musters nearly a thousand strong."

"My lord, my company is barely a hundred rank and file!" said I hesitatingly.

"But they are Scots Fusiliers, and those you are to attack are only a band of wretched negroes. As a sample how they mean to carry on the war, the standard of our sable hero with the classic name, is a white man's head upon a pike."

"This is encouraging!" said I, laughing.

"I am glad you think so."

"And my orders are——"

"To march at once, attack their fastness in the mountains, and save M. de Thoisy if you can. Root these fellows out, and show no quarter, but take especial care that none of your men fall into their hands, alive at least, if you can prevent it."

"Are they worse than other folks?" asked Rowland Haystone.

"I should think so—they eat their prisoners."

"Eat them!"

"Yes; after offering them up to an idol they have fashioned out of the bones of white men."

"Well, Ellis, this is not a pleasant prospect for you after being starved on that island for a month and more," said Glendonwyn.

"And this rich old planter——"

"They can't be particular to a shade, if they eat him," said Haystone, laughing.

"Why?" I inquired.

"I don't think the old fellow will prove very digestible."

"You remember his daughters, Georgette, Claire, and Julie, three handsome girls, whom we met at the ball here in Basse Terre, on the night before La Fleur d'Epée was retaken," said Bruce.

"Yes," replied Haystone, twirling his whiskers (we were not permitted a moustache in those days); "charming French Creole demoiselles, with designs upon the liberty of mankind equal to those of Bonaparte and all the Directory."

"They beat all the girls in the Antilles, windward and leeward," said another, "and can flirt like the deuce."

"Ah—we understand all that," lisped our last accession of a sub from the depôt; "but though we do make a little love in the Fusiliers, we don't marry!"

"Do not jest thus, if you please, gentlemen," said Lord Kildonan; "their father, poor man, must be saved, if possible. He is, I believe, a loyal old French royalist, and is now at the mercy of absolute devils incarnate. So to you, Ellis, I confide the duty of saving him. March, and take your whole company; but whatever you do, do warily, for those black fellows are full of strategy and wickedness. See that your men keep sober, for kill-devil (new rum) slays more than French bullets or the yellow fever. Shoot all who make the slightest resistance, or in fact, whom you find in arms."

"And philanthropists at home?" queried Glendonwyn.

"Philanthropists at home, who run no danger, and sleep sound in their beds at night, may say exactly what they please. With savages, one must act the savage. Are we to grant the courtesies of war and of civilization to those who are ignorant alike of military honour and the amenities of civilized life? Terror is the only argument they understand; so, through terror, bloodshed, and death, must we speak to them. To strike terror into mere cannibals is to befriend them. There sounds the bugle! Gentlemen, to your companies. Ellis, good-bye; make quick work with Scipio and his Quacos, or you may be too late to share in the recapture of La Fleur d'Epée."

In ten minutes after this, under the guidance of a faithful French quadroon, I was on the march at the head of my company, and had quitted the town of Basse Terre by the shady sun-proof avenue.

CHAPTER LXII.

THE DOS D'ANE.

As our time of morning parade in that season, was about the hour of sunrise, our march towards the mountains was a very pleasant one.

The old castle or citadel of Basse Terre, which the valiant Benbow besieged in vain, in 1702, still jutted, with its four great bulwarks, in grim strength into the water. Its walls were mounted by sixty pieces of French ordnance, but now the British flag waved above them; and as we marched on, we heard our band playing in the square,

Between St. Johnstone's and Bonnie Dundee,
I'll gar ye be fain to follow wi' me,

the old quickstep of the regiment.

A portion of this citadel was not more than thirty-five years old, for when the British forces were there in 1759, it was blown up by accident, and with it perished the Governor, Lieutenant-colonel Desbrissay of Watson's Foot, the 38th or old Staffordshire regiment. He was carried into the air, together with Major Trollop, and both being found crushed to death, were buried in the Carmelite church, were I saw their tombs.

Concerning the colonel, I remember Captain Glendonwyn relating an anecdote, as we stood by his monument one day.

"Desbrissay," said he, "was a captain of infantry at the battle of Rocaux, which was fought against Marshal Saxe, near Liege, on the 12th of October, 1746, when Sir John Ligonier, after doing all that a brave general could, posted some British battalions in hollow squares in rear of the dorpts to secure the retreat of the army, which was pressed by the splendid cavalry of Saxe, and which the Butcher of Culloden was blundering by his cowardice and inability. There Desbrissay fell wounded, and while lying on the ground was run through the body by a French officer, whose dastardly example was immediately followed by some Walloon infantry, thirteen of whom planted their bayonets in his body. Yet Desbrissay did not die; he was taken prisoner by the French, and by the skilful treatment of their surgeons he recovered, for there are some men who possess as many lives as a cat.

"One day, not long after his convalescence, being at dinner with Marshal Count de Saxe, who was deemed the mirror of military honor, and was ever kind and gentle to prisoners, the count said,—

"'Pray tell me, sir, if you know the officer who used you so barbarously on the field of Rocaux?'

"'I do, M. le Maréchal.'

"'You do?"

"'Yes—as well as I know you, M. le Comte.'

"'Pray give me his name, that I may make him an example to all France, by tearing the epaulettes from his shoulders, and disgracing him in front of his regiment.'

"'Excuse me, M. le Comte,' replied the brave but gentle Desbrissay, 'I know his corps—I know his name, and I know his rank in the French service, but I beg to decline pointing him out to you, contenting myself with the hope, that one day I may meet him hand to hand on the field of honour, and then, like a true English gentleman, shall I avenge the savage wrong he and his soldiers did me on that fatal day at Rocaux.'

"'Monsieur, you are most generous—I shall press you no further,' said Count Saxe.

"So spoke the gallant Desbrissay, of the old 38th; but the day he longed for never came; he was sent to serve in other lands, and thirteen years after that shameful defeat near Liege, he perished in Guadaloupe, and lies there interred in the church of the Carmelites."

And now, with this anecdote, we have brought the reader to the rising ground which looks down on the town of Basse Terre, the capital of the Isle of Alto, Guadaloupe, as it was named by the Spaniards, because its high mountains resembled those of the same name, which rise in all their solemn beauty between the Tagus and the Guadiana in the Estramadura of old Spain.

Many of those hills, towards which we marched, were covered by waving woods, that drew down the clouds, and added to the charms of the scenery; but when the morning sun arose, the shadows fell deep on every rugged pass and wide and fair savannah.

And now if the reader will look back with me, from our line of march, he may see the city of Basse Terre, with its churches of the Carmelites and Jesuits, and its whitewashed houses, clustering round the little bay; on the south, its old mishapen and irregular castle, perched on a rock so lofty, that when viewed from it, our ships of the line seemed no larger than bumboats; on the north, the heavy bastions of Le Morne Rouge; to the eastward, wide fields of sugar, cotton, and indigo, studded with groves, mills, and houses; to the westward the Caribean sea, with its blue waves running merrily on sands of silvery whiteness.

Above this border of sand, there rose green belts of sugarcane, and over these were the hills towards which we were marching, shrouded in the dark foliage of old primeval forests; and higher still, the rarefied clouds that floated like gossamer webs about their peaks.

After a halt during mid-day in the thickets, we pushed on by a circuitous route towards a cleft or gorge in the mountains named the Dos d'Ane, which guarded the passage into Cabesterre, the more level and fertile part of the isle, and there the outpost of Scipio's black band was last seen, as our quadroon guide assured me. The French are said to have given the hill its name from a fancied resemblance to the form of an ass. The ascent was steep and rugged, as the narrow path over which we toiled in heavy marching order, with arms loaded and bayonets fixed—for we knew not the moment we might be attacked—was encumbered by masses of fallen rock; by deep rents and rifts in the cliffs of limestone and basalt, and through these runnels of warm and sulphureous water were trickling under the broad and fibrous leaves of the giant tropical weeds. Thick vapours rose here and there from stagnant pools which were shrouded by dwarf mangroves; but beyond this gorge which was so gloomy, that one might fancy it led to the putrid lake of Avernus, rose mountain slopes covered by velvet-green, and trees of every kind.

A profound and melancholy silence reigned here; at least, we heard only the croak of the huge frogs that squatted in the marshy pools, or the voice of the mocking-bird in a grove of fern-palms; and now as evening began to fall, and we penetrated deeper into the gloomy gorge of the Dos d'Ane, our guide warned me that we were within a short distance of the camp of the black insurgents—less than a mile, he thought.

A few hundred yards further on we found a deep and wooded ravine opening to the right of the narrow path. Therein I concealed the whole company, and so soon as the dusk favoured, went forward to reconnoitre, leaving my men orders to maintain the strictest silence until my return. Guided by the quadroon, I advanced through the cleft in the mountains, and ere long, by the various strange and tumultuous sounds which woke their echoes, I found that we were approaching the camp of Scipio.

Lest the guide might play me false—for we had no great faith in men of colour—I had shown him significantly a pair of loaded pistols, that were stuck somewhat ostentatiously in my waist-belt; but the poor fellow proved every way faithful, and here, for the benefit of the uninitiated, I may mention that a quadroon is the child of a white and a mulatto, who is the child of a pure black and a European; but there are also black as well as white Creoles—the former being the children of slaves, born and reared in degradation and slavery.