CHAPTER XVIII.

RIO DE JANEIRO.

On a gorgeous tropical morning, when the Princess was nearing her destined port, and when Morrison declared that already he could see the "land-blink" in the sky, Morley watched with some interest the result of what is termed in nautical astronomy, "taking a sight," or "making an observation," by noting the altitude of any heavenly body, in order to estimate the latitude and longitude.

"What is the time?" asked Bartelot.

"Twelve, sir, by the sun," replied Morrison.

"And by the chronometer?"

"Twelve."

"Then bring me the correct latitude, while I calculate the longitude. I have had a capital sight to-day."

He then relinquished the quadrant, and proceeded, compass in hand, to "prick off," as the sailors term it, the ship's place upon the chart.

Looking the while at a large chart of the Southern and Northern Atlantic, Morley asked:

"Where should a vessel, bound for the Mauritius, be now, if she left London at the same time I said the Hermione would sail?"

"Always the same thought, Morley?" said Bartelot, looking up with a smile.

"Well, Tom?"

"If winds are fair, and all went well"—at these words Morley gave a sigh of anxiety—"she should now be here, about St. Helena, or a few miles to the southward, and off the African coast."

"And we are how far from that?"

"Farther than I should like to fly, Morley."

Poor Morley sighed again, and looked eagerly at the chart; thereon, by three spans of his hand, he could compass the world of waters that lay between him and Ethel Basset.

On the 6th July, the Princess was in latitude 19 deg. 57 min. south; longitude, 37 deg. 48 min. west; and Cabo Frio (or the cold cape of South America) bore about forty-five miles to the westward.

They were drawing very near Rio de Janeiro, and many ships bound for the same quarter were in sight daily.

The trade-wind continued steady and fine; Morley looked with keen interest on the ships that veered from time to time in sight. Among them all, might be one that would have a freight for the Isle of France.

To search for such was to be his first object and occupation on landing; and worthy Tom Bartelot assured him that money should not be wanting to further his double purpose of joining Ethel and punishing Cramply Hawkshaw.

"But, ah, Tom," said he, on one occasion, "how, or when, is a poor devil such as I to repay you?"

"Think of that when the time comes," said Tom, laughing.

About 10 A.M., on the morning of the 9th, the look-out man, old Noah Gawthrop, who was in the forecrosstrees, sung out, in his queer voice:

"Land a-head!"

"Where away?" asked Morrison, jumping off the companion seat.

"Land on the starboard bow, sir," added Noah.

Morley's heart leaped at the sound, and the telescopes of Bartelot and Morrison were speedily levelled in the direction indicated.

"It should be Cabo Frio," said the Scotchman.

"And Cabo Frio it is!" added Bartelot, emphatically. "Look, Morley, that is the great headland on the coast of Brazil."

"It was there the Thetis frigate was wrecked in 1830," added Morrison; "she had lost her reckoning, on a dark December night, and was borne more than twenty-four miles to leeward by the current."

"Then we shall see Rio to-night?" said Morley.

"No, no; Rio lies sixty-four miles beyond the Ilha de Cabo Frio—the cold cape, rather a misnomer in this season, at least," replied the mate.

"Steward, bring up the case-bottle; let the men forward have each a tot of grog, while we'll have a glass below on the head of this."

"Head of what, Tom?" asked Morley.

"Scenting the land, to be sure," replied Bartelot, as the three descended to the cabin.

"You are a clever seaman, Tom, and have made the land to a minute, at the time you foretold a week ago."

Bartelot laughed, and said:

"Father wanted me to go into the navy, where he said I was certain to shine, as I never was out of scrapes and turmoils at school and at home; but I had no ambition. What does old Topham's song end with?" and pouring out his grog, Bartelot began to sing:

"'Ambition, they tell me, has charms for us all,
But well I'm convinced they are charms that must pall;
The pageant of splendour may lure for a while,
But soon we grow sick of its weight and its toil;
Nor can it compare with us, Morley, my boy,
Whose appetites strengthen the more we enjoy.
Then deign ye, kind powers! with this wish to comply—
May I always be drinking, yet always be dry!'"

After the long voyage, sixty-four miles from the Cabo to Rio seemed a trifle to Morley. He strove to be thankful and content in his heart, that the first portion of his watery pilgrimage was nearly accomplished, and that he had now attained what was rather more than the beginning of a future end.

By 5 P.M. they were within seven miles of the land, and the rocky Cabo, a vast insular mass of granite, which terminates a long range of mountains, was glowing redly in the light of the Brazilian sun. The highest summit there has an altitude of more than 1,500 feet; the sea and sky around were both serene and beautiful.

The water possessed a strangely pure and crystalline aspect; so much so, that at times the bed, or what appeared to be the bed of the ocean, was visible, but this was only the flowers of the sea.

Long and mysterious plants (the Nereocystis), which, with a stem no thicker than a spunyarn, grow from their roots in the deep bed of the ocean to the length of 300 feet and more, and have at their upper end a huge bulbous-shaped vesicle, filled with air, which floats upon the surface, or near it, and from this bulb there springs a thick crown of dusky leaves.

These tremendous marine vegetables are more commonly found on the north-western than on the eastern shores of America, but many are to be seen at times off the coast of the southern continent.

Elsewhere Morley's eye could discern masses of rock or coral reefs, that rose to within fifty or sixty feet of the surface, showing a freight of shellfish, sea-anemones, wondrous creeping things, and fibrous tufts of giant seaweed.

But the scene changed with tropical rapidity, when with midnight there came on sudden black squalls, with heavy rain, deep hoarse thunder, and vivid red lightning, that seemed to flash and play about the granite summits of the Cabo Frio with a brilliance that eclipsed the gleam of its lighthouse, which marks now where our frigate, the Thetis, perished.

Bartelot reefed his fore and mizzen topsails; but when the weather faired he shook out the reefs again. He set his main topgallant-sail, mainsail, and jib, and the rising sun that gilded the mountains which bound the plain of the Corcovada saw the Princess running fair into the lovely bay of Rio de Janeiro, with the British ensign flying at the peak, her private colours at the foremast-head.

Now were heard the rattle of the chain-cables, as they were hauled up from the tier, laid along the decks in French-fake, that is, in lines all clear, and bent to the working anchor.

The harbour of Rio, one of the finest in the world in size and form, stretches twenty nautical miles inland, widening to the breadth of eighteen miles at its centre. On its western slope stands the city of Rio, or, as it is sometimes called, San Sebastian, crowded with magnificent edifices.

The entrance to the bay from the ocean is bounded at its southern extremity by the Pao d'Asucar, or sugarloaf, a conical mountain, more than 1,200 feet in height.

On the northern side the ocean rolls in snowy foam, against a mighty rock of glistening granite, at the base of which stands the castle of Santa Cruz, with a triple platform, from which 120 pieces of cannon point towards the sea.

Looking beyond this entrance, the bay is seen to be studded with little isles, nearly eighty in number, clothed with glorious verdure, brilliant with fruit, giant flowers, and wondrous foliage, though here and there the grim muzzle of a cannon shows where a battery is built, and among these isles a fleet of small steamers are always puffing and gliding.

Beyond all this and around it—a new scene, indeed, to Morley—the great mountains of the new world rise in a thousand fantastic forms, covered to their summits with wood, forming a vast amphitheatre around Rio de Janeiro, the City of Palaces, a title which it well deserves.

Morrison, who had been getting the cable clear, and the anchors hoisted over the bows, now came to Morley's side, and pointed out the church of Nossa Senhora da Gloria, on the lofty hill that juts into the sea, between the city and the Praya de Flamengo; and then indicating the castle, on which the gaudy flag of the Brazilian Empire floated, he said, in his deep Scotch accent:

"In 1515, where that great castle stands, there stood only a wooden fort, built in that year by Juan Diaz de Salis, to be a place of refuge for Protestants, and forty years after they named it the Castle of Coligni; but the Portuguese came upon it in the night, and put every living thing in it to the sword. It was Juan Diaz who gave the place its name, Janeiro, as his ship ran into the bay in the first days of January. A wild place it must have been then."

"Hands prepare to shorten sail—stand by the anchor!" were now the orders of Bartelot.

The canvas was clewed up preparatory to being handed, and the light warm breeze from the wooded shore swept through the bared rigging and spars.

Already the seamen were hurrying up aloft; the small bower anchor was let go with a plunge; hoarsely rushed the chain-cable as it vanished from the deck through the hawse-hole; and now the Princess rode at her moorings in eight-fathom water, in the noble harbour of Rio de Janeiro—the region where eternal spring and endless summer reign.

And now, leaving Morley Ashton to push his way among the skippers and merchant-officers in the Rua Direta, and all its branching streets, seeking a mode of transit to the Isle of France, while Tom Bartelot sends his crew ashore, and procures a copper-coloured gang to "break bulk" and start his cargo, we shall return to Ethel Basset, whom we left five chapters back, with her quondam lover, on board the Hermione, of London.

CHAPTER XIX.

ETHEL AMID THE ATLANTIC ISLES.

Unlike the Princess, which, as we have shown, accomplished a most prosperous voyage, the Hermione encountered a series of head-winds and hard gales; she had several of her spars carried away, and even before skirting the Bay of Biscay, had to put in requisition her spare foretopmast and topsail yards.

This was considered by all on board a singularly unlucky beginning, as Captain Phillips said; all the more so, that a pair of sparrows had built their nest in the forecrosstrees, during the time that the ship lay in the London-dock, and had finished it, too, undeterred by all the noise and bustle around them.

This was considered so good an omen, that the event was actually recorded in the ship's log; biscuit crumbs were scattered in the tops for their support, and orders were given not to disturb the birds, if possible, so they went to sea with the ship. So the female sat upon her eggs, while the male hopped and twittered about the top and below in search of the scattered crumbs; but in the first tough breeze, as some ill-disposed fellow—supposed to be Pedro Barradas—was going aloft at night, the nest was destroyed, and flung with its two little eggs on the deck; the poor birds were swept away to sea, and hence, as Mr. Quail affirmed, came the ill-luck, the head-winds and hard gales, encountered by the ship.

After passing the Madeira Isles her foremast was carried away, and at the very time when Tom Bartelot was informing Morley Ashton that she should be somewhere off St. Helena, the Hermione was creeping slowly under a jury foremast into the harbour of Teguise (the chief town of Lanzarota, one of the Canary Isles), to refit; and there the dockyard appliances were so small and so poor, that she was delayed for more than a fortnight.

Mr. Basset took Ethel and Rose to a posada in the town, where, though the accommodation was miserable, as usual in all Spanish posadas, it was a vast relief, after the discomfort, circumscribed space, and monotony of the ship, to tread on terra firmâ, under the cloudless sky of the Canary Isles, and to see the sheep, and goats, and camels, too, browsing in the grassy pastures.

The inevitable Hawkshaw, glad, for certain cogent reasons of his own, to keep clear of the ship, or, at least, of its crew, of course accompanied them, as Mr. Basset's guest.

It should have been mentioned that when the captain came on deck next morning, after recognising Pedro Barradas on the yard-arm overnight, so complete was the change in his costume and toilet, that scarcely anyone knew him.

His thick, luxuriant brown beard, and most cherished moustaches, were shaved clean off; his hair, of which he had a great quantity, was now shorn quite short. In lieu of the scarlet tarboosh, in which he had been hitherto wont to figure, he wore a white wide-awake; and his military boots, with brass heels, were exchanged for a pair of white shoes with yellow soles.

For the natty, short sack-coat, and Spanish sash beneath it, a surtout and vest of most ample and business-like cut had been substituted. On the whole, his tout ensemble, if less picturesque and striking, was infinitely more respectable.

"Lor' bless me!" exclaimed old Nance Folgate, terrified to meet on the companion-stair a man whose eyes and voice she alone could recognise.

Captain Phillips and Mr. Basset laughed heartily at the change; even Ethel smiled, and Rose made great fun of it; and it was soon remarked that, with his hirsute appendages, the ci-devant captain relinquished all his South American reminiscences, the Spanish interjections and Yankeeisms, with which his conversation had been so fully flavoured hitherto—a change greatly for the better.

Hawkshaw pleaded the heat they were soon to encounter as a reason for his new toilet, though they were scarcely clear of the "chops of the Channel." For many weighty reasons, best known to himself, he kept a nervous watch upon Pedro and Zuares Barradas; and the appearance of either of these seamen coming aft, to take the wheel, or perform any other ship's duty, sent the Texan captain below, with a celerity and abruptness which was so often repeated, that there were times—especially when he was conversing with the young ladies, Mr. Basset, Captain Phillips, or Dr. Heriot—that it became so strange as to excite remark, though no one could have understood what his conduct meant.

The rough weather encountered by the Hermione after leaving the British Channel afforded ample excuses for remaining below; but how to avoid his dreaded South American acquaintances during the months of a protracted voyage he knew not, and he felt the wretched conviction that it was impossible!

Whether it was a dread of some destructive revelation, or whether his growing love for Ethel had somewhat purified this luckless and guilty fellow's mind, we know not; neither can we say whether he repented the terrible past, as that could be known to Heaven and himself only. It is very possible that he may have felt alike repentance and remorse, with gleams of hope for the future, as no human character is so utterly bad as to be without one redeeming point at least.

"No time," says Robert Burns (in one of his unpublished letters preserved at Edinburgh), "can cast a light further on the present resolves of the human mind; but time will reconcile, and has reconciled, many a man to that iniquity which at first he abhorred."

The appearance of Zuares had even a more exciting effect on Hawkshaw than that of Pedro.

Zuares, the unwitting matricide of the Barranca Secca, was a more youthful but equally picturesque-looking ruffian. He was decidedly handsome, with well-cut features; his eyes and nose were very fine; but he had a cruel and savage mouth, which he inherited from his Mexican blood.

It seemed the very machination of Satan, or of a retributive destiny, that, after he had so fearfully rid himself of Ashton, now placed him in the same ship with these two men.

If seen by them, if known and recognised, he felt himself lost with Ethel, Mr. Basset, and all on board.

Should they meet him face to face, he dare not decline their recognition, and with that recognition the assumption or resumption of an old and insolent familiarity, from which he had everything to dread, and from which he shrank instinctively now.

Poor wretch! his position was far from enviable.

He felt conscious, probably, that he had led a wild and reckless, a wandering and unprofitable life; but softened now by his regard for Ethel Basset—though even that regard was full of self-interest and selfishness—he mentally resolved that, if he were spared from this disaster, this hourly terror of exposure, and if he escaped the toils and perils in which those Barradas could involve him, that he would turn over a new leaf, and be for the future a better man.

"Ah, these new leaves!" exclaims Digby Grand; "if the half of them were turned over, what a gigantic volume they would form in the life of many of us!"

With this resolution, perhaps, he strove to soothe the remorse, or guilt, he felt for the outrage on Morley Ashton. It was not his first crime, probably, nor the first time he had taken the life of a fellow-creature in some fashion.

"Barradas—Barradas!" he never ceased to mutter. "How the wheel of fortune turns! What fiend brought us together again? But fate is fate, and there is an end of it!"

Consequently, right glad was he to avail himself of a fortnight on shore at the Canaries, till the Hermione was reported ready for sea, and had the blue peter fluttering at her new foremast head.

Rose found, in the Canaries, and boat visits to Santa Clara, Aleguenza, and Graciosa (three islets adjoining Lanzarota), and to the old Spanish Castle, which, in 1596, the Earl of Cumberland assailed at the head of 600 men-at-arms, ample materials for the diary she was keeping; and Ethel wrote letters to the Pages, and other dear friends at Acton-Rennel, dated from the Posado de St. Iago, opposite the Canal de Bocagna, detailing the terrors and dangers they had undergone, in such exaggerated terms as young ladies generally resort to when excited, or fired by a desire to run into flowery description.

A fine day in July—but all days are fine in that region, save those of October and November—saw the Hermione entirely refitted, her spars and hamper all a-taunto, under a heavy press of sail, once more at sea, and leaving the Cape of Mascona rapidly astern, while the sharp cone of Teneriffe rose as rapidly from the ocean on her weather-bow.

For some time after this the voyage was truly delightful, and, as Mr. Basset had anticipated, the change of scene and of air acted most beneficially on Ethel. She was in excellent medical hands, too; for young Dr. Heriot, though more disposed to be attentive to Rose, was unremitting in his care of Ethel, to whose pale cheek the colour was gradually returning.

The atmosphere, especially in the evening, under the quarter-deck awning, was charming, and a day seldom passed without something occurring to break the monotony of the voyage.

The Canary Isles were passed in succession; one day they had a glimpse of Africa, about twenty miles distant. It was the great headland forming the extremity of Jebel Kahl, or the Black Mountains of Sahara.

Low, and dim, and distant looked that little strip of blue coast. How strange to think it was a portion of that vast continent of perils and wonders—the land of Park, Lander, Livingstone, Speke, and Grant!

After leaving the Canaries they had a tedious calm for nearly three days—a fresh delay.

The ocean was still as the waters of an English mere in summer. The sails hung straight and motionless upon the yards, though the ship kept sheering round from time to time, her bowsprit pointing to all the points of the compass in slow succession, and occasional swells that heaved slowly up and sunk noiselessly down in the glassy sea, jerked the neglected rudder and its wheel a few inches to and fro.

Ethel and Rose sat reading under the awning; the doctor was fishing over the taffrail; the mates were forward superintending the men, who were busy cleaning the forecastle.

Captain Phillips sat somewhat moodily on a spare topsail-yard, that was slung alongside, smoking, with his short fat legs dangling over the water, and his eyes fixed on the horizon, as if he was waiting to see the coming breeze.

Tempted by the heat, Manfredi was about to strip for a bathe about the ship's bows, when the Yankee, Bill Badger, who was busy painting the grating of the head-boards, sung out:

"Take care, mate! for here comes a fellow that gobble up the prophet Joaney. Once in his ballast port, I calculate you'll never be a capting, Mr. Manfreddy. Blowd if I don't get a harpoon, and have a shy at the beggar!"

"Look, Miss Rose," cried Captain Phillips, from his perch on the spare topsail-yard, "there goes a sea-lawyer."

Rose looked at her papa and laughed, while the ship's cook threw over a piece of rancid pork, with a sharp skewer in it, for mischief, as there is a natural antipathy between Jack Tar and Jack Shark.

The shark—a white one—turned on his back, and the piece of pork that floated steadily on the oily sea vanished into his capacious maw, the opening and shutting of which made the girls shudder, and old Nurse Folgate, who was knitting beside them, utter a "Lor' a mussy me!" with great earnestness.

Hawkshaw hoped the heat might tempt either of the Barradas to take a bathe alongside, but they were much too cautious to do so.

"How horrible!" said Ethel, as the monster sailed away, with his black triangular fin erect.

"A fellow like that would dart at a man in the sea, and snap him up as a snipe would a fly," said Dr. Heriot. "I have heard, Miss Basset, of the master of a Guinea ship, among whose cargo of slaves there prevailed a strange rage for drowning in the belief that, after death, they would be restored to their native country, their tribes and wigwams; to cure them of this, or to convince them that they could not reanimate their dead bodies, he ordered one, a gigantic negro, who had died at a ring-bolt, to be towed overboard by the heels at the end of a line. A shark rose. In an instant twenty men tailed on the rope to haul the body in, yet that instant did not suffice. The shark devoured every morsel save the feet and ankles, which were tied by the end of the rope."

One day a whale rose suddenly, about a quarter of a mile from the ship, and brought a shriek of dismay from old Nance Folgate, who clung to Manfredi, the Italian mate, on seeing it floating steadily, like Sindbad's island in the sea; and still greater was her terror when he spouted a cloud of water in the air, stuck up his flukes, and went surging down with a sound like a roar to the depths below.

On another day there came a shoal of porpoises from windward of the ship, rushing in madlike and headlong career.

On they come, on and on, surging, rollicking, flashing in the sunshine, as they leaped from one bank of water to the other, all keeping time in their ocean race, all going together, and all crossing the ship's bows in one frolicsome shoal. So close do they pass that their little red eyes can be seen twinkling and glancing; and away they go, surging and leaping on towards the far horizon, till they are lost or blinded amid "the grey and melancholy wastes" of ocean. It is always on a breezy day that these living shoals are seen. Rose clapped her hands, as if at a horse-race, when they passed.

"You English call them porpoises, from our Italian term, porco-pesce," said the soft voice of Manfredi; "but is it not strange, Mees Rose, that they do go so very fast with only three fins?"

"Only three, Mr. Manfredi?"

"Yes; one on the back, placed rather below the middle, and two on the breast—no more."

But greater was the excitement when a water-logged vessel, whose deck was almost flush with the sea—a brig which the waves of some mighty storm had swept of everything from stem to stern, so that the stumps of her two masts, and a few weather-worn timber-heads, alone were visible above her planks—was passed, drifting, silent and alone, about two miles to leeward.

The melancholy object excited, of course, much remark, and made Ethel and her sister weep, and speculate upon the probable fate of her crew, their story, and the story of that poor deserted ship, to the rusty chain-plates of which the barnacles and seaweed clung, as it drifted away into the wastes of sea and sky; and Ethel thought of the oft-quoted words of the Psalmist—words she had heard again and again in the old church at home:

"They who go down to the sea in ships, and do business in the great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the mighty deep."

Dr. Heriot, who was a very enterprising young man, Hawkshaw, and Manfredi, proposed to have a boat lowered for the purpose of visiting the wreck, and ascertaining her name; but the Hermione was running free, under a press of sail, and Captain Phillips and Mr. Quail flatly refused permission; so that the old wreck was rapidly dropped astern.

On the warm summer Sunday mornings, when the quarter-deck—that looked so very small when they came on board at first—got an extra drenching, holystoning, and swabbing; when the running rigging aft was more neatly coiled over the belaying-pins, and between the four six-pound carronades; when the binnacle lamps and other brasses had received an extra polish; when camp-stools, cushions, and hassocks were brought from the cabin, and "a church was rigged;" when the somewhat motley crew assembled in their cleanest attire, and stood by, bareheaded and respectful (to all outward appearance), to hear jolly Captain Phillips read the grand and impressive service of the Church of England, with Mr. Quail, the first mate, or Dr. Leslie Heriot, acting as clerk, making all the responses; while the great ship, with her vast spread of white canvas bellying on the wind, and shining in the sun, with the British flag flying aloft in honour of the day, though no other eyes could behold it, save those in heaven; when all this took place weekly, we say, Ethel was indeed soothed and charmed by the solemnity of the scene, upon that illimitable world of waters, and her thoughts naturally reverted to the gray old house of God at home, with its Norman spire and Gothic porch, the pew where last she had sat by the side of Morley Ashton, and then she seemed to see the old yew-tree that cast its shadow on her beloved mother's grave—the grave which lay in that dear English soil she never more might tread, never more might see.

CHAPTER XX.

MOONLIGHT ON THE SEA.

At such times as the Divine service on Sunday, when there was a great muster of the crew, Hawkshaw always remained below on one pretence or other, unless he had assured himself that his two bêtes noire, the Barradas, were neither at the wheel nor in "the church," which was so easily improvised upon the quarter-deck.

On these occasions, it was observable that Rose Basset and the young Scotch doctor always read from the same book.

This did not fail to attract the notice of Captain Phillips, who, being unable to resist a joke thereon, gave them once or twice a remarkably knowing wink, in the very middle of the service he was reading so solemnly, a proceeding which very much scandalised Mr. Samuel Quail, and made Rose colour and glance nervously at her papa.

And there was one Sunday when, after prayers had been read, the crew dismissed forward to smoke, sing, or mend their clothes, as usual on Sundays, and the passengers had assembled in the cabin for lunch, he proceeded to quiz poor Rose and the doctor, by offering, in his "double capacity of skipper and parson, to perform a Scotch marriage for them on the high seas."

Rose reddened again with so much real annoyance at this broad jest, that Captain Phillips offered a species of salt-water apology, which rather made the matter worse; so the handsome young doctor blushed too, all the more so, perhaps, that his soup was scalding hot, and the thermometer on the bulkhead stood at eighty in the shade.

"After the rigs I have seen run by those who live by salt water," continued the jolly captain, "I have always thanked my stars—wherever they may be—that I am still a bachelor; yet had I, in other times, met such a young lady as you, Miss Rose, mayhap I'd have struck my colours and changed my mind—who knows? But perhaps things are best as they are."

"You should be ashamed of saying so, captain," said Rose; "and I am certain that some one has missed a good kind husband, through your mistake."

"Mayhap, miss, mayhap; but 'tis too late now for old Jack Phillips to 'bout ship, and make a fool of himself, by hauling up for the gulf of matrimony."

"Gulf? Fie, captain!" exclaimed Rose; "you should call it a bay, or happy haven."

"Do you know, captain, how they treated old bachelors in Sparta?" asked the doctor.

"Stopped their grog, mayhap, or keel-hauled 'em, I shouldn't wonder."

"They were stripped of their clothes, and in the coldest days of winter were forced to run through the principal streets, chanting songs, full of sharp sarcasms upon their own condition."

"Deuced hard lines, doctor; was there any other nice little thing they made us do?"

"Yes," resumed the doctor, furbishing up his Scotch latinity to punish the captain for making Rosa blush, "Athenæus, the grammarian of Naucratis——"

"My eyes! there's a name to turn in of a night with!"

"Well, he tells us that there was, every year, a laughable festival celebrated in a great temple, at which all the bachelors of a certain age were compelled to attend, that the ladies might taunt, mock them, and slap their faces as much as they pleased."

Honest Phillips rubbed his curly head, the brown hair of which was becoming thickly seamed with gray, slapped his sturdy thigh, and burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

"Overhaul the charts, Quail, and see where this same Sparta lies. Its latitude and longitude won't do for me, Sam. Another glass of wine, ladies, and then I must be off to relieve the deck, and let Mr. Manfredi down."

The night that followed this day was peculiarly lovely—lovely even beyond what night is in the tropics at times.

Mr. Basset, the captain, Mr. Quail, and the second mate were having a quiet rubber in the cabin; Hawkshaw had fallen asleep on one of the lockers, or pretended to do so; Rose and Dr. Heriot were promenading the deck aft the mainmast, in very close conversation, and Ethel was seated alone near the taffrail, at the stern of the Hermione, which was gliding through the water with an almost imperceptible motion, for the wind was light and steady.

She was alone, for no one was near her, save the man at the wheel, Zuares Barradas, who seemed oblivious of all save his duty. The light of the binnacle lamps fell steadily on his dark olive face, his bare neck, arms, and breast, on which the figure of a Madonna had been graven with gunpowder, on the rings in his ears, and on his black, glittering eyes.

The ship had her three courses, top and topgallant sails, royals, and lower studding-sails set; and this vast cloud of canvas shone white as snow in the moonlight, the bellying curve of every sail being beautifully and softly rounded into shadow by the chastened radiance, and with every heave she gave upon the long glassy rollers, the reef-points pattered like a shower upon the taut and swollen bosom of the sail.

Star after star twinkled out and was lost, and then seen again under the arched leach of each square of canvas, as the ship rose and fell with each successive heave. Forward she was sunk in silence; the watch were clustered in a group near the chocks of the long-boat or main-hatch; the rest of the crew were all seated together about the windlass and forecastle-bitts.

Nothing broke the silence, save Mr. Basset's voice, or Captain Phillips's laugh, in the lighted cabin, the occasional rattle of the rudder in its case, the wash of the passing sea under the counter, or the gurgle of the long wake astern, that seemed like a path of green fire amid the eddying bosom of the deep, the unfathomable deep, that held, as Ethel believed, the remains of him she loved and mourned, as a widow, in her heart of hearts.

Full of thoughts of home, of sadness, and of the past, Ethel reclined against the taffrail, with a heart inspired by deep and indescribable emotions; and her dark, swimming eyes wandered with admiration over the phantom-like outline of the vast white ship, gliding in awful silence unerringly over the solitude of the broad ocean, beneath the mighty dome of the star-studded sky.

Her thoughts were finding vent in tears, when she found that some one was near her. Passing a handkerchief across her eyes, she drew her cloak closely round her as this person came forward, and politely touched his cap. It was Manfredi, the handsome and pleasing young Italian mate.

"Pardon me, Miss Basset," said he, in his distinct yet somewhat broken English; "I have been observing you for some time, and am very sorry to see you so triste—so sad."

"I was not sad, Mr. Manfredi."

"Oh yes you were," said he, with smiling earnestness.

"The great beauty of the night impressed me. To you, perhaps, it may be little worth noticing after the skies of your native Italy."

"The skies are clearer here than in Italy; the air is purer and freer," he replied, with a sad smile.

"When so far away, do you never wish for home?"

"I did so once."

"And now?"

"I have no home, save on the sea."

This was said with such a melancholy and pathetic brevity, that Ethel gazed at the young man inquiringly, but in silence.

"I had a home in Italy once, madam—a home, though humble, as happy, perchance, as yours in England; but the Austrians came and brought death and sorrow upon it, so I turned my back on the place where the olives and acacias grew before my father's house, and returned there no more."

"The Austrians," repeated Dr. Heriot, who, with Rose leaning on his arm, had now joined them; "we, in England, occasionally heard of great outrages committed by them."

The black eyes of Manfredi sparkled, and a sigh escaped him.

"Mr. Manfredi is sighing," said the heedless Rose; "depend upon it that love has something to do with his memories of Italy."

"You mistake, madam," said the third mate, with a smile at the lively girl, whose fair English face and fine merry eyes looked so beautiful in the moonlight, that the younger Barradas at the wheel regarded her more than his compass, so that frequently the sails shivered aloft, and he was somewhat wild in his steering; "my memories of Italy are, many of them, pure and charming, as if love formed a portion of them; and yet I wish all these memories to die together."

"What kind of paradox is this, my dear Manfredi?" asked Dr. Heriot.

"It is no paradox."

"We have a Scottish writer who says that 'No thought, no delightful memory, ever dies; it may remain silent for a season, but it will come from those inexpressibly deep regions of memory; it will come at some time to brighten the present, and to brighten the recollection of the past."

The face of the young Scotchman flushed as he spoke, with Rose's pretty hand trembling on his arm; but the Italian only smiled sadly, and said:

"You mistake me, doctor. The pure and tender memories of my home are so inseparably blended with the sad and bitter, that I have no desire but to forget them altogether, for the former add but poignancy to the latter. Surely you must have heard the story of my brother, little Attilio Manfredi, whose assassination was termed the great crime of the House of Hapsburg? As such it went the circuit of the English newspapers, which received the story from the Monitore Toscana, whose sheets were under the revision of the assassin, the Austrian commandant."

After a silence of a minute, for the Italian seemed labouring under deep emotion, Dr. Heriot said:

"No; I do not remember of this, Manfredi."

"Pray tell us about it," said Rose.

"Pray do," added Ethel.

"Wait, ladies, please, until the wheel is relieved, and I shall tell you a sad but simple tale of barbarous cruelty."

A tall, rawboned Yankee sailor, with a hooked nose and villainous square jaw, now relieved Zuares Barradas, who civilly touched his hat and went forward, just as the whist-players came on deck, and proceeded to exchange tobacco-pouches and light their pipes.

Immediately on discovering that the helmsman was changed, Hawkshaw appeared on deck and joined the group, to whom Manfredi proceeded to explain what he meant by relating one of the darkest stories that ever disgraced the pretty voluminous annals of continental military tyranny.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE STORY OF A BRAVE BOY.

"In 1850," began Adrian Manfredi, "I was, with my elder brother Attilio, a schoolboy at home, in our father's house at Pistoja, and had no more idea then of becoming a seaman or a wanderer on the sea, than I have now of filling the chair of St. Peter.

"Our father was a sculptor; his studio was always filled with choice efforts in Tuscan and Carrara marble, in alabaster and chalcedony. He was a leading member of the Academia delle Belle Arti: but in that land of artists his means were small; hence our living was frugal and our house somewhat humble, because it was very old, being the same in which Pope Clement IX. was born.

"My brother Attilio was said to be as beautiful as an angel by all the mothers of Pistoja. Indeed, he was a very handsome little boy, and frequently served my father as a model; thus Attilio's figure appears in more than one of the groups which he contributed to the Great Exhibition at London in 1851.

"Versions of my brother's story have already, as I have stated, appeared in the English newspapers. I now propose to tell you mine.

"Pistoja, our native place, is a Tuscan town, situated amid a fertile country, at the base of the beautiful Apennines. In fancy I can see it still, with its carved cathedral of snowy Carrara marble; its convents and hospitals; its quaint streets of the middle ages; its old and crumbling walls, that were built by Didier, last king of the Lombards, and the clear blue waters of the Ombrone, bordered by chestnut groves, and lands that teem with corn, wine, and oil, all reddened in the setting sun, as I saw them last; and that feature, the blot and blight on all the rest, the accursed Austrian eagle, that floats above its ancient fortress.

"Yes, Pistoja, like too many other Italian towns, had or has an Austrian garrison, and, at the time I refer to—the first months of 1850—all Europe was filled with ardour, interest, and sympathy by the gallant stand made by the Hungarians, under Kossuth, and other chiefs, against their imperial oppressors; and nowhere did their victories and their downfall find a more ready echo than in the hearts of Italians.

"The boys of the Academia de Pistoja, which my brother Attilio and I attended—he was then twelve, and I but ten years of age—held a jubilee with others, on an evil day, when fresh tidings of some new battle came. We received a holiday. I went to fish in the Ombrone, and my brother returned home.

"When, chancing to pass near the palace of the Bishop of Pistoja, where the Austrian commandant, Colonel Count Rudolf de Veinrich, had quartered himself (after expelling our venerable prelate), Attilio saw a number of soldiers in what he considered the Hungarian uniform—brown tunics, embroidered and faced with red.

"When passing the first sentinel, Attilio lifted his little hat and cried:

"'Viva Kossuth! Viva Hongria!'

"'Viva!' replied the sentinel, whose comrades joined in the cry, adding:

"'Eviva—bravo Hongrie!'

"Thus emboldened, the rash boy continued to wave his hat and shout the name of Kossuth.

"'Come hither, boy,' cried the soldiers, in strange Italian; 'we wish to speak with you.'

"Attilio, believing that he beheld the countrymen of the Hungarian dictator, approached, but was instantly surrounded and seized, and then, to his astonishment, he found himself in the hands of a party of Croats, whose uniform, in his ignorance of such matters, the boy supposed to be Hungarian.

"They were proceeding to drag him into the guard-house, when Attilio, active and nimble, glided like an eel through their hands, sprang from an open window and escaped, but was closely pursued.

"Fearing to take shelter in our house, which would implicate our innocent parents, and insure their ruthless pillage, he left the town behind him, and fled, bareheaded, towards the woods. As it chanced, he came close to where I was fishing in the Ombrone.

"'Change jackets with me, Adrian!' he exclaimed, 'the Austrians are after me—change, but ask no questions.'

"We exchanged in a moment; my jacket was black, and his a bright green; thus, when he disappeared, the Croats came upon me. I uttered an involuntary cry of real terror as they seized me, and handled me very roughly before they discovered their mistake.

"Then I laughed at them, on which they spitefully broke my rod, and seized my fish basket, with its contents. A closer search was instituted for poor Attilio, and at night he was dragged from our dear mother's arms, and reconducted to the guardhouse, where he was brought before Count Rudolf de Veinrich, colonel of the Regiment de Radetzki.

"Knowing well the kind of hands he had fallen into, Attilio gave himself up for lost; yet he was brave as a lion; his courage never deserted him, and, in contempt of his captors, he spat upon the Austrian flag that hung over the guard-house door. Yet he wept, when in the dark, for the mother from whom he had been torn—the poor little boy of twelve happy years!

"I may mention that though, like the Italians, the Croats generally profess the Catholic religion, in the military portion of that semi-barbarous race there is a strong element of the Greek schism, and of this last was the Regiment de Radetzki composed. Its soldiers had all the worst qualities of the Croat; they were revengeful, deceitful, intemperate, prone to robbery, and officered by Germans, who, when in Tuscany, cared little to restrain their licentiousness.

"Their colonel, notwithstanding his title of count, was a man without family or friends, save such as position gave him, without kindly sympathy or common human feeling. His mother had been found speechless and dying near the new Scottish gate of Vienna, and she expired soon after in the Allgemeine Krankenhaus, or great infirmary of the city, leaving her child to the foundling hospital, by the name of Rudolf.

"Ten years after a person of rank, a prince of the Russian Empire, on searching the books of the said hospital, discovered in this foundling his own son, the mother being a hapless Polish woman, whom, he had deluded and abandoned; so the little Rudolf, on the payment of so many thousand ducats, became a count, and in time rose to the rank of colonel of Croats; and, as such, exercised the stern military laws of Austria with unexampled severity.

"On bringing my brother before him, the Croats charged Attilio with attempting to induce them to desert in the name of Kossuth; and then with defiling the flag of the Empire by spitting thereon.

"'Did he attempt to seduce you by money?' asked the colonel, with a frown on his face.

"'Yes, Herr Colonel,' replied a corporal named Schwartz, and he produced eighteen quattrini, which he had found in the pocket of my jacket, and which were in value about twopence British.

"On this the colonel, undeterred by the manly aspect of the beautiful little boy—for my brother Attilio was beautiful—struck him with his gloved hand, and with his sheathed sword, repeatedly.

"He then ordered him to be put into one of the dark, damp, and horrid dungeons of the old castle of Pistoja, where, among the rats, the toads, the gloom, and the cobwebs, the poor boy wept for his parents, and for me; wept in cold and forlorn misery, on some wet straw, near which a clay pitcher of water was placed.

"He had a stone whereon to rest his head if weary, and his right wrist was fettered by a chain to his left ankle.

"'Sono desolato! Sono perduto!' ('I am ruined! I am lost!') he kept repeating from time to time.

"Our father was crushed with grief, our mother was filled with wild despair, and I was stupefied!"

"And they dared to seize him thus?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, flushing with indignation like an honest John Bull, while vigorously polishing his forehead with his silk handkerchief; "a frightful outrage on the rights of the subject! Where were the police? Where was that great bulwark of liberty, the writ of habeas corpus?"

Manfredi smiled sadly, and replied:

"You forget that I am talking of Tuscany?"

"True, my dear sir, true; but go on."

"The poor boy!" said Ethel, mournfully.

"Those odious, hateful Austrians!" commented Rose.

"D——n them!" was the addendum of Captain Jack Phillips, while Manfredi resumed:

"In this horrible condition, crushed for a time in body and in soul, and drowned in tears, he remained, while all access was denied to him, even to our parents; but ultimately he was found by the good Padre Marraccini, who had come to visit the sick prisoners, and who, by chance or mistake, was shown by Corporal Schwartz into the atrocious dungeon where our poor little Attilio lay.

"Undeterred by the grim Croat, who carried a smoky lamp, the light of which scared the rats and toads, who were seen hurrying away to their dark and slimy recesses, the child leaped up with a cry of joy, and hastened towards the padre, who was our father's friend, but in hastening fell, for his chain was short, and cramped the action of his limbs.

"'Water, Padre Marraccini!' he exclaimed hoarsely, 'water; for I am dying of thirst, and they have salted what is in that pitcher.'

"With great difficulty the commiserating padre procured him some water in the hollow of a broken bottle; the corporal would give nothing else, and it cut the poor boy's mouth, so that he drank his own blood, his tears, and the water together.

"'My mother, my father—are they well?' he asked.

"'Yes.'

"'It seems so long since I saw them—the day before yesterday when I went to school,' continued Attilio, weeping, with his head on the padre's shoulder. 'And Adrian, my brother—did they hurt him, for he changed jackets with me?'

"'Hush!' said the padre, glancing at the stolid Croat who stood by them, with a lamp flaring in one hand, and his drawn bayonet glittering in the other.

"'Get me out of this, Padre Marraccini; pray get me out of this place, and home to my mother. Oh, my mother! my mother!'

"'I will, dear Attilio, I will—that is if I can.'

"'I shall take courage. I shall be a man!'

"'Do, until I return from the commandant.'

"With dire forebodings in his heart, the poor old padre hastened to the count, whom he found seated at his wine, after dinner, with several Austrian officers, in the saloon of the bishop's palace.

"After enduring considerable annoyance—even insult—from the Croatian sentinels and German lackeys—insults which he endured with contempt, perhaps, rather than with meekness, and feeling himself the servant of a higher master than even the Emperor of Austria—he was admitted to an audience, and he begged—he dared not, in such a presence, demand—'the release of the child Attilio Manfredi, who had been seized by the soldiers of the garrison.'

"'Seized, Fra Marraccini, for attempting to seduce them by money to desert their colours, in the name of the rebel Magyar, Kossuth,' replied the count, sternly.

"'Term it as you please, Signor Excellenza. I implore you to allow me to restore him to his parents—his heart-broken mother especially.'

"'It cannot be; his case is not in my hands.'

"'In whose then?'

"'It has been remitted to the general-commanding at Prato.'

"'And the answer will come——'

"'About midnight,' interrupted the count, with a dark glance there was no misinterpreting. 'Enough, priest. You may go.'

"The poor priest felt his soul sink within him. Instead of seeking our parents, to whom, knowing the Austrians as he did, he could give no hope, he returned to the castle, and sought to prepare the unhappy child, my brother, for the fate, the great change, that was to follow.

"All day had elapsed without food passing the boy's mouth, and he was in such a state as to be incapable of swallowing the coarse cake which the priest had procured with difficulty from the Croatian guard.

"Attended by the corporal, named Schwartz, who remained persistently in the dungeon, holding a lamp, the priest sat on the damp stone, with Attilio on his knee; and resting his head caressingly on his shoulder, besought him to make his confession, in the fashion of our church—to speak in whispers, lest the Croat might overhear and mock them.

"But the confession of a boy—a mere child, so pure, so good, and sinless, could interest the soldier but little, and the youthful prisoner made it with charming artlessness; though his large dark eyes began to dilate with mournful anxiety, fear, and wonder, and then to sparkle with courage and sublime resignation, as Fra Marraccini spoke to him in earnest whispers of his spiritual state, beseeching him to think of hopes beyond the grave, of the Father he had in heaven as well as his father on earth, and of the Blessed Madonna, who was the mother of all good children.

"Then the little boy began to see clearly the terrible meaning of the priest, and though his heart yearned, and his tears fell fast when he thought of his poor mother who was on earth, and whom he never more should see, at length he became pacified, or worn out by emotion, and fell asleep in the arms of dear old Father Marraccini.

"So the hours stole on, Corporal Schwartz trimmed the lamp, growled and swore, tugged his obstinate moustache, and smoked his huge meerschaum, while the old priest, heedless of his impatience, read the prayers for the dying with the child asleep upon his knee.

"The galloping of a horse was heard, and the clank of a sabre, as an Austrian dragoon passed the grated window of the prison.

"'Poor Attilio!' groaned the priest.

"'Rouse the prisoner!' croaked the corporal, harshly, 'here comes the final order about him!'

"At that time the clock of the fortress struck midnight.

"Prato is only six miles from Pistoja, so the general there had not hurried himself.

"'They are not really going to kill me, Fra Marraccini, are they? Oh! my sweet mother! Oh! my dear father! and my little brother Adrian, too, shall I never see you any more?' exclaimed Attilio, as he was dragged out by the guard.

"'Remember what I have said and taught you," whispered the priest; 'take courage, and be a Christian.'

"'Yes, padre, and a Tuscan, too!' replied Attilio, as they were conducted from the dark passages and vaults of the ancient castle into one of the dry ditches, where the moon was shining in all her brilliance—yes, gloriously, as now she shines upon this tropical sea.

"There, between the high walls of the dry ditch, were several Austrian officers in their white uniforms, with long boots and black varnished helmets, surmounted by plumes or spikes, and double-headed eagles, and all apparently flushed with wine.

"Beyond them were twelve Croats under arms, drawn in a single rank across the ditch.

"'Corporal Schwartz,' said the count, as he opened a letter, 'unlock the prisoner's chains.'

"As they were taken off and flung rattling aside, the courage of Father Marraccini rose.

"Bareheaded before this imposing group, whose breasts were covered with imperial orders and medals, stood Attilio, with his dark eyes cast down, his crossed hands on his breast, humble, but courageous.

"'He looked so fair and handsome!' says the kind padre, in an account he wrote of this affair. 'The moonlight silvered him from head to foot, and made him look like an angel. The boy was very sad, but at the same time calm. No entreaty passed his lips to be allowed to look once more upon his parents' faces. All he said was, "Don't leave me any more—oh! see to what a pass they have brought me!"'

"'Priest, bring the boy forward,' said Count Rudolf, imperiously.

"Marracini did so, and so clear and bright was the moonlight, which poured aslant over the grand masses of the ancient castle of Pistoja, on the glittering arms of the ferocious-looking Croats, on the white uniforms and glittering accoutrements of the Austrian officers, and on the boy's pale face, that the count could read distinctly, as if at noon-day, the brief but pompous despatch of the general commanding at Prato.

"'Attilio Manfredi,' said he, 'listen! Your sentence has come hither in German, but I shall read it to you in Italian.'

"The boy bowed, played nervously with his hands, and said:

"'Dio il voglia, Signor Colonello—se piace a Dio!' ('God willing—if it please God!')

"'Attilio Manfredi,' resumed the tall Austrian, raising his voice with a hiccup at times, 'scholar of the Academy of Pistoja, son of Adrian Manfredi, sculptor, and member of the Academia delle Belle Arti, you have been accused and fully convicted of attempting, by bribery, to induce Corporal Carl Schwartz and Private Demetrius Spitzbübbel, with other soldiers of Veltmarshal Radetzki's Croatian Regiment, to desert the fatherly and benign service of his Imperial Majesty Ferdinand I., Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, Bohemia, Lombardy, and Venice, Dalmatia, Crotia, Sclavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria, and Illyria——'"

"Dash my wig!" exclaimed Captain Phillips; "why did he omit the Cannibal Islands, and the Viceroy Whanky-fum?"

"Count Rudolf paused to draw breath, as well he might after such a mouthful of words; and again the fine large eyes of the boy dilated with wonder, at a list of names that sounded so strange and barbarous to his Tuscan ear.

"'Have you the courage to hear your sentence?'

"'Si, signore; the blessed Madonna, who is alike the mother of my mother and me, support me!'

"'She does, my son!' cried Marraccini, with enthusiasm.

"'Silence!' exclaimed the count. 'Prisoner—you are to be shot to death by a platoon of twelve men.'

"He deliberately folded the despatch and drew back.

"'The mother of God receive me!' murmured the poor boy; then he added, in a feeble voice, 'Father Marraccini, when it is all over—when I am dead—cut off three locks of my hair: one for my dear father, one for dear, dear mother, and one for my little brother Adrian.'

"Here Manfredi drew a locket from his breast and kissed it.

"'You will keep my crucifix for yourself, in memory of your little penitent, and say masses for his soul.'

"It was now the old priest's turn to weep, and he wept aloud, while the brave little Attilio had not a tear in his eye.

"Hoarse, and harsh, and rapid were the German words of command, and in less than three minutes, a volley of twelve rifles that rang like thunder on the still midnight, waking all the echoes of the fortress and of the silent streets of Pistoja, announced that all was over—that the great crime had been committed!

"In five minutes more Attilio was flung into a hasty grave dug in the ditch beneath the castle wall, quicklime was cast over him, and there, uncoffined and unconsecrated, the Croats covered him up.

"My poor little brother!

"My father and mother could not survive the shock of this atrocity. They both died soon after; I was left alone in the world, and, turning my back upon Pistoja, became a sailor and a wanderer.

"A wooden cross nailed on the castle wall, by tine kind hand of Fra Marraccina, marked the uncouth grave of my brother till 1860, when the ecclesiastical and civic authorities of Pistoja took heart, and, with many grand and empty ceremonies, exhumed his sad remains, and reinterred them in a coffin within the church of the Confraternita dei Dolori, where they now lie, and may they rest in peace![*]

[*] For the truth of this story, see the Athenæum of 1860.

"Fra Marraccini, now Bishop of Pistoja, performed the funeral mass, and wrote me all about it when I was far away, a merchant seaman, in the Southern Pacific.. The good man sent me his blessing, and it reached me even there."

As he concluded, the Italian crossed himself, and stepped aside, as if to light a cigar; but Ethel Basset and others knew, by the tremor of his voice, that he had turned to hide his emotion.

"And this cruel colonel—this Austrian," she asked, "what became of him?"

"The curse that fell on Cain followed him. He died, not on a gallows, as he deserved, but fell beneath the Danish rifles, at the foot of the Dannewerke," replied Manfredi, with flashing eyes; "and now I am Christian enough to say: may he, too, rest in peace, even as my brother rests at Pistoja."