was the last about to retire, passed me he knelt down, and taking my hand placed it respectfully to his forehead and his lips, and then rose to depart; but, before he had gained the cabin door, Gavel called him.

66

Jugurtha, I want you. Help me to remove this dead body and this living lump of beastiality, into the after cabin. They shall keep each other company. And I'll take care that the watcher of the dead shall remain sober. Away with him.”

The whining supplications of the debased drunkard were most disgusting; but, in the sinewy arms of Jugurtha, he was soon conveyed to his place of imprisonment, and afterwards, with much more reverence, the body of the old man was placed beside him.

As the moans and the pitiable howlings of Tomkins were unintermitting and most dolorous, I repaired to the deck, and in the afternoon, the weather being still fine, with baffling winds, I there dined upon the reduced allowance, and on the same sordid fare as the men. James Gavel ate nothing. He seemed absorbed, absent, and at times transported, ever and anon muttering to himself various texts from Scripture, and pious ejaculations, "Lord have mercy upon his soul," being the most frequently repeated.

About five in the afternoon he went below, and I, going a short time afterwards into the fore-cabin, principally to listen if Tomkins was still moaning, I found Gavel on his knees, praying so devoutly, with the Bible open before him, that he did not perceive my entrance. I looked over his shoulder, and found the holy book open at that part that narrates the sacrifice of Jonah. I shuddered. A fear crept over me, that I too well understood the workings of his distracted and superstitious imagination. I laid my hand on his shoulder, he started, trembled, and looked up.

"This will never do, Gavel," I said, mildly. "Your thoughts are unholy, unchristian-damnable. In that same book that lies before you, there is an express command, Thou shalt do no murder.'"

"A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, and a life for a life. But fear not, I will do no murder. And, Ardent Troughton, if I did, you at least should be grateful for it. This murder, as you improperly call it, will restore you to your father, to your mother, to your sister. But fear not. The Lord himself will decide this question. I am but an instrument."

"You fill me with horror. Let us leave this unhappy man to the laws of his country, administered with due form, and by impartial judges. Do not give way to these wild dreams. We shall make Teneriffe to-morrow. We may then hand him over to the civil authorities, if we do not find a man-of-war in the roadstead. The British consul will advise us what to do."

"We shall never again reach land whilst the murderer is on board. No, not one of us," answered Gavel, doggedly.

"Well, let us then all perish together, rather than peril our souls by a contrived assassination."

"Who talks of assassination, Troughton? The word is yours, not mine. I will not soil my hand with the dastard's blood. His fate is in the hands of the Lord."

"Do not thus prevaricate with me. What is blood? Starvation, poison, strangulation, or the cool depths of the unrevealing sea, are each as effectual. Shall even a man like Tomkins be shuffled out of the way like a loathsome reptile in our path, with no prayer-no rite-no Christian burial? Even if he be condemned by the laws to suffer death -the consolations of religion will not be denied to him during his passage to death, nor its rites afterwards. You have no right, guilty as you esteem him, to deprive him of them."

"He shall have them. I will go in and pray with him, and with the dead."

"Gavel, I swear by all that's sacred, I'll watch you. I will be a guard to this man until the laws determine his fate."

"Be so. tian burial."

Fear me not. I swear to you that he shall have Chris

"Must I be satisfied with this assurance? May I depend upon you ?"

"You may. And see, I take this sinner food."

The mate then procured him one ration, exactly similar to those served out to the rest of the ship's company, with half a pint of fœtid cold water. I entered the after cabin with him. The master was in mental agony on the floor, still bound, and had removed himself as far as possible from the dead body. His haggard countenance was cadaverously pale, excepting where it was disfigured by the dark blue blotches of intemperance. He was a wretched spectacle, every muscle in his face quivering, every limb trembling.

"I have brought you food and water," said the mate sternly. "Eat, and then try to make your peace with God."

But he could not eat-he could not drink. He could only plead to be removed from his ghastly companion, and petition for his favourite rum. How ardently, how passionately, did the abject wretch pray for the draught of intoxication! His language was by turns bold, figurative, pathetic, and touching. I had no conception of the powers of his eloquence. What impassioned oratory was wasted, for the privilege of making himself a beast! To all these moving appeals, Gavel answered only by tightening the bands upon his hands and feet, and lashing him more securely to a ring-bolt in the stern-port. His arms had been previously loosened, in order that he might, if he had chosen, feed himself. When the mate thought him properly secured, he locked the door of the cabin, and, with myself, proceeded on deck.

To all my remonstrances on this unnecessary cruelty, he was sternly unheedful. There was a light wind from the right quarter. Every sail that our jury-masts and make-shift yards could carry and spread, was extended to take advantage of it. As the bright haze of the heat dispersed, and the evening approached, cool and clear, the high and snow-white peak of Teneriffe distinctly appeared right before us, singularly and beautifully relieved by the intense blue of the sky. There was joy came upon us all but Gavel, and the prisoner in the cabin. My exhilaration was excessive-the mate, however, grew more and more gloomy. At that moment I could have embraced my bitterest enemy. Full of this gushing milk of human kind

ness, I addressed the superstitious zealot in the blandest and most friendly tones. I could not move him. I talked to him of his friends, his home, of happiness in store for him, of his approaching promotion. But it roused him not. I spoke to him of his mother, and he softBut it was only a change from the stony rigidity of despair to its weakness. I could see by the contorted play of the muscles of his face, that he could have wept, had it not been for very shame. He thanked me with a tremulous voice for all my kindness to him-made me write down in my pocket-book the address of his mother-described to me exactly where she lived, in some bye street leading from the Commercial Road-and asked me to be kind to her. Indeed, had he been standing on the scaffold, with the headsman near him, he could not have taken a more solemn leave of me, or bade God bless me more fervently-and we all the time nearing land with a favouring and rapidly-increasing breeze.

It was nearly dusk, when we found the wind had risen so much, that we were forced to take in sail. It was done cheerfully and ra

pidly.

"It is coming," said Gavel to me; "we are drawing near the end of this frightful chapter: before midnight we shall have learned the great secret: I am awed, but yet I am happy."

"Nonsense."

"But I have much to do. I will save as many of you as I can : it is a bitter cup that is offered to me, but I will not, I may not refuse it."

He then again turned the hands up, still further to shorten sail. After this was done, and we were again running along under the foresail only, that unlucky foresail,-he called the men aft, and spoke to them to the following effect.

"My men, we shall have hard work to-night;-prepare yourselves. I know by signs that you cannot understand that, before midnight, we shall have the sea and the heavens raging. Let us be prepared. He who is below promised you each a bottle of rum; but I know that you would not now take it if it were offered to you. Let us not stand like beasts upon the brinks of our graves; but, as there has been much malice between me and you, as a peace-offering, I will give to every man on board a half-pint of spirits."

"Too much, too much," I exclaimed; but Gavel did not take the least notice of the interruption.

None:

"Now, if there is any man among you whom I have wronged or insulted, let him come forward, and I will right him if I can. -well then, I am, from my very heart, glad to see that there is no ill-will among us. Let us all shake hands. At four bells (10 o'clock, P. M.,) in the first watch, we will bury the dead. If any man thinks his half-pint too much for him, let him refrain. We must not disgrace the last of poor old Williams, for you all know that he was yours and every sailor's friend. Let us attend his burial like men and like Christians. Join me, my dear friends, as fervently as you can in the burial service, we are threatened with much calamity, for there is a murderer on board."

The men were then all sent down except the man at the wheel and

one look-out ahead. Gavel then walked the deck with me, labouring under a great depression of spirits. At length, he ordered Jugurtha, the negro, to be sent to him, and then it was, for the first time, that I discovered that the poor fellow was dumb. However, the mate made himself understood sufficiently, and the dark countenance of the black grinned with a satisfaction that I thought almost demoniac.

It was now nearly eight o'clock, or, as it is nautically termed, the beginning of the first watch. By this time, I had become a very tolerable seaman; my schooling had been severe, but not only salutary as regarded my present position, but also of the most vital importance to me in my after-life.

Gavel advanced to me with a great deal of respect in his manner, and said, "Mr. Troughton, will you do me the favour to keep the first half of the first watch? You perceive that the wind is bustling up into a gale; there is a good man at the wheel, and a good look-out placed forward. Do not, if you please, disturb the men from the enjoyment of the spirits that I have served out to them, without there is the most pressing occasion."

"Considering their long abstinence, they will get drunk.”

"I know it; but only partly so. I speak under an invisible and supernatural control; they will be sober enough four hours hence. Do not disturb me on any account. Jugurtha and I must go and sew the dead up in his winding-sheet. You know that we bury to-night. A body should not be kept long in these warm latitudes: besides, it is unlucky, and with a corpse on board, one does not feel comfortable. Besides, I wish to offer religious consolation to the drunken reprobate below."

"James Gavel!"

"Ardent Troughton, I meet your look with a calm brow and a clear conscience. We are doomed. In spite of human skill, most, if not all of us, will go down, this night, to their watery graves. It is unsafe to let the drunken madman loose who is below. In the crisis, when the timbers part, and the cold, black death of the wave is amongst us, can he be saved?-ought he to be saved? and steeped, as he is, in sin, ought I not to endeavour to awake in his mind some religious thoughts? The parable of the eleventh hour is honey and balm to the sinner." "Well, go. Do we not all want those consolations ?" "None so much as he."

He then went below with Jugurtha; and every time, as I turned aft in my solitary watch, I heard a low moaning rise out of the aftercabin, and mingle sorrowfully with the whistling of the winds that came shrieking after us as we hurried on our course.

The night was excessively dark, for the flying scud had appeared with the gale, and obscured what little starlight we might have expected. The moon was voyaging round the earth, the fickle companion of the sun, and was with him now, far beneath the horizon. That my thoughts should have assumed a sombre hue was most natural. The office going on immediately beneath me of sewing the slain steward up in his hammock, at once his coffin and his shroud, the dire events of the day, and the dreadful prognostications of the mate,

which I could not, though I wished, despise, altogether lay heavily on my bosom.

I would have conversed with the man who was steering, were it not that all his attention was necessary to keep the brig from broaching to. I continually hailed the man forward to keep a good look-out, but his monotonous, dismal, "Aye, aye, sir," did not in the least tend to dispel my melancholy or distract my thoughts. As is usual in these cases, my mind ran back to the scenes that I had left, and the memory of other days came over me with a mingled bitterness and pleasure. For the first time, I felt a strange tenderness come over me for the little Mira. I dwelt upon her pure and fair complexion, and the honest yet intellectual frankness of her countenance. I recalled to mind the social board of the good old merchant, with all its luxuries, and the smiling and cordial faces around it. I contrasted all this, and much more, with the reeling and crazy vessel that was staggering on, like one just recovering from a fit-the vagabonds of the sea, who were now my companions, and, above all, with the morose and superstitious, though manly mate, with the terrible idea of murder so familiarized to his mind, that he had by some strange and perverted manner of reasoning sanctified it by the approbation of religion.

What I am going to relate may be deemed a wild fiction. I cannot help it. I wish that it were so. To me, it was a dreadful truth, and taught me an awful lesson of mistrust in our weak natures, and the necessity of guarding against presumption, that nursing mother of superstition; but I will hurry over this part of my biography as rapidly as I can.

It was just eight bells, ten o'clock, when James Gavel again came on deck. His features were rigid and stern, yet there was a wild excitement in his eye that was painful to look upon, and which appeared the more startling, from the concentrated light of the lanthorn that he held. He first of all, with studious phrase, thanked me for the diligent watch that I had kept. Indeed, latterly, I had perceived a refinement in his language much at variance with his former nautical phraseology. He then requested me to turn up the hands for burial of the dead. The wind was mournfully singing among the rigging, and hurrying along the decks, whilst the doleful cry of the boatswain, "All hands to burial," sounded strangely sad. The men did not hurry up quickly, as usual. They came up like so many shadows in the partial darkness, stealing quietly and reverently aft.

By the directions of Gavel, who superintended the preparation, instead of placing the grating on the gangway, as is usual, he ordered it to be placed on the taffrail, that, as we were running before the wind, when the body was thrown overboard, it might the sooner be clear of the vessel. The line was made ready, another lanthorn was lighted, and Jugurtha, the dumb black, with the boatswain and Gavel, went below, and shortly afterwards the corpse was handed up, covered with the ship's colours for a pall. It was then put upon the grating, in order to be launched overboard.

The manner of burial at sea is this. The body is sewn up in the hammock of the dead, and if he died of any disease considered epidemical, the bed-clothes are also contained in this canvass shroud. Two