his face, and did all we could for him, he never spoke afterwards, and died in half an hour.

Four gentlemanly-looking men were sitting at table, lashed to their chairs, pale and trembling, while six of the most ruffian-looking scoundrels I ever beheld stood on the opposite side of the table in a row fronting us, with the light from the lamps shining full on them. Three of them were small but very square mulattoes; one was a South American Indian, with the square high-boned visage and long, lank, black glossy hair of his caste. These four had no clothing besides their trousers, and stood with their arms folded, in all the calmness of desperate men caught in the very fact of some horrible atrocity, which they knew shut out every hope of mercy. The two others were white Frenchmen, tall, bushy-whiskered, sallow desperadoes, but still, wonderful to relate, with, if I may so speak, the manners of gentlemen. One of them squinted, and had a hare-lip, which gave him a horrible expression. They were dressed in white trousers and shirts, yellow silk sashes round their waists, and a sort of blue uniform jackets, blue Gascon caps, with the peaks, from each of which depended a large bullion tassel, hanging down on one side of their heads. The whole party had apparently made up their minds that resistance was vain, for their pistols and cutlasses, some of them bloody, had all been laid on the table, with the butts and handles towards us, contrasting horribly with the glittering equipage of steel, and crystal, and silver things, on the snow-white damask tablecloth. They were immediately seized and ironed, to which they submitted in silence. We next released the passengers, and were overpowered with thanks, one dancing, one crying, one laughing, and another praying. But, merciful Heaven! what an object met our eyes! Drawing aside the curtain that concealed a sofa fitted into a recess, there lay, more dead than alive, a tall and most

beautiful girl, her head resting on her arm, her clothes disordered and torn, blood on her bosom, and foam on her mouth, with her long dark hair loose and dishevelled, and covering the upper part of her deadly pale face, through which her wild sparkling black eyes, protruding from their sockets, glanced and glared with the fire of a maniac's, while her blue lips kept gibbering an incoherent prayer one moment, and the next imploring mercy, as if she had still been in the hands of those who knew not the name; and anon, a low hysterical laugh made our very blood freeze in our bosoms, which soon ended in a long dismal yell, as she rolled off the couch upon the hard deck, and lay in a dead faint.

Alas the day!—a maniac she was from that hour. She was the only daughter of the murdered master of the ship, and never awoke, in her unclouded reason, to the fearful consciousness of her own dishonour and her parent's death.

The Torch captured the schooner, and we left the privateer's men at Barbadoes to meet their reward, and several of the merchant sailors were turned over to the guardship, to prove the facts in the first instance, and to serve his Majesty as impressed men in the second, but scrimp measure of justice to the poor ship's crew.

Anchored at Carlisle Bay, Barbadoes. Town seemed built of cards-black faces-showy dresses of the negroes

-dined at Mr. C's-capital dinner-little breezemill at the end of the room, that pumped a solution of salpetre and water into a trough of tin, perforated with small holes, below which, and exposed to the breeze, were ranged the wine and liqueurs, all in cotton bags; the water then flowed into a well, where the pump was stepped, and thus was again pumped up and kept circulating.

Landed the artillery, the soldiers, officers, and the Spanish Canon-discharged the whole battery.

Next morning, weighed at day-dawn, with the trade for Jamaica, and soon lost sight of the bright blue waters of Carlisle Bay, and the smiling fields and tall cocoanut trees of the beautiful island. In a week after we arrived off the east end of Jamaica; and that same evening, in obedience to the orders of the admiral on the windward Island station, we hove to in Bull Bay, in order to land despatches, and secure our tithe of the crews of the merchantvessels bound for Kingston, and the ports to leeward, as they passed us. We had fallen in with a pilot canoe of Morant Bay with four negroes on board, who requested us to hoist in their boat, and take them all on board, as the pilot schooner to which they belonged had that morning bore up for Kingston, and left instructions to them to follow her in the first vessel appearing afterwards. We did so, and now, as it was getting dark, the captain came up to Mr. Treenail.

"Why, Mr. Treenail, I think we had better heave to for the night, and in this case I shall want you to go in the cutter to Port Royal to deliver the despatches on board the flag-ship.

"I don't think the admiral will be at Port Royal, sir," responded the lieutenant; “and, if I might suggest, those black chaps have offered to take me ashore here on the Palisadoes, a narrow spit of land, not above one hundred yards across, that divides the harbour from the ocean, and to haul the canoe across, and take me to the agent's house in Kingston, who will doubtless frank me up to the pen where the admiral resides, and I shall thus deliver the letters, and be back again by day-dawn."

"Not a bad plan," said old Deadeye; "put it in execution, and I will go below and get the despatches immediately."

The canoe was once more hoisted out; the three black

fellows, the pilot of the ship continuing on board, jumped into her alongside.

"Had you not better take a couple of hands with you, Mr. Treenail?" said the skipper.

"Why, no, sir, I don't think I shall want them; but if you will spare me Mr. Cringle I will be obliged, in case I want any help."

We shoved off, and as the glowing sun dipped under Portland Point, as the tongue of land that runs out about four miles to the southward, on the western side of Port Royal harbour, is called, we arrived within a hundred yards of the Palisadoes. The surf, at the particular spot we steered for, did not break on the shore in a rolling curling wave, as it usually does, but smoothed away under the lee of a small sandy promontory that ran out into the sea, about half a cable's length to windward, and then slid up the smooth white sand without breaking, in a deep clear green swell, for the space of twenty yards, gradually shoaling, the colour becoming lighter and lighter until it frothed away in a shallow white fringe, that buzzed as it receded back into the deep green sea, until it was again propelled forward by the succeeding billow.

"I say, friend B'ungo, how shall we manage? You don't mean to swamp us in a shove through that surf, do you?" said Mr. Treenail.

"No fear, massa, if you and toder leetle man-of-war buccra only keep dem seat when we rise on de crest of de swell dere."

We sat quiet enough. Treenail was coolness itself, and I aped him as well as I could. The loud murmur, increasing to a roar, of the sea, was trying enough as we approached, buoyed on the last long undulation.

"Now sit still, massa, bote."

We sank down into the trough, and presently were hove forwards with a smooth sliding motion up on the beach

until grit, grit, we stranded on the cream-coloured sand, high and dry.

"Now, jomp, massa, jomp."

We leapt with all our strength, and thereby toppled down on our noses; the sea receded, and before the next billow approached we had run the canoe twenty yards beyond high-water mark.

It was the work of a very few minutes to haul the canoe across the sand-bank, and to launch it once more in the placid waters of the harbour of Kingston. We pulled across towards the town, until we landed at the bottom of Hanover Street; the lights from the cabin windows of the merchantmen glimmering as we passed, and the town only discernible from a solitary sparkle here and there. But the contrast when we landed was very striking. We had come through the darkness of the night in comparative quietness; and in two hours from the time we had left the old Torch, we were transferred from her orderly deck to the bustle of a crowded town.

One of our crew undertook to be the guide to the agent's house. We arrived before it. It was a large mansion, and we could see lights glimmering in the ground-floor; but it was gaily lit up aloft. The house itself stood back about twenty feet from the street, from which it was separated by an iron railing.

We knocked at the outer gate, but no one answered. At length our black guide found out a bell-pull, and presently the clang of a bell resounded throughout the mansion. Still no one answered. I pushed against the door, and found it was open, and Mr. Treenail and myself immediately ascended a flight of six marble steps, and stood in the lower piazza, with the hall, or vestibule, before us. We entered. A very well-dressed brown woman, who was sitting at her work at a small table, along with two