CHAPTER VIII.

VOYAGE CONTINUED.

I found the captain and mate of the Eugenie both pleasant and instructive companions.

The latter, like the generality of his countrymen, was well educated; he was tolerably read in classical lore, and knew all the current literature of the day; thus his little state-room was so crammed with books, that he had scarcely room to move in it. Like many other Scotchmen of humble birth or limited means, Marc Hislop had educated himself, beyond what schools or teachers could have done. Though usually quiet in disposition, he was sometimes impatient, and more than once I have seen him snatch from his pocket a colt (a piece of knotted rope eighteen inches long) for the special benefit of the ship-boys, of whom we had three on board.

He was so learned on the theory and law of storms, with the practical exposition thereof, and could talk so fluently about straight, circular, and parallel winds, storm-waves, and storm-focuses, the height of a cyclone, and speed of a hurricane, that honest Sam Weston, the captain and Tom Lambourne, the second mate, wondered what it was all about; as they had weathered many a gale without ever caring a jot about the theory or law of them, or without ever troubling their brains about where the wind came from, and still less about where it went to.

Among other things, Hislop had a photographic apparatus, by which he took the aspect of the sea by moonlight and daylight, and all our likenesses, in groups or otherwise. Tattooed Tom Lambourne, who had once been adrift in the bush somewhere, and been decorated with certain ineffaceable marks by the natives, came out famously in these artistic efforts, as he was all over stripes, like a zebra or a New Zealander.

Calm weather and heavy rains succeeded the gale I have mentioned; but the Eugenie steadily kept her course, and two days after, when spanking along before a fine topgallant breeze, we picked up a bottle, which was descried by the watch, floating and bobbing in the water a few fathoms distant from the brig. She was at once hove in the wind, and Hislop went in the stern boat to bring the bottle on board.

As the most trivial incident becomes of interest on board of ship, where the daily occurrences are so few, and the circle of society so limited, considerable concern was excited by the appearance of this bottle, which seemed to have been freshly corked; and on its being broken, we found a scrap of paper—torn apparently from a notebook—whereon a hurried and agitated hand had pencilled this brief notice:

"The Mary, clipper ship, of Boston, 20th Nov., 1861, momentarily expected to go down—pumps worn out, and the leaks gaining—Captain and first mate, with all the boats, washed away—God help us!"

"The 20th of November? It was on that night we encountered the heavy gale," said Weston.

We had been on the skirt of the tempest, as Hislop maintained, while the Yankee ship had probably suffered all the fury of it. From the main-cross-trees Captain Weston swept the sea with his telescope, in vain, for any trace of her; so if that melancholy scrap of paper told truth, all was doubtless over long since with the Mary and her crew.

In the cabin that night, a conversation on the probabilities of her destruction or escape, led to a recurrence to the miraculous manner in which the unlucky Dutch schooner had floated so long with me; and I mentioned to Weston and Hislop the additional terrors I had endured by the effect of imagination, and a recollection of the strange incidents told me by Captain Zeervogel; but they ridiculed the story of the poor man, chiefly, I thought, because "it was the yarn of a Hollander."

"Though I am a Scotchman," began Hislop——

"And come of a people naturally superstitious," suggested Weston, parenthetically——

"As all large-brained races are," retorted the mate, while filling his clay pipe with tobacco.

"Well, what were you about to say?" asked Weston. "But first fill your glass and pass over the tobacco bag."

"I was simply about to reiterate that I don't believe in ghosts, or value them any more than I do the Yankee sea-serpent, a rope's end, or a piece of old junk; I never saw one, or knew a man who had seen one; but every one has heard of a man, that knew another man who saw, or believed he saw a ghost. It is at variance with the laws of nature, which are so ordered that no such erratic spirit can be."

"I don't know that," replied Weston; "earth and water have their inhabitants, so why not the air also?"

"And why not the fire?"

"There you go, right before the wind into the troubled sea of argument—you Scotchmen are all alike."

"Ghosts are at variance with the workings of Divine wisdom, and we all know what Jones of Nayland says thereupon."

"No we don't," said Weston; "who the deuce was he—what port did he hail from?"

"'He who cannot see the workings of a Divine wisdom in the order of the heavens, the change of the seasons, the flowing of the tides, the operations of the wind and other elements, the structure of the human body, the circulation of the blood, the instinct of beasts, and the growth of plants, is sottishly blind and unworthy the name of man.'"

"You hear him, Mr. Rodney," said Weston; "now he has got both his anchor and topsails a-trip; he can pay out whole speeches in this fashion, all at a breath, as fast as the chain-cable running through the hawse-pipe."

Being fresh from Eton, I was not going to let our learned Scotch mate have it all his own way, when Weston resumed,—

"If you will listen, you shall hear a strange story in which I bore a prominent part."

"As the ghost?" said I.

"No; but you will soon acknowledge whether or not I had cause for fear."

And after he had replenished his glass and pipe, Captain Sam Weston began in this manner:

"About fifteen years ago, I found myself at Matanzas, in Cuba, the same port we are bound for now—adrift, without a ship, and almost without a penny in my pocket, among foreigners, Spaniards, and mulattoes, mestees and quadroons, black, white, and yellow. I had gone there as second mate of a ship from Boston, but the tyranny of our skipper wellnigh drove me mad. During the voyage he had nearly killed three of our men for being slow in sending down the top-gallant yards on a squally night. He beat them till they were black and blue with a handspike, and kept them for forty-eight hours, lashed to ringbolts in the lee-scuppers, that the sea might break over them, as he said, and cure their sores.

"When I interfered to save a poor cabin boy, whom he had hung by the heels from the main-boom, and was scourging with a heavy colt till his back was covered with blood, he produced a bowie knife and revolver, threatening to 'shoot or rip me up.'

"Just at that moment we were passing a Spanish ship of war which was at anchor in the bay, about half a mile from us, and had the red and yellow jack of Castile and Leon flying at his gaff peak. One of the poor fellows who had been so severely beaten was then in the foretop, so I hailed him to make a signal of distress to the Spaniard.

"In a moment his blue shirt was off and placed on the lift of the foreyard. This meant, Mr. Rodney, that as merchant seamen we appealed to the man-o'-war for protection, and wanted an armed boat's crew. Thank Heaven, such an appeal is never made in vain by a poor Jack of any country to a British man-o'-war, but the lubberly Spaniards never noticed the signal, or if so, never heeded it.

"The Yankee skipper uttered a fierce laugh.

"'Douse that shirt and come down, you sir,' he thundered out; 'down instantly, or I will shoot you like a coon.'

"But, desperate with fear, the poor fellow now stood upon the yard, and while one hand grasped the topping lift, with the other he waved his shirt to the Spaniards. I heard the crack of a pistol, and next moment he fell a quivering mass upon the deck, stone dead, shot by the revolver.

"'That will teach you to make signals from my ship, you varmint,' snivelled the merciless skipper, giving the body a kick; 'and as for you,' he continued, addressing me, and ramming home his words with an oath; but before he could get further, I levelled him on the deck by a blow from a handspike, and tossed his knife and revolver overboard.

"His right arm was broken. There was a great row about all this before the Alcalde when we got into harbor; our bell was unshipped and our canvas unbent by a party of Spanish marines; but the captain crossed the Alcalde's hand with silver or gold, and there was an end of it. There was an end of my engagement too; for the Yankee weathered me about my salary, seized my chest, my quadrant, even an old silver watch which my mother gave me to make me comfortable, when I first went to sea, and then turned me out of the ship.

"So with nothing except a Mexican dollar in my pocket, but followed by my Newfoundland dog Hector, I found myself on a wet and dusky evening on the great quay of Matanzas, which faces the bay that opens into the Gulf of Florida.

"Low alike in spirit and funds, I had to endure being jostled by negro porters, scowled at by alguazils, ordered about by redcapped and blackbearded Spanish sentries, who were shirtless and tattered, and whose brown uniforms and red worsted epaulettes tainted the very sea-breeze with the odor of garlic and coarse tobacco.

"The sun had set behind clouds as red as blood. The bay was all of a deep brown tint, and the shores were black or purple. I was very sad at heart, and thought it hard that I, a British seaman, should be there an outcast, and all my kit reduced to the clothes on my back, in the very place where the same flag that Pococke and Albemarle hoisted on Havana, had brought all the Don Spaniards on their knees in old King George's time.

"However, that would neither find me supper or a bed. I lost or missed my Newfoundland dog Hector, and in the bitterness of my heart I banned the poor animal for ingratitude in leaving me. Just as I was looking about for a humble posada, where a moiety of my dollar might procure me a bed, a man stumbled against me.

"'Look alive, cucumber shanks,' said he angrily, in English.

"'Do you take me for a negro?' I asked, fiercely.

"'You are grimy enough for any thing,' said he; and after being a night in the Alcalde's lock-up house, I certainly was not the cleanest of men; but now it seemed as if the voice of the stranger was familiar to me. I examined his features.

"'What,' I exclaimed, 'Hislop—Jack Hislop, is this you?'

"''Tis I, Jack Hislop, certainly,' replied the other, who proved to be my old friend, Marc's father; 'but who the deuce are you?'

"'Your old shipmate, Sam Weston, who sailed with you for many a day in the Good Intent of Port Glasgow.'

"For a moment his tongue seemed absent without leave.

"'What, you Sam Weston—English Sam, as we called you—adrift here at Matanzas among these Spanish land-crabs?'

"'Aye, adrift sure enough,' said I, as we shook hands heartily, and then adjourned to a taberna, when I told him all about my quarrel with the Yankee and my present hopeless condition, over a glass of nor'-nor'-west.

"'I have a brig here on the gridiron, repairing, for we lost some of her copper in scraping a rock near the Tortugas shoal. All my crew are of course ashore, and at present I am residing with a friend,' said Hislop; 'but I can find permanent quarters for you till you get a berth. Do you see that craft out there in the bay?'

"'The polacca brig, about a mile off?'

"'Yes. Well, she is consigned to my owner, but was found adrift, abandoned by all her crew except two, about fifty miles off, half way between this and the Salt Key Bank. I have charge of her now, and there you may sleep every night if you choose. What say you to that?'

"'That I thank you, old shipmate, with all my heart, but—but—'

"'What?'

"'I have heard of that polacca, and that the two of her crew who remained on board—'

"'Were dead; yes, true enough. They were found in their berths, one on the starboard, and the other on the port side of the cabin. But what of that? I buried them off the point of Santa Cruz, and there they sleep sound enough, believe me, each with a couple of cold shot at his heels. Here is the key of the companion hatch, and take my revolver with you, for picaros are pretty common hereabout.'

"'Thanks, Hislop,' said I; 'but how am I to get on board?'

"'Scull over to her in the punt that is moored beside the quay. When on board make yourself quite at home, for the agent and I left plenty of grog, beef, biscuits, and tobacco in the cabin. On the morrow I'll overhaul you, in the forenoon watch. Till then, good-by;' and before I could say any thing more, old Jack was gone, and I found myself alone on the stone mole, with the key of the polacca's companion in my hand.

"There seemed nothing for me but to accept the temporary home thus offered; so, in the hope that it might lead to something better, I stepped into the light punt, cast loose the painter, and after a few minutes' vigorous sculling found myself on the lonely deck of the silent polacca.

"Her canvas was unbent; most of the running rigging had also been taken off her and stowed away,—so her tall and taper spars stood nakedly up from the straight flush deck, with a sharp rake aft.

"Thick banks of dark-blue cloud were coming heavily up from the Gulf of Florida. The air was hot and sulphureous; some drops of rain, warm, and broad as doubloons, began to plash upon the deck and to make circles on the sea; while at the far edge of the horizon a narrow streak of bright moonlight, against which the waves were seen chasing each other, glittered through the flying scud, the bottom of which was uplifted in the offing, like a dark curtain that was tattered and rent.

"Then a flash of red lightning, tipping the waves with fire, shone, but to be replaced by instant darkness, and all became black chaos to seaward, save where a pale-green beacon burned steadily at Santa Cruz, on the western side of the bay.

"These signs prognosticated a rough night, but I was glad to perceive that the polacca was well moored at stem and stern; so I unlocked the companion door and descended, not without a shudder, into the dark and cold cabin, where the dead men had been found, and where all was silence and gloom.

"I struck a lucifer match; my teeth chattered; and while groping about for a candle, to make myself comfortable for the night, I began to wish I had remained on shore.

"I found a ship-lantern with the fag-end of a candle in it, and this, when lighted, enabled me to take a survey of the cabin; but I first applied to the jar of right Jamaica which stood on the table; and when looking about, found my eyes wander so incessantly to the side berths in which the dead Spaniards had been found, that at last I almost fancied their pale sharp profiles and rigid figures were visible in the flickering light of the candle.

"'Come,' said I, 'Sam Weston—this will never do! Are you a man, or have you become a child again?'

"Another application—a long one, too—to the rum jar, and I wrapped some bunting, a rug, and a pea-jacket that lay on the locker, round me, and lay down on the cabin floor to sleep; and scarcely had I stretched myself there when the candle flared up, and, after casting some strange kaleidoscopic figures on the beams overhead, through the perforated lantern-top—went out!

"I was in total darkness now, but more awake than ever.

"I felt as if in a great floating coffin, but heard no sound except the gurgle of the sea under the counter, or the splash of the stern warp, as it whipped the water occasionally.

"I kept my eyes closed resolutely, and determined, perforce, to sleep, and not to wake till morning; but still I could not help thinking of the two poor fellows who had died in the berths of that cold, dark, and silent cabin, and been tossed to and fro so long upon the sea before they received Christian burial.

"Which had died first,—the man in the larboard, or he in the starboard berth? Why were they thus abandoned? What had they said to each other? What messages had they sent to wife, to father, or mother? What tale of love to repeat.—of guilt to reveal?—messages given by the dead to the dead, and never delivered!

"These thoughts crowded upon me till I almost imagined the dead men lay there still, and that they might rise and give their last messages to me.

"Then I heard a sound in the forehold. It made my blood curdle! Was it caused by rats? Perhaps they had fed on the dead Spaniards and now were come to take a nibble at me. Rats were bad enough, but ghosts were worse. I took a third and last pull at the Jamaica jar; said my prayers over again, with more than usual devotion, adding thereto the wish that I should soon have a spanking craft of my own.

"Still the idea of the two dead men, with their pale faces and unclosed eyes, would come before me again and again; and I could have groaned but for dread of some similar response that might make my heart wither up and my flesh creep. And creep it soon did; for, just as this horrid idea of an overstrained fancy, fostered by imagination and fashioned out of the silence and darkness, became strongest within me, what were my emotions,—how painful the throbbings of my heart,—on beholding a strange, green ghastly light glimmering about, and playing within each of the side berths.

"While shrinking into a corner of the cabin, with eyeballs straining, I gazed at them alternately with a species of horrid fascination. The two lights were weird, wavering, and pale; they seemed to me as two warnings from the land of spirits, for they played upon the curtains and in the recess of each berth, port, and starboard, in which a dead man had been found. And while these lights shone, there came upon my ear the palpable sound of a heavy breathing and snorting, as from the oppressed chest of some one close by me.

"I placed my hands upon my eyes and on my ears, to shut out these horrid lights and sounds; but when I looked again the former had disappeared, and all was opaque darkness.

"On putting forth my hand to rise, a cry of uncontrollable terror escaped me,—a yell that rang in wild echoes through the silent polacca,—when my fingers came in contact with something icy, and then a cold, clammy, and wet head of hair!

"Then two glistening eyes seemed to peer and to glare into mine!

"In horror and bewilderment, and followed by something, I knew not what, I sprang up the companion, and, half fainting, reached the deck of the polacca. Then I turned to find that the object which had excited so much dismay was no other than my poor dog Hector, which had swam off to the brig in pursuit of me.

"The eyes that in the dark seemed to glare into mine, were his; the icy object, from which my fingers shrunk, was his honest black nose; and what seemed a wet head of hair, was his own curly front; while the lights—the mysterious lambent lights—that had flickered about the dead men's berths, proved to be nothing more than the green beacon on the promontory of Santa Cruz, which shone at times through the two stern windows of the polacca.

"Being moored with the chain cable ahead, and a manilla warp from her port quarter to a buoy astern, she swung to and fro a little with the ebb and flow of the tide; hence the oscillation which caused the moving gleams that terrified me.

"'Ha! ha!' said I, on descending into the cabin, a wiser and a more sleepy man, 'scared by my own dog Hector! I have been as great a gull as ever touched salt water.'

"A fortnight afterwards, I shipped with old Jack Hislop as second mate, and the fifteenth day saw us running before a smart topgallant breeze into the Gulf of Florida, bound with a cargo of rum, sugar, and molasses for the Clyde.

"So that is my ghost yarn. It conveys a moral, does it not? Order them to strike the bell forward. Hislop, call the watch; see how her head bears, and let us turn in."

CHAPTER IX.

A HURRICANE DRIVES US TO THE FORTUNATE ISLES.

Some days after this we passed a carraca, as the Portuguese name those large and round-built vessels which they send to Brazil and the Indies, and which are alike adapted for burden, fighting, and sailing.

On exchanging the bearings—which, when vessels pass each other, are usually chalked on a blackboard hung over the quarter—Weston and Hislop found a considerable difference between the Portuguese and ours; but never doubting that we were correct, they bore on without hailing the carraca, as we passed each other on opposite tacks under a press of sail.

The weather continued cloudy, and an increased difference was found on exchanging the latitude and longitude with another vessel next morning. Then, after an observation at noon. Weston found that for more than fifty hours the Eugenie had been going several miles to the south-east of her due course.

The compass was immediately overhauled by Hislop, who found that the standard of the needle was loose.

On that night there commenced a long course of head winds and foul weather, during which the compass never worked properly, and the captain and mate found, by the first solar observation, that we had drifted so far to leeward as to be somewhere between the parallels of 28° and 28° 35' north.

Tattooed Tom and old Roberts, the man-o'-war's-man, were superstitious enough to give me the entire blame of all this, in consequence of having fired one day at some of Mother Cary's chickens; an action, they averred, which never failed to give the craft of the perpetrator a head wind for the remainder of her voyage—if she ever finished it at all.

"If this foul weather holds for another day," said Weston, as he trod the deck with a sulkiness quite professional under the circumstances, "we shall see land sooner than I wished."

"Land!" I reiterated, brightening at the idea more than he relished.

"Yes, some part of the Canaries—Santa Cruz de la Palma, most likely; but we shall have very rough weather before another sun rises. I know well the signs, Mr. Rodney. Don't you see what is brewing yonder, Hislop?" he said in a low voice to his mate.

"You say just what old Roberts, Tattooed Tom, and I were observing forward," replied Hislop. "We have not all of us seen a hurricane off the west coast of Africa, a tornado in the Windward Isles, and a regular roaring pampero off the Rio de la Plata, without learning something—eh, Captain?"

"I hope not; so remember that this gloomy weather, with the wind lulling away and then coming again in hot gusts with a moaning sound—in my part of England we name it 'the calling of the sea'—are always signs of a coming squall."

As the night closed in, the canvas on the brig was reduced; the royals were struck and the yards sent on deck; the dead lights were shipped on the stern windows; the quarter boat was hoisted within the taffrail, and there lashed hard and fast, for there were increasing tokens of a coming tempest, and ere midnight it came with a vengeance.

The sky at first was all a deep, dark blue, wonderfully dark for that region, and the stars, especially the planets, shone with singular clearness and beauty; but in the north-west quarter of the heavens we could see the coming blast.

From the horizon to the zenith, there arose with terrible rapidity a mighty bank of sable cloud, forming a vast and gloomy arch, at the base of which a pale and phosphorescent light seemed to play upon the heaving sea.

This light brightened and sunk alternately. Now it would shoot downward with a lurid glare, steadily and brilliantly, under the flying vapor, and then it died away with an opal tint.

Sheet lightning, of a pale and ghastly green, extending over ten or twelve points of the horizon, flashed and played upon it. Then we heard the rush of rain, as if a great lake had been falling from a vast height into the sea, and next the roar of the mighty blast; while furrowing up the ocean in its passage, the tempest came swooping down upon us and around us, in a species of whirlwind.

Bravely the Eugenie met it, for her captain and men handled her nobly.

She had her topgallant sails furled, her courses up, the topsails lowered upon the cap, and the reef-tackles close out; but she swayed fearfully when careening beneath the hot breath of the mighty blast, and riding over those black mountains of water, which in fierce succession it impelled toward her. High she went over a sloping sheet of foam one moment, and the next saw her plunging into a deep, black valley of that midnight sea; so deep, that the wind seemed to pass over us, the canvas flapped to the mast, and we only caught its weight and power when rising quickly on the crest of the next mighty roller.

Meanwhile the green-forked lightning flashed so brightly that at times we could see every rope in the vessel, our own blanched and pale faces, as we held on by ringbolts and belaying-pins to save ourselves from being washed overboard by the blinding sheets of mingled foam and rain that deluged the deck, over which the sea was also breaking heavily every instant.

Each time the Eugenie rose in her buoyancy, her decks were half full of water, and the longboat amidships filled so fast that a man with a bucket could scarcely keep it baled.

Following the whirlwind, we went round five times in thirty-five minutes, with the after-yards squared and the head-yards braced sharp up.

Then the black mass of sulphureous cloud in which we were enveloped seemed to ascend, and with the same rapidity with which it approached, passed away into the sky; "the chamber of the thunder," as the Bard of Cona names it, became again clear, blue, and starry, though marked by occasional masses of flying vapor. The rain ceased, and the Eugenie heaved upon a foam-covered sea, over which there passed, from time to time, short squalls, compelling us to lower the double-reefed topsails and run before the wind.

Now a stiff glass of grog was served round to all, and by turns we contrived to get some dry clothing.

In the end of the middle watch—about four o'clock, A.M.—there was suddenly visible, upon our larboard bow, a faint and vapory light that shot upward in the sky, from time to time, like jets of steam.

This singular appearance was high above the horizon, and first caught the anxious eye of Captain Weston.

"Hah! do you see that?" said he to me.

"What is it?"

"The Peak of Adam,—Teneriffe."

"The great volcanic peak in the Fortunate Isles!"

"Old Tenny Reef in the Canaries, we calls it, sir," said Tattooed Tom, who was at the wheel. "It ain't a volcano now; but it can't give over its old trade o' smoking altogether, and blows up steam like a screw propeller, or just as a whale does water through his spiracles."

"Tom means what the Spaniards term the ventas, or nostrils, of the peak, through which the aqueous vapors come with a buzzing sound, and these cause a species of light," said Hislop.

"Well, thank Heaven, though we are far out of our course, that blast has done no more than wet our storm jackets, and scrape some of our paint off."

"We have come out of it uncommon well, sir," said Tom, as he stood with his feet planted firmly apart on the deck, his hard brown hands grasping the wheel, with the helm amidships, as we were still before the wind, and the light of the binnacle flaring upward on his weather-beaten face, with its strange zebra-like stripes,—at least, on so much of his grim visage as the peak of his sou'-wester and a scarlet cravat that was round his throat and jaws permitted us to see. "The last time I was in such a breeze was a pampero off the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, but then we had our foresail split to ribbons, and the ship was canted over on her beam ends almost. The mainsail was blown right out of the men's hands, and flapped in the sky like thunder, while the craft—a five-hundred ton ship she was, and all copper-fastened—was just on the point of capsizing, when with a crash that made our hearts ache, snap went the jibboom and topmasts off at the caps, just as you'd break a 'bacca-pipe at the bowl. She righted after that; but four of our best men were swept away to leeward, and never seen again. And now, Master Rodney, with all your book-learning, or you, Master Hislop, with all yours, can you tell me why such things as tornadoes, hurricanes, pamperos, and the like, are sent to torment poor hard-working fellows such as me?"

"I can," said Hislop, turning his handsome but wet and weather-beaten face to the steersman.

"You can, sir?" reiterated Tom, loudly and incredulously.

"Yes, in four lines. Listen,—

"'Perhaps this storm was sent with healing breath,
From distant climes to scourge disease and death;
'Tis ours on Thine unerring laws to trust;
With Thee, great Lord,—whatever is is just!"

"Faith, you are right, sir," said honest Tom Lambourne, touching his tarry hat in respect to the mate, mingled with that piety which, in his own rugged way, a seaman is never without.

CHAPTER X.

I GO ASHORE.

The wind lulled away into a gentle breeze; reef after reef was shaken out until a full spread of canvas once more covered the spars of the Eugenie; and to repair some trifling damages of the night we crept in shore.

As day brightened through clouds half rain, half mist, and wholly gray or obscure, we saw the land looming high and dark. Beyond it in the distance there was a space of vivid light; in the foreground, surf white as snow was breaking on the beach, and high over all, in mid-air, towered the wondrous Peak of Adam, on the eastern side of which the sun (as yet unrisen to us) was shining brightly when we came to anchor in the harbor of Santa Cruz.

We moored in thirty-three fathoms water, about half a mile from the shore, which in most places is steep, with green and lovely slopes rising high above it. As Captain Weston proposed to weigh next morning, he allowed me to go ashore, but sent with me, to be a guide and companion, Tom Lambourne, the tattooed sailor, who had been frequently before at the Grand Canary, and in whom he reposed great trust.

He gave me a courier-bag containing some provisions, a flask of spirits, and a telescope; and thus provided, old Tom and I, with such emotions of pleasure as two newly-escaped schoolboys might feel, landed on the shore, which seemed to heave, sink, and rise under my feet—for after the late storm I still felt that which is termed "the roll of the ship."

It was in this harbor of Santa Cruz that the famous old English Admiral Blake encountered, and within six hours burned and sunk, seven great Spanish galleons, though they were anchored under the protecting cannon of seven forts and a strong castle, in the walls of which some of his shot were shown imbedded for many years after.

I cast longing eyes to the summit of the mighty Peak of Adam. It seemed to rise sheer from the sea, over which, literally piercing the clouds, it towers to the height of more than twelve thousand feet; but the idea of attempting to climb it within so short a space of time as we had to spend on shore never occurred to me; but what a feat it would have been to relate when I returned to Erlesmere!

The morning was early yet; the sun was barely above the now cloudless horizon; so the shadow of this stupendous cone was cast not only over the whole island, which seems to form merely its base, but to the far horizon, perhaps beyond it; for there are writers who assert that in clear weather Cape Bojadore, that dreary and barren promontory of Africa, ninety miles distant, is visible from its summit.

Did the waves of the sea ever overflow that mighty Peak? At such a question the mind becomes lost in conjecture.

As I am not writing a descriptive book of travels, but merely a plain narrative of my own very recent adventures, I need not detail at great length either the magnitude or the aspect of this great island-mountain of the Atlantic.

From cliffs of dark-brown basalt, against which the ocean pours in vain its foam and fury, we ascended the steep slope of the volcano for a few miles. Then at our feet, as it were, we could see that fertile island, where a perpetual spring seems to smile, and where the fragrant myrtle, the golden orange-trees, and the dark funereal cypress form the mere hedgerows of those plantations where the sugar-cane, the broad-leaved plantain, the luscious Indian fig, the trailing vine, the fragrant cinnamon, and the pretty coffee-bush, were all flourishing in a luxuriance that filled us with wonder and pleasure.

Further off was the boundless sea, of that deep blue which it borrowed from the sky above and mirrored in its depth were the shipping in the roadstead, with their white canvas hanging loose to dry in the sun; the green woods and dark rocks reflected downward, and the old turreted castle of Santa Cruz, with the scarlet and yellow banner of Castile and Leon on its time-worn ramparts.

The summit of the great cone, on the clothed sides of which we never tired of gazing, soon became lost in vapor; far above the dark-green belt of many miles, named the Region of Laurels, and that other belt or forest of timber, where pines, chestnuts, and oaks of vast size mingle their varied foliage together, the mountain seemed all of a violet tint, which paled away into faint blue as its apex mingled and became lost amid the gossamer clouds.

The vines, in luxuriance, bordered the pathway as we ascended, and it is said that for years after the wine has been taken from these isles to England or elsewhere, it always ferments and becomes agitated when the vineries from whence it came are in bloom; but this tale may perhaps be as true as the accounts of those mighty ruins which Pliny avers once covered all the Fortunate Islands, but of which no trace remains now.

Tom Lambourne and I, after a ramble of some hours, found ourselves in a wild and solitary place, where blocks of lava and heaps of yellow-pumice dust were lying among shattered masses of basalt, which were studded with spars and chrystals that glittered as the sunshine streamed through a ravine upon them.

The sides of this ravine were clothed with rich copsewood and little thickets of the retamablanca, which there grows about ten feet high, and is covered with tufts of odoriferous flowers. The distant sea, the waves of which seemed to bask or sleep in the sunshine, closed the perspective of this ravine; and there we could see the Eugenie at anchor, with her snow-white courses loose and her other canvas neatly handed. Being warmed by our walk, we sat down within the mouth of a species of natural grotto, formed by masses of lava and basalt, which in some past age the throes of the volcano had thrown and heaped together. There a clear spring gurgled joyously from a fissure in the rocks; and now, opening the courier-bag, we proceeded to make our breakfast on the viands I had brought from the ship—to wit, Bologna sausage and biscuits, with brandy-and-water.

The air was deliciously clear, and over the brow of the rocky chasm in which we sat, there fell a natural screen of the wild Indian fig and vine creepers, and these shaded us from the increasing heat of the morning sun. All was still there.

We heard only the coo of the great wood-pigeons among the gorgeous foliage, or the sweet notes of the little golden-colored canary birds, as they twittered about us when we scared them from their nests, which they usually build in the barrancas or watercourses, such being the coolest places in that volcanic isle.

CHAPTER XI.

HOW TOM WAS TATTOOED.

My companion was a short and thick-set sailor, about forty years of age, and whose figure was suggestive of great muscular strength; his hair was cut short, but his whiskers were of the most voluminous description, as he was anxious to conceal as much as possible of the strange circles, stripes, and grotesque designs with which his sun-burned face was covered, and which by their form and blackness, imparted a hideous aspect to features that otherwise were rather good and pleasing.

He was an intelligent man, and well read, for the humble class to which he belonged.

"Aye, Master Rodney," said he, on perceiving that I was still surveying him with something of wonder (and his face was a point on which he was particularly sensitive); "you see what a precious figure-head those 'tarnal niggers on the coast of Africa made for me."

"How did this happen, Tom?" said I, filling his drinking-horn.

"About twenty years ago, Master Rodney, I belonged to the Arrow, a smart Liverpool bark of two hundred and twenty tons register. I made many voyages in her to South America, but at last, as bad luck, or my destiny (as men say in the play) would have it, she was chartered for the West Coast of Africa, to trade with the natives, but not in black cattle, for slavery was never our line of business.

"We sailed from the Mersey in June, and early in August found ourselves at the mouth of the Congo river, after a prosperous voyage; but on the night we made the land, a heavy gale came on, and it veered round all the points of the compass in an hour. The sea and sky were as black as they could be, and every thing else was black too, except the breakers on the shore to leeward, and heaven knows they were white enough,—too white and too near to be pleasant.

"Our skipper handled the Arrow well, and she obeyed every touch of the helm as a horse might do its bridle; she was sharply built, but heavily sparred, and no other square-rigged craft upon the sea could beat her on a wind.

"I think I see her yet, Master Rodney, for she was the first vessel I shipped on board of, and hang me if I didn't love her as if she had been my old mother's house, near Deptford docks.

"Her hull was long and low, and sat like a swan in the water, only that she was not white, like a swan, but as black as paint could make her. Aloft, the masts tapered away like fishing-rods, crossed by the square yards, while stays, shrouds, halyards, and hamper, were always taut, as if made of cast-iron; but for all this, she failed to weather that gale off the Congo river. She missed stays and got sternway, so you see, sir, it was soon all over with her after that."

"How—I do not understand?"

"Don't you know what sternway is? What do they teach folks ashore? She was taken aback in the hurricane—the most dangerous thing that can happen to any vessel—a sudden shift of wind threw her on her broadside in the trough of the sea, and with her deck toward the storm, so her hatches were soon beaten in,—all the sooner that she was driven on a coral reef near the Shark's Nose, where the sea was like a sheet of foam around her.

"Five poor fellows were washed away and drowned; but when day broke, and the storm abated a little, the captain, six men and I, got ashore in the long boat just as the poor Arrow began to break up, for we could see the waves beating into her and rending asunder the decks, the inner and outer sheathing, as if they couldn't scatter the cargo fast enough far and wide.

"Well, there we were, shipwrecked in a wild place on the West Coast of Africa, at a part of the Congo river where the mangrove trees grow into the water, and have their lower branches covered with oysters and barnacles.

"We could see high blue hills in the distance when the sun came up from the cane swamps and the wild woods which bordered the river, and we sat on the beach for a while looking ruefully at the wreck, of which little now remained but a few timbers, till the increase of the morning heat drove us for shelter into a grove of oil-palms, and there, Master Rodney, we found tulips, lilies, and hyacinths growing wild, and six times larger than any you ever saw in England.

"Some of our men proposed that we should repair the longboat—she was partly stove in—and put to sea, or creep in her along the coast until we were picked up. We were without carpenter's tools; but the captain had a case of surgical instruments, and the first use we made of the saw was to cut into halves an iron buoy which had floated ashore from the wreck.

"Thus we had two kettles, in which we boiled some seabirds and their eggs, and made a mess whereon we breakfasted. Exhausted by the late storm, the birds were easily knocked down by stones as they sat with drooping wings upon the rocks near the sea; but scarcely was our miserable meal over, when we heard loud yells, and attracted by the smoke of our fire, down came a whole gang of ugly darkies, all Mussolongos wild and naked, with rings or fishbones in their long ears and flat noses,—all streaked with war-paint and all shouting like madmen as they brandished their muskets and spears.

"They fired a volley which stretched on the earth the poor captain and all my shipmates dead or dying. The latter they soon despatched with their knives and spears, and left them to be eaten by wild animals; but on finding that I had escaped their bullets, they supposed that their Fetish had protected me, and so for a time I was safe.

"For a whole week I was forced to help these savages in the work of taking all that remained of the wreck to pieces, though hundreds came from the interior, and they wrought hard, some men using even their filed teeth, to get all the iron and copper bolts, which they prized more than the cargo, sails, or spars, as they could fashion them into weapons and the heads of spears and arrows. But with every thing they could lay their dingy hands upon, myself included, they made off inland, just as a vessel, which proved to be a King's ship, came round the Shark's Nose, and thus, with help, protection, and liberty at hand, I was more than ever a prisoner.

"I was in very low spirits, you may be sure, fearing they only intended to fatten me up, like a stall-fed ox, or a turtle in a tub, before cooking and eating me, or making me a sacrifice to some idol carved of wood; for many times I saw the whole 'tarnal tribe on their knees before the figure head of the Arrow, which had been washed ashore, and was pronounced to be a great Fetish.

"For three days we travelled among deep and slimy-green swamps, thick wild woods, and immense pathless canebrakes, where in an hour I saw more tree-leopards and zebras, howling jackals and antelopes, grinning monkeys and chattering paroquets, than ever were seen in all the shows at Greenwich fair, till we arrived at a kraal of a hundred huts, for all the world like pigsties, surrounded by a high palisade of bamboos, and situated in a forest of palms.

"I was now the slave of a chief, whose rigging was rather queer, for it consisted only of a deep fringe, or kilt, of unplaited grass, a necklace of lion's teeth and fish-bones, and a cap of leopard's skin, on which towered a plume of feathers, above a row of human teeth and sea-shells.

"Being rope-ended by an inch-and-half colt—aye, or keelhauled once a day from the foreyardarm—were jokes when compared to all this African nigger made me undergo, while working for him under a blazing sun, in pestilent swamps, where the very air choked me, as if I had been in a ship with a foul hold, for the slime in these canebrakes was as thick as tar and black as old bilge-water.

"One day he was soothing his excitement by beating me with a heavy bamboo, till my back and arms were covered with blood. Close by were a whole gang of the tribe squatted under a palm-tree, smoking hubble-bubbles made of nut shells, looking on and laughing at the torture was undergoing; but in the midst of their sport we heard a roar that made our hearts tremble, and all ready to scamper off.

"There was a mighty crashing and swaying of the wild canes in the adjacent brake, and then a great square-headed and tawny-haired lion, as large as a good-sized pony, and with a tuft like a swab at the end of his switching tail, came plunging forward, with eyes flashing and his red mouth open.

"Souse as a sheet anchor goes into the sea, he sprang upon my owner, and in the time I take to turn this quid, Master Rodney, that troublesome personage was borne off into the jungle a bruised mass of bones and blood, dangling in his jaws.

"The whole thing passed like a flash of lightning!

"At first the niggers were about to pursue the lion, but upon reflection they thought it less dangerous to fall upon me and kill me outright, saying that my stupid cries had brought the wild animal upon them. Then an old fellow, whose wool had become white with age, who was coiled up in the root of a tree, where he generally berthed himself, and who was considered a wise man, came forward and demanded their attention. He had been a brave fellow in his time, for he wore a row of human teeth at his neck, all strung on a lanyard, with a bit of an old quart bottle which he had found upon the beach, and wore as a 'great medicine,' or order of the Garter perhaps. He saved me by saying, in their outlandish gibberish, that I was evidently under the protection of the great Fetish, in honor of whom I should be made like themselves, and handsomely tattooed.

"I might as well have hallooed to the wind in a tearing pampero or a stiff reef-topsail breeze, Master Rodney, as have attempted to oppose this piece of Congo kindness. In a minute I was hove down under the nasty black paws of five-and-forty howling and jabbering niggers, all smearing me with palm-oil out of calabashes and old gallipots, and they persisted in rubbing it into me till all my skin was nearly peeled off.

"Then the old Fetish-man who lived in the root of the tree, after making three summersets and uttering six howls, ornamented all my face, hands, and arms in this fashion, using a kind of knife, which he dipped from time to time in some black stuff that he carried in a cocoanut-shell. In ten minutes I was all over serpents and circles, stripes, pothooks and hangers!

"It went to my heart to have my beauty spoiled, but I was far past making any opposition, and so I have had to go through life in all weathers, with a face like the clown's in a pantomime.

"They made me so like a nigger that they scarcely knew me from one of themselves. This so favored my escape, that I soon found an opportunity of giving the Mussolongos the slip in the night, and made a shift, after many a break-heart adventure, to reach a British settlement.

"I remember well when, from a wild forest, I saw before me a long blue ridge. It was the Sierra Leona—or the Mountain of the Lioness, as the niggers thereabout call it—the highest in North or South Guinea. Glad was I, Master Rodney, to see the flag of Old England waving on the fort and in the bay. There was a sloop of war at anchor there, the Active; and when she fired the evening gun you would have thought a whole fleet was saluting, there are so many echoing caves and dens in the mountains and along the shore.

"I soon made my way home to England, but was more laughed at than pitied for my queer figure-head, which frightened some folks, my old mother especially, for she banged the door right in my face, and called for the police when I went to her old bunk at Deptford.

"However, I got used to all that sort of thing; but as folks are so ill-bred and uncharitable ashore, I have left Deptford forever, and keep always afloat, to be out of harm's way. So that's the yarn of how I became tattooed, Master Rodney."

"Finish the brandy-and-water, Tom," said I; "and now we shall make a start for the brig—noon is past, and the atmosphere cooler than it was."

"Your very good health. Next time we splice the main-brace ashore, I hope it will be in Cuba," said Tom, finishing the contents of my flask, and then becoming so jovial that he broke at once into an old sea-song, the last two verses of which were somewhat to this purpose:

"I learned to splice, to reef, and clew,
To drink my grog with the best of the crew,
            And tell a merry story;
And though I wasn't very big,
Aloft I'd climb; nor care a fig
To stand by my gun, or dance a jig,
            And all for Britain's glory!

"When home I steered again, I found
My poor old mother run aground,
            And doleful was her story;
She had been cheated by a lawyer elf,
Who married her for her old dad's pelf,
But spent it all, then hanged himself.
            Hooray for Britain's glory."

Just as Tom concluded this remarkable ditty, with tones that made the volcanic grotto echo to "glory," a voice that made us start, exclaimed close by us—

"Bueno! Ha! ha! Los Inglesos borrachios!"

On hearing chis impertinent reflection on our sobriety, we both looked up and saw—what the next chapter will tell you.

CHAPTER XII.

DANGEROUS COMPANY.

Behind us stood eight fellows, five of whom had muskets, and three heavy bludgeons. They were apparently Spanish seafaring men; but whether contrabandistas of the lowest class, a portion of a slaver's crew, or merely drunken brawlers, we could not at first determine. However, they soon made us aware that robbery was their object, and that they were no way averse to a little homicide also, if we interfered with their plans in the least.

Some had their coarse, but glossy and intensely black hair, confined by nets or cauls; others had only Barcelona handkerchiefs round their heads. The spots of blood upon these, together with several patches and discolored eyes, showed us that these modern Iberians had been fighting among themselves. Their attire, which consisted only of red or blue shirts and dirty canvas trousers, was rather dilapidated; but something of the picturesque was imparted to it by the sashes of glaring red and yellow worsted which girt their waists, and in which they had long knives stuck conspicuously.

By their bearing, their dark glaring eyes, their muscular figures, their bare arms, chests, and feet, their bronzed, sallow, and ugly visages,—and more than all, by their rags, which were redolent of garlic and coarse tobacco, it was evident that we had fallen into unpleasant society. Several had silver rings in their ears, and on the bare chest of one, I saw a crucifix marked either with ink or gunpowder.

These fellows had come from the inner or back part of the cavern, where they had evidently been observing us for some time before they so suddenly appeared.

"Acqu'ardiente," said one, approvingly, as he applied his fierce hooked nose to my empty flask, and then placed it in his pocket. A second snatched away my courier-bag, and a third appropriated my telescope, which he stuck in his sash.

Taking up a stone which lay at hand, I was about to hurl it at the head of the latter when the muzzle of a cocked musket pointed to my breast, and the butt of another applied roughly to my back, admonished me that discretion was the better part of valor.

"El page de escoba—ha, ha!" (the cabin boy), said one contemptuously, as he examined my attire—a smart blue jacket, with gilt anchor buttons, which Hislop had given me. My porte-monnaie, which contained only a few shillings, and my gold watch, a present given to me by my mother when I went to Eton, were soon taken from me. As for poor Tom, he possessed only a brass tobacco-box, a short black pipe, and one shilling and sixpence; yet he was speedily deprived of them by one who seemed to be the leader of the gang.

"You rascally Jack Spaniard!" said Tom, shaking his clenched fist in the robber's face, "if ever I haul alongside of you elsewhere, look out for squalls!"

At this they all laughed; and seizing us by the arms, dragged us into the back part of the cavern or fissure in the rocks, leaving one of their number, armed with a musket, as sentinel, at the entrance, where he lit a paper cigar, and stretching himself on the grassy bank, placed his hands under his head, and proceeded leisurely to smoke in the sunshine.

These proceedings filled us with great alarm; now that they had robbed us of everything save our clothes, what could their object be?

One of them produced two pieces of rope, with which our hands were tied. Dragged by some, and receiving severe blows and bruises from the clenched hands and musket-butts of others—accompanied by the imprecations and coarse laughter of all—we were conveyed through a low-roofed grotto, or natural gallery in the rocks, the echoes of which repeated their voices with a thousand reverberations.

The only light here was by the reflection of the sunshine at the entrance, where the basalt was coated by a white substance, the débris of some old volcanic eruption; for the slope, up which we had been ascending all the morning, formed a portion of the great Peak. And now we became sensible of a strange sound and a strange odor pervading all the place.

Through a rent in the rocky roof of the grotto there fell a clear bright stream of sunlight, that revealed the terrors of the place toward which our captors dragged us.

On one side there yawned a vast black fissure or chasm in the sombre masses of glassy obsidian and red blocks of lava which composed the floor of that horrid cavern; and from this fissure there ascended, and doubtless still ascends at times, a hot sulphureous steam, which rendered breathing difficult, and induced an inclination to sneeze.

From the depth of that hideous chasm, the profundity of which no mortal eye could measure, and no human being could contemplate without awe and terror, we heard a strange, buzzing sound, as if from the bowels of the inner earth, far—heaven alone knew how far—down below.

In fact, we were upon the verge of one of those natural spiracles which the natives term "the Nostrils," or avenues through which the hot vapors of that tremendous Piton ascend; and the buzzing sound that made our hearts shrink, we scarcely knew why, was caused by some volcanic throe at the bottom of the mountain, whose base is many a mile below the waters of the sea.

This fissure was almost twelve feet broad, and across it there lay a plank, forming a species of bridge.

Two of our captors crossed, and then ordered us to follow them.

I obeyed like one in a dream; but my heart was chilled by a terror so deadly that I had no power or thought of resistance. My first fear was that the plank might be trundled from under our feet, and that we would be launched into the black abyss below; but such was not the object of these Spaniards, as Tom and I were permitted to pass in safety.

The remainder of the thieves followed, and we found ourselves in another grotto, the roof of which was covered by stalactites, that glittered like gothic pendants of alabaster in the light that fell from the upper fissure, which formed a natural window, and through it we could see the thin white steam ascending and curling in the sunshine.

Now, supposing that they had us in perfect security, our captors proceeded to hold a consultation as to what they should do with us; and imagining that we were both ignorant of their language, or what is more probable, caring little whether we knew it or not, they canvassed the most terrible resolutions with perfect coolness and freedom of speech.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE VENTANA.

Tom Lambourne's face wore somewhat of a blanched hue, through which the stripes of his tattooing seemed blacker than ever. A severe cut on his forehead, from which the blood was oozing, did not add to his personal appearance. He scarcely knew a word of Spanish, but seemed instinctively aware that we had fallen into hands nearly as dangerous as his former acquaintances the Mussolongos, for he said,—

"Master Rodney, I fear we have run our last knot off the log-line, and our sand-glass won't run again, unless heaven gives the order to turn. Yet, if I could but get one of these muskets, to have a shot at the rascally cargo-puddlers before it's all over with us, I would be content. As it is, I am all over blood from clew to ear-ring, and they have wellnigh choked me by shaking a quid down my throat."

"Hush, Tom," said I, for I was listening to a discussion which took place among the Spaniards.

"Do you understand their lingo?"

"A little."

"What are they saying?" he asked, with growing interest.

"I will tell you immediately."

But as they all spoke at once in the sonorous Spanish of the Catalonian coast, mingled with obscure slang and nautical phrases, some time elapsed before I could understand them. Meanwhile, how terrible were the thoughts that filled my mind.

If these fellows murdered and cast us into that awful chasm, the deed would never be known; until the day of doom, our fate and our remains could no more be traced than the smoke that melts into the sky. Even if we escaped unhurt, but were detained so long that the brig sailed without us, what would be our condition, penniless, forlorn, and unknown, in that foreign island? But this was a minor evil.

Then I burned to revenge the lawless treatment to which we were subjected, and the blows and bruises their cowardly hands had dealt so freely.

"Companeros," I heard one say, "one of these fellows is tattooed, and would sell very well to the South American planters with the rest that will soon be under hatches. He is worth keeping, if he cannot ransom himself; as for the other——"

"El muchaco!" (the boy) said they, glancing at me.

"Si—el page de escoba—if he is allowed to return, a complaint may find its way to the Senor Alcalde, whose alguazils may come and borrow our topsails and anchor for a time; whereas, if we heave him where the others went yesterday——"

"Where?"

"Into the ventana, hombre!" was the fierce response; "and then no more will be heard of the affair."

My blood grew cold at these words, and I scarcely knew what followed, till the first man who spoke came forward and addressed us.

"Inglesos," said he, "we have decided that one of you, after swearing not to reveal our present hiding-place, shall return within four hours, bearing a fitting ransom for both, else, so surely as the clock strikes, he who is left behind goes into the ventana of the mountain, where never did the longest deep-sea line find a bottom—not that I suppose any man was ever ass enough to try. Santos! do you hear?" he added, striking his musket-butt sharply on the rocks, when perceiving that Tom was ignorant of all he said, and that I was stupefied by it.

"Si, senor," said I, and translated it to Tom Lambourne, who twirled his tarry hat on his fore-finger, stuck his quid in his cheek, slapped his thigh vigorously, and gave other nautical manifestations of extreme surprise and discomposure.

"Ransom, Master Rodney?" he reiterated; "in the name of old Davy, who would ransom a poor Jack like me?"

"The whole crew would table their month's wages on the capstan head—aye, in a moment, Tom," I replied with confidence.

"I'm sure they would, and the Captain and Master Hislop, too, for the matter o' that, rather than poor shipmates should come to harm; but——"

"As for me," said I, with growing confidence, "I am, as you said, senores, only the page de escoba."

"Bah!" said the Spaniard, grinning, and showing a row of sharp white teeth, under a dirty and sable moustache; "though I said so, I knew better. A shipboy seldom has a watch like this," he added, displaying my gold repeater. "Now, we shall keep you; and if this seaman—after he has first sworn that he will not betray us—does not return to us here with five hundred dollars within two hours after sunset, par el"—(here he made a dreadful vow in Spanish), "we will toss you like a dead dog into the ventana of the mountain. Look down, and see what a journey is before you," he added, with a diabolical smile, as he dragged me to the beetling edge of the chasm, and forced me to look into it.

Our eyes had now become so accustomed to the light of the gallery or grotto, that the rays of sunshine falling through the fissure above us were sufficient to disclose a portion of the vast profundity on the verge of which we stood.

From the earth's womb, far, far down below, there came upward a choking steam, with a hollow buzzing sound, which deepened at times to a rumble.

This steam or mist rose and fell on the currents of air; sometimes it sank so low that nothing but a black and dreary void met the eye, which ached in attempting to pierce it. Anon the steam would rise in spiral curls from that gloomy bed below, where doubtless the fires of the now almost extinct volcano seethe their embers in the waves of the ocean.

The words "have mercy," were on my lips, but I could not utter them; nor would they have availed me. Ignorant of what the ruffian said, and believing he was about to thrust me in, poor Tom Lambourne, in the fulness of his heart, uttered a howl of dismay; and at that moment the sentinel, whom the gang had left at the entrance to their lurking-place, came hurriedly in, with alarm expressed in his glittering eyes, and a finger placed, as a warning, on his hairy lip.

"Para! Paz! Silenzio!" (hold—peace—silence), he exclaimed, and added that four officers from the garrison of Santa Cruz had dismounted in the ravine, unbitted their horses, and had seated themselves under a tree to smoke.

This information was received by the band with oaths and mutterings of impatience; and by us with mingled emotions of hope and agony—hope that they might be the means of our escape or rescue; and agony to know that such means were so near, and yet could avail us nothing; for on the slightest sound being made by either of us, there were the Albacete knives of our captors on one hand, and the ventana—that awful ventana—on the other, to insure forever the silence and oblivion of the grave.

Not the least of my sufferings was from the cord which secured my wrists. Already the skin was swollen, cut, and bleeding in consequence of the tightness with which these wretches had bound me.