Chapter XVII.

Where there's a Will there's a Way--Mucius Scævola--What's to be done?--Brutus Torquatus and Peter the Great--Australia, Botany Bay, and the Flying Dutchman--New Guinea and the Buccaneer--Vancouver's Island--White Skins--Danger of Landing on a Wave--Hanged or Drowned--Route to Happiness--Omens.

The old saw, Where there's a will there's a way, means--if it means anything--that a great deal may be effected by energy. A man without energy is a helpless character, and invariably lags behind his fellow mortals in the stream of life; like a cork in an eddy, he is rebuffed here and jostled there, and goes on travelling in a circle to the end of the chapter. Not so the man of action; no jostling thwarts him, no rebuffs retard him; he breaks through all sorts of obstacles, and floats along with the current.

Such a man was Becker. Though surrounded with dangers, and harassed by the elements, almost alone he had converted a wilderness into fertile fields; he pursued the track that his judgment suggested, and followed it up with invincible resolution; he manfully resisted the severest trials, and cheerfully bore the heaviest burdens; his reliance on Truth or Virtue and on God were unfaltering; but had he provided for every emergency? Is mortal power capable of overcoming every difficulty? We shall see.

A day or two after the entertainment at Rockhouse, Becker whispered to the Pilot--

"Willis, take a rifle, and come along with me; I have something to say to you."

They walked a quarter of an hour or so without uttering a word, when Willis broke the silence.

"You seem sad, Mr. Becker."

"Yes, Willis, I am almost distracted."

"Still, you seem well enough; you are as hale and hearty as if you had just been keel-hauled and got a new rig."

"It is not my body that is suffering, Willis; it is my mind."

"Whatever is the matter?"

"Willis, my wife is dying."

And so it was. For a long period Becker's wife had been a prey to racking pains, which, so to speak, she hid from herself, the better to conceal them from others, just as if suffering had been a crime. After having resisted for fourteen years the afflictions of exile, long and perilous expeditions, nights passed under tents, humid winters and fierce burning summers, her health had, at length, succumbed, not all at once, like fabrics sapped by gunpowder, but little by little, like those that are demolished piecemeal with the pickaxe of the workman. Day by day she grew more and more feeble, without those who were constantly by her side observing the insidious workings of disease. Like Mucius Scaevola, who held his hands in a burning brazier without uttering a word, she so effectually hid her griefs within the recesses of her own bosom, that no one even suspected her illness.

"But, Mr. Becker," said Willis, "I saw your wife this morning, and she seemed as well as usual."

"Yes, seemed, Willis, that is true enough; not to give us pain, she has concealed her illness from us all. It is only within the last twelve hours that I accidentally discovered that she has been long laboring under some fearful malady."

"Do you know the nature of the disease?"

"No, that I have no means of ascertaining; it may be a distinct form of disease, or it may be a complication of disorders, which I know not."

"It would not signify about the name if we only knew a remedy."

"True; but I dread some malady of a cancerous type, which could not be eradicated without surgical skill."

"I wish I had been born a doctor instead of a pilot," sighed Willis.

"I cannot see her perish before my eyes."

"Certainly not, Mr. Becker; it would never do to allow a ship to sink if she can be saved."

"Well, what is to be done?"

"There lies the difficulty; had it been a question of anything that floats on the water, I might have suggested a remedy; but, in this case, I am fairly run aground."

"I know too well what must be done, Willis. In cases of ordinary maladies, with care and due precaution, proper nourishment and time, Nature will generally effect a cure."

"Nature has no diploma, but she accomplishes more cures than those that have."

"Unfortunately this is not a malady that can be cured by such means; and, unless its progress be checked in time, it may ultimately assume a form that will render a cure impossible."

"Is death, then, inevitable?"

"A patient may retain a languishing life under such circumstances for some time; but if the disease be cancer, a cure is hopeless without instruments and scientific skill."

"I thought I was the only wretched being in the colony," said Willis, sighing, "but I find I am not alone."

"There are no hopes of the Nelson, are there?" inquired Becker.

"None now; for some time Mr. Wolston and yourself almost persuaded me that she had escaped; but had she reached the Cape, we should have heard of her ere now."

"The probabilities of another vessel touching here are small, are they not?"

"We are not in the direct track to anywhere; therefore, unless a ship has been driven out of her course by a gale, there is not a chance."

"Unfortunate that I am!" exclaimed Becker, covering his face with his hands. "Brutus, Manlius Torquatus, and Peter the Great, condemned their sons to death, but they were guilty; still the sacrifice must be made."

Here Willis stared aghast, and began to fear Becker's intellect had been affected by his troubles.

"I do not exactly understand you, Mr. Becker."

"Two of my sons have gone on before us; they were to embark in the canoe for Shark's Island, and wait for us there. I must have courage, and you also, Willis."

This exordium did not tend to alter the Pilot's impression. They walked on for some time in silence towards the coast.

"Do you know the latitude and longitude of this coast, Willis?"

"Good!" thought the Pilot, "he has changed the subject."

"Yes; we are in the South Sea, and no great distance from the line."

"What continent is nearest us?"

"We cannot be very far off the south coast of New Holland, or, as it is named in some charts, Australia. You know that the Nelson hailed from Botany Bay, or Sydney, as the convict colony which the English Government has just founded there is called."

"How far do you suppose we are from Sydney?"

"Well, I should say, with a fair wind and a smart craft, Sydney is not above two months' sail, if so much."

"Is the coast inhabited?"

"Yes."

"What character do the inhabitants bear?"

"According to the Dutch sailors, who have been on the coast, they are the most plundering and lubberly set of rascals to be met with anywhere."

"They are not acquainted with the use of fire-arms, are they?"

"No not of fire-arms; but they have a machine of their own that they call a waddy, or something of that sort, which they throw like a harpoon; but the thing takes a twist in the air, and strikes behind them."

"Is the coast accessible?"

"No; it is fringed with reefs, and, in some places, the surf runs for miles out to sea."

"The navigation along shore, then, is extremely perilous?"

"Whatever can he be driving at?" thought Willis.

"Yes; such a lee shore in a gale would terrify the Flying Dutchman himself."

Here Becker shook his head dolefully, and they walked on a little further in silence.

"What islands do you suppose are nearest us, Willis?"

"I should say we are in or near the group marked in the chart Papuasia; beyond them is the territory of New Guinea, and a point to nor'ard are a whole nest of islands discovered by the celebrated buccaneer, Dampiere."

"And their inhabitants?"

"Oh, some of them are pretty fair; but, taking them in the lump, they are a bad lot."

"The islands to the west are those discovered by Cook, Vancouver, and Bougainville, are they not?"

"They are marked Polynesia in the charts."

"Do you know of any European settlements on these islands?"

"Well, there is a fort of the Hudson's Bay Company on Vancouver's Island, but that is a long way north; and, I believe, a factory has recently been anchored in New Zealand, but that is a long way south."

"And what are the principal islands between?"

"There is New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Friendly Islands, the Societies' Islands, the Marquesas, Tahite, and the Pelew Islands; but each navigator gives them a new name, so that it is hard to say which is which; all you can do is to say that there is an island in latitude so and so and longitude so and so, but the name is almost out of the question."

"And the natives?"

"Some of them are remarkably tame, and trade freely with strangers; but others have strongly marked cannibal propensities, and dote upon a white-skin feast when they can get one."

Here Becker shuddered, and uttered an exclamation of horror.

"That would be a terrible fate, Willis."

"Whatever can he mean?" thought the Pilot.

"Willis, to reach Europe from here, what course do you think would be best?"

"Now I think I shall fix him at last," said the Pilot, levelling his rifle at an imaginary bird.

"You will only waste gunpowder," said Becker; "I see nothing."

"You asked me just now what course I should steer for Europe, did you not?"

"Yes."

"Well, the most direct course would be to make the Straits of Macassar, and then steer for Java."

"And when there?"

"You would then be fifteen or sixteen hundred leagues from the Cape."

"So much?"

"Yes, that is about the distance in a straight line across the Indian Ocean. When at the Cape, another fifteen days' sail will bring you to the line; five or six weeks after that St. Helena will heave in sight; then you fall in with the Island of Ascension; leaving which a week or two will bring you to the Straits of Gibraltar, where you get the first glimpse of Europe. But if you are bound for England, your daughter may commence working a pair of slippers for you; they will be ready by the time you get there."

They had now arrived at the point of the Jackal River where the pinnace was moored.

"What do you think of this boat?" inquired Becker.

"The pinnace is well enough for fair weather; but it is not the sort of craft I should like to command in a storm at sea."

"So that to venture to sea in it would be to incur imminent danger?"

"There is no denying that, Mr. Becker; if she shipped a moderately heavy sea, down she must go to the bottom, like a four and twenty pound shot; and if she should spring a leak, you cannot land to put her to rights; the waves are by no means solid."

"Just as I thought!" exclaimed Becker; "I was right in judging that it would be a sacrifice. It is almost certain death; but they must go."

"Where?" inquired Willis.

"To Europe if need be, if God in his mercy spares the pinnace."

"What for?"

"I have the means of purchasing surgical skill, and I must use all the sacrifices at my command to obtain it."

"Avast heaving, Mr. Becker," cried Willis; "now I understand; the thing is as clear as the tackle of the best bower, and when a resolution is once formed, nothing like paying it out at the word of command. When shall we start?"

"I am not talking of either you or myself, Willis."

"Of whom then, may I ask?"

"Fritz and Jack. Fritz knows something of navigation; and if they succeed, they will have saved their mother; if they perish, they will have died to save her."

"Fritz, as you say, does know something of navigation, particularly as regards coasting; but here you have a pilot, accustomed to salt water, quite handy, why not engage him also?"

"Willis, you have yourself said that the undertaking is perilous in the extreme, and your life is not bound up like theirs in that of their mother."

"True; but do you not see that I am sick of dry land, and that I am getting rusty for the want of a little sea air?"

"I felt ashamed to ask you to share in so desperate an enterprise, otherwise I would have proposed it to you, Willis."

"But you might have seen that I was growing thin, absolutely pining away, and drying up on land. There are ducks that can live without water, but I am not one of them."

"Am I, then, to understand that you offer to risk your life in this forlorn hope?"

"Certainly, Mr. Becker; a man condemned to be hanged, running the risk of being drowned is no great sacrifice."

"Willis, I accept your offer, to share in the dangers of this enterprise, most gratefully. I thank you in the name of my sons and of their mother, and trust that God may enable me to recompense you for your devotion to them and to myself."

"You forget," added Willis, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, that he ascribed to a grain of dust, "you forget that I was on the point of venturing out to sea in the canoe, had you yourself and Mr. Wolston not prevented me. There is work to be done, I admit; and it is not impossible to cross even the Indian Ocean in the pinnace. But we may find a doctor, perhaps, at some of the settlements--for instance, at Manilla, in the Philippines."

"That is not to be hoped for, Willis; there is, probably, only one skilful medical man in each colony, and he will be prevented leaving by Government engagements."

"True; then we had better hoist sail for Europe direct, and trust to falling in with a ship now and then."

"Alas!" sighed Becker, "in a path so wide as the ocean, it would be unwise to trust to such chances; you will have to rely, I fear, entirely upon the resources of the pinnace alone."

"Well, I dare say, though we may have to put up with half rations, we shall not starve on the voyage, at all events."

They had unmoored the pinnace, and were on their way to Shark's Island.

"You are about to announce to your sons their departure?" said Willis, inquiringly.

"Yes; but my heart almost fails me."

"The iron must be struck while it is hot. Will you commission me to whisper a few words in their ear?"

"Thanks, Willis; but what right have I to expect courage from them, if I exhibit weakness myself? No, my friend, I may shed tears in your presence, but not before them."

"A man ought never to allow his feelings to get the better of his courage," said Willis, in whose eyes, however, the dust was evidently playing sad havoc.

"These boys have almost never been absent from me. I have watched them grow up from infancy to adolescence, and from adolescence to manhood; they have always been dutiful and obedient, and with gratitude I have blessed them every night of their lives. But stern are the decrees of Fate; I must command them to depart from me--perhaps for ever!"

"There are evils that lead to good," said Willis, "even though these evils be the Straits of Magellan or the storms of the Indian Ocean."

Here the pinnace reached the offing of Shark's Island, where Fritz and Jack, leaning on the battery, watched the progress of the boat.

"Do you observe how downcast my father looks?" said Fritz.

"Willis does not look much gayer," remarked Jack.

"Do you believe in omens, Jack?"

"Now and then."

"Well, mark me, there is a screw loose somewhere, or I am no oracle."

Chapter XVIII.

Bacon and Biscuit--Let Sleeping Dogs Lie--The Paternal Benediction--An Apparition--A Mother not easily deceived--The Adieu--The Emperor Constantine--hoc signo vinces--The Sailor's Postscript--Cæsar and his Fortunes--Recollections--Mrs. Becker plucks Stockings and Knits Ortolans--How delightful it is to be Scolded--The Bodies vanish, but the Souls remain.

On their return from Shark's Island, Fritz and Jack were deeply affected, not by the dread of the perils they were destined to encounter--these never gave them a moment's uneasiness--but by the knowledge that a merciless vulture was preying upon the vitals of their beloved mother.

Willis on the contrary, appeared as lively as if he had just received notice of promotion; but whether the idea of again dwelling on the open sea had really elevated his spirits, or whether this gaiety was only assumed to encourage Becker and his sons, was best known to himself.

It was arranged amongst them that no one, under any circumstances, should be made acquainted with the design they had in contemplation. By this means all opposition would be vanquished, and the regrets of separation would, in some degree, be avoided. Besides, if the project were divulged, might not Frank and Ernest insist upon their right to share its dangers? This eventuality alone was sufficient to impress upon them all the urgency of secrecy. The really strong man knows his weakness, and therefore dislikes to run the risk of exposing it, so Becker dreaded the tears and entreaties that this desperate undertaking would inevitably exercise, were it generally known beforehand to the rest of the family; whereas, if once the pinnace were fairly at sea, it could not be recalled, and time would do the rest.

Since, then, all the preparations had to be made in such a way as not to excite suspicion that any thing extraordinary was on foot, the progress was necessarily slow. Willis, under pretext of amusing himself, refitted the pinnace, and strengthened it so far as he could without impairing its sailing efficiency. He called to mind that, when Captain Cook reached Batavia, after his first voyage round the world, he observed with astonishment that a large portion of the sides of his famous ship the Endeavor was, under the water line, no thicker than the sole of a shoe.

As soon as the weather had settled, and the tropical heats set in, the Wolstons resumed their abode at Falcon's Nest; whilst, under some plausible pretext or other, Willis, Fritz, and Jack took up their quarters at Rockhouse. This arrangement gave the destined navigators the means of carrying on their operations unobserved, especially as regards salting provisions and baking for the voyage.

Along with the stores, a portion of the valuables, that still remained in the magazines of Rockhouse, were placed on board the pinnace; for, though gold and precious stones were not of much value in New Switzerland, Becker had not forgotten that such was not the case in other portions of the world; he reflected that his sons must be furnished with the means of returning to the colony with comfort. There was also a man of science and education to be bought, and that, he knew, could not be done without as the French proverb has it, having some hay in one's boots.

Storms are usually heralded by some premonitory symptoms: the atmosphere becomes oppressive, the clouds increase in density, the sky gradually becomes obscure and large drops of rain begin to fall, then follows the deluge, and the elements commence their strife. It is much the same with impending misfortunes: gloom gathers on the countenance, our movements become constrained, our thoughts wander, and a tear lingers in the corner of the eye. Fritz and Jack endeavored in vain to appear unconcerned, but, in spite of their efforts, it was painfully evident that their minds were burdened by some heavy weight. They were more tender and more affectionate, particularly towards their mother. Towards evening, when they quitted the family circle for Rockhouse, their adieus were so earnest, so warm, and so often repeated, that it almost appeared as if they were laying in a stock of them for their voyage, to store up and preserve with the bacon and biscuits. Even the animals came in for an extra share of caresses, and, if they were capable of reflection, it must have puzzled them sorely to account for all the endearments that were lavished upon them by the two brothers.

Becker himself was no less affected than his sons; sometimes, when the latter were busily occupied with some preparation for the voyage, he would fix his eyes sadly upon them, just as if every trait of these cherished features had not already been deeply graven on his soul.

During the preceding rainy season, the two young men felt the days long and tedious, and wished in their inmost hearts that they would pass away more swiftly; now, the hours seemed to fly with unaccountable rapidity, and they would gladly have lengthened them if they had had the power. But no one can arrest

  Le temps, cette image mobile
  De l'immobile eternite.

And time is right in holding on the even tenor of its way; for if it once yielded to the desires of mortals, there would be no end of confusion and perplexity. It takes unto itself wings and flies away, say the fortunate; it lags at a snail's pace, say the unfortunate. The idler knows not how to pass it away. The man of action does not observe its progress. Those who are looking forward to some favorite amusement exclaim, "Would that it were to-morrow!" but how many there are that might well ejaculate, from the bottom of their souls, "Would that to-morrow may never arrive!" How, then, could such wishes be met in a way to satisfy all?

A day at length arrived when everything was ready for departure, and when nothing was wanted to weigh anchor but courage on the part of the voyagers. The pinnace was laden to the gunwale, the compass was in its place, the casks were filled with fresh water from the Jackal River, and Willis reported that both wind and sea were propitious for a start.

The morning of that day was lovely in the extreme. Willis, Fritz, and Jack were early at Falcon's Nest; the two families breakfasted together under the trees in the open air. After breakfast an adjournment to the umbrageous shade of the bananas was proposed and agreed to.

"Mother," said Fritz, taking Mrs. Becker's arm, "I want you all to myself."

"I object to that, if you please," cried Jack, taking her other arm.

"Why, you boys seem extravagantly fond of your mother to-day," said Mrs. Becker, gaily.

"Well, you see, mother, we have the right to have an idea now and then--Willis has one every week."

"So long as your ideas are about myself, I have no reason to object to them," said Mrs. Becker, smiling.

"We have always been dutiful sons, have we not, mother?" inquired Fritz.

"Yes, always."

"You are well pleased with us then?"

"Yes, surely."

"We have never caused you any uneasiness, have we?" inquired Jack.

"That is to say, inadvertently," added Fritz; "designedly is out of the question."

"No, not even inadvertently," replied their mother.

"Were you very sorry when Frank and Ernest were going to leave us?"

"Yes, my children, the tears still burn my cheek."

"Nevertheless, you knew that it was for the common welfare, and you felt resigned to the separation."

"But why do you ask such a question now?"

"Well, a propos de rien, mother," replied Jack, "simply because we love you, and, like misers, we treasure your love."

Towards the afternoon both families were again assembled under the trees at Falcon's Nest This time it was dinner that brought them together; the repast consisted of cold meats of various kinds, but the chief dish was a wonderful salad, the rich, fresh odor of which perfumed the air. Wolston, Frank, and Ernest kept up a lively conversation, yet, though all seemed happy and pleased, there were bursting hearts at the table that day."

"I am going to take a turn in the pinnace to-morrow," said Willis, quietly; "who will go with me?"

"I will!" cried all the four brothers.

"I shall require you, Frank and Ernest, to take a look at the rice plantation to-morrow," said Becker, "so I wish you to put off the excursion till another time."

"We are at your orders, father," replied the two young men.

"Where are you going, Willis?" inquired Mrs. Wolston.

"Well, I am anxious to discover whether we inhabit an island or a continent, and may, consequently, extend the survey beyond the points already known; so you must not be disappointed should we not return the same night."

"But what is the good of such an expedition?" inquired Mrs. Becker.

"The country may be inhabited, or there may be inhabited islands in the vicinity," replied Willis.

"If there be natives anywhere near," said Mrs. Becker, "they have left us at peace hitherto, and, in my opinion, since the dog sleeps, it will be prudent for us to let it lie."

"It is not a question of creating any inconvenience," suggested Becker, "but only to ascertain more accurately our geographical position: such a knowledge can do us no possible harm, but, some day, it may be of immense service to us."

"What if you should fall in with a ship?" inquired Mrs. Wolston.

"In that case we shall give your compliments to the commander," replied Jack.

"You may do that if you like, but try and bring it back with you if you can."

"Do you wish to leave us?"

"I do not mean that," hastily added Mrs. Wolston, "but I am beginning to get anxious about my son, poor fellow. If the Nelson has not arrived at the Cape, then he will suppose we are all drowned, and I should like to fall in with some means of assuring him of our safety."

"Oh yes," cried the two girls, "do try and fall in with a ship; our poor brother will be so wretched."

"You might say our brother as well," added the two young men.

Here the two mothers interchanged a glance of intelligence, which might mean very little, but which likewise might signify a great deal.

A moment of intense anxiety had now arrived for Becker and his two sons; they could scarcely refrain from shedding tears, but they felt that the slightest imprudence of that nature would divulge everything.

"Come now, my lads, look alive," cried Willis, in a voice which he meant to be gruff; "if you intend to take a few hours' repose before we start in the morning, it is time to be off."

Fritz and Jack, had it been to save their lives, could not now have helped throwing more than usual energy into their parting embraces that particular afternoon; but they passed through the ordeal with tolerable firmness, and then with heavy hearts turned towards the door.

"I think I will walk with you as far as Rockhouse," said Becker.

All four then departed; and when the party were about fifty yards from Falcon's Nest, Fritz and Jack turned round and waved a final adieu to those loved beings whom probably, they might never see again.

"It is well," said Becker. "I am satisfied with your conduct throughout this trying interval."

It was now an hour when there is something indescribably sombre about the country; day was declining, the outlines of the larger objects in the landscape were becoming less distinct, and the trees were assuming any sort of fantastical shape that the mind chose to assign to them. Here and there a bird rustled in the foliage, but otherwise the silence was only broken by footsteps of the four men.

In ordinary life children quit the parental home by easy and almost imperceptible gradations. First, there is the school, then college; next, perhaps, the requirements of the profession they have adopted. Thus they readily abandon the domestic hearth; friends, intercourse, and society divide their affection, and the separation from home rarely, if ever, costs them a pang. Not so with Becker's two sons; their world was New Switzerland; therefore, like the rays of the sun absorbed by the mirror of Archimedes, all their affections were concentrated on one point.

On the former occasion when the family ties were on the eve of being rent asunder, the case was very different. It is true, Frank and Ernest were about to leave for an indefinite period of time; but then, every comfort that the most fastidious voyager could desire was awaiting them on board the Nelson; for a well-appointed ship is like a well-appointed inn on shore, all your wants are ministered to with the utmost celerity. Besides, Captain Littlestone had taken the young men under his special protection, and had promised to see them properly introduced and cared for in Europe. How dissimilar was the position of Fritz and his brother; they were about to tumble into the old world should they be so fortunate as to reach it, much as if they had dropped from the skies, without a guide and without a friend. They were about to entrust themselves to the ocean, separated from its treacherous floods by a few wretched planks; to be exposed for months, almost unsheltered, to wind, rain, and the mercy of pitiless storms.

"If God in His mercy preserves you, my sons," said Becker, breaking at last the silence, "you will find yourselves launched in an ocean still more turbulent than that you have escaped--an ocean where falsehood and cunning assume the names of policy and tact; where results always justify the means, whatever these may be; where everything is sacrificed to personal interest and ambition; where fortune is honored as a virtue that dispenses with all others, and where profligacies of the most odious kinds are decorated with gay and seductive colors. It is difficult for me to foresee the various circumstances amidst which you may be placed; but there are certain rules of conduct that provide for nearly every emergency. I have no need to urge loyalty or courage--these qualities are inseparable from your hearts. Strive only for what is just and honest. Submit to be cheated rather than be cheats yourselves; ill-gotten gains never made any one rich. Put your trust in Providence. Seek aid from on high, when you find yourselves surrounded with difficulties. Never forget that there is no corner on the earth's surface, however obscure, that the eyes of the Lord are not there to behold your actions. Act promptly and with energy. Bear in mind that every moment lost will be to your mother an age of suffering, and that her life is suspended on the fragile thread of your return."

The party had now reached the banks of the Jackal River, where the pinnace was moored. Fritz and Jack were shedding tears unrestrainedly, and had dropped on their knees at their father's feet.

"I call," said Becker, in a trembling voice, "the benediction of Heaven upon your heads, my sons."

"Oh, but they must not go!" cried Mrs. Becker, rushing out from behind some tall brushwood that hid her from their view; "they shall not go!"

Fritz and Jack were instantly inclosed within their mother's arms.

"Ah!" cried she, pushing aside the hair from their brows, the better to observe their features, "you thought to deceive your mother, did you?"

"Pardon!" exclaimed both the young men.

Here Becker thought it necessary to interfere; and, summoning all the courage he could muster to the task, said--

"Why should they not go? Is this the first expedition they have undertaken?"

"No, it is not the first expedition they have undertaken, but it is the first time their eyes and their looks betokened an eternal adieu. It is the first time that I felt they were forsaking me for ever, and it is the first time you ever addressed them with the words you just now uttered."

Becker saw that it was useless to attempt to carry deceit any further; he therefore withdrew his eyes from the piercing glance of his wife. Willis, caught in the act, as it were, was completely thrown off his guard, and had not a word to say for himself. Fritz and Jack had again fallen on their knees, this time at the feet of their mother.

"Ah! I begin to understand," she screamed, as she glanced around on the scared group that surrounded her, like a wounded lioness whose cubs were being carried off; "now the bandage begins to drop from my eyes. A thousand inexplicable things dart into my mind. You are sending the boys on an impracticable voyage to secure the safety of their mother; but you did not think that in order to prolong my existence for a few years, you would kill me instantly with grief! What right have you to impose a remedy upon me that is a thousand times worse than the malady? Have I ever complained? May my sufferings not be agreeable to me? May I not like them? Is pain and suffering not our lot from the cradle to the tomb? But I am not ill, I was never better in my life than I am at this moment."

Here she was seized with a paroxysm of nervous tremors that convulsed her frame most fearfully, and completely belied her words. Becker rushed forward and held her firmly in his arms.

"God give me strength!" he murmured. "Go, my children, where your duty calls you; go, my friend, do not prolong this terrible scene an instant longer."

Not another word was spoken, the pinnace was unmoored; Fritz, Jack, and Willis embarked. When at some little distance from the shore, there was just light enough for Fritz to notice that his father was directing the feeble steps of his mother in the direction of Falcon's Nest. In a few moments more all the objects on shore were one confused mass of unfathomable shadow. The pinnace dropped anchor at Shark's Island, where some few final preparations for the voyage had to be made. Fritz here took a pen and wrote:

"We part. We are gone. When you read this letter, the sea, for some distance, will extend between us. We shall live and move elsewhere, but our hearts still with you. We wish that Ernest and Frank would erect a flagstaff on the spot where we last parted with our parents. It may be to us what the celestial standard bearing the scroll, in hoc signo vinces was to the Emperor Constantine. The place is already sacred, and may be hallowed by your prayers for us. Our confidence in the divine mercy is boundless. Do not despair of seeing us again. We have no misgivings, not one of us but anticipates confidently the period when we shall return and bring with us health, happiness, and prosperity to you all.

"Let me add a word," said Jack.

"The sea is calm, our hearts are firm, our enterprise is under the protection of Heaven--there never was an undertaking commenced under more favorable auspices. Farewell then, once more, farewell. All our aspirations are for you.

"FRITZ.

"JACK.

"P.S.--Willis was going to write a line or two when, lo and behold! a big tear rolled upon the paper. 'Ha!' said he, 'that is enough, I will not write a word, they will understand that, I think,' and he threw down the pen."

"How is the letter to be sent on shore?" inquired Fritz.

"There is a cage of pigeons on board the pinnace," replied Jack, "but I do not want them to know that, for, if they should expect to hear from us, and some accident happen to the pigeons, they might be dreadfully disappointed."

"We can return on shore," observed Willis, "and place it on the spot, where we embarked; they are sure to be there to-morrow."

This suggestion was incontinently adopted. The letter was attached to a small cross, and fixed in the ground. The voyagers had all re-embarked in the pinnace, which was destined to bear even more than Caesar and his fortunes. Willis had already loosened the warp, when, a thought crossed the mind of Fritz.

"I must revisit Falcon's Nest once more," said he.

"What!" cried Willis, "you are not going to get up such another scene as we witnessed an hour or two ago?"

"No, Willis, I mean to go by stealth like the Indian trapper, so as to be seen by no mortal eye. I wish to take one more look at the old familiar trees, and endeavor to ascertain whether my mother has reached home in safety."

"But the dogs?" objected Willis.

"The dogs know me too well to give the slightest alarm at my approach. I shall not be long gone; but really I must go, the desire is too powerful within me to be resisted."

"I will go with you," said Jack.

Here Willis shook his head and reflected an instant.

"You are not angry with us, Willis, are you?"

"Not at all," he replied, "and I think the best thing I can do, under the circumstances, is to go too."

"Very well, make fast that warp again, and come along."

The party then disappeared amongst the brushwood.

"Some time ago," remarked Fritz, "we followed this track about the same hour; there was danger to be apprehended, but the enterprise was bloodless, though successful."

"You mean the chimpanzee affair," said Willis.

"Yes; this time we have only an emotion to conquer, but I am afraid it is too strong for us."

"These are the trees," said Jack, as they debouched upon the road, "that I stuck my proclamations upon. We had very little to think of in those days."

As the party drew near Falcon's Nest, the dogs approached and welcomed them with the usual canine demonstrations of joy.

"I have half a mind to carry off Toby," said Fritz; "but I fear Mary would miss him."

Externally all appeared tranquil at Falcon's Nest; this satisfied the young men that their mother had succeeded in reaching home, at least, in safety; a light streaming through the window of Becker's dwelling, however, showed that the family had not yet retired for the night.

"If they only knew we were so near them!" remarked Jack.

The entire party then sat down upon a rustic bench, shrouded with flowering orchis and Spanish jasmine.

"How often, on returning from the fields or the chase, we have seen our mother at work on this very seat," observed Fritz.

"Aye," added Jack; "once I observed she had fallen asleep whilst knitting stockings. I advanced on tip-toe, removed gently her knitting apparatus, stockings, and all, and placed on her lap some ortolans that I had caught and strangled; but I first plucked one of them, and scattered the feathers all about, and then retreated into a thicket to watch the denouement of my scheme. She awoke, put down her hand to take up a stocking, and laid hold of a bird. She stared, rubbed her eyes, stared again, looked about, and could find nothing but the ortolan feathers. I then ran forward and embraced her, looking as if I had just come from unearthing turnips. 'Well, I declare,' she said with a bewildered air, 'I could have sworn that I was knitting just now, and here I find myself plucking ortolans; and what is more, I have not the slightest idea where, in all the world, the birds have come from!' Of course, I looked as innocent as possible; so that the more she stared and reflected, the less she could make the matter out. At last, she went on plucking the birds, and when this was done she stuck them on the spit. When the ortolans were roasted and ready to be served up, I went into the kitchen, carried them off, and put my mother's knitting apparatus on the spit. Imagine her surprise when she beheld her worsted and stockings at the fire, knowing, at the same time, that four hungry stomachs were waiting for their dinners! At last, fearing that she was going to ascribe the metamorphosis to some hallucination of her own, I went up to her, threw my arms round her neck, told her the whole story, and we both of us enjoyed a hearty laugh over it."

"Aye, Jack, those were laughing times," said Fritz, sadly.

"Not only that, but our mother was always so even--tempered; she was never ruffled in the slightest degree by my nonsense; though she often had the right to be very angry, yet she never once took offence. On another occasion, Mary and Sophia Wolston were working here at those mysterious embroideries which they always hid when we came near."

"Toby's collar, I suppose," remarked Fritz.

"My tobacco pouch," suggested Willis.

"I approached," continued Jack, "with the muffled softness of a cat, and was just on the point of discovering their secret, when my monkey, Knips, who was cracking nuts at their feet, made a spring, and drew a bobbin of silk after it; this caused them to look round, and great was my astonishment to find myself caught at the very moment I expected to surprise them. They commenced scolding me at an immense rate, but then it was so delightful to be scolded!"

"Aye," murmured Fritz, "that is all over now."

Like a file of sheep, one recollection dragged another after it, so that the whole of the past recurred to their memories. Some faint streaks of light now warned them that day was about to break; the cocks began to crow one after the other, and to fill the air with their shrill voices.

"Now," said Willis, "it is high time to be off."

Jack hastily gathered two bouquets of flowers, which he suspended to the lintel of each dwelling.

"These," said he, "will show them that we have paid them another visit."

They then bent down all three on their knees, uttered a short prayer, and afterwards disappeared amidst the shadows of the chestnut trees.

"Listen!" said Willis, seeing that his companions were about to make a halt, "if you stop again, or speak of returning any more, I will cease to regard you as men."

Half an hour afterwards, on the morning of the 8th March, 1812, the pinnace bore out to sea, and when day broke, the crew could not descry a single trace of New Switzerland on any point of the horizon.

Chapter XIX.

Eighteen Hundred and Twelve--The Mary--Count Ugolino--The Sources of Rivers--The Alps demolished--No more Pyrenees--The First Ship--Admiral Noah--Fleets of the Israelites--The Compass--Printing--Gunpowder--Actium and Salamis--Dido and Æolus--Steam--Don Garay and Roger Bacon--Melchthal, Furst, and William Tell--Going a-pleasuring--Upset versus blown up--A Dead Calm--The Log--Willis's Archipelago--The Island of Sophia--The Bread Fruit-tree--Natives of Polynesia--Striped Trowsers--Abduction of Willis--Is he to be Roasted or Boiled?--When the Wine is poured out, we must Drink it.

At the date of the events narrated in the preceeding chapter, comparatively little was known of Oceania, that is, of the islands and continents that are scattered about the Pacific Ocean. Most of them had been discovered, named, and marked correctly enough in the charts, but beyond this all was supposition, hypothesis, and mystery. The mighty empire of England in the east was then only in its infancy, Sutteeism and Thuggism were still rampant on the banks of the Ganges, but the power of the descendants of the Great Mogul was on the wane. California was only known as the hunting-ground of a savage race of wild Indians. The now rich and flourishing colonies of Australia were represented by the convict settlement of Sydney. The Dutch had asserted that the territory of New Holland was utterly uninhabitable, and this was still the belief of the civilized world; nor was it without considerable opposition on the part of soi-disant philanthropists that the English government succeeded in establishing a prison depot on what at the time was considered the sole spot in that vast territory susceptible of cultivation. At the present time, these formerly-despised regions send one hundred tons of pure gold to England. The political state of Europe itself had at this time assumed a singular aspect. Napoleon had made himself master of nearly all the continental states; Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, and a part of Germany were at his feet; and, by the Peace of Tilsit, he had secured the cooperation of Alexander, Emperor of Russia, in his schemes to ruin the trade and commerce of Great Britain. England, by her opportune seizure of the Danish fleet, broke up the first great northern confederacy that was formed against her. This act, though much impugned by the politicians of the day, is now known not only to have been perfectly justifiable, but also highly creditable to the political foresight of Canning and Castlereagh, by whom it was suggested, to say nothing of the daring and boldness that Nelson displayed in executing the manoeuvre. When news of this event reached the Russian Emperor it threw him into a paroxysm of rage, and he declared war against England in violent language. He had the insolence to make peace with France the sina qua non of his friendship. At the distance of nearly half a century, the actual language employed has a peculiar flavor. The emperor, after detailing his grievances, declares that henceforth there shall be no connection between the two countries, and calls on his Britannic Majesty to dismiss his ministers, and conclude a peace forthwith. The British Government replied to this by ordering Nelson to set sail forthwith for the mouth of the Neva. A bitter and scorching manifesto was at the time forwarded to the emperor. It accused him flatly of duplicity, and boldly defied him and all his legions. The whole document is well worthy of perusal in these lackadaisical times. It is dated Westminister, December 18, 1807. It sets forth anew the principles of maritime war, which England had then rigidly in force. Napoleon had declared the whole of the British Islands in a state of blockade. The British Government replied by blockading de facto the whole of Europe. This was done by those celebrated orders in council, which, more than anything else, precipitated the downfall of Napoleon. They threw the trade of the world into the hands of England. Of course, Russia was deeply affected, so was Spain and all the other maritime states; and they were all, one way or another, in open hostility with this country. But England laughed all their threats to scorn; and in the whole history of the country, there was not a more brilliant period in her eventful history. She stood alone against the world in arms. Even the blusterings of the United States were unheeded, and in no degree disturbed her stern equanimity. She saw the road to victory, and resolved to pursue it. But England then had great statesmen, and, of them all, Lord Castlereagh was the greatest, although he served a Prince Regent who cared no more for England or the English people, than the Irish member, who, when reproached for selling his country, thanked God that he had a country to sell.

At length the ill-will of the Americans resolved itself into open warfare, and the United States was numbered with the overt enemies of England. This resulted in British troops marching up to Washington and burning the Capitol, or Congress House, about the ears of the members who had stirred up the strife. Meanwhile, all the islands of France in the east and west had been taken possession of; the British flag waved on the Spanish island of Cuba, and in the no less valuable possessions of Holland, in Java. Everywhere on the ocean England held undisputed sway. This state of things gave rise to one great evil--the sea swarmed with cruisers and privateers, English, French, and American; so that no vessel, unless sailing under convoy, heavily armed, or a very swift sailer, but ran risk of capture.

The Mary--for so Fritz now called the pinnace--had been ten days at sea, the wind had died away, and for some time scarcely a zephyr had ruffled the surface of the water, the sails were lazily flapping against the mast, and but for the currents, the voyagers would have been almost stationary. It may readily be supposed that, under such circumstances, their progress was somewhat slow, and, as Jack observed, to judge from their actual rate of sailing, they ought to have started when very young, in order to arrive at the termination of the voyage before they became bald-headed old men.

They prayed for a breeze, a gale, or even a storm; their fresh water was beginning to get sour, and they reflected that, if the calm continued any length of time, their provisions would eventually run short, and the ordinary resource of eating one another would stare them in the face. Jack, being the youngest, would probably disappear first, next Fritz, then Willis would be left to eat himself, in order to avoid dying of hunger, just as the unfortunate Count Ugolino devoured his own children to save them from orphanage.

As yet, however, there were no symptoms of such a dire disaster; they were in excellent health and tolerable spirits; they had provisions enough to last them for six months at least, and consequently had not as yet, at all events, the slightest occasion to manifest a tendency to anthropophagism.

"I can understand the sea," remarked Jack, "as I understand the land and the sky; God created them, that is enough; but I cannot understand how a mighty river like the Nile or the Ganges can continue eternally discharging immense deluges of water into the sea without becoming exhausted. From what fathomless reservoirs do the Amazon and the Mississippi receive their endless torrents?"

"The reservoirs of the greatest rivers," replied Fritz, "are nothing more than drops of water that fall from the crevice of some rock on or near the summit of a hill; these are collected together in a pool or hollow, from which they issue in the form of a slender rivulet. At first, the smallest pebble is sufficient to arrest the course of this thread of water; but it turns upon itself, gathers strength, finally surmounts the obstacle, dashes over it, unites itself with other rivulets, reaches the plain, scoops out a bed, and goes on, as you say, for ever emptying its waters into the sea."

"Yes; but it is the source of these sources that I want to know the origin of. You speak of hills, whilst we know that water naturally, by reason of its weight and fluidity; seeks to secrete itself in the lowest beds of the earth."

"It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that water may come down a hill, although it never goes up. Rain, snow, dew, and generally all the vapors that fall from the atmosphere, furnish the enormous masses of water that are constantly flowing into the sea. The vapor alone that is absorbed in the air from the sea is more than sufficient to feed all the rivers on the face of the earth. Mountains, by their formation, arrest these vapors, collect them in a hole here and in a cavern there, and permit them to filter by a million of threads from rock to rock, fertilizing the land and nourishing the rivers that intersect it. If, therefore, you were to suppress the Alps that rise between France and Italy, you would, at the same time, extinguish the Rhone and the Po."

"It would be a pity to do that," said Jack; "there was a time though when there were no Pyrenees."

"That must have been, then, at a period prior to the formation of granite, which is esteemed the oldest of rocks."

"No such thing," insisted Jack; "it was so late as 1713, when, by the peace of Utrecht, the crown of Spain was secured to the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV."

"Howsomever," remarked Willis, "all the mariners in the French fleet could not convince me that the Pyrenean mountains are only a hundred years old."

"My brother is only speaking metaphorically," said Fritz; "when the crown of Spain was assigned to the Duke of Anjou, his grandfather said--Qu il n'y avait plus de Pyrenees. He meant by that simply, that France and Spain being governed by the same prince, the moral barrier between them existed no longer. The formidable mountains still stood for all that, and he who removes them would certainly be possessed of extraordinary power."

"I am always putting my foot in it," said Willis, "when the yarn is about the land; let us talk of the sea for a bit. Who built the first ship?"

"Well," replied Fritz, "I should say that the first ship was the ark."

"Whence we may infer," added Jack, "that Noah was the first admiral."

"We learn from the Scriptures," continued Fritz, "that the first navigators were the children of Noah, and it appears from profane history that the earliest attempts at navigation were manifested near where the ark rested; consequently, we may fairly presume that the art of ship-building arose from the traditions of the deluge and the ark."

"In that case, the art in question dates very far back."

"Yes, since it dates from 2348 years before the birth of Christ; but the human race degenerated, the traditions were forgotten, and navigation was confined to planks, rafts, bark canoes, or the trunk of a tree hollowed out by fire."

"That is the sort of craft used by the inhabitants of Polynesia at the present day," remarked Willis.

"It appears, however, by the Book of Job, that pirates existed in those days, and that they went to sea in ships and captured merchantmen, which proves, to a certain extent, that there were merchantmen to conquer. We know also that David and Solomon equipped large fleets, and even fought battles on sea."

"Whether an ancient or modern, a Jew or a Gentile," said Willis, "he must have been a brave fellow who launched the first ship, and risked himself and his goods at sea in it."

"True," continued Fritz; "but when once the equilibrium of a floating body was known, there would be no longer any risk; as soon as it came to be understood that any solid body would float if it were lighter than its bulk of water, the matter was simple enough."

"Very good," interrupted Jack; "but the words 'when' and 'as soon as' imply a great deal; when, or as soon as, we know anything, the mystery of course disappears. But before! there is the difficulty. Particles of water do not cohere--how is it, then, that a ship of war, that often weighs two millions of pounds, does not sink through them, and go to the bottom? Individuals, like myself for example, who are not members of a learned society, may be pardoned for not knowing how water bears the weight of a seventy-four."

"The seventy-four would, most undoubtedly, sink if it were heavier than the weight of water it displaced; but this is not the case; wood is generally lighter than water."

"The wood, yes; but the cannon, the cargo, and the crew?"

"You forget the cabooses, the cockpits, and the cabins, that do not weigh anything. Allowing for everything, the weight of a ship, cargo and all, is much lighter than its bulk of water, and consequently it cannot sink."

"But how is it, then, that the immense bulk of a seventy-four moves so easily in the water? One would think that its prodigious weight would make it stick fast, and continue immoveable."

"When the seventy-four in question has displaced its weight of water, its own weight is substituted for the water, and is in consequence virtually annihilated; it does not, in point of fact, weigh anything at all, and therefore is easily impelled by the wind."

"When there is any, understood," added Jack.

"And a yard or so of canvas," suggested Willis.

"True," continued Fritz, "a sail or two would be very desirable; these instruments of propulsion do not appear, however, to have been used by the ancients. We first hear of a sail being employed at the time when Isis went in search of her husband Osiris, who was killed by his brother Typhon, and whose quarters were scattered in the Nile. This lady, it seems, took off the veil that covered her head, and fastened it to an upright shaft stuck in the middle of the boat, and, much to her astonishment, it impelled her onwards at a marvellous speed."

"A clever young woman that," said Willis; "but I doubt whether veils would answer the purpose on board a seventy-four, particularly as regards the mainsail and mizentops."

"The Phoenicians were the most enterprising of the early navigators. They appeared to have sailed round Africa without a compass, for they embarked on the Red Sea and reappeared at the mouth of the Nile, and the compass was not invented till the fourteenth century."

"And who was the inventor of the compass?" inquired Willis.

"According to some authorities, it was invented by a Neapolitan named Jean Goya; according to others, the inventor was a certain Hugues de Bercy."

"Then," said Jack, "you do not admit the claims of the Chinese and Hindoos, who assert priority in the discovery?"

"I neither deny nor admit their claims, because I do not know the grounds upon which they are founded; like the invention of gunpowder and printing, the discovery of the compass has many rival claimants."

"I am of opinion," said Jack, "that Guttenberg is entitled to the honor of discovering printing, and that Berthold Schwartz invented gunpowder."

"Perhaps you are right; but there is scarcely any invention of importance that has not two or three names fastened to it as inventors; they stick to it like barnacles, and there is no way to shake any of them off. So, in the case of illustrious men, nations dispute the honor of giving them birth; there are six or seven towns in Asia Minor that claim to be the birth-place of Homer. National vanities justly desire to possess the largest amount of genius; hence, no sooner does anything useful make its appearance in the world, than half a dozen nations or individuals start up to claim it as their offspring. The wisest course, under such circumstances, is to side with the best accredited opinion, which I have done in the case of the compass."

"It was no joke," said Willis, "to circumnavigate Africa without a compass."

"You are quite right, Willis, if you judge the navigation of those days by the modern standard; but it is to be borne in mind that the ancients never lost sight of the coast. They steered from cape to promontory, and from promontory to cape, dropping their anchor every night and remaining well in-shore till morning. If by accident they were driven out into the open sea, and the stars happened to be hidden by fog or clouds, they were lost beyond recovery, even though within a day's sail of a harbor; because, whilst supposing they were making for the coast, they might, in all probability, be steering in precisely the opposite direction."

"It is certainly marvellous," said Jack, "that a piece of iron stuck upon a board should be a safe and sure guide to the mariner through the trackless ocean, even when the stars are enveloped in obscurity and darkness!"

"It is a symbol of faith," remarked Willis, "that supplies the doubts and incertitudes of reason."

"As for the ships, or rather galleys, of the ancients," continued Fritz, "with the exception of the ambitious fleets of the Greeks and Romans that fought at Salamis and Actium, one of the modern ships of war could sweep them all out of the sea with its rudder."

"Yes," said Jack, "at the period of which you speak, the ancients possessed a great advantage over us. The winds in those days were personages, and were very well known; they were called Aeolus, Boreas, and so forth. They were to be found in caves or islands, and, if treated with civility, were remarkably condescending. Queen Dido, through one of these potentates, obtained contrary winds, to prevent Aeneas from leaving her."

"By the way," said Willis, "there is, or at least was, in one of the Scottish rivers, a ship without either oars or sails."

"Yes, very likely; but it did not move."

"It did though, and, what is more, against both wind and tide."

"I wish we had your wonderful ship here just now, it is just the thing to suit us under present circumstances," said Jack.

"So it would, Master Jack, for it sails against currents, up rivers, and the crew care no more about the wind than I do about the color of the clouds when I am lighting my pipe."

"You don't happen to mean that the Flying Dutchman has appeared on the Scotch coast, do you, Willis?"

"Not a bit of it, I mean just exactly what I say. It is a real ship, with a real stern and a real figure-head, but manned by blacksmiths instead of mariners."

"Well, but how does it move? Does somebody go behind and push it, or is it dragged in front by sea-horses and water-kelpies?"

"No, it moves by steam."

"But how?"

"Aye, there lies the mystery. The affair has often been discussed by us sailors on board ship; some have suggested one way and some another."

"Neither of which throws much light on the subject," observed Jack; "at least, in so far as we are concerned."

"All I can tell you," said Willis, "is, that the steam is obtained by boiling water in a large cauldron, and that the power so obtained is very powerful."

"That it certainly is, if it could be controlled, for steam occupies seventeen or eighteen hundred times the space of the water in its liquid state; but then, if the vessel that contains the boiling water has no outlet, the steam will burst it."

"It appears that it can be prevented doing that, though," replied Willis, "even though additional heat be applied to the vapor itself."

"By heating the steam, the vapor may acquire a volume forty thousand times greater than that of the water; all that is well known; but as soon as it comes in contact with the air, nothing is left of it but a cloud, which collapses again into a few drops of water."

"That may be all very true, Master Fritz, if the steam were allowed to escape into the air; but it is only permitted to do that after it has done duty on board ship. It appears that steam is very elastic, and may be compressed like India-rubber, but has a tendency to resist the pressure and set itself free. Imagine, for example, a headstrong young man, for a long time kept in restraint by parental control, suddenly let loose, and allowed scope to follow the bent of his own inclinations."

"Very good, Willis; for argument's sake, let us take your headstrong young man, or rather the steam, for granted, and let us admit that it is as elastic as ever you please--but what then?"

"Then you must imagine a piston in a cylinder, forced upwards when the steam is heated, and falling downwards when the steam is cooled. Next fancy this upward and downward motion regulated by a number of wheels and cranks that turn two wheels on each side of the ship, keeping up a constant jangling and clanking, the wheels or paddles splashing in the water, and then you may form a slight idea of the thing."

"Oh!" cried Jack, "we invented a machine of that kind for our canoe, with a turnspit. Do you recollect it, Fritz?"

"Yes, I recollect it well enough; and I also recollect that the canoe went much better without than with it."

"You spoke just now," continued Willis, "of rival nations, who pounce like birds of prey upon every new invention; and so it is with the steamship. An American, named Fulton, made a trial in the Hudson with one in 1807--that is about five years ago--and I believe the Yankees, in consequence, are laying claim to the invention."

"Now that you bring the thing to my recollection," said Fritz, "the idea of applying steam in the arts is by no means new, although, I must candidly admit, I never heard of it being used in propelling ships before. The Spaniards assert that a captain of one of their vessels, named Don Blas de Garay, discovered, as early as the sixteenth century, the art of making steam a motive power."

"I don't believe that," said Jack.

"Why?"

"Because a real Spaniard has never less than thirty-six words in his name. If you had said that the steam engine was discovered by Don Pedrillo y Alvares y Toledo y Concha y Alonzo y Martinez y Xacarillo, or something of that sort, then I could believe the man to have been a genuine Spaniard, but not otherwise."

"Spaniard or no Spaniard, the Spanish claim the discovery of steam through Don Blas; the Italians likewise claim the discovery for a mechanician, named Bianca; the Germans assign its discovery to Solomon de Causs; the French urge Denis Papin; and the English claim the invention for Roger Bacon."

"You have forgotten the Swiss," said Jack.

"The Swiss," replied Fritz, with an air of dignity, "put forward no candidate: steam and vapor and smoke are not much in their line. They discovered something infinitely better--the world is indebted to them for the invention of liberty. I mean rational, intelligent, and true liberty--not the savagery and mob tyranny of red republicanism. The three discoverers of this noble invention were Melchthal, Furst, and William Tell."

"You can have no idea," continued Willis, "of the stir that steam was creating in Europe the last time I was there. Of course there were plenty of incredulous people who said that it was no good; that it would never be of any use; and that if it were, it would not pay for the fuel consumed. On the other hand, the enthusiasts held that, eventually, it would be used for everything; that in the air we should have steam balloons; on the sea, steam ships, steam guns, and perhaps steam men to work them; that on land there would be steam coaches driven by steam horses. Journeys, say they, will be performed in no time, that is, as soon as you start for a place you arrive at it, just like an arrow, that no sooner leaves the bow than you see it stuck in the bull's eye."

"In that case," observed Jack, "it will be necessary to do away with respiration, as well as horses."

"A Londoner will be able to say to his wife, My dear, I am going to Birmingham to-day, but I will be back to dinner; and if a Parisian lights his cigar at Paris, it will burn till he arrives at Bordeaux."

"Holloa, Willis, you have fairly converted Fritz and me into marines at last."

"I am only speaking of what will be, not of what is--that makes all the difference you know. It is expected that there will be steam coaches on every turnpike-road; so that, instead of hiring a post-chaise, you will have to order a locomotive, and instead of postboys, you will to engage an engineer and stoker."

"Then, instead of saying, Put the horses to," remarked Jack, "we shall have to say, Get the steam up."

"Exactly; and when you go on a pleasure excursion, you will be whisked from one point to another without having time to see whether you pass through a desert or a flower-garden."

"What, then, is to become of adventures by the way, road-side inns, and banditti?"

"All to be suppressed."

"So it appears," said Jack; "men are to be carried about from place to place like flocks of sheep; perhaps they will invent steam dogs as well to run after stragglers, and bring them into the fold by the calf of the leg. Your new mode of going a-pleasuring may be a very excellent thing in its way, Willis; but it would not suit my taste."

"Probably not; nor mine either, for the matter of that, Master Jack."

"At all events," said Fritz, "you would run no danger of being upset on the road."

"No; but, by way of compensation, you may be blown up."

"True, I forgot that."

"This conversation has carried us along another knot," said Jack, opening the log, which he had been appointed to keep; "and now, by your leave, I will read over some of my entries to refresh your memories as to our proceedings.

"March 9th.--Wind fair and fresh--steered to north-west--a flock of seals under our lee bow--feel rather squeamish.

"10th.--No wind--fall in with a largish island and four little ones, give them the name of Willis's Archipelago.

"11th.--A dead calm--sea smooth as a mirror--all of us dull and sleepy.

"12th.--Heat 90 deg.--shot a boobie, roasted and ate him, rather fishy--passed the night amongst some reefs.

"13th.--Same as the 12th, but no boobie.

"14th.--Same as the 13th.

"Dreadfully tiresome, is it not," said Jack; "no wonder they call this ocean the Pacific."

"Alas!" sighed Willis, thinking of the Nelson, "it does not always justify the name."

"15th.--Hailed a low island, surrounded with breakers, named it Sophia's Island."

"But all these islands have been named half a dozen times already," said Willis.

"Oh, never mind that, another name or two will not break their backs."

"16th.--Current bearing us rapidly to westward--caught a sea cow, and had it converted into pemican.

"17th.--Shot another boobie, which we put in the pot to remind us that we were no worse off than the subjects of Henry IV. No wind--sea blazing like a furnace."

"You will have to turn over a new leaf in your log by-and-by," said Willis, "or I am very much mistaken."

"Well, I hope you are not mistaken, Willis, for I am tired of this sort of thing."

A red haze now began to shroud the sun, the heat of the air became almost stifling, but the muffled roar of distant thunder and bright flashes of light warned the voyagers to prepare for a change. Willis reefed the canvas close to the mast, and suggested that everything likely to spoil should be put under hatches. This was scarcely done before the storm had reached them, and they were soon in the midst of a tropical deluge. At first, a light breeze sprung up, blowing towards the south-east, which continued till midnight, when it chopped round. Towards morning, it blew a heavy gale from east to east-south-east, with a heavy sea running. In the meantime, the pinnace labored heavily, and several seas broke over her. Willis now saw that their only chance of safety lay in altering their course. All the canvas was already braced up except the jib, which was necessary to give the craft headway, and with this sail alone they were soon after speeding at a rapid rate in the direction of the Polynesian Islands. The gale continued almost without intermission for three weeks, during which period Willis considered they must have been driven some hundreds, of miles to the north-west.

The gale at length ceased, the sea resumed its tranquility, and the wind became favorable. The pinnace had, however, been a good deal battered by the storm, and their fresh water was getting low, and it was decided they should still keep a westerly course till they reached an island where they could refit before resuming their voyage.

"The gale has not done us much good," said Jack, sadly; "if it had blown the other way, we might have been in the Indian Ocean by this time."

"Cheer up," said Willis, taking the glass from his eye, "I see land about three miles to leeward, and the landing appears easy."

"But the savages?" inquired Jack.

"The islands of this latitude are not all inhabited," replied Fritz; "besides, under our present circumstances, we have no alternative but to take our chance with them."

"Well, I do not know that," objected Jack; "it would be better for us to do without fresh water than to run the risk of being eaten."

"What a beautiful coast!" cried Willis, who still kept the telescope at his eye. "Near the shore the land is flat, and appears cultivated; but behind, it rises gradually, and is closed in with a range of hills, covered with trees. There is a beautiful bay in front of us, which appears to invite us ashore. But the place is inhabited; the shore is strewn with huts, and I can see clumps of the bread-fruit tree growing near them."

"What sort of vegetable is the bread-fruit?" inquired Fritz.

"It is a very excellent thing, and supplies the natives with bread without the intervention of grain, flour-mills, or bakers. It can be eaten either raw, or baked, or boiled; either way, it is palatable. The tree itself is like our apple trees; but the fruit is as large as a pine-apple--when it is ripe, it is yellow and soft. The natives, however, generally gather it before it is ripe; it is then cooked in an oven; the skin is burnt or peeled off--the inside is tender and white, like the crumb of bread or the flour of the potato."

"Let me have the telescope an instant," said Fritz; "I should like to see what the natives are like. Ah, I see a troop of them collecting on shore; some of them seem to be covered with a kind of wrought-steel armor."

"Perhaps the descendants of the Crusaders," remarked Jack, "returning from the Holy Land by way of the Pacific Ocean!"

"Others wear striped pantaloons," continued Fritz.

"That is to say," observed Willis, "the whole lot of them are as naked as posts. What you suppose to be cuirasses and pantaloons, are their tabooed breasts and legs."

"Are you sure of that, Willis?"

"Not a doubt about it."

"Such garments are both durable and economical," remarked Jack; "but I scarcely think they are suitable for stormy weather. But do you think it is safe to land amongst such a set of barebacked rascals, Willis?"

"I should not like to take the responsibility of guaranteeing our safety; but I do not see what other course we can adopt."

They had now approached within musket-shot of the shore. They could see that a venerable-looking old man stood a few paces in front of the group of natives. He held a green branch in one hand, and pressed with the other a long flowing white beard to his breast.

"According to universal grammar," said Jack, "these signs should mean peace and amity."

"Yes," replied the Pilot; "the more so that the rear-guard are pouring water on their heads, which is the greatest mark of courtesy the natives of Polynesia can show to strangers."

"Gentlemen," cried Jack, taking off his cap and making a low bow, "we are your most obedient servants."

"We must be on our guard," said Willis; "these savages are very deceitful, and sometimes let fly their arrows under a show of friendship. I will go on shore alone, whilst you keep at a little distance off, ready to fire to cover my retreat, if need be."

The young men objected to Willis incurring danger that they did not share; but on this point Willis was inexorable, so they were obliged to suffer him to depart alone. By good chance, they had shipped a small cask of glass beads on board the pinnace. The Pilot took a few of these with him, and, placing a cask and a couple of calabashes in the canoe, he rowed ashore.

The natives were evidently in great commotion; there was an immense amount of running backwards and forwards. Something important was, obviously enough, going forward; but, whether the excitement was caused by curiosity or admiration, it was hard to say. They might be preparing a friendly reception for the stranger, or they might be preparing to eat him--which of the two was an interesting question that Willis did not care about probing too deeply at that particular moment.

Fritz and Jack anxiously watched the operations of the natives from the bay. They could not with safety abandon the pinnace; but to leave Willis to the mercy of the sinister-looking people on shore was not to be thought of either. The Mary was, therefore, run in as close as possible, and Jack leaped on the sands a few minutes after the Pilot.

Willis marched boldly on towards the natives, and when he arrived beside the old man, the crowd opened up and formed an avenue through which a chief advanced, followed by a number of men, seemingly priests, who carried a grotesque-looking figure that Jack presumed to be an idol. The figure was made up of wicker-work--was of colossal height--the features, which represented nothing on earth beneath nor heaven above, were inconceivably hideous--the eyes were discs of mother-of-pearl, with a nut in the centre--the teeth were apparently those of a shark, and the body was covered with a mantle of red feathers.

At the command of the chief, some of the natives advanced and placed a quantity of bananas, bread-fruits, and other vegetables at the Pilot's feet; the priests then came forward and knelt down before him, and seemed to worship after the fashion of the ancients when they paid their devotions to the Eleusinian goddess, or the statue of Apollo. Meanwhile, Jack, on his side, was likewise surrounded by the natives, who was treated with much less ceremony than Willis. Instead of falling down on their knees, each of them, one after the other, rubbed their noses against his, and then danced round him with every demonstration of savage joy.

Jack had now an opportunity of observing the personages about him more in detail. They were mostly tall and well-formed; their features bore some resemblance to those of a negro, their nose being flat and their lips thick; on the other hand, they had the high cheek-bones of the North American Indian and the forehead of the Malay. Nearly all of them were entirely naked, but wore a necklace and bracelets of shells. They were armed with a sort of spear and an axe of hard wood edged with stone. Their skins were tattooed all over with lines and circles, and painted; these decorations, in some instances, exhibiting careful execution and no inconsiderable degree of artistic skill. These observations made, Jack pushed his way to the spot where Willis was receiving the homage of the priests.

"What! you here?" said the Pilot.

"Yes, Willis, I have come to see what detained you. By the way, is there anything the matter with my nose?"

"Nothing that I can see; but the natives of New Zealand rub their noses against each other, and probably the same usage is fashion here."

"Why, then, do they make you an exception?"

"I have not the remotest idea."

The priests at length rose, and the chief advanced. This dignitary addressed a long discourse to Willis in a sing-song tone, which lasted nearly half an hour. After this, he stood aside, and looked at Willis, as if he expected a reply.

"Illustrious chief, king, prince, or nabob," said Willis, "I am highly flattered by all the fine things you have just said to me. It is true, I have not understood a single word, but the fruits you have placed before me speak a language that I can understand. Howsomever, most mighty potentate, we are not in want of provisions; but if you can show us a spring of good water, you will confer upon us an everlasting favor."

"You might just as well ask him to show you what o'clock it is by the dial of his cathedral," said Jack.

"They would only point to the sun if I did."

"But suppose the sun invisible."

"Then they would be in the same position as we are when we forget to wind up our watches. Gentlemen savages," he said, turning to the natives and handing them the glass beads, "accept these trifles as a token of our esteem."

The natives required no pressing, but accepted the proffered gifts with great good-will. The dancing and singing then recommenced with redoubled fury, and poor Jack's nose was almost obliterated by the constant rubbing it underwent.

Suddenly the hubbub ceased, and a profound silence reigned throughout the assembly. The oldest of the priests brought a mantle of red feathers, similar to the one that covered the idol. This was thrown over the Pilot's shoulders; a tuft of feathers, something resembling a funeral plume, was placed upon his head, and a large semi-circular fan was thrust into his hand. Thus equipped, a procession was formed, one half before and the other half behind him. The cortege began to move slowly in the direction of the interior, but the operation was disconcerted by Willis, who remained stock-still.

"Thank you," he said, "I would rather not go far away from the shore."

As soon as the natives saw clearly that Willis was not disposed to move, the chief issued a mandate, and four stout fellows immediately removed the idol from its position, and Willis was placed upon the vacant pedestal.

The kind of adoration with which all these proceedings were accompanied greatly perplexed the voyagers. What could it all mean? Was this a common mode of welcoming strangers? It occurred to Jack that the Romans were accustomed to decorate with flowers the victims they designed as sacrifices to the altars of their gods before immolating them. This reminiscence made his flesh creep with horror, and filled him with the utmost dismay.

"Willis!" he cried to the Pilot, whom they were now leading off in triumph, "let us try the effects of our rifles on this rabble; you jump over the heads of your worshippers, and we will charge through them to shore. I will shoot the first man that pursues us, and signal Fritz to discharge the four-pounder amongst them."

"Impossible," replied Willis; "we should both be stuck all over with arrows and lances before we could reach the pinnace. Did I not tell you not to come ashore?"

"True, Willis, but did you suppose I had no heart? How could I look on quietly whilst you were surrounded by a mob of ferocious-looking men?"

"Well, well, Master Jack, say no more about it; I do not suppose they mean to do me any harm; but there would be danger in rousing the passions of such a multitude of people. They seem, luckily, to direct their attentions exclusively to me, so you had better go back and look after the canoe."

"No; I shall follow you wherever you go, Willis, even into the soup-kettles of the wretches."

"In that case," said Willis, "the wine is poured out, and, such as it is, we must drink it."

Chapter XX.

Jupiter Tonans--The Thunders of the Pilot--Worshippers of the Far West--A late Breakfast--Rono the Great--A Polynesian Legend--Manners and Customs of Oceanica Mr. and Mrs. Tamaidi--Regal Pomp--Elbow Room--Katzenmusik--Queen Tonico and the Shaving Glass--Consequences of a Pinch of Snuff--Disgrace of the Great Rono--Marins--Coriolanus--Hannibal--Alcibiades--Cimon--Aristides--A Sop for the Thirsty--Air something else besides Oxygen and Hydrogen--Maryland and Whitechapel--Half-way up the Cordilleras--Human Machines--Star of the Sea, pray for us!

Was he on his way to the Capitol or to the Gemoniae? The solution of this question became, for the moment, of greater importance to Willis than the "to be or not to be" of Hamlet to the State of Denmark. This incertitude was all the more painful, that it was accompanied by myriads of insects, created by the recent rains; these swarmed in the air to such an extent, that it was utterly impossible to inhale the one without swallowing the other. The sailor, notwithstanding his elevated and somewhat perilous position, true to his instincts and tormented by the flies, took out his pipe, filled it, and struck a light. As soon as the first column of smoke issued from his mouth, the cavalcade halted spontaneously, the natives fell on their faces, their noses touching the ground, and in an attitude of the profoundest fear and apprehension. Jupiter thundering never created such a sensation as Willis smoking. The savages seemed glued to the earth with terror. If the Pilot had thought it advisable to escape, he might have walked over the prostrate bodies of his captors, not one of whom would have been bold enough to follow what appeared to be a human volcano, vomiting fire and smoke,--the fire of course being understood.

Willis, however, now saw that he possessed in his pipe a ready means of awing them. Besides, it was clear that, through some fortunate coincidence, the natives had mistaken him for a divinity. There was, consequently, no immediate danger to be apprehended; he therefore became himself again, and began to enjoy the novelty of his new dignity.

It was certainly a curious contrast. Willis, seated on a sort of throne, crowned with a waving plume of feathers, shrouded in a fiery mantle, and surrounded by a crowd of prostrate figures, was quietly puffing ribbons of smoke from the tips of his lips. There he sat, for all the world like a crane in a duck-pond. From time to time the more daring of the worshippers slightly raised their heads to see whether Jupiter was still thundering; but when their eye caught a whiff of smoke, they speedily resumed their former posture. Some of them even thrust their heads into holes, or behind stones, as if more effectually to shelter themselves from the fury of the fiery furnace. At last the eruption ceased, Willis knocked the ashes out of his pipe, replaced it in his pocket, and the convoy resumed its route. After half an hour's march, the procession halted near a clump of plantains, in front of a structure more ambitious than any of those in the neighborhood. A female, laden with rude ornaments, was standing at the door. This lady, who rivalled the celebrated Daniel Lambert in dimensions, would have created quite a furore at Bartholomew Fair; according to Jack, she was so amazingly fat, that it would have taken full five minutes to walk round her. She took the Pilot respectfully by the hand, and led him into the interior of the building, which was crowded with images of various forms, and was evidently a temple. Willis, at a sign from his conductress, seated himself in a chair, raised on a dais, and surmounted by a terrific figure similar to the one already described, but draped in white feathers instead of red.

The fat lady, or rather the high priestess--for she was the reigning potentate in this magazine of idols--took a sucking pig that was held by one of the priests. After muttering a prayer or homily of some sort, she strangled the poor animal, and returned it to the priest. By and by, the pig was brought in again cooked, and presented with great ceremony to Willis. There were likewise sundry dishes of fruit, nuts, and several small cups containing some kind of liquid. One of the priests cut up the pig, and lifted pieces of it to Willis's mouth; these, however, he refused to eat. The fat priestess, observing this, chewed one or two mouthfuls, which she afterwards handed to the Pilot. This was putting the sailor's gallantry to rather a rude test. He was equal to the emergency, and did not refuse the offering. But he must have felt at the time, that being a divinity was not entirely without its attendant inconveniences.

Nor was this the only infliction of the kind he was doomed to withstand. One of the priests took up a piece of kava-root, put it into his mouth, chewed it, and then dropped a bit into each of the cups already noticed. One of these, containing this nectar, was presented to Willis by the fat Hebe who presided at the feast, and he had the fortitude to taste it. Another of the cups was handed to Jack.

"No, I thank you," said he, shaking his head; "I breakfasted rather late this morning."

Meantime, another personage had entered upon the scene. After having performed an obeisance to Willis like the rest, this individual backed himself to where Jack was standing, by this means adroitly avoiding both the kava and the nose-rubbings. He was distinguished from the other natives by an ornament round his waist, which fell to his knees. His skin seemed a trifle less dark, his features less marked; but his body was tattooed and stained after the common fashion.

The new comer turned out to be a Portuguese deserter, who had abandoned his ship twenty years before, and had married the daughter of a chief of the island on which he now was. At the present moment, he filled the part of prime minister to the king, an office be could not have held in his own ungrateful country, since he could neither read nor write. These accomplishments, it appeared, were not, however, absolutely indispensable in Polynesia. It has been found that when a savage is transferred to Europe, he readily acquires the habits of civilized life. By a similar adaptation of things to circumstances, this European had identified himself with the savages. He had adopted their manners, their customs, and their costume. When he thought of his own country, it was only to wonder why he ever submitted to the constraint of a coat, or put himself to the trouble of handling a fork and spoon. He had not, however, entirely forgotten his mother tongue, and, moreover, still retained in his memory a few English words. He was likewise very communicative, and told Jack that they were in the Island of Hawai; that the name of the king was Toubowrai Tamaidi, who, he added, intended visiting the pinnace with the queen next day, to pay his respects in person to the great Rono. "His Majesty," said the Portuguese, "would have been amongst the first to throw himself at his feet, but unfortunately the royal residence is a good way off; and though both the king and the queen are on the way, running as fast as they can, it may take them some time yet to reach the shore."

"But who is the great Rono?" inquired Jack.

"Well," replied the prime minister, "you ought to know best, since you arrived with him."

Jack felt that he was touching on delicate ground, and saw that it was necessary to diplomatise a little.

"True," said he; "but I am not acquainted with the position that illustrious person holds in relation to Hawai." The Portuguese then made a very long, rambling, and not very lucid statement, from which Jack gleaned the following details. About a hundred years before, during the reign of one of the first kings, there lived a great warrior, whose name was Rono. This chief was very popular, but he was very jealous. In a moment of anger he killed his wife, of whom he was passionately fond. The regret and grief that resulted from this act drove him out of his senses; he wandered disconsolately about the island, fought and quarrelled with every one that came near him. At last, in a fit of despair, he embarked in a large canoe, and, after promising to return at the expiration of twelve hundred moons, with a white face and on a floating island, he put out to sea, and was never heard of more.

This tradition, it appears, had been piously handed down from family to family. The natives of Hawai--who are not more extravagant in the matter of idols than some nations who boast a larger amount of civilization, but who do not destroy them so often--enrolled Rono amongst the list of their divinities. An image of him was set up, sacrifices were instituted in his honor. Every year the day of his departure was kept sacred, and devoted to religious ceremonies. The twelfth hundred moon had just set, when a large boat appeared in the bay, and a man came ashore. The high priest of the temple, Raou, and his daughter, On La, priestess of Rono, solemnly declared that the man in question was Rono himself, who had returned at the precise time named, and in the manner he promised.

It was, therefore, clear from this statement that Willis was to be henceforward Rono the Great.

Jack was rather pleased than otherwise to learn that he was the companion of a real live divinity. It assured him, in the first place, that the danger of his being converted into a stew or a fricassee was not imminent. He did not forget, however, that the consequences might be perilous if, by any chance, the illusion ceased; for he knew that the greater the height from which a man falls, the less the mercy shown to him when he is down. As soon, therefore, as the ceremonies had a little relaxed, and Willis was left some freedom of action, Jack went forward, and knelt before him in his turn.

"O sublime Rono," said he, "I know now why your nose has escaped all the rubbings that mine has had to undergo."

"Do you?" said Willis; "glad to hear it, for I am as much in the dark as ever."

Jack then related to him the fabulous legend he had just heard.

After a while, Willis shook off his entourage as gently as possible, and succeeded in getting out of the temple. Accompanied by Jack, he proceeded towards the shore, receiving, as he went, the adoration of the people. The route was strewn with fruit, cocoa-nuts, and pigs, and the natives were highly delighted when any of their offerings were accepted by the deified Rono.

The islanders appeared mild, docile, and intelligent, notwithstanding the singular delusion that possessed them. Living from day to day, they were, doubtless, ignorant of those continual cares and calculations for the future that in the old world pursue us even into the hours of sleep. Were they happier in consequence? Yes, if the child is happier than the man, and if we admit that we often loose in tranquillity and happiness what we gain in knowledge and perfection: yes, if happiness is not exclusively attached to certain peoples and certain climates; yes, if it is true that, with contentment, happiness is everywhere to be found.

The houses of the Hawaians are singular structures, and scarcely can be called dwellings. They consist of three rows of posts, two on each side and one in the middle, the whole covered with a slanting roof, but without any kind of wall whatever.

They do not bury their dead, but swing them up in a sort of hammock, abundantly supplied with provisions. It is supposed that this is done with a view to enable the souls of the departed to take their flight more readily to heaven. The practice, consequently, seems to indicate that the natives possess a confused idea of a future state. When a child dies, flowers are placed in the hammock along with the provisions--a touch of the nature common to us all. They express deep grief by inflicting wounds upon their faces with a shark's tooth; and, when they feel themselves in danger of dying, they cut off a joint of the little finger to appease the anger of the Divinity. There was scarcely one of the adult islanders who was not mutilated in this way.

Though the worshippers of the great Rono appeared gentle and peaceable enough, there were to be seen here and there a human jaw-bone, seemingly fresh, with the teeth entire, suspended over the entrances to the huts. These ghastly objects sent a shudder quivering through Jack's frame, and made Willis aware that it would not be advisable rashly to throw off his sacred character.

As it was now late, and as they knew that Fritz would be uneasy about them, they put off laying in their stock of water till next day. Jack told the prime minister that the great Rono would be prepared to receive their majesties whenever they chose to visit him. This done, Willis and his companion seated themselves in the canoe, and rowed out to the pinnace.

"God be thanked, you have returned in safety!" cried Fritz; "I never was so uneasy in the whole course of my life."

"Well, brother, we have not been without our anxieties as well, and had we not happened to have had a divinity amongst us, we might not have come off scathless."

Jack then related their adventures, which gradually brought a smile to the pale lips of Fritz.

"But the water?" inquired Fritz, after he had heard the story.

"Oh, water; they offered us something to drink on shore that will prevent us being thirsty for a month to come, but we shall see to that to-morrow."

Towards dark, some fireworks were discharged on board the pinnace, by way of demonstrating that Willis's pipe was not the only fiery terror the great Rono had at his command.

Early next morning a flotilla of canoes were observed rounding one of the points that formed the bay. The one in advance was larger than the others, and was evidently the trunk of a large tree hollowed out. Jack's new friend, the Portuguese, hailed the pinnace, and announced the King and Queen of Hawai, who thereupon scrambled into the pinnace. His majesty King Toubowrai had probably felt it incumbent upon himself to do honor to the illustrious Rono, for he wore an old uniform coat, very likely the produce of a wreck, through the sleeves of which the angular knobs of his copper-colored elbows projected. He did not seem very much at his ease in this garment, which contrasted oddly with the tight-fitting tattooed skin that served him for pantaloons.

His wife, Queen Tonico, princess-like was half stifled in a thick blanket or mat of cocoa-nut fibre. Her ears were heavily laden with teeth and ornaments of various kinds, made out of bone, mother of pearl, and tortoise-shell. Her nails were two or three inches long; and, to judge by the number of finger-joints that were wanting, she was either troubled with delicate nerves, or was slightly hypochondriac.

The royal pair were accompanied by a band of music: fortunately, this remained in the regal barge. It consisted of a flute with four holes, a nondescript instrument, seemingly made of stones; a drum made out of the hollow trunk of a tree, covered at each end with skin, of what kind it is needless to inquire. The sounds emitted by this orchestra were of an ear-rending nature, and of a kind graphically termed by the Germans Katzenmusik.

"Illustrious Rono," cried Jack, "for goodness sake, tell these gentlemen you are not a lover of sweet sounds."

"Belay there!" roared Willis.

This command, however, had no effect; the artists continued thumping and blowing away as before. Willis, thinking to make himself better heard, placed his hands on his mouth, and roared the same order through them. This action seemed to be received as a mark of approbation, for the noise became absolutely terrific.

"No use," said Willis: "I can make nothing of them. You try what you can do."

"Very good," said Jack, lighting what is technically termed an artichoke, but better known as a zig-zag cracker; "if they do not understand English, perhaps they may comprehend pyrotechnics."

The artichoke was thrown into the royal barge. At first there was only a slight whiz, finally it gave an angry bound and leaped into the midst of the musicians. Startled, they tried to get out of its way; but they were no sooner at what they thought to be a safe distance, than the thing was amongst them again. Their majesties, who were just then engaged in kissing the Rono's feet, started up in alarm; but when they saw the danger did not menace themselves, they burst into a hearty laugh at the antics of their suite.

This episode over, and the orchestra silenced, the Sovereign of Hawai proceeded to inspect the pinnace. He expressed his delight every now and then by uttering the syllables "ta-ta." Fritz handed one of those shaving glasses to the Queen that lengthen the objects they reflect. This astonished her Majesty vastly, and caused her to ta-ta at a great rate. She looked behind the mirror, turned it upside down, and at last, when she felt assured that it was the royal person it caricatured, she commenced measuring her cheeks to account for the extraordinary disproportion.

They next all sat down to a repast that was spread on deck. Their Majesties observing Rono use a fork, did so likewise; but though they stuck a piece of meat on the end of it, and held it in one hand, they continued carrying the viands to their mouths with the other. At the conclusion of the feast, Willis took a pinch of snuff out of a canister. Their Majesties insisted upon doing so likewise. Willis handed them the canister, and they filled their noses with the treacherous powder. Then followed a duet of sneezing, accompanied with facial contortions. The royal personages thinking, probably, that they were poisoned, leaped into the sea like a couple of frogs, and swam to the royal barge.

"Holloa, sire," cried Jack, "where are you off to?"

This was answered by the barge paddling away rapidly towards land. Hitherto, the whole affair had been a farce; but now the natives, who had collected in great numbers along the shore, seeing their king and queen leap into the water with a terrified air, supposed that an attempt had been made to cut short their royal lives, and, under this impression, discharged a cloud of arrows at the pinnace, and matters began to assume a serious aspect.

"What!" exclaimed Jack, "shooting at the great Rono!"

"That," said Fritz, "only proves they are men like ourselves. He who is covered with incense one day, is very often immolated the next."

"And that simply because Rono treated Mr. and Mrs. What's-their-names to a pinch of snuff. Serve them right to discharge the contents of the four-pounder amongst them."

"No, no," cried Willis; "the worthy people are, perhaps, fond of their king and queen."

"Worthy people or not," said Fritz, drawing out an arrow that had sunk into the capstan, "it is very likely that if this dart had hit one of us, there would only have been two instead of three in the crew of the pinnace."

"Well," said Willis, "Master Jack thought the voyage rather dull; now something has turned up to relieve the monotony of his log."

"We are still without fresh water though, Willis; I wish you could say that had turned up as well."

"It will be prudent to go in search of that somewhere else now," said Willis, unfurling the sails. "Fortunately the wind is fresh, and we can make considerable headway before night."

As they steered gently out of the bay a second cloud of arrows was sent after them, but this time they fell short.

"The belief in Rono is about to be seriously compromised," remarked Fritz; "I should advise the priestess to retire into private life."

"Impossible."

"Why?"

"Because she is too fat to live in an ordinary house, she could only breathe in a temple. But, O human vicissitudes!" added Jack, rolling himself up in a sail after the manner of the Roman senators; "behold Rono the Great banished from his country, and compelled to go and pillow his head on a foreign sail, like Marius at Minturnus--like Coriolanus amongst the Volcians--like Hannibal at the house of Antiochus--like Alcibiades at the castle of Grunium in Phrygia, given to him out of charity by the benevolent Pharnabazus, and in which he was burnt alive by his countrymen--like Cimon, voted into exile by ballot and universal suffrage--like Aristides, whom the people got tired of hearing called the Just, and many others."

"Who are all these personages?" inquired Willis.

"They were worthies of another age," replied Fritz; "very excellent men in their way, and you are in no way dishonored by being numbered amongst them."

"Yesterday," continued Jack, "an entire people were upon their knees before you; they offered up sacrifices, and poured out incense on their altars for you; fruit and pigs were scattered in heaps, like flowers, upon your path; the crowd were prostrated by the fumes of your pipe. To-day--alas, the change!--a cloud of arrows, and not a single glass of cold water!"

"That gives you an opportunity of quenching your thirst with the nectar offered to you yesterday," said Fritz; "as for myself, I have no such resource."

"Yes, that was a posset to quench one's thirst withal; I only wish I had a cupful to give you. I do not regret having had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the people though. They have enabled me to rectify some erroneous notions I formerly entertained. If, for example, I were to ask you what air consists of? you would, no doubt, reply that is a compound body made of oxygen and hydrogen or azote, in the proportion of twenty-one of the one to seventy-nine of the other."

"Yes, most undoubtedly."

"Well, such is not the case; there are other elements in the air besides these."

"If you mean that the air accidentally, or even permanently, holds in solution a certain quantity of water, or a portion of carbonic acid gas, and possibly some particles of dust arising from terrestrial bodies, then I grant your premises."

"No; what I mean is, that the air of Hawai is composed of three distinct elements."

"Possibly; but if so, the air in question is not known to chemists."

"These three elements are oxygen, hydrogen, and insects."

"Ah, insects! I might have fancied you were driving at some hypothesis of that sort."

"I intend to communicate this discovery to the first learned society we fall in with."

"In the Pacific Ocean?"

"Yes: there or elsewhere."

"I always understood," observed Willis, "that air was a sort of cloud, one and indivisible."

"A cloud if you like, Willis; but do you know the weight of it you carry on your shoulders?"

"Well, it cannot be very great, otherwise I should feel it."

"What do you say to a ton or so, old fellow?"

"If you wish me to believe that, you will have to explain how, where, when, why, and wherefore."

"Very good. Willis; you have bathed sometimes?"

"Yes, certainly."

"In the sea?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what water weighs?"

"No, but I know that it is heavy."

"Well, a square yard of air weighs two pounds and a half, but a square yard of water weighs two thousand pounds. Now, can you calculate the weight of the water that is on your back and pressing on your sides when you swim?"

"No, I cannot."

"You are not sufficiently up in arithmetic to do that, Willis?"

"No."

"Nor am I either, Willis; but let me ask you how it is that the waves do not carry you along with them?"

"Because one wave neutralises the effect of another."

"Very good; but how is it that these ponderous waves, coming down upon you, do not crush you to atoms by their mere weight?"

"Well, I suppose that liquids do not operate in the same way as solids: perhaps there is something in our bodies that counterbalances the effect of the water."

"Very likely; and if such be the case as regards water, may it not be so also as regards air?"

"But I do not feel air; whereas, if I go into water, I not only feel it, but taste it sometimes, and I cannot force my way through it without considerable exertion."

"That is because you are organized to live in air and not in water. You ask the smallest sprat or sticklebake if it does not, in the same way feel the air obstruct its progress."

"But would the stickleback answer me, Master Fritz?"

"Why not, if it is polite and well bred?"

"By the way, Willis," inquired Jack, "do you ever recollect having lived without breathing?"

"Can't say I do."

"Very well, then; had you felt the weight of the air at any given moment, it must have produced an impression you never felt before, but you have not, because circumstances have never varied. A sensation supposes a contrast, whilst, ever since you existed, you have always been subject to atmospheric pressure."

"Ah, now I begin to get at the gist of your argument. You mean, for example, that I would never have appreciated the delicate flavor of Maryland or Havanna, had I not been accustomed to smoke the cabbage-leaf manufactured in Whitechapel."

"Precisely so; and take for another example the farm of Antisana, which is situated about midway up the Cordilleras, mountains of South America. When travellers, arriving there from the summits which are covered with perpetual snow, meet others arriving from the plain where the heat is intense, those that descend are invariably bathed in perspiration, whilst those that have come up are shivering with cold and covered with furs. The reason of this is, that we cannot feel warm till we have been cold, and vice versa."

"Our bodies," resumed Fritz, "however much the thermometer descends, never mark less than thirty-five degrees above zero. In winter the skin shrinks, and becomes a bad conductor of heat from without; but, at the same time, does not allow so much gas and vapor to escape from within. In summer, on the contrary, the skin dilates and allows perspiration to form, a process that consumes a considerable amount of latent heat. Starting from this principle, it has been calculated that a man, breathing twenty times in a minute, generates as much heat in twenty-four hours as would boil a bucket of water taken at zero."

"If means could be found," remarked Jack, "to furnish him with a boiler, by fixing a piston here and a pipe there man might be converted into one of the machines we were talking about the other day."

"Were I disposed to philosophize," added Fritz, "I might prove to you that for a long time men have been little else than mere machines."

Before night they had run about thirty miles further to the north-east, without seeing any thing beyond a formidable bluff, guarded by a fringe of breakers, that would soon have swallowed up the Mary had she ventured to reach the land. It was necessary however to obtain fresh water at any price before they resumed their voyage.

It was to be feared that all the islanders of the Pacific were not in expectation of a great Rono, consequently Willis suggested that it would be as well to search for an uninhabited spot. The only question was, how long they might have to search before they succeeded; for they knew that there were plenty of small islands in these latitudes unencumbered by savages, and furnished with pools and springs of water.

Night at length closed in upon them, and with it came a dense mist, that enveloped the Mary as if in a triple veil of muslin.

"Willis," inquired Jack, "what difference is there between a mist and a cloud?"

"None that I know of," replied the Pilot, "except that a cloud which we are in is mist, and mist that we are not in is a cloud. And now, my lads," he added, "you may turn in, for I intend to take the first watch."

Before turning in, however, all three joined in a short prayer. The young men had not yet forgotten the pious precepts of their father. Prayer is beautiful everywhere, but nowhere is it so beautiful as on the open sea, with infinity above and an abyss beneath. Then, when all is silent save the roar of the waves and the howling of the winds, it is sublime to hear the humble voice of the sailor murmuring, "Star of the night, pray for us!"

That night the star of the night did pray for the three voyagers, for the rays of the moon burst through the darkness and the mist, and fell upon a long line of reefs under the lee of the pinnace. Had they held on their course a few minutes longer, our story would have been ended.

Chapter XXI.

Lying-to--Heart and Instinct--Sparrows viewed as Consumers--Migrations--Posting a Letter in the Pacific--Cannibals--Adventures of a Locket.

The glimpse of moonshine only lasted a second, but it was sufficient to light up the valley of the shadow of death. All around was again enveloped in obscurity. The moon, like a modest benefactor who hides himself from those to whose wants he has ministered, concealed itself behind its screen of blackness.

The pinnace was thrown into stays, and they resolved to lie-to till daybreak. There might be rocks to windward as well as to leeward; at all events, they felt that their safest course lay in maintaining, as far as possible, their actual position; and, after having returned thanks for their almost miraculous escape, they made the usual arrangements for passing the night.

Next morning they found themselves in the midst of a labyrinth of rocks, from which, with the help of Providence, they succeeded in extricating themselves. The rocks, or rather reefs, amongst which they were entangled, are very common in these seas. As they are scarcely visible at high water, they are extremely dangerous, and often baffle the skill of the most expert navigator.

Whilst Willis steered the pinnace amongst the islands and rocks of the Hawaian Archipelago, Fritz kept a look-out for savages, fresh water, and eligible landing-places. And Jack, after having posted up his log, set about inditing a letter for home.

"The voyage," said he, "has lately been so prolific in adventure, that I scarcely know where to begin."

"Begin by saluting them all round," suggested Fritz.

"But, brother of mine, that is usually done at the end of the letter," objected Jack.

"What then? you can repeat the salutations at the end, and you might also, for that matter, put them in the middle as well."

"I have written lots of letters on board ship for my comrades," remarked Willis, "and I invariably commenced by saying--I take a pen in my hand to let you know I am well, hoping you are the same."

"What else could you take in your hand for such a purpose, O Rono?" inquired Jack.

"Sometimes, after this preamble, I added, 'but I am afraid.'"

"I thought you old salts were never afraid of anything, short of the Flying Dutchman."

"Yes; but the letters I put that in were for young lubbers, who, instead of sending home half their pay, were writing for extra supplies, and were naturally in great fear that their requests would be refused."

"I scarcely think I shall adopt that style, Willis, even though it were recognized by the navy regulations."

"Do you think the pigeon will find its way with the letter from here to New Switzerland?" inquired Willis.

"I have no doubt about that," replied Fritz, "it naturally returns to its nest and its affections. If you had wings, would you not fly straight off in the direction of the Bass Rock or Ailsa Craig, to hunt up your old arm-chair?"

"Don't speak of it; I feel my heart go pit-pat when I think of home, sweet home."

"So do the birds. When they soften the grain before they throw it into the maw of their fledgelings--when they fly off and return laden with midges to their nests--when they tear the down from their breasts to protect their eggs and their young, do you think their hearts do not beat as well as yours?"

"But all that is said to be instinct."

"Heart or instinct, where is the difference? The Abbe Spallanzani saw two swallows that were carried to Milan return to Pavia in fifteen minutes, and the distance between the two cities is seven leagues."

"That I can easily believe."

"When you see a little, insignificant bird flying backwards and forwards, perching on one branch and hopping off to another, whistling, carolling, perching here and there, you think that it has no cares, that it does not reflect, and that it does not love!"

"Well, I have heard in my time a great many wonderful stories of robin-redbreasts and jenny-wrens, but I always understood that they were intended only to amuse little boys and girls."

"You consider, doubtless, that a field-sparrow is not a creature of much importance; but do you know that he consumes half a bushel of corn annually?"

"If that is his only merit, the farmers, I dare say, would be glad to get rid of him."

"But it is not his only merit. What do you think of his killing three thousand insects a week."

"That is more to the purpose. But, to return to the pigeon, supposing it is possible for it to find its way, how long do you suppose it will take to get there?"

"It is estimated that birds of passage fly over two hundred miles a day, if they keep on the wing for six hours."

"Two hundred miles in six hours is fast sailing, anyhow."

"Swallows have been seen in Senegal on the 9th of October, that is, eight or nine days after they leave Europe; and that journey they repeat every year."

"They must surely make some preparations for such a lengthy excursion."

"When the period of departure approaches, they collect together in troops on the chimneys or roofs of houses, and on the tops of trees. During this operation, they keep up an incessant cry, which brings families of them from all quarters. The young ones try the strength of their wings under the eyes of the parents. Finally, they make some strategic dispositions, and elect a chief."

"You talk of the swallows as if they were an army preparing for battle, with flags flying, trumpets sounding, and ready to march at the word of command."

"The resemblance between flocks of birds and serried masses of men in martial array is striking. Wild ducks, swans, and cranes fly in a kind of regimental order; their battalions assume the form of a triangle or wedge, so as to cut through the air with greater facility, and diminish the resistance it presents to their flight.

"But how do you know it is for that?"

"What else could it be for? The leader gives notice, by a peculiar cry, of the route it is about to take. This cry is repeated by the flock, as if to say that they will follow, and keep the direction indicated. When they meet with a bird of prey whose attacks they may have to repulse, the ranks fall in so as to present a solid phalanx to the enemy."

"If they had a commissariat in the rear and a few sappers in front, the resemblance would be complete."

"If a storm arises," continued Fritz, without noticing Willis's commentary, "they lower their flight and approach the ground."

"Forgotten their umbrellas, perhaps."

"When they make a halt, outposts are established to keep a look out while the troop sleeps."

"And, in cases of alarm, the outposts fire and fall in as a matter of course."

"Great Rono," said Jack, "you are become a downright quiz. I have finished my letter whilst you have been discussing the poultry," he added, handing the pen to his brother, "and it only waits your postscriptum." Fritz having added a few lines, the epistle was sealed, and was then attached to one of the pigeons, which, after hovering a short time round the pinnace, took a flight upwards and disappeared in the clouds.

They were now in sight of a large island, which bore no traces of habitation. There was a heavy surf beating on the shore, but the case was urgent, so Willis and Jack embarked in the canoe, and, after a hard fight with the waves, landed on the beach.

Each of them were armed with a double-barrelled rifle, and furnished with a boatswain's whistle. The whistle was to signal the discovery of water, and a rifle shot was to bring them together in case of danger. These arrangements being made, Jack proceeded in the direction of a thicket, which stood at the distance of some hundred yards from the shore. He had no sooner reached the cover in the vicinity of the trees than he was pounced upon by two ferocious-looking savages. They gave him no time to level his rifle or to draw a knife. One of his captors held his hands firmly behind his back, whilst the other dragged him towards the wood. At this moment the Pilot's whistle rang sharply through the air. This put an end to any hopes that Jack might have entertained of being rescued through that means. Had he sounded the whistle, it would only have led Willis to suppose that he had heard the signal, and was on his way to join him.

Poor Jack judged, from the aspect of the men who held him, that they were cannibals, and consequently that his fate was sealed, for if his surmises were correct, there was little chance of the wretches relinquishing their prey. Jack had often amused himself at the expense of the anthropophagi, but here he was actually within their grasp. Though death terminates the sorrows and the sufferings of man, and though the result is the same in whatever shape it comes, yet there are circumstances which cause its approach to be regarded with terror and dismay. In one's bed, exhausted by old age or disease, the lips only open to give utterance to a sigh of pain; life, then, is a burden that is laid down without reluctance; we glide imperceptibly and almost voluntarily into eternity.

At twenty years of age, however, when we are full of health and ardor, the case is very different. Then we are at the threshold of hope and happiness; our illusions have not had time to fade, the future is a brilliant meteor sparkling in sunshine. At that age our seas are always calm, and the rocks and shoals are all concealed. Our barks glide jauntily along, the sailors sing merrily, the perils are shrouded in romance, and the flag flutters gaily in the breeze. Then life is not abandoned without a tear of regret.

To die in the midst of one's friends is not to quit them entirely. They come to see us through the marble or stone in which we are shrouded. It is another thing to have no other sepulchre than the aesophagus of a cannibal. How the recollections of the past darted into Jack's mind! He felt that he loved those whom he was on the point of leaving a thousand times more than he did before. What would he not have given for the power to bid them one last adieu? The idea of quitting life thus was horrible.

It was in vain that he tried to shake off his assailants; his adolescent strength was as nothing in the arms of steel that bound him. He saw that he was powerless in their hands, and at length ceased making any further attempts to escape.

The savages, finding that he had relaxed his struggles, commenced to rifle and strip him. They tore off his upper garments, and discovered a small locket, containing a medallion of his mother, which the unfortunate youth wore round his neck. This prize, which the savages no doubt regarded as a talisman of some sort, they both desired to possess. They quarrelled about it, and commenced fighting over it. Jack's hands were left at liberty. In an instant he had seized his rifle. He ran a few paces back, turned, took deliberate aim at the most powerful of his adversaries, who, with a shriek, fell to the ground. The other savage, scared by the report of the shot and its effects upon his companion, took to flight, but he carried off the locket with him.

Jack had now regained his courage. He felt, like Telemachus in the midst of his battles, that God was with him, and he flew, perhaps imprudently, after the fugitive. Seeing, however, that he had no chance with him as regards speed, he discharged his second rifle. The shot did not take effect, but the report brought the savage to his knees. The frightened wretch pressed his hands together in an attitude of supplication. Jack stopped at a little distance, and, by an imperious gesture, gave him to understand that he wanted the locket. The sign was comprehended, for the savage laid the talisman on the ground.

"Now," said Jack, "in the name of my mother I give you your life."

By another sign, he signified to the man that he was at liberty, which he no sooner understood than he vanished like an arrow.

Great was the consternation of Fritz when he heard the reports; he feared that the whole island was in commotion, and that both his brother and the Pilot were surrounded by a legion of copper-colored devils. From the conformation of the coast he could see nothing, and, like Sisiphus on his rock, he was tied by imperious necessity to his post.

The Pilot, on hearing the first shot, ran to the spot, and both he and Jack arrived at the same instant, where the savage lay bleeding on the ground.

"You are safe and sound, I hope?" said Willis, anxiously.

"With the exception of some slight contusions, and the loss of my clothes, thank God, I am all right, Willis."

"We are born to bad luck, it seems."

"Say rather we are the spoilt children of Providence. I have just passed through the eye of a needle."

"Is this the only savage you have seen?"

"No, there were two of them; and, to judge from their actions, I verily believe the rascals intended to eat me. As for this one, he is more frightened than hurt."

And so it was, he had escaped with some slugs in his shoulders; but he seemed, by the contortions of his face, to think that he was dying.

"Fortunately," said Jack, "my rifle was not loaded with ball. I should be sorry to have the death of a human being on my conscience."

"Well," said Willis, "I am not naturally cruel, but, beset as you have been, I should have shot both the fellows without the slightest compunction."

"Still," said Jack, giving the wounded savage a mouthful of brandy, "we ought to have mercy on the vanquished--they are men like ourselves, at all events."

"Yes, they have flesh and bone, arms, legs, hands, and teeth like us; but I doubt whether they are possessed of souls and hearts."

"The chances are that they possess both, Willis; only neither the one nor the other has been trained to regard the things of this world in a proper light. Their notions as to diet, for example, arise from ignorance as to what substances are fit and proper for human food."

"As you like," said Willis; "but let us be off; there may be more of them lurking about."

"What! again without water?"

"No, this time I have taken care to fill the casks; the canoe is laden with fresh water."

"Fritz must be very uneasy about us; but this man may die if we leave him so."

"Very likely," said the Pilot; "but that is no business of ours."

"Good bye," said Jack, lifting up the wounded savage, and propping him against a tree; "I may never have the pleasure of seeing you again, and am sorry to leave you in such a plight; but it will be a lesson for you, and a hint to be a little more hospitable for the future in your reception of strangers."

The savage raised his eyes for an instant, as if to thank Jack for his good offices, and then relapsed into his former attitude of dejection.

Twenty minutes later the canoe was aboard the pinnace.

"Fritz," said Jack, throwing his arms round his brother's neck, "I am delighted to see you again; half an hour ago I had not the shadow of a chance of ever beholding you more."

Chapter XXII.

The Utility of Adversity--An Encounter--The Hoboken--Bill alias Bob.

A light but favorable breeze carried them away from land, and they were once again on the open sea. Willis, after a prolonged investigation of the sun's position, taken in relation to some observations he had made the day before, concluded that the best course to pursue, under existing circumstances, was to steer for the Marian Islands.[H] In addition to the distance they had originally to traverse, all the way lost during the storm was now before them. As regards provisions, they had little to fear; they could rely upon falling in with a boobie or sea-cow occasionally, and fresh fish were to be had at any time. Their supply of water, however, gave them some uneasiness, for the quantity was limited, and they might be retarded by calms and contrary winds. The chances of meeting a European ship were too slender to enter for anything into their calculations.

"It appears to me," said Jack, one beautiful evening, when they were some hundreds of miles from any habitable spot, "that, having escaped so many dangers, the watchful eye of Providence must be guarding us from evil."

"Very possibly," replied Fritz; "one of the early chroniclers of the Christian Church says that Lazarus, whom our Saviour resuscitated at the gates of Jerusalem, became afterwards one of the most popular preachers of Christianity, and in consequence the Jews regarded him with implacable hatred."

"But what, in all the world, has that to do with the Pacific Ocean?" inquired Jack.

"Very little with the Pacific in particular, but a great deal with the ocean in general. Lazarus, his sisters, and some of his friends, were thrown into prison, tried, and condemned."

"And stoned or crucified," added Jack.

"No; the high priest of the temple had a great variety of punishments on hand besides these. He resolved to expose them to the mercy of the waves, without provisions, and without a mast, sail, or rudder."

"Thank goodness, we are not so badly off as that."

"He, for whom Lazarus suffered, and who is the same that nourishes the birds of the air and feeds the beasts of the field; watched over the forlorn craft; under his guidance, the little colony of martyrs were wafted in safety to the fertile coasts of Provence. They landed, according to the tradition, at Marseilles, of whom Lazarus was the first bishop, and has always been the patron saint. Who knows?--the same good fortune may perhaps await us."

"We are not martyrs."

"True; but Providence does not always measure its favors by the merits of those upon whom they are bestowed--misfortune, alone, is often a sufficient claim; so it is well for us to be patient under a little suffering, for sweet often is the reward."

"A little hardship, now and then," added Jack, "is, no doubt, salutary. The Italians say: 'Le avversita sono per l'animo cio ch' e un temporale per l'aria.' Suffering teaches us to prize health and happiness; were there no such things as pain and grief, we should be apt to regard these blessings as valueless, and to estimate them as our legitimate rights. For my own part, I was never so happy in my whole life as when I embraced you the other day, after escaping out of the clutches of the savages."

"There are many charms in life that are almost without alloy: the perfume of flowers--music--the singing of birds--the riches of art--the intercourse of society--the delights of the family circle--the treasures of imagination and memory. Some of the most beneficent gifts of Nature we only know the existence of when we are deprived of them; occasional darkness alone enables us to appreciate the unspeakable blessing of light. Man has a multitude of enjoyments at his command; but so many sweets would be utterly insipid without a few bitters."

"The rheumatism, for example," said Willis, rubbing his shoulders.

"Many enjoyments," continued Fritz, "spring from the heart alone; the affections, benevolence, love of order, a sense of the beautiful, of truth, of honesty, and of justice."

"On the other hand," said Willis, "there are dishonesty, injustice, disappointment, and blighted hopes; but you are too young to know much about these. When you have seen as much of the world on sea and on land as I have, perhaps you will be disposed to look at life from another point of view. In old stagers like myself, the tender emotions are all used up; it is only when we are amongst you youngsters that we forget the present in the past; when we see you struggling with difficulties, it recalls our own trials to our mind, rouses in us sentiments of commiseration, and softens the asperities of our years."

"According to you, then," said Fritz, levelling his rifle at a petrel, "the misfortunes of the one constitute the happiness of the other?"

"Unquestionably," said Jack; "for instance, if you miss that bird, so much the worse for you, and so much the better for the petrel."

"It is very rarely, brother, that you do not interrupt a serious conversation with some nonsense."

"Keep your temper, Fritz; I am about to propose a serious question myself. How is it that the petrel you are aiming at does not come and perch itself quietly on the barrel of your rifle?"

"Jack, Jack, you are incorrigible."

"Did you ever see a hare or a pheasant come and stare you in the face when you were going to shoot it?"

"Stunsails and tops!" cried Willis, "if I do not see something stranger than that staring us in the face."

"The sea-serpent, perhaps," said Jack.

"I thought it was a sea-bird at first," said Willis, "but they do not increase in size the longer you look at them."

"They naturally appear to increase as they approach," observed Fritz.

"Yes, but the increase must have a limit, and I never saw a bird with such singular upper-works before. Just take a cast of the glass yourself, Master Fritz."

"Halls of AEolus!" cried Fritz, "these wings are sails."

"So I thought!" exclaimed Willis, throwing his sou'-wester into the air, and uttering a loud hurrah.

"If it is the Nelson" said Jack, "it would be a singular encounter."

"The Nelson!" sighed Willis, "in the latitude of Hawai; no, that is impossible."

"She is bearing down upon us," said Fritz.

"Just let me see a moment whether I can make out her figure-head," said Willis. "Aye, aye!"

"Can you make it out?"

"No; but, from the sheer of the hull, I think the ship is British built."

"Thank God!" exclaimed both the young men.

"Yes, you may say 'Thank God;' but, if it turns out to be a man-of-war, I must report myself on board, and I doubt whether my story will go down with the captain."

"But if it is the Nelson?" insisted Jack.

"Aye, aye; the Nelson," replied Willis, "is not going to turn up here to oblige us, you may take my word for that."

"I have better eyes than you, Willis; just let me see if I can make her out. No, impossible; nothing but the hull and sails."

"It is just possible," persisted Jack, "that the Nelson may have been detained at the Cape, and afterwards blown out of her course like ourselves."

"All I can say is," replied Willis, "that if Captain Littlestone be on board that ship, it will make me the happiest man that ever mixed a ration of grog. But these things only turn up in novels, so it is no use talking."

"She has hoisted a flag at the mizzen," cried Fritz.

"Can you make it out?"

"Well, let me see--yes, it must be so."

"What, the Union Jack?" cried Willis.

"No, a red ground striped with blue."

"The United States, as I am a sinner!" cried Willis. "Well, it might have been worse. We can go to America; there are surgeons there as well as in Europe--at all events, we can get a ship there for England. But let me see, we must hoist a bit of bunting; unfortunately, we have only British colors aboard, and I am afraid they are not in particularly high favor with our Yankee cousins just now."

"Never mind a flag," said Fritz.

"Oh, that will never do, they have hoisted a flag and are waiting a reply. But let me see," added Willis, rummaging amongst some stores, "here is one of our Shark's Island signals--that, I think, will puzzle the Yankee considerably."

The Pilot's signal was answered by a gun, the report of which rang through the air. The strange ship's sails were thrown back and she stood still. A boat then put off with a young man in uniform and six rowers on board.

"Pinnace ahoy!" cried the officer through a speaking trumpet, "who are you?"

"Shipwrecked mariners," cried Fritz, in reply.

"What is the name of your craft?"

"The Mary."

"What country?"

"Switzerland."

"I was not aware that Switzerland was a naval power," observed Willis.

"She has no sea-port," said Jack, "but she has a fleet--of row boats."

"Where do you hail from?" inquired the officer.

"New Switzerland."

"That gentleman is very curious," observed Jack.

Here a silence of some minutes ensued; the officer seemed at fault in his geography.

"Where away?" at last resounded from the trumpet.

"Bound for Europe," replied Fritz.

This reply elicited an expression of doubt, accompanied with such a tremendous exjurgation as made both Fritz and Jack almost shrink into the hold.

A few minutes after the Yankee in command stepped on board, and explanations were entered into that perfectly satisfied the republican officer. He continued, however, to eye Willis curiously.

The Hoboken, for that was the name of the strange ship, was an American cruiser, carrying twelve ship guns and a long paixhan. She was attached to the Chinese station, but had recently obtained information that war had been declared between England and the States. She was now making her way to the west by a circuitous route to avoid the British squadron, and, at the same time, with a view to pick up an English merchantman or two.

Fritz and Jack being citizens of a sister republic, and subjects of a neutral power, were received on board with a hearty welcome, and with the hospitality due to their interesting position. Willis also received some attention, and was treated with all the courtesy that could be shown to the native of an enemy's country.

The pinnace was taken in tow till the young men made up their minds as to the course they would adopt. A free passage to the States was kindly offered to them, and even pressed upon their acceptance; but the captain left the matter entirely to their own option.

Fritz and Jack were delighted with the warmth of their reception; and, after being so long cooped up in the narrow quarters of the pinnace, looked upon the Yankee cruiser, with its men and officers in uniform, as a sort of floating palace. The Nelson having been only a despatch-boat, it had given them but an indifferent idea of a man-of-war. On board the Yankee every thing was kept in apple-pie order. Discipline was maintained with martinet strictness. The fittings shone like a mirror. The brass cappings glistened in the sun. Complicated rolls of cable were profusely scattered about, but without confusion. The deck always seemed as fresh as if it had been planked the day before. The sails overhead seemed to obey the word of command of their own accord. The boatswain's whistle seemed to act upon the men like electricity. The seamen's cabins, six feet long by six feet broad, in which a hammock, locker, and lashing apparatus were conveniently stowed, were something very different from the accommodation on board the pinnace. These things were regarded by Fritz and Jack with great interest; and nowhere is the genius of man so brilliantly displayed as on board a well-appointed ship of war.

The young men, however, when they sat down to dinner in the captain's cabin, and beheld a long table flanked with cushioned seats, commanded at each end by arm-chairs, the side-board plentifully garnished with plate and crystal of various kinds, fastened with copper nails to prevent damage from the ship's pitching, they did not reflect that they were in the crater of a volcano, and that two paces from where they sat there was powder enough to blow the ship and all its crew up into the air.

They were likewise highly amused by the perpetual "guessing," "calculating," "reckoning," and inexhaustible curiosity of the crew; but their admiration of the ship, her guns, her stores, and her tackle, were boundless; they felt that their pinnace was a mere toy in comparison. The urbanity of the officers also was a source of much gratification to them; Jack even declared that all the civilization of Europe had been shipped on board the Hoboken, and in so far as that was concerned, they had no occasion to go on much further.

The object of this expedition, however, was a surgeon. There was one on board. Would he go to New Switzerland? Jack determined to try, and accordingly he walked straight off to the personage in question.

"Doctor," said he, "would you do myself and my brother a great favor?"

"Certainly; and, if it is in my power, you may consider it done."

"Well, will you embark with us for New Switzerland?"

"For what purpose, my friend?"

"My mother is laboring under a malady, which there is every reason to fear is cancer."

"And suppose a fever was to break out in this ship whilst I am absent, what do you imagine is to become of the officers and crew?"

"There are no symptoms of disease on board; but my mother is dying."

"You forget, young man, that disease may make its appearance at any moment. There are many sons on board whose lives are as dear to their mothers as your mother's is to you, and for every one of these lives I am officially accountable."

Jack hung down his head and was silent.

"No, my good friend, it is impossible for me to grant such a request; but, from what I know of your history, and the means at your command, you may be able to obtain the services of a competent medical man. I would, therefore, recommend you to abandon your boat, and proceed with us to our destination."

After a lengthy consultation, the two brothers and Willis determined to adopt this course. The cargo of the pinnace was accordingly transferred to the hold of the Hoboken. A short summary of their history was written, corked up in a bottle, and fastened to the mast of the Mary, which was then cut adrift. A tear gathered on the cheeks of the young men as they saw their old friend in adversity dropping slowly behind, and they did not withdraw their eyes from it till every vestige of its hull was lost in the shadows of the waters.

As Fritz and Jack were thus engaged in gazing listlessly on the ocean, and reflecting upon their altered prospects, and perhaps trying to penetrate the veil of the future, Willis came towards them rubbing his breast, as if he had been seized with a violent internal spasm.

"Hilloa," cried Jack, "the Pilot is sea-sick! Shall I run for some brandy, Willis?"

"No, stop a bit; we were in hopes of falling in with Captain Littlestone, were we not?"

"Yes; but what then?"

"We were disappointed, were we not?"

"Yes. That has not made you ill, has it?"

"No; somebody else has turned up; there is one of the Nelson's crew on board this ship."

"One of the Nelson's crew?"

"Aye, and if you only knew how my heart beat when I saw him."

"I can easily conceive your feelings," said Jack, "for my own heart has almost leaped into my mouth."

"And I am thunderstruck," added Fritz.

"I went towards my old friend," continued Willis, "with tears in my eyes, threw my arms round him, and gave him a hearty but affectionate hug."

"And what did he say?"

"Nothing, at first; but, as soon as I left his arms at liberty, he gave me such a punch in the ribs as almost doubled me in two; it was enough to knock the in'ards out of a rhinoceros--ugh!"

"A blow in earnest?" exclaimed Fritz in astonishment.

"Yes; there was no mistake about it; it was a real, good, earnest John Bull knock-down thump; it put me in mind of Portsmouth on a pay day--ugh!"

"Extremely touching," said Jack, smiling.

"Then, when I called him by his name Bill Stubbs, and asked what had become of the sloop, he said that he knew nothing at all about the sloop, and swore that he had never set his eyes on my figure-head before, the varmint--ugh!"

"Odd," remarked Jack.

"Are you sure of your man?" inquired Fritz.

"But you say his name is Bill, whilst he declares his name is Bob."

"Aye, he has evidently been up to some mischief, and changed his ticket."

"Then what conclusion do you draw from the affair."

"I am completely bewildered, and scarcely know what to think; perhaps the crew has mutinied, and turned Captain Littlestone adrift on a desert island. That is sometimes done. Perhaps--"

"It is no use perhapsing those sort of melancholy things," said Fritz; "we may as well suppose, for the present, that Captain Littlestone is safe, and that your friend has been put on shore for some misdemeanour."

"May be, may be, Master Fritz; and I hope and trust it is so. But to have an old comrade amongst us, who could give us all the information we want, and yet not to be able to get a single thing out of him--"

"Except a punch in the ribs," suggested Jack.

"Exactly; and a punch that will not let me forget the lubber in a hurry," added Willis, clenching his fist; "but I intend, in the meantime, to keep my weather eye open."

A few weeks after this episode the Hoboken was slowly wending her way along the bights of the Bahamas. Fritz, Jack, and Willis were walking and chatting on the quarter-deck. The sky was of a deep azure. The sea was covered with herbs and flowers as far as the eye could reach--sometimes in compact masses of several miles in extent, and at other times in long straight ribbons, as regular as if they had been spread by some West Indian Le Notre. The ship seemed merely displaying her graces in the sunshine, so gentle was she moving in the water. The air was laden with perfumes, and a soft dreamy languor stole over the friends, which they were trying in vain to shake off. In one direction rose the misty heights of St. Domingo, and in another the cloud-capped summits of Cuba. Sometimes the highest peaks of the latter pierced the veil that enveloped them, and seemed like islands floating in the sky, or heads of a race of giants.

"The air here is almost as balmy and fragrant as that of New Switzerland," remarked Fritz.

"Aye, aye," said the Pilot; "but it is not all gold that glitters: in these sweet smells a nasty fever is concealed, with which I have no wish to renew my acquaintance."

"By the way, talking about acquaintances, Willis, have you obtained any further intelligence from your friend Bill, alias Bob?" inquired Jack.

"No, not a syllable; the viper is as cunning as a fox, and keeps his mouth as close as a mouse-trap."

"He seems as obstinate as a mule, and as obdurate as a Chinaman into the bargain."

"All that, and more than that; but," added Willis, "I have found out from the mate that he was pressed on board this ship at New Orleans."

"Pressed on board?" said Fritz, inquiringly.

"Yes; that is a mode of recruiting for the navy peculiar to England and the United States. Would you like to hear something about how the system is carried out?"

"Yes, Willis, very much."

"The transactions, however, that I shall have to relate are in no way creditable, either to myself or anybody else connected with them; and I am afraid, when you hear the particulars, you will be ready to turn round and say, your friend the Pilot is no good after all."

"Have you, then, been desperately wicked, Willis?"

"Well, that depends entirely upon the view you take of what I am to tell you. Listen."

FOOTNOTES:

[H] Sometimes called the Ladrones or Archipelago of Saint Lazarus.

Chapter XXIII.

In which Willis shows, that the term Press-gang means something else besides the Gentlemen of the Press.

"When I was a youngster, about a year or two older than you are now, Master Fritz, I slipped on board the brig Norfolk as boatswain's mate. The ship at the time was short of hands, so there was no immediate probability of her weighing anchor; but on the same day I scratched my name on the books a despatch arrived, in consequence of which we left the harbor, and proceeded out to sea under sealed orders. One day, when off the Irish coast, I was called aft by the first lieutenant.

"'You know something of Cork, my man, I believe?' said he.

"'Yes, your honor, I have been ashore there once or twice,' said I.

"'Very good,' said he; 'get ready to go ashore there again as quick as you like.'

"Leave to go on shore is always agreeable to a sailor. He prefers the sea, but likes to stretch himself on land now and then, just to enjoy a change of air, and look about him a bit; so it was with all possible expedition that I made the requisite preparations.

"When I reappeared, I found a party of twenty men mustered on deck in pipe-clay order. A full ration of small arms was served out to them, and, under the command of the lieutenant, we embarked in the long-boat and rowed ashore. We landed at a point of the coast some miles distant from Cork, and it was dark before we reached the military barracks of that town, which, for the present, appeared to be our destination.

"I had not the slightest idea of what we were to do on shore. From our being so heavily armed, I knew it was no mere escort or parade duty that was in question, and began to think there was work of some kind on hand. This gave me no kind of uneasiness. I only wondered whatever it could be, for there was clearly a mystery of some kind or other. Were we going to besiege Paddy, in his own peaceable city of Cork? Had some of the peep-o'-day boys been burning down farmer Magrath's ricks again? or was there a private still to be routed out and demolished? I could not tell.

"Half an hour after our arrival, I was called into a private room by the lieutenant, who was seated at a table with a package of clothes beside him. The first lieutenant of the Norfolk, I must remark, was a bit of an original. He had won his way up to the rank he then held from before the mast. His build was rather squat, and his face was garnished with a pair of fiery red whiskers, so he was no beauty, added to which he was reckoned one of the most rigid martinets in the service; yet, for all that, his crew liked him, for they knew his heart was in the right place.

"'See, my man,' said he, 'take this package, and rig yourself out in the toggery it contains.'

"I obeyed this order, and soon after stood before him, in a pair of jack-boots, with a slouching sort of tarpauling hat on my head, so that I might either have passed for a manner out of luck or a dustman.

"'Well,' said the lieutenant, laughing, 'now you have quite the air of the hulks about you.'

"This remark not being very complimentary, I did not feel called upon to make any reply.

"'You know,' he continued, 'that the brig is short about a dozen hands, and I want you to pick up a few likely lads here. I understand there are a number of able-bodied seamen skulking about the public-houses, where they will likely remain as long as their money lasts. I should like to secure as many of them as possible, and then capture a few stout landsmen to make up the number; but, in the first place, I want you to go and find out the best place to make a razzia.'

"I stared when I found myself all at once promoted to the post of pioneer for a party of kidnappers, and muttered something or other about honor.

"'Honor, sir!' roared the lieutenant, 'what has honor to do with it, sir? It is duty, sir. It is the laws of the service, sir, and you must obey them, sir.'

"'But it is hard, your honor,' said I, 'that the laws of the service should force men to do what they think is wrong.'

"'And what right, sir, have you to think it is wrong, or to judge the acts of your superiors? If the laws of the service order you fifty lashes at the yard-arm to-morrow, you will find that you will get them. Do you want to be handed over to the drummer, and to cultivate an acquaintance with the cat?'

"'No, your honor,' said I, laughing.

"The lieutenant's face by this time was as red as his whiskers, and, though he was in a towering rage, he quickly calmed down again, like boiling milk when it is taken off the fire.

"'Then,' said he, quietly, 'am I to understand you refuse?'

"'No, your honor,' said I. 'If it is my duty, I must obey; but you will pardon the liberty, when I say that it is hard to be forced to drag away a lot of poor fellows against their wills.'

"'Look ye,' replied the lieutenant, 'I tolerate your freedom of speech for two reasons--the first, because we are here alone, and no harm is done; the second, because I entertain the same opinion myself; but, mind you, we are both bound by the regulations of the service, and it is mutiny for either of us to disobey.'

"According to the moral law, the mission with which I was charged could scarcely be considered honorable; but, according to the laws of the land, or rather of the sea, it was perfectly unexceptionable. Amongst the seamen, a foray amongst the landlubbers was regarded more in the light of a spree than anything else. If, indeed, it were possible to pick up the lazy and idle amongst the population, this mode of enlistment might be useful; but often the industrious head of a family was seized, whilst the idle escaped. It was rare, however, that a ship's crew were employed in this sort of duty; men were more usually obtained through the crimps on shore, who often fearfully abused the authority with which they were invested for the purpose. As for myself, the lieutenant's arguments removed all my scruples, if I ever had any.

"I then suggested a plan of operations, which was approved. The men were to be kept ready for action, and the lieutenant himself was to await my report at the 'Green Dragon,' one of the hotels in the town.

"At that time there was in the outskirts of Cork a sort of tavern and lodging-house, called the 'Molly Bawn.' This establishment was frequented by the lowest class of seamen and 'tramps.' Thither I wended my way. It was late when I arrived in front of the place; and whilst hesitating whether I should venture into such a precious menagerie, I happened to look round, and, by the light of a dim lamp that burned at the corner of the street, I caught a glimpse of the lieutenant leaning against the wall, quietly smoking an Irish dudeen."

"Like Rono the Great in the island of Hawai," suggested Jack.

"Something. This, however, cut short my deliberations. I walked in. There was a crowd of men and women drinking and smoking about the bar. These, however, were not the people I sought. The regular tenants of the house were not amongst that lot, and it was essential for me to find out in what part of the premises they were stowed. I commenced proceedings by ordering a noggin of whisky, and making love to the damsel that brought it in. After having formally made her an offer of marriage, I asked after the landlord. She told me he was engaged with some customers, but offered to take a message to him.

"'Then,' said I, 'just tell him that a friend of One-eyed Dick's would like to have a parley with him.'"

"And who was One-eyed Dick?" inquired Fritz.

"One of the crew of a piratical craft captured by one of our cruisers a few months before, and who at that time was safely lodged in Portsmouth jail.

"The girl soon returned. She told me to walk with her, and led me through some narrow passages into what appeared to be another house. She knocked at a door that was strongly barred and fastened inside. A slight glance at these precautions made me aware that there was no chance of making a capture here without creating a great disturbance. So, after reflecting an instant, I decided upon adopting some other course.

"When the door was opened I could see nothing distinctly; there was a turf-fire throwing a red glare out of the chimney, a dim oil-lamp hung from the roof, but everything was hidden in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, through which the light was not sufficiently powerful to penetrate."

"The atmosphere must have been stifling," observed Fritz.

"Yes, it puts me in mind of your remark about the air, which, you said, consists of--let me see--"

"Oxygen and hydrogen."

"Just so; but the air a sailor breathes when he is at home consists almost entirely of tobacco smoke. At last, I could make out twenty or thirty rough-looking fellows seated on each side of a long deal table covered with bottles, glasses, and pipes. Dan Hooligan, the landlord, sat at the top--a fit president for such an assembly. He was partly a smuggler, partly a publican, and wholly a sinner. I should say that the liquor consumed at that table did not much good to the revenue. How Dan contrived to escape the laws, was a mystery perhaps best known to the police."

"So you are a pal of One-eyed Dick's, are you?' said he.

"'Rather,' said I, adopting the slang of the place.

"'Well,' said he, 'Dick has been a good customer of mine, and all his pals are welcome at the 'Molly.' I have not seen him lately, however--how goes it with him now?'

"'Right as a trivet,' said I, 'and making lots of rhino.'

"'Glad to hear it; and what latitude does he hail in now?'

"'That,' said I, 'is private and confidential.'

"'Oh,' said he, 'there are no outsiders here, we are all sworn friends of Dick's, every mother's son of us.'

"'Then,' said I, 'Dick is off the Cove in the schooner Nancy, of Brest,'"

"Holloa, Willis," cried Jack, "there was a fib!"

"Well, I told you to look out for something of that sort when I began."

"'What!' cried the landlord, 'Dick in a schooner off the Irish coast?'

"'Yes,' said I; 'and aboard that schooner there is as tight a cargo of brandy and tobacco as ever you set eyes upon.'

"Here the landlord pricked up his ears, and the rest of the company began to listen attentively. The fellow that sat next me coolly told me that both he and Dick had been lagged for horse-stealing, and had subsequently broken out of prison and escaped. He further told me that most of the gentlemen present had been all, one way or another, mixed up with Dick's doings; from which I concluded they were a rare parcel of scamps, and resolved, within myself, to try and bag the whole squad. They were all stout fellows enough, most of them seamen. I thought they might be able to 'do the State some service,' and determined to convert them into honest men, if I could.'

"'Dick cannot come ashore,' said I; 'some one of his old pals here has peached, and there is a warrant out against him.'

"This information threw the assembly into a state of violent commotion. They rose up, and swore terrible vengeance against the head of the unfortunate culprit when they caught him. The oaths rather alarmed me at first, for they were of a most ferocious stamp.

"'Yes,' continued I, 'Dick is aboard the schooner, but, as there are two or three warrants out against him, he does not care about coming ashore; so said he to me, 'We want a lugger and a few hands to run the cargo ashore; and if you look in at the 'Molly,' and see my old pal, Dan, perhaps you will find some lads there willing to give us a turn. The captain said, if the thing was done clean off, he would stand something handsome."

"'Just the thing for us!' shouted half a dozen voices.

"'But the lugger?' said I.

"'Oh, Phil Doolan, at the Cove, has a craft that has landed as many cargoes as there are planks in her hull. Besides, he has stowage for a fleet of East Indiamen.'

"'Well, gentlemen," said I, 'the chaplain, One-eyed Dick, and myself, will be at Phil Doolan's to-morrow at midnight; do you agree to meet us there?'

"This question was answered by a universal 'Yes;' and by way of clenching the affair, I ordered a couple of gallons of the stiffest potheen in the house. This was received with three cheers, and before I left the 'Molly' every man-jack of them had disappeared under the table. Dan himself, however, kept tolerably sober, and promised, on account of his friendship for One-eyed Dick, to have the whole kit safe at Phil Doolan's by twelve o'clock next night, and with this assurance I made my exit from the premises, and steered for the 'George and Dragon.'

"The lieutenant agreed with me in thinking that it would cause too much uproar to attack the 'Molly Bawn.' He congratulated me on my success in laying a trap for the people, and promising to meet me at the Cove, he ordered a car, and drove off in the direction of the Norfolk's boat. Early next morning I started to reconnoitre the ground and organize my plan of operations. I found Phil Doolan's mansion to be a mud-built tenement, larger, and standing apart from, the houses that then constituted the village. It was ostensibly a sailor's lodging-house and tavern for wayfarers, but, like the 'Molly Bawn,' was in reality a rendezvous of smugglers, occasionally patronized by fugitive poachers and patriots. It was known to its familiars as 'The Crib,' but was registered by the authorities as the 'Father Mahony,' who was represented on the sign-post by a full-length portrait of James the Second. What gave me most satisfaction was to observe that the building was conveniently situated for a sack.

"When night set in I marched the Norfolk's men in close order, and as secretly as possible, to the Cove. Approaching Phil Doolan's in one direction, I could just catch a glimpse of the red coats of a file of marines advancing in another, with the lieutenant at their head, and, exactly as twelve o'clock struck on the parish clock, the 'Father Mahony' was surrounded on all sides by armed men. Two or three lanterns were now lit, and dispositions made to close up every avenue of escape."

"'There he is!' cried Willis, interrupting himself, and staring into the air.

"Who?" inquired Jack--"Phil Doolan?"

"No--Bill Stubbs, late of the Nelson."

"Where?"

"That squat, broad-shouldered man there, bracing the maintops."

"Yes, now that you point him out, I think I have seen him before," said Fritz.

"Holloa, Bill," cried Jack.

"You see," said Willis, "he turned his head."

"How d'ye do, Bill?" added Jack.

"Are you speak'ng to me, sir?" inquired the sailor.

"Yes, Bill."

"Then was your honor present when I was christened? I appear to have forgotten my name for the last six-and thirty years."

"No use, you see," said Willis; "he is too old a bird to be caught by any of these dodges. But I have lost the thread of my discourse."

"You had surrounded the cabin, and were lighting lamps."

"Half a dozen men were stationed at the door, pistol in hand, ready to rush in as soon as it opened. The lieutenant and I went forward and knocked, but no one answered. We knocked again, louder than before, but still no answer.

"'Open the door, in the King's name!' thundered the lieutenant. Silence, as before.

"Calling to the marines, he ordered them to root up Phil Doolan's sign-post, and use it as a battering ram against the door. The first blow of this machine nearly brought the house down, and a cracked voice was heard calling on the saints inside.

"'Blessed St. Patrick!' croaked the voice, 'whativer are ye kicking up such a shindy out there for? Whativer d'ye want wid an old woman, and niver a livin' sowl in the house 'cept meself and Kathleen in her coffin?'

"'Kathleen is dead, then?' said the lieutenant with a grin.

"'Save yer honor's presence, she's off to glory, an' as dead as a herrin,' replied the voice.

"'Really!' said the lieutenant, 'and where is Phil Doolan?'

"'Och, yer honor? he's gone to get some potheen for the wake.'

"'Well,' said the lieutenant, 'I should like to take a share in waking the defunct--what's her name?'

"'Kathleen, yer honor.'

"'Well, just let us in to take a last look at the worthy creature.'

"The door then creaked on its rusty hinges, and we entered. Not a soul, however, was to be seen anywhere, save and except the old woman herself. The coffin containing the remains of Kathleen, resting on two stools, stood in the middle of the floor, with a plate of salt as usual on the lid. I fairly thought I had been done, and looked upon myself as the laughing stock of the entire fleet."

"So far," remarked Jack, "your story has been all right, but the last episode was rather negligently handled."

"How?" inquired Willis.

"Why, you did not make enough of the coffin scene; your description is too meagre. You should have said, that the wind blew without in fierce gusts, the weathercocks screeched on the roofs, and caused you to dread that the ghost of the defunct was coming down the chimney; large flakes of snow were rushing through the half-open door; a solitary rushlight dimly lit up the chamber, and cast frightful shadows upon the wall."

"Well; but the night was fine, and there was not a breath of wind."

"What about that? A little wind, more or less, a weathercock or so, some drops of rain, or a few flakes of snow, do not materially detract from the truth, whilst they heighten the color of the picture."

"And if some lightning tearing through the clouds were added?"

"Yes, that would most undoubtedly increase the effect; but go on with your story."

"I knew Phil to be an artful dodger, and was determined not to be foiled by a mere trick, so I laid hold of a lantern and closely examined the walls and flooring. My investigation was successful, for just under the coffin I detected traces of a trap-door."

"'Well, my good woman, what have you got down there?" inquired the lieutenant.

"'Is it underground, ye mane, yer honor? divil a hail's there, if it isn't the rats.'

"'Well, just remove the coffin a little aside; we shall see if we cannot pepper some of the rats for you.'

"Here the old woman appealed to a vast number of saints, and protested against Kathleen's remains being disturbed. The lieutenant, however, grew tired of this farce, and ordered the coffin to be shifted. A sailor accordingly laid hold of each end.

"'Blazes!' said one, 'here is a body that weighs.'

"'Perhaps,' said the other, 'the coffin is lined with lead.'

"The trap-door was drawn up, and the lieutenant, pistol in hand, descended alone.

"'Now, my lads,' said he, addressing some invisible personages, 'we know you are here, and I call upon you to yield in the King's name--resistance is useless, the house is surrounded, and we are in force, so you had better give in without more ado.'

"No answer was returned to this exordium; but we heard the murmuring of muffled voices, as if the rapscallions were deliberating. I now descended with my lamp, followed by some of the seamen, and beheld my friends of the night before either stretched on the ground or propped up against the walls, like a lot of mummies in an Egyptian tomb.

"They were handcuffed one by one, pushed or hauled up the stairs, and then tied to one another in a line. When we had secured the whole lot of them in this way--

"'Lieutenant,' said I, winking, 'will you permit me to send a ball into that coffin?'

"'Please yourself about that, young man,' said he.

"Here the old woman recommenced howling again and called upon all the saints in the calendar to punish us for my sacrilegious design.

"'Shoot a dead body,' said I, 'where's the harm?' Besides, what is that salt there for?'

"'To keep away evil spirits,' was the reply.

"'Very well,' said I, 'my pistol will scare them away as well.' Then, cocking it with a loud clink, I presented it slowly at the coffin."

"The lid all at once flew off--the salt-was thrown on the ground with a crash--the defunct suddenly returned from the other world in perfect health, and sat half upright in his bier. I did not recognize the individual at first, but, on closer inspection, found him to be my communicative companion of the preceding night--the horse-stealer of the 'Molly Bawn;' and, being a stout young fellow, he was harnessed to the others, and we commenced our march to the boats."

"You do not appear to have had much trouble in effecting the capture," remarked Fritz.

"No; the men were unarmed, and were nearly all intoxicated. You never saw such a troop; scarcely one of them could walk straight; they assumed all sorts of figures; the file of prisoners was just like a bar of music, it was a string of quavers, crotchets, and zig-zags. Luckily, it was late at night, else we might have had the village about our ears, and, instead of flakes of snow and screeching weathercocks, we might have had a shower of dead cats and rotten eggs. Probably a rescue might have been attempted; at all events, we might have calculated on a volley of brickbats on our way to the boats. There would have been no end of commotion, uproar, confusion, and hubbub, possibly smashed noses, blackened eyes, broken beads--"

"Holloa, Willis!"

"You said just now that a little colouring was necessary."

"Certainly; but the privilege ought not to be abused. Besides, broken heads and smashed faces are the realities, and not the accessories of the picture."

"Oh, I see. If it is night, the moon should be introduced; and if it is day, the sun--and so on?"

"Of course; and, if the circumstances are of a pleasing nature, you must leave horrors and terrors on your pallette; change gusts into zephyrs, snow into roses and violets, and the weathercocks into golden vanes glittering in the sunshine."

"I understand."

"You want to color a popular outbreak, do you not?"

"Yes."

"Then you should introduce a tempest howling, the waves roaring, the lightning flashing, and discord raging in the air as well as on the earth."

"Well, to continue my story. Although it was midnight, the disturbance began to wake up the villagers, and a crowd was collecting, so we hurried off our prisoners to the boats as speedily as we could. Some five and twenty able bodied men were thus added to his Majesty's fleet. The object of our visit to the Irish coast was accomplished, and the Norfolk continued her voyage to the West Indies. Now you know what is meant by the word pressed, and likewise the nautical signification of the word press-gang."

"And you say that Bill Stubbs has been trapped on board this ship by such means?"

"Yes, at New Orleans."

"According to your story, then, that does not say very much in his favor?"

"No, not a great deal; still, that proves nothing--the fact of his calling himself Bob is a worse feature. A man does not generally change his name without having good, or rather bad, reasons for it."

"What appears to me," remarked Fritz, "as the most singular feature of your press-gang adventure is, that you are alive to tell it."

"Why so?"

"Because I think it ought to end thus: 'The victims of the press-gang strangled Willis a few days after,'"

"Aye, aye, but you do not know what a sailor is; our recruits had not been a fortnight at sea before they entirely forgot the trick I had played them."

Just as Willis concluded his narrative, the man at the mast-head called out, "Sail ho!"

"Where away?" bawled the captain.

"Right a-head," replied the voice.

The Hoboken had hitherto pursued her voyage uninterruptedly, and the Yankee captain now prepared to signalize himself by a capture.

Chapter XXIV.

Another Idea of the Pilot's--The Boudeuse.

The captain of the Hoboken was rather pleased than otherwise when the look-out reported the strange sail to show English colors. He looked rather glum, however, half an hour afterwards, when the same voice bawled that she was a bull-dog looking craft, schooner-rigged, and pierced for sixteen guns. The Yankee had hoped to fall in with a fat West Indiaman, instead of which he had now to deal with a man-of-war, carrying, perhaps, a larger weight of metal than himself.

The heads of the two ships were standing in towards each other, there was no wind to speak of, but every hour lessened the distance that separated the antagonists.

"Pilot," said the captain, addressing Willis, "be kind enough to let me know what you think of that craft."

"I think," said Willis, taking the telescope, "I have had my eyes on her before. Aye, aye, just as I thought. An old tub of a Spaniard converted into an English cruiser, and commanded by Commodore Truncheon, I shouldn't wonder. She has caught a Tartar this time, however. Nothing of a sailer. If a breeze springs up, you may easily give her the slip, if you like, captain."

"Give her the slip! No, not if I can help it. My cruise hitherto has not been very successful, and I must send her into New York as a prize. Mr. Brill," added he, addressing the officer next in command, "prepare for action."

In an instant all was commotion and bustle on deck. Half an hour after, the captain, now in full uniform, took a hasty glance at the position of his crew. A portion of the men were stationed at the guns, with lighted matches. Others were engaged in heating shot, and preparing other instruments of destruction. Jack and Fritz, armed with muskets, were ready to act as sharp-shooters as soon as the enemy came within range, and Willis was standing beside them, with his hands in his pockets, quietly smoking his pipe.

"What, Pilot!" exclaimed the captain in passing, "don't you intend to take part in the skirmish?"

"I am much your debtor, captain, but I cannot do that."

"And these young men?"

"They are not Englishmen, and your kindness to them entitles you to claim their assistance. I am sorry that honor and duty prevent me giving you mine."

"No matter, captain," said Fritz, "my brother and myself will do duty for three."

"Then, Pilot, you had better go below."

"With your permission, captain, I would rather stay and look on."

"But what is the use of exposing yourself here?"

"It is an idea of mine, captain. But I shall remain perfectly neutral during the engagement."

"As you like then, Pilot, as you like," said the captain, as he resumed his place on the quarter-deck.

At this moment a cannon ball whistled through the air.

"Good," said Willis; "the commodore gives the signal."

"That shot," observed Jack, "passed at no great distance from your head, Willis. You had better take a musket in self-defence. Besides, that ship is English, and you are a Scotchman."

"The ship is a Spaniard by birth," replied Willis, "and it is pretty well time it was converted into firewood, for the matter of that. But it is the flag, my boy--that is neither Spanish nor English."

"What is it, then?" inquired Fritz.

"It is the union-jack, Master Fritz. It is the ensign of Scotland, England, and Ireland united under one bonnet; and as such, it is as sacred in my eyes as if it bore the cross of St. Andrew."

Musket balls were now rattling pretty freely amongst the shrouds. The young men levelled their muskets and fired.

Soon after, the two ships were abreast of each other, and almost at the same instant both discharged a deadly broadside. The conflict became general. The crashing of the woodwork and the roaring of the guns was deafening. A thick smoke enveloped the two vessels, so that nothing could be seen of the one from the other; still the firing and crashing went on. The sails were torn to shreds, the deck was encumbered with fragments of timber; men were now and then falling, either killed or wounded, and a fatigue party was constantly engaged in removing the bodies. There are people who consider such a spectacle magnificent; but that is only because they have never witnessed its horrors.

Already many immortal souls had returned to their Maker; many sons had become orphans, and many wives had been deprived of their husbands; but as yet there was nothing to indicate on which side victory was to be declared. Soon, however, a cry of fire was raised, which caused great confusion; and another cry, announcing that the captain had fallen, increased the disorder.

A ball crashed through the taffrail, near where Jack and Fritz were standing; it passed between them, but they were both severely wounded by the splinters, and were conveyed by Willis to the cockpit. The doctor, seeing his old friend Jack handed down the ladder, hastened towards him and tore out a piece of wood from the fleshy part of his arm. He next turned to Fritz, who had received a severe flesh-wound on the shoulder. When both wounds were bandaged, he left the care of the young men to Willis, who had escaped with a few scratches, which, however, were bleeding pretty freely--to these he did not pay the slightest attention.

"How stands the contest?" inquired Fritz in a weak voice.

"The Hoboken is done for," replied Willis; "the commodore was preparing to board when we left the deck; but it does not make much difference; we shall go to England instead of America, that is all."

"God's will be done," said Fritz.

Just then Bill Stubbs was swung down in a hammock; both his legs had been shot off by a cannon ball. The surgeon could only now attend to a tithe of his patients, so numerous had the wounded become. A glance at the new comer satisfied him that he was beyond all human skill, and he directed his attention to the cases that promised some hopes of recovery. Willis, seeing that his old comrade was abandoned to die almost uncared for, staunched his wounds as well as he could, fetched him a panniken of water, and performed a number of other little acts of kindness and good will. This he did, less with a view of obtaining an explanation from him at a moment when no man lies, than to mitigate the pangs of his last convulsions. For an instant the old mariner's body appeared re-animated with life. His eyes were fixed upon Willis with an ineffable expression of recognition and regret. He convulsively grasped the Pilot's hand and pressed it to his breast, and his lips parted as if to speak. Willis bent his ear to the mouth of the dying man, but all that followed was an expiring sigh. His earthly career was ended.

The hardy sailor who is supposed never to shed a tear, then wiped the corner of his eyes. Next he turned to the children of his adoption, whose pale faces indicated the amount of blood they had shed, and whose wounds, if he could have transferred them to himself, would have less pained his powerful muscles than they now grieved his excellent heart.

A party of boarders from the enemy had taken possession of the ship. Willis reported himself to the officer in command, and at his request, Fritz and Jack, together with the cargo of the pinnace, were conveyed on board the victorious schooner. Shortly after the Hoboken was despatched to Bermuda as a prize, with the prisoners, the wounded, and the dying.

The old tub that had gained this victory was named the Arzobispo, having, as Willis supposed, been captured in the Spanish Main. It was under the command of Commodore Truncheon, better known in the fleet by the soubriquet of Old Flyblow.

The Arzobispo, though old and clumsy, was a stout-built craft; and so thick was its hide, that the broadsides of the Yankee had done the hull no damage to speak of. The superstructure, however, was completely shattered; the masts and rigging hung like sweeps over the sides; and, to the unpractised eye, the ship was a complete wreck. A few days, however, sufficed to put everything to rights again so far as regards external appearance; but how this impromptu carpentry would stand a storm was another question.

The commodore was on his way to Europe when he fell in with the Yankee, and, notwithstanding the disabled condition of the ship, he resolved to continue his voyage. Some of the officers expostulated with him on the hazard of crossing the Atlantic in so shaky a trim. He only got red in the face, and said that he had crossed the herring-pond hundreds of times in crafts not half so seaworthy. He was like the

  Froggy who would a wooing go,
  Whether his mother would let him or no.

The consequences of this defiance of advice were fatal to Old Flyblow; for, a week or two after his victory, he was pounced upon by the French corvette, Boudeuse, which was fresh, heavily armed, and well manned. The commodore's jury masts were knocked to pieces by the first broadside, his flag went by the board, and he was completely at the enemy's mercy. Willis lent a hand this time with a good will; but it was of no use, the wreck would not obey the helm, and the corvette hovered about, firing broadsides, and sending in discharges of musketry, when and where she liked. It was only when the commodore saw clearly that there was neither mast nor sail enough to yaw the ship, that he waved his cocked hat in token of surrender.

Fritz and Jack were still confined below with their wounds, when Willis brought them word that they would have to shift themselves and their cargo once more. The captain received them on board the Boudeuse with marked courtesy, and informed them that he was bound direct for Havre de Grace.

"It seems, then," said the Pilot, "that neither America nor England is to be our destination after all. But never mind, there are no lack of surgeons amongst the mounseers."

"If we go on this way much longer," said Jack, sighing, "we shall be carried round the world without arriving anywhere. Alas, my poor mother!"

Chapter XXV.

Delhi--William of Normandy and King John--Isabella of Bavaria and Joan of Arc--Poitier and Bovines--History of a Ghost, a Gridiron, and a Chest of Guineas.

At first the three adventurers were regarded as prisoners of war; when, however, their entire history came to be known, and their extraordinary migrations from ship to ship authenticated, they were looked upon as guests, and treated as friends.

"I thought I had only obtained possession of an English cruiser," said the captain; "but I find I have also acquired the right of being useful to you."

The commander of the Boudeuse was a very different sort of a person from Commodore Truncheon; the former treated his men as if every one of them had a title and great influence at the Admiralty, whilst the latter swore at his crew as if the word of command could not be understood without a supplementary oath. The English commodore might be the better sailor of the two, but certainly the French captain carried off the palm as regards politeness, urbanity, and gentlemanly bearing.

The wounds of Fritz and Jack were healing rapidly under the skilful treatment of the French surgeon, and, with a lift from Willis, they were able to walk a portion of the day on deck. With reviving health, their cheerful hopes of the future returned, their dormant spirits were re-awakened, and their minds regained their wonted animation.

"The corvette spins along admirably," said the Pilot, "and is steering straight for the Bay of Biscay."

"Ah!" said Jack sighing, "it is very easy to steer for a place, but it is not quite so easy to get there. I am sick of your friend the sea, Willis; and would give my largest pearl for a glimpse of a town, a village, or even a street."

"If you want to see a street in all its glory, Master Jack, you must try and get the captain to alter his course for Delhi."

"But I should think, Willis, that there is nothing in the street-scenery of Delhi to compare with the Boulevards of Paris, Regent-street in London, or the Broadway of New York."

"Beg your pardon there, Master Jack; I know every shop window in Regent-street; I have often been nearly run over in the Broadway, and can easily imagine the turn out on the Boulevards; but they are solitudes in comparison with an Indian street."

"How so, Willis?"

"Well, it is not that there are more inhabitants, nor on account of the traffic, for no streets in the world will beat those of London in that respect--it is because the people live, move, and have their being in the streets; they eat, drink, and sleep in the streets; they sing, dance, and pray in the streets; conventions, treaties, and alliances are concluded in the streets; in short, the street is the Indians' home, his club, and his temple. In Europe, transactions are negotiated quietly; in India, nothing can be done without roaring, screaming, and bawling."

"There must be plenty of deaf people there," observed Jack.

"Possibly; but there are no dumb people. Added to the endless vociferations of the human voice, there is an eternal barking of dogs, elephants snorting, cows lowing, and myriads of pigs grunting. Then there is the thump, thump of the tam-tam, the whistling of fifes, and the screeching of a horrible instrument resembling a fiddle, which can only be compared with the Belzebub music of Hawai. If, amongst these discordant sounds, you throw in a cloud of mosquitoes and a hurricane of dust, you will have a tolerable idea of an Indian street."

"There may be animation and life enough, Willis, but I should prefer the monotony of Regent-street for all that. Would you like to air yourself in Paris a bit?"

"Yes, but not just now; the less my countrymen see of France, under present circumstances, the better."

"What is England and France always fighting about, Willis?"

"Well, I believe the cause this time to be a shindy the mounseers got up amongst themselves in 1788. They first cut off the head of their king, and then commenced to cut one another's throats, and England interfered."

"That," observed Fritz, "may be the immediate origin of the present war [1812]. But for the cause of the animosity existing between the two nations, you must, I suspect, go back as far as the eleventh century, to the time of William, Duke of Normandy."

"What had he to do with it?"

"A great deal. He claimed a right, real or pretended, to the English throne. He crossed the Channel, and, in 1066, defeated Harold, King of England, at the battle of Hastings."

"Both William and Harold were originally Danes, were they not?" inquired Jack.

"Yes; I think Rollo, William's grandfather, was a Norman adventurer, or sea-king, as these marauders were sometimes called. William, after the victory of Hastings, proclaimed himself King of England and Duke of Normandy, and assumed the designation of William the Conqueror."

"Then how did France get mixed up in the affair?" inquired Willis.

"William's grandfather, when he seized the dukedom cf Normandy, became virtually a vassal of the King of France, though it is doubtful whether he ever took the trouble to recognize the suzerainty of the throne. As sovereign, however, the King of France claimed the right of homage, which consisted, according to feudal usage, in the vassal advancing, bare-headed, without sword or spurs, and kneeling at the foot of the throne."

"Was this right ever enforced?"

"Yes, in one case at least. John Lackland--or, as the French called him, John Sans Terre--having assassinated his nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, in order to obtain possession of his lands, was summoned by Philip Augustus, King of France, to justify his crime. John did not obey the summons, was declared guilty of felony, and Philip took possession of Normandy. Thus the first step to hostilities was laid down."

"The English having lost Normandy, the vassalage ceased."

"Yes, so far as regards Normandy; but, in the meantime, Louis le Jeune, King of France, unfortunately divorced his wife, Elenor of Aquitaine, who afterwards married an English prince, and added Guienne, another French dukedom to the English crown."

"So another vassalage sprung up."

"Exactly. All the French King insisted upon was the homage; but Edward III. of England, instead of bending his knee to Philip of Valois, argued with himself in this way: 'If I were King of England and France as well, the claim of homage for the dukedom of Guienne would be extinguished.'"

"Rather cool that," said Jack, laughing.

"'We shall then,' Edward said to himself, 'be our own sovereign, and do homage to ourself, which would save a deal of bother.'"

"Well, he was right there, at least," remarked the Pilot.

"The King of France, however, entertained a different view of the subject. Hence arose an endless succession of sieges, battles, conquests, defeats, exterminations, and hatreds, which, no doubt, gave rise to the ill-feeling that exists at present between England and France. It is curious, at the same time, to observe what mischief individual acts may occasion. If William of Normandy had remained contented with his dukedom, and Louis le Jeune had not divorced his wife, France would not have lost the disastrous battles of Agincourt and Poitiers."

"Nor gained the brilliant victory of Bovines," suggested Jack.

"Certainly not; but she would have been spared the indignity of having one of her kings marched through the streets of London as a prisoner."

"True; but, on the other hand, the captured monarch would not have had an opportunity of illustrating the laws of honor in his own person. He returned loyally to England and resumed his chains, when he found that the enormous sum demanded by England for his ransom would impoverish his people: otherwise he could not have given birth to the maxim, 'That though good faith be banished from all the world beside, it ought still to be found in the hearts of kings.'"

"One of the kings of Scotland," remarked Willis, "was placed in a similar position. The Scottish army had been cut to pieces at the battle of Flodden, the king was captured in his harness, conveyed to London, and the people had to pay a great deal more to obtain his freedom than he was worth. But, before that, the Scotch nearly caught one of the Edwards. This time the English army had been cut to pieces; but the king did not wait to be captured, he took to his heels, or rather to his horse's hoofs. He was beautifully mounted, and followed by half a dozen Scottish troopers; away he went, over hill and dale, ditch and river. Dick Turpin's ride from London to York was nothing to it. The king proved himself to be a first-rate horseman, for, after being chased this way over half the country, he succeeded in baffling his pursuers. All these escapades between England and Scotland are, however, forgotten now, or at least ought to be; there are, doubtless, a few thick-headed persons in both sections of the empire who delight in keeping alive old prejudices, but they will die out in time."

"It seems, however, they have not died away yet," said Fritz, "in so far as regards France and England, since the two countries are at war again. But, as I observed before, had it not been for the ambition of William and the anti-connubial propensities of John, the English would never have been masters of Paris, and a great part of France under Charles VI."

"Still, in that case," persisted Jack, "Charles VII. would not have had the opportunity of liberating his country."

"Then," continued Fritz, "history would not have had to record the shameless deeds of Isabella of Bavaria."

"Nor chronicle the brilliant achievements of Joan of Arc," added Jack.

"Any how," observed Willis, "the mounseers are a curious people. I have heard it remarked that they are occupied all day long in getting themselves into scrapes, and that Providence busies herself all night in getting them out again."

By chatting in this way, Fritz, his brother, and the Pilot contrived to relieve the monotony of the voyage, and to pass away the time pleasantly enough. Each contributed his quota to the common fund; Fritz his judgment, Jack his humor, and Willis his practical experience, strong good sense, and vigorous, though untutored understanding. A portion of Jack's time was passed with the surgeon, between whom a great intimacy had sprung up. Time did not, therefore, hang heavily on the hands of the young men; for even during the night their thoughts were busy forming projects, or in embroidering the canvas of the future with those fairy designs which youth alone can create.

One morning Willis arrived on deck, pale, and with an air of fatigue and lassitude altogether unusual. He gazed anxiously into every nook and cranny of the ship.

"Whatever is the matter, Willis?" inquired Jack. "Have you seen the Flying Dutchman?"

"No, Master Jack," said he in a forlorn tone; "but I have either seen the captain or his ghost."

"What! the captain of the Hoboken?"

"No; the captain of the Nelson."

"In a dream?"

"No, my eyes were as wide open as they are now; he looked into my cabin, and spoke to me."

"Impossible, Willis."

"I assure you it is the case though, impossible or not."

"Where is he then?" exclaimed both the young men, starting.

"That I know not; I have looked for him everywhere."

"What did he say to you?"

"At first he said, How d'ye do, Willis?"

"Naturally; and what then?"

"He asked me what I thought of the cloud that was gathering in the south-west."

"Imagination, Willis."

"But look there, you can see a storm is gathering in that quarter."

"The nightmare, Willis. But what did you say to him?"

"I could not answer at the moment; my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I rose to take hold of his hand."

"Then he disappeared, did he not?"

"Yes, Master Jack."

"I thought so."

"But I heard the door of my cabin shut behind him, as distinctly as I now hear the waves breaking on the sides of the corvette at this moment."

"You ought to have run after him."

"I did so."

"Well, did you catch him?"

"No; I was stopped by the watch, for I had nothing on me but my shirt; the officers stared, the sailors laughed, and the doctor felt my pulse. But, for all that, I am satisfied there is a mystery somewhere."

"But, Willis, the thing is altogether improbable."

"Well, look here; Captain Littlestone is either dead or alive, is he not?"

"Yes," replied Jack, "there can be no medium between these hypotheses."

"Then all I can say is this, that as sure as I am a living sinner, I have seen him if he is alive, and, if he is dead, I have seen his ghost."

"You believe in visitations from the other world then, Willis?"

"I cannot discredit the evidences of my own senses, can I?"

"No, certainly not."

"Besides, this brings to my recollection a similar circumstance that happened to an old comrade of mine. Sam Walker is as fine a fellow as ever lived, he sailed with me on board the Norfolk, and I know him to be incapable of telling a falsehood. Though his name is Sam Walker, we used to call him 'Hot Codlins.'"

"Why, Willis?"

"Because he had an old woman with a child tatooed on his arm, instead of an anchor, as is usual in the navy."

"A portrait of Notre Dame de Bon Lecours, I shouldn't wonder," said Jack; "but what had that to do with hot codlins: a codlin is a fish, is it not?"

"I will explain that another time," said Willis, the shadow of a smile passing over his pale features. "The short and the long of the story is, that Sam once saw a ghost."

"Well, tell us all about it, Willis."

"But I am afraid you will not believe the story if I do."

"On the contrary, I promise to believe it in advance."

"Very well, Master Jack. Did you ever see a windmill?"

"No, but I know what sort of things they are from description."

"There are none in Scotland," continued Willis; "at least I never saw one there."

"How do they manage to grind their corn then? There should be oats in the land o' cakes, at all events," said Jack, with a smile.

"Well, in countries that have plenty of water, they can dispense with mills on land. Though there are no wind-mills in Scotland, there are some in the county of Durham, on the borders of England, for it appears my mate Sam was born in one of them. His father and mother died when he was very young, and he, conjointly with the rats, was left sole owner and occupant of the mill. Some of the neighboring villagers, seeing the poor boy left in this forlorn condition, got him into a charity school, whence he was bound apprentice to a shipmaster engaged in the coal trade, by whom he was sent to sea. The ship young Sam sailed in was wrecked on the coast of France, and he fell into the hands of a fisherman, who put the mark on his arm we used to joke him about."

"I thought so," said Jack; "the mark in question represents the patron saint of French sailors."

"After a variety of ups and downs, Sam found himself rated as a first-class seaman on board a British man-of-war. He served with myself on board the Norfolk, and was wounded at the battle of Trafalgar [1806], which, I dare say, you have heard of."

"Yes, Willis, it was there that your Admiral Nelson covered himself with immortal renown."

"There and elsewhere, Master Fritz."

"It cost him his life, however, Willis, and likewise shortened those of the French Admiral Villeneuve and the Spanish Admiral Gravina; that, you must admit, is too many eggs for one omelet."

"As you once said yourself, great victories are not won without loss, and the battle of Trafalgar was no exception to the rule. Sam, having been wounded, was sent to the hospital, and when his wound was healed, he was allowed leave of absence to recruit his strength, so he thought he would take a run to Durham and see how it fared with the paternal windmill. Time had, of course, wrought many changes both outside and in, but it still remained perched grimly on its pedestal, but now entirely abandoned to the bats and owls. The sails were gone, and the woodwork was slowly crumbling away; but the basement being of hewn granite, it was still in a tolerable state of preservation. The place, however, was said to be haunted; exactly at twelve o'clock at night dismal howls were heard by the villagers to issue from the mill. According to the blacksmith, who was a great authority in such matters, Sam's father was a very avaricious old fellow, and had hid his money somewhere about the building; and you know, Master Jack, that when a man dies and leaves his money concealed, there is no rest for him in his grave till it is discovered."

"I really was not aware of it before," replied Jack; "but I am delighted to hear it."

"When Sam arrived, nobody disputed his title to the property, except the ghost; but Sam had seen a good deal of hard service, and declared that he would not be choused out of his patrimony for all the ghosts in the parish; and, in spite of the persuasions of the villagers, resolved to take up his abode there forthwith. Sam accordingly laid in a supply of stores, including a month's supply of tobacco and rum. He first made the place water-tight, then made a fire sufficient to roast an ox, and when night arrived made a jorum of grog, a little stiff, to keep away the damp. This done, he lit his pipe, and began to cook a steak for his supper. The old mill, for the first time since the decease of the former proprietor, was filled with the savory odor of roast beef."

"And there are worse odors than that," remarked Jack. "Whilst the steak was frizzling, he took a swig at the grog; and, thinking one side was done, he gave the gridiron a twist, which sent the steak a little way up the chimney, and, strange to say, it never came down again.

"'Ten thousand What's-a-names,' cried Sam, 'where's my steak?'

"No answer was vouchsafed to this query; he looked up the chimney, and could see no one."

"The steak had really disappeared then?" said Jack, inquiringly.

"Yes, not a fragment remained; but he had more beef, so he cut off another; and, as his head had got a little middled with the grog, he thought it just possible that he might have capsized the gridiron into the fire, so he quietly recommenced the operation."

"And the second steak disappeared like the first?" "Yes, Master Fritz, with this difference--there was a dead man's thigh-bone in its place."

"An awkward transformation for a hungry man," said Jack.

"'Here's a go!' cried Sam, like to burst his sides with laughing, 'they expect to frighten me with bones, do they? they've got the wrong man--been played too many tricks of that kind at sea to be scared by that sort of thing. Ha, ha, ha! capital joke though.'"

"Your friend Sam must have been a merry fellow, Willis."

"Yes, but he was hungry, and wanted his supper; so he continued supplying the gridiron with steaks as long as the beef lasted, but only obtained human shin-bones, clavicles and tibias.

"'Never mind,' said Sam to himself, 'they will tire of this game in course of time.'

"When the beef was done, he kept up a supply of rashers of bacon, and threw the bones as they appeared in a corner, consoling himself in the meantime with his pipe and his grog."

"He must have been both patient and persevering," remarked Jack.

"This went on till a skull appeared on the gridiron."

"A singular object to sup upon," observed Jack.

"'I wonder what the deuce will come next,' said Sam to himself, throwing the skull amongst the rest of the bones.

"The next time, however, he took the gridiron off the fire, there was his last rasher done to a turn.

"'Now,' said Sam, 'I am going to have peace and quietness at last.'

"He sat down then very comfortably, and kept eating and drinking, and drinking and smoking, till the village clock struck twelve."

"Good!" cried Jack. "You may come in now, ladies and gentlemen; the performance is just a-going to begin."

"Sam heard a succession of crack cracks amongst the bones, and turning round he beheld a frightful-looking spectre, pointing with its finger to the door."

"Was it wrapped up in a white sheet?" inquired Jack.

"Yes, I rather think it was."

"Very well, then, I believe the story; for spectres are invariably wrapped up in white sheets."

"The bones, instead of remaining quietly piled up in the corner, had joined themselves together--the leg bones to the feet, the ribs to the back-bone--and the skull had stuck itself on the top. Where the flesh came from, Sam could not tell; but he strongly suspected that his own steaks and bacon had something to do with it. But, be that as it may, there was not half enough of fat to cover the bones, and the figure was dreadfully thin. Sam stared at first in astonishment, and began to doubt whether he saw aright. When, however, he beheld the figure move, there could be no mistake, and he knew at once that it was a ghost. Anybody else would have been frightened out of their senses, but Sam took the matter philososophically and went on with his supper.

"'How d'ye do, old fellow?' he said to the spectre. 'Will you have a mouthful of grog to warm your inside? Sit down, and be sociable.'

"The spectre did not make any reply, but continued making a sign for Sam to follow.

"'If you prefer to stand and keep beckoning there till to-morrow you may, but, if I were in your place, I would come nearer the fire,' said Sam; 'you may catch cold standing there without your shirt, you know.'

"The same silence and the same gesture continued on the part of the ghost, and Sam, seeing that his words produced no effect, recommenced eating."

"There is one thing," remarked Jack, "more astonishing about your friend Sam than his coolness, and that is his appetite."

"The spectre did not appear satisfied with the state of affairs, for it assumed a threatening attitude and strode towards the fire-place.

"'Avast heaving, old fellow,' cried Sam, 'there is one thing I have got to say, which is this here: you may stand and hoist signals there as long as ever you like; but if you touch me, then look out for squalls, that's all.'

"The 'old fellow,' however, paid no attention to this caution. He strode right up to the fire-place, and, whilst pointing to the door with one hand, grasped Sam's arm with the other. Sam started up, shook off the hand that held him, and pitched into the spectre right and left. But, strange to say, his hands went right through its bones and all, just as if it had been made of the hydrogen gas you spoke of the other day. Sam saw that it was no use laying about him in this fashion, for the spectre stood grinning at him all the time, so he gave it up.

"'I wish,' said he, 'you would be off, and go to bed, and not keep bothering there.'

"Still the spectre maintained the same posture, and kept pertinaciously pointing to the door.

"'Well,' said Sam, 'since you insist upon it, let us see what there is outside. Go a-head, I will follow.'

"The spectre led him into what used to be the garden of the mill, but the enclosure was now overgrown with rank and poisonous weeds. There was a path running through it paved with flagstones; the spectre pointed with its finder to one of them. Sam stooped down, and, much to his astonishment, raised it with ease. Beneath there was an iron chest, the lid of which he also opened, and saw that it was filled with old spade guineas and Spanish dollars.

"'You behold that treasure!' said the spectre, in a hollow voice.

"'Ha, ha, old fellow! you can speak, can you? Now we shall understand each other. Yes, I see a box, filled with what looks very like gold and silver coins.'

"'I placed that treasure there before my death,' added the spectre.

"'Ah, so! than you are dead?' said Sam.

"'One half of that money I wish you to give to the poor, and the other half you may keep to yourself, if you choose.'

"'Golley!' said Sam, 'you are not much of a swab after all, though you look as thin as a purser's clerk. Give us a shake of your paw, my hearty.'

"Here Sam, somehow or other, stumbled over the lamp, and when he got up again the spectre had vanished. He laid hold of the chest, however, and groped his way back to the mill. When safe inside, he made a stiff jorum of grog, and then fell comfortably asleep. That night he dreamt that he was eating gold and silver, that he was his own captain, that the cat-o'-nine tails was entirely abolished in the navy, and that his ship, instead of sailing in salt water was floating in rum. When he awoke, the sun was steaming through all the nooks and crannies of the old mill. All the marks of the preceding night's adventures were there--the gridiron, the empty rum jar, the the table o'erturned in the melee with the ghost--but the chest of money was gone."

"And what did Sam conclude from that incident?" inquired Fritz.

"Well, he supposed that he had slept rather long, and that somebody had come in before he as up and had walked off with the box."

"If I had been in his place," continued Fritz, "I should have said to myself that the mind often gives birth to strange fancies, particularly after a heavy supper, and that I had muddled my brain with rum; consequently, that all the things I imagined I had seen were only the chimeras of a dream."

"But that could not be, Master Fritz, for two reasons; the first, that the mark of the ghost's hand remained on his arm."

"Very likely burnt it when he grilled the bacon."

"The second, that the ghost was no more seen or heard of in the mill."

"That proof is a poser for you, brother, I think," said Jack.

"Did you heave that sigh just now, Master Fritz?" inquired Willis, in a low tone.

"It was not I," said Fritz, looking at his brother.

"Nor I," said Jack, looking at Willis.

"Nor I," said Willis, looking behind him.

Chapter XXVI.

Willis falls in with the Sloop on terra firma, instead of at the bottom of the Sea, as might have been expected--Admiral Cicero--The Defunct not yet Dead.

The corvette, notwithstanding the multitude of British cruisers scattered about the ocean, and the other dangers that beset her, held on the even tenor of her way. A gale sprung up now and then, but they only tended to give a filip to the common-place incidents recorded in the log. This quietude was not, however, enjoyed by all the persons on board. Willis was a prey to violent emotions; and so it often happens, in the midst of the profoundest calm, storms often rage in the heart of man.

Whether in reality or in a dream, Willis declared that Captain Littlestone paid him a visit every night, and invariably asked him precisely the same questions. On these occasions, Willis asserted that he distinctly heard the door open and shut whilst a shadow glided through. That he might once, or even twice, have been the dupe of his own imagination, is probable enough; but a healthy mind does not permit a delusion to be indefinitely prolonged--it struggles with the hallucination, and eventually shakes it off; providing always the mind has a shadow, and not a reality, to deal with, and that the patient is not a monomaniac. The dilemma was consequently reduced to this position--either Willis was mad, or Captain Littlestone was on board the Boudeuse.

In all other respects, Willis was perfectly sane. He himself searched every corner of the ship, but without other result than a confirmation of his own impression that there were no officers on board other than those of the corvette; and yet, notwithstanding his own conviction in daylight, he still continued to assert the reality of his interviews with Captain Littlestone during the night. The Italians say, La speranza e il sogno d'an uomo svegliato. Was Willis also dreaming with his eyes open? Might not the wish be father to the thought, and the thought produce the fancy? There is only one other supposition to be hazarded--could it be possible, in spite of all his researches, that Willis did see what he maintained with so much pertinacity he had seen?

These questions are too astute to admit of answers without due consideration and reflection; therefore, with the reader's permission, we shall leave the replies over for the present.

On the 12th June a voice from the mast-head called "Land ahoy!" much to the delight of the voyagers. The land in question was the island of St. Helena. This sea-girt rock had not at that time become classic ground. It had not yet become the prison and mausoleum of Napoleon the Great. The petulant squabbles between Sir Hudson Lowe and his illustrious prisoner had not been heard of. Little wotted then the proud ruler of France the fate that awaited him, for, when the Boudeuse touched at the island, all Europe, with the single exception of England, was kneeling at his feet.

On the 30th the Island of Ascension was reached. Here, in accordance with a usage peculiar to French sailors, a bottle, containing a short abstract of the ship's log, was committed to the deep. Willis thought this ceremony, under existing circumstances, would have been better observed in the breach than the observance, for, said he, if a British cruiser picked up that bottle within twenty-four hours, she stood a chance of picking up the Boudeuse as well.

On the 15th July the peak of Teneriffe hove in sight This remarkable basaltic rock rises to the extraordinary height of three thousand eight hundred yards above the level of the sea; it is consequently seen at a considerable distance, and constitutes a valuable landmark for navigators in these seas. Six weeks later the Boudeuse dropped anchor in the Havre roads.

Here the three adventurers had to encounter by far the greatest misfortune that had as yet befallen them. The continental system of Napoleon was then in force. The importation of everything English or Indian was strictly prohibited. The cargo the young men had brought with them from New Switzerland, which already had escaped so many perils, was, therefore, declared contraband, and seized by the French fisc--an institution that rarely permitted such a prize to quit its rapacious grasp.

Behold now our poor friends, Fritz and Jack, in a strange land, deprived at once of their fortune and their chance of returning home--the two beacons that had cheered them on their way! All their bright hopes of the future were thus annihilated at one fell swoop. Their fortitude almost gave way under the severity of this blow; the excess of their distress alone saved them. Grief requires leisure to give itself free vent; but when we are compelled, by absolute necessity, to earn our daily bread, we cannot find time for tears; and such was the case with Willis and his two friends; they were here without a friend and without resources of any kind whatever.

If they had only known Greek and Latin; if they had only been half doctors or three-quarter barristers, or if even they had been doctors and lawyers complete, it would have sorely puzzled their skill to have raised a single sous in hard cash. Fortunately, however, whilst cultivating their minds, they had acquired the art of handling a saw and wielding a hammer. The blouse of the workman, consequently, fitted them as well as the gown of the student, and they set themselves manfully to earn a living by the sweat of their brow. They were carpenters and blacksmiths by turns, regulating their occupations by the grand doctrines of supply and demand.

Jack alone of the three was defective in steadiness; he only joined Willis and his brother at mid-day. What he did with himself during the forenoon was a profound mystery. He rose before daybreak, and disappeared no one knew where, or for what purpose. His companions in adversity endeavored in vain to discover his secret; he was determined to conceal his movements, and succeeded in baffling their curiosity. To judge, however, by the ardor with which he worked, he was engaged in some one of those schemes that are termed follies before success, but which, after success, are universally acknowledged to be brilliant and praiseworthy instances of industrial enterprise.

If, after a hard day's work, when assembled together in the little room that served them for parlor, kitchen, and hall, the power of regret vanquished fatigue, and sadness drove away sleep, then Jack, who compared himself to Peter the Great, when a voluntary exile in the shipyards of Saardam, would endeavor to infuse a little mirth into the lugubrious party. If all his efforts to make them merry failed, all three would join together in a humble prayer to their Heavenly Father, who bestowed resignation upon them instead.

If Willis and his two friends were not accumulating wealth, at all events they were earning the bread they ate honestly and worthily. They had all three laid their shoulders vigorously to the wheel and kept it jogging along marvellously for a month. By that time, a detailed report of the seizure of their property had been placed before the director of the Domaine Extraordinaire, who was the sovereign authority in all matters pertaining to the exchequer of the empire. He saw at once that this capture was extremely harsh, and probably thought that, if it became known, it would raise a storm of indignation about the ears of his department. Here were two young men--Moseses, as it were, saved from the bulrushes. Lost in the desert from the period of their birth, and ignorant of the dissensions then raging in Europe, they were unquestionably beyond the ordinary operation of the law. This will never do, he probably said to himself; the civilization which these two young men have come through so many perils to seek ought not to appear to them, the moment they arrived in Europe, in the form of spoliation and barbarism.

The name of this extraordinary director of Domaine Extraordinaire was M. de la Boullerie, and, when we fall in with the name of a really good-hearted man, we delight to record it. He felt that the two young men had been hardly dealt with, but he had not the power to order a restitution of the property, now that the seizure had been made, and sundry perquisities, of course, deducted by the excise officials. Accordingly, he referred the matter to the Emperor, who commanded the goods to be immediately restored intact. Napoleon, at the same time, praised the functionary we have named for calling his attention to the merits of the case, and thanked him for such an opportunity of repairing an injustice.[I]

There are many such instances of generosity as the foregoing in the career of the great Emperor--mild rays of the sun in the midst of thunderstorms; sweet flowers blowing here and there, in the bosom of the gigantic projects of his life--which many will esteem more highly than his miracles of strategy and the renown of his battles. As nothing that tends to elevate the soul is out of place in this volume, we may be permitted to insert one or two of these anecdotes.

In 1806, Napoleon was at Potsdam. The Prussians were humbled to the dust, and the outrage of Rossbach had been fearfully avenged. A letter was intercepted, in which Prince Laatsfeld, civil governor of Berlin, secretly informed the enemy of all the dispositions of the French army. The crime was palpable, capital, and unpardonable. There was nothing between the life and death of the prince, except the time to load half a dozen muskets, point them to his breast, and cry--Fire. The princess flew to the palace, threw herself at the feet of the Emperor, beseeched, implored, and seemed almost heart-broken. "Madam," said Napoleon, "this letter is the only proof that exists of your husband's guilt. Throw it into the fire." The fatal paper blazed, crisped, passed from blue to yellow, and the treachery of Prince Laatsfeld was reduced to ashes.

Another time, a young man, named Von der Sulhn, journeyed from Dresden to Paris; unless you are told, you could scarcely imagine for what purpose. There are people who travel for amusement, for business, for a change of air, or merely to be able to say they have been at such and such a place. Some go abroad for instruction, others, perhaps, with no other object in view than to eat frogs in Paris, bouillabaisse at Marseilles, a polenta at Milan, macaroni at Naples, an olla podrida in Spain, or conscoussou in Africa. Von der Sulhn travelled to assassinate the Emperor. Like Scaevola and Brutus, he, no doubt, imagined the crime would hand down his name to posterity. In youth, all of us have erred in judgment more or less. Sulhn thought the Emperor ought to be slain. Unfortunately for him, the Duke of Rovigo, the then minister of police, entertained a different opinion. He thought, in point of fact, that the Emperor ought not to be killed: hence it was that the young Saxon found himself in chains, and that the Duke went to ask the Emperor what he should do with him. We ought, however, to mention that the young man, in his character of an enlightened German, testified his regret that he had not succeeded in carrying out his project, and protested that, in the event of regaining his liberty, he would renew the attempt. "Never mind," said the Emperor to the duke, "the young man's age is his excuse. Do not make the affair public, for, if it is bruited about, I must punish the headstrong youth, which I have no wish to do. I should be sorry to plunge a worthy family into grief by immolating such a scapegrace. Send him to Vincennes, give him some books to read, and write to his mother." In 1814, the young man obtained his liberty, his family, and his Germany, and it is to be hoped that he afterwards became a respectable pater-familias, a sort of Aulic councillor, and that, during the troublesome times in the land of Sauerkraut, he was before, and not behind, the barricades of his darling patria. If he be dead, it is to be supposed that, instead of lying a headless trunk ignominiously in a ditch, or in the unconsecrated cemetery of Clamort, he is reposing entire in the paternal tomb.

On the 15th of March, 1815, the Emperor landed at Cannes--he had returned from the island of Elba. On the beach he was joined by one man, at Antibes by a company, at Digne by a battalion, at Gap by a regiment (that of Labedoyer), at Grenoble by an army. The hearts of the soldiers of France went to him like steel to the loadstone--first a drop, and then a torrent; the Empire, like a snowball, increased as it progressed. At Lyons, the Count of Artois, the setting sun, is obliged to go out of one gate the moment that Napoleon, the rising sun, comes in at another. Smiles, orations, triumphal arches, and even the discourses that had been prepared to welcome the Bourbons, were used to congratulate their successor on his return. Cockades and flags were altered to suit the occasion, by inserting a stripe of red here and another of blue there. One national guard, but only one, remained faithful to the Bourbons; he would neither alter his cockade nor his colors, and remained true to his patrons in the hour of disaster. Everybody asked, what would the Emperor do with him? Would he be imprisoned or banished? Neither; the Emperor sent him a cross of the order of merit! It is, no doubt, grand to have overthrown the brilliant army of Murad Bey in Egypt; to have vanquished Melas, Wurmser, and Davidowich in Italy; Bragation, Kutusoff, and Barclay de Tolly in Russia; Mack in Germany; and thus to have reduced the entire continent of Europe to subjection. But it appears to us that a still greater feat was the victory he gained over himself, when, in the midst of the fever excited by his return, and the animosity of parties, he gave this cross to the solitary adherent of misfortune. Having made these slight digressions into the future, it is proper that we should return to our story.

The mysterious roads of Providence do not always lead to the places they seem to go; it often happens that, when we expect to be swallowed up by the breakers that surround us, we are wafted into a harbor, and that we encounter success where we only anticipated disappointment. The rigorous enactments of the continental system, that the other day had ruined the two brothers, became all at once the source of unlooked-for wealth; for, on account of the scarcity of colonial produce, a scarcity dating from the prohibitory laws promulgated in 1807, the merchandise of the young men had more than quadrupled in value.

From the grade of hard-working mechanics they were suddenly promoted to the rank of wealthy merchants. They consequently abandoned the laborious employments that for a month had enabled them to live, and to keep despair and misery at bay. Willis, greatly to his inconvenience, found himself transformed into a gentleman at large, which caused him to make some material alterations in the manipulation and quality of his pipes.

Fritz busied himself in collecting in, the by no means inconsiderable sums, which their property realised. He did not value the gold for its glitter or its sound, he valued it only as a means of enabling himself and his brother to return promptly to their ocean home. Jack undertook the task of finding a scalpel to save his mother--doubtless a difficult task; for how was he to induce a surgeon of standing to abandon his connexion, his family, and his fame, and to undertake a perilous voyage to the antipodes, for the purpose of performing an operation in a desert, where there were neither newspapers to proclaim it, academicians to discuss it, nor ribbons to reward it? As for the gentlemen of the dentist and barber school, like Drs. Sangrado and Fontanarose of Figaro, the remedy was even worse by a great deal than the disease. But, as we have said, Jack promised to find a surgeon, and the research was so arduous, that he was scarcely ever seen during the day by either Willis or his brother.

To Willis was confided the office of chartering a ship for the homeward voyage, and there were not a few obstacles to overcome in order to accomplish this. French ship-masters at that time engaged in very little legitimate business; they embarked their capital in privateering, prefering to capture the merchantmen of England to risking their own. One morning, Willis started as usual in search of a ship, but soon returned to the inn where they had established their head-quarters in a state of bewilderment; he threw himself into a chair, and, before he could utter a word, had to fill his pipe and light it.

"Well," said he, "I am completely and totally flabbergasted."

"What about?" inquired the two brothers.

"You could not guess, for the life of you, what has happened."

"Perhaps not, Willis, and would therefore prefer you to tell us at once what it is."

"After this," continued Willis, "no one need tell me that there are no miracles now-a-days."

"Then you have stumbled upon a miracle, have you, Willis?"

"I should think so. That they do not happen every day, I can admit; but I have a proof that they do come about sometimes."

"Very probably, Willis."

"It is my opinion that Providence often leads us about by the hands, just as little children are taken to school, lest they should be tempted to play truant by the way."

"Not unlikely, Willis; but the miracle!"

"I was going along quietly, not thinking I was being led anywhere in particular, when, all at once, I was hove up by--If a bullet had hit me right in the breast, I could not have been more staggered."

"Whatever hove you up then, Willis?"

"I was hove up by the sloop."

"What sloop?"

"The Nelson."

"Was it taking a walk, Willis?" inquired Jack.

"Have you been to sea since we saw you last?" asked Fritz.

"If I had fallen in with the craft at sea, Master Fritz, I should not have been half so much astonished. The sea is the natural element of ships; we do not find gudgeons in corn fields, nor shoot hares on the ocean. But it was on land that I hailed the Nelson."

"Was it going round the corner of a street that you stumbled upon it, Willis?" inquired Jack.

"Not exactly; but to make a long story short--"

"When you talk of cutting anything short, we are in for a yarn," said Jack.

"And you are sure to interrupt him in the middle of it," said Fritz.

"Well, in two words," said Willis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "I was cruising about the shipyards, looking if there was a condemned craft likely to suit us--some of them had gun-shot wounds in their timbers, others had been slewed up by a shoal--and, to cut the matter short--"

"Another yarn," suggested Jack.

"I luffed up beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been completely gutted. But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I recognized it at once to be that of the Nelson. Now do you believe in miracles?"

"But are you sure, Willis?"

"Suppose you met Ernest or Frank in the street to-morrow, pale, meagre, and in rags, would you recognize them?"

"Most assuredly."

"Well, by the same token, sailors can always recognize a ship they have sailed in. They know the form of every plank and the line of every bend. There are hundreds of marks that get spliced in the memory, and are never forgotten. But in the present case there is no room for any doubt, a portion of the figure head is still extant, and the word Nelson can be made out without spectacles."

"But how did it get there?"

"You know, Master Fritz, it could not have told me, even if I had taken the trouble to inquire."

"Very true, Willis."

"I was determined, however, to find it out some other way, so I steered for a cafe near the harbor, where the pilots and long-shore captains go to play at dominoes. I was in hopes of picking up some stray waif of information, and, sooth to say, I was not altogether disappointed."

"Another meeting, I'll be bound," said Jack.

"My falling in with the Nelson astonished you, did it not?"

"Rather."

"Then I'll bet my best pipe that this one will surprise you still more. You recollect my comrade, Bill, alias Bob, of the Hoboken?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"Then I met him."

"What! the man who had both his legs shot off, and died in consequence of his wounds?" inquired Jack.

"The same."

"And that was afterwards thrown overboard with a twenty-four pound shot tied to his feet!" exclaimed Fritz.

"The same."

At this astonishing assertion the young men regarded Willis with an air of apprehension.

"You think I am mad, no doubt, do you not?"

"Whatever can we think, Willis?"

"I admit that my statement looks very like it at first sight, but still you are wrong, as you will see by-and-by. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw him. 'Is that you, Bill Stubbs,' says I, 'at last?'

"'Lor love ye!' says he, 'is that you, Pilot?'

"He then took hold of my hand, and gave it such a shake as almost wrenched it off.

"'Where in all the earth did you hail from?' he said. 'I thought you were dead and gone?'

"'And I thought you were the same,' said I, 'and no mistake.'

"'Alive and hearty though, as you see, Pilot; only a little at sea amongst the mounseers.'

"'But what about the Hoboken?' says I.

"'What Hoboken?' says he.

"'Were you not aboard a Yankee cruiser some months back?'

"'Never was aboard a Yankee in all my life,' says Bill.

"And no more he was, for he never left the Nelson till she was high and dry in Havre dockyard; so, the short and the long of it is, that I must have been wrong in that instance."

"So I should think," remarked Fritz.

"Yet the resemblance was very remarkable; the only difference was a carbuncle on the nose, which the real Bill has and the other has not, but which I had forgotten."

"Like Cicero," remarked Jack.

"Another Admiral?" inquired Willis, drily.

"No, he was only an orator."

"Bill soon satisfied me that he was the very identical William Stubbs, and that the other was only a very good imitation."

"He did not receive you with a punch in the ribs, at all events, like the apocryphal Bill," remarked Jack.

"No; but what is more to the purpose, he told me that, after having struggled with the terrible tempest off New Switzerland--which you recollect--the Nelson found herself at such a distance, that Captain Littlestone resolved to proceed on his voyage, and to return again as speedily as possible.

"'We arrived at the Cape all right,' added Bill, 'landed the New Switzerland cargo, and sailed again with the Rev. Mr. Wolston on board. A few days after leaving the Cape, we were pounced upon by a French frigate; the Nelson, with its crew, was sent off as a prize to Havre, and here I have been ever since,' said Bill, 'a prisoner at large, allowed to pick up a living as I can amongst the shipping.'"

"And the remainder of the crew?" inquired Fritz.

"Are all here prisoners of war."

"And the Rev. Mr. Wolston and the captain?"

"Are prisoners on parole."

"Where?"

"Here."

"What! in Havre?"

"Yes, close at hand, in the Hotel d'Espagne."

"And we sitting here," cried Jack, snatching up his hat and rushing down stairs four steps at a time.

Willis and Fritz followed as fast as they could.

When they all three reached the bottom of the stairs.

"If Captain Littlestone is here, Willis," said Jack, "he could not have been on board the Boudeuse."

"That is true, Master Jack."

"In that case, Great Rono, you must have been dreaming in the corvette as well as in the Yankee."

"No," insisted Willis, "it was no dream, I am certain of that."

"Explain the riddle, then."

"I cannot do that just at present, but it may be cleared up by-and-by, like all the mysteries and miracles that surround us."

FOOTNOTES:

[I] This circumstance is historical, and will be found at length in the Memoirs of Napoleon, by Amedee Goubard.