was nothing human to look upon but the black and disfigured countenance of Jugurtha. All my companions consisted but of two dumb animals. Hope had sunk with the brig and Gavel beneath the unfathomable waves-in the bitterness of my spirit I cursed the fallacious dream, and then turned aside and wept.

The horrors of the three next days! The years of miseries—of mortal sufferings of infinite agonies-that they contained! Had it not been that I afterwards rectified my calendar by that of the rest of the world, I should have believed that the sun did not set for months. What is time but the noter of sensations, of actions? Oh! those days were long, long years. But they had their uses. Shall I describe them? My spirit faints before the task. the poetry of Byron, or the prose of Marryat, I should not thus quail at my attempt. But, as I have said, those days of despair had their uses-precious and soul-preserving-however weak may be my recital of them, I feel the endeavour to describe them has all the solemnity of a duty.

Had I

The first morning was cloudless, the day was sultry, and the wind had entirely gone down. The swell was long and monotonous. Neither Jugurtha nor myself scarcely moved. We crouched ourselves as much down into the bottom of the boat as we could, to escape the intolerable eye of the veilless sun. I spoke not. About noon, the negro made some attempts to swallow a few mouthfuls of salt water, which he had scooped up in the hollow of his hand; but he spat them out again with grimaces of the utmost disgust, and made afterwards no similar attempt, but relapsed into the state of apathy that seemed natural to him when under disasters. The dog was, this first day, the most restless of the three. He stalked from stem to stern, and from thwart to thwart, backwards and forwards, in the manner that wild animals do in their dens in a menagerie, and he would pause at each turn, and set up a piteous, a heart-breaking howl, and this he continued for the livelong day; but when the sun went down, he came aft to us in the stern sheets, and nestled himself down beside us. He endeavoured to lick my hands and face, but his tongue was dry and rough, and the attempt was evidently painful to him. The whole of this day of glaring light and silence I was tortured with a fiery thirst. I began to envy Gavel.

How weak is the heathen fable of Tantalus, compared with what we then suffered! Before our eyes, dancing, smiling, down into its clear and immeasurable cool depths, shone the mocking liquid. What fountain gushing forth in its purity from the hard rock-what brook wantoning, splashing, and laughing, over the cold pebbles, could rival the tempting and transparent appearance of the blue waves upon the treacherous bosom of which we floated? But place it to the burning lips-let it touch the arid and scorched throat-the mockery--the agonizing mockery! Thirst is, to the internal man, what racks, and wheels, and the burning pile, is to the external. May my worst enemy never endure it in the extreme.

As night fell, the fangs of hunger were buried deeply in our bosoms, and we became wolfish-all but the noble, the generous dog. Confidingly he lay his drooping head upon my knee, with his fine languishing eyes looking entreatingly in my face, whilst I, monster that I

am, was greedily speculating upon what moisture was in his brain, what sustenance in his honest, and his faithful heart. Jugurtha read my thoughts-famine has a wondrous sympathy. His wild eyes glared at the caressing animal at my feet, which had saved my life. The black arose and stood up, and unclasping the knife that hung round his neck, after the manner of seamen, by a lanyard, he prepared greedily to enact the butcher. But, as he did so, he commenced a savage, unearthly howl, the first sounds that ever I had heard from his mouth, for his tongue had been lopped away. The dire wail might have been heard for miles in the silence of that dreadful evening, as it stole along over the gently undulating water.

He advanced towards Bounder, and my heart smote me. The dog had borne me safely through the storm, and over the angry waves. He had been my playfellow, and he was now trusting me as a friend. He was our companion in misery-embarked in the same peril-and yet to eat him! How faithless, how very human would have been the act! I could not consent to it. Bounder himself seemed to understand the intention of the black, for he eyed the brandished knife wistfully, whined piteously, and crept still more closely to me as to his natural protector.

"Jugurtha," said I, mildly, “you are very hungry, my friend, and so am I let us wait. Poor Bounder has been our companion in danger. To-morrow we may meet with some vessel some relief; God has mercy for the merciful. Do you comprehend me. Put up the knife, my brother. Believe me, that we shall sleep the better for it, than if we had gorged ourselves with the flesh and blood of this good fellow."

At these words the savageness of the poor fellow's features relaxed; without a murmur he shut his knife, and then laid himself quietly down by my feet-and we again prepared ourselves to rest like three brothers.

At the ready obedience of Jugurtha, my heart was softened with a woman's tenderness, and, with the tears in my eyes, I made a solemn vow, that if the Almighty spared our lives, ever after, come weal, come woe, the despised black should be to me as a friend and as a brother, that he should eat of my bread and drink of my cup, and his home should be under my roof. How have I kept that vow? Not, alas! too well.

My slumbers this second night were interrupted, uneasy, and dreamful. I revisited, in my sleep, every banquet of which I had partaken since I could boast of memory. How unsatisfactory they all were! The promise kept to the eye was continually belied to the lips. And yet, sometimes I tasted; but when my dream produced this fruition, the craving that followed for more, more, more, was intolerable. As night was advancing into morning, I felt extremely cold, chilled, aguish. My companions in misery did not seem to enjoy a better rest. Bounder was evidently hunting, seizing, and devouring his prey, all night. The sleep of the negro was stark, profound, and deathlike. He was the happiest of the three.

Morning came, and the fire-darting sun, and the suffocating heat, and the all-consuming thirst. Our parched and strained eye-balls scanned

our bounded horizon, but no friendly sail, no speck, no succour appeared. Blue and overpoweringly bright was all around us-above us beamed forth intolerable day. Famine had become gaunt in the features of Jugurtha-the dog was restless and feverish, and I was nearly mad with hunger, thirst, and a thousand bitter hallucinations. I was, I fear me, growing delirious. I fancied I saw land-cool bowersfountains playing-and then some vast three-decker would come sweeping by, and when I was upon the point of hailing the winged monster, to entreat her not to run over us, the phantom ship would vanish. But the most frequent delusion was, that I could perceive bottles floating past us, doubtless filled with some agreeable and cooling liquid, none of which could I ever reach. The day previous, I had been depressed, and almost silent; this day, I felt an irresistible impulse to talk, but when I looked upon Jugurtha, his countenance appeared so stern, so famine-sharpened, that, for a long time, I resisted the temptation.

It might have been about two hours after noon, when the black suddenly sprang upon his legs, as if no longer able to endure the tortures of his hunger, and made most impressive signs that he would kill and eat. Thirst, at that moment, was my predominant affliction. I did not believe that the blood of the dog could quench it, and my aversion to the shedding of the stream of life, even though of an irrational animal, was just as strong as ever.

"Jugurtha, let us not kill. No good as yet come of it. Captain Tomkins killed the steward, and then Gavel killed the captain-and God was angry, and destroyed the brig, and all that was in it, but you and me, and this poor dog. You understand me-you savey— we will sleep to-night-to-morrow morning, God no come to us, we kiil Bounder, and eat-savey so?"

He nodded in assent, and I now found that I was the better understood when I spoke to him in the abbreviated jargon common among negroes. I almost felt that, in withholding Jugurtha from feeding upon the dog, I was doing wrong, and not following up that immutable and divine law of self-preservation that God has planted in our bosoms as a bar to suicide. However, I determined that I would restrain him no longer than till the following morning; and that I myself, however loathingly, would partake of the revolting meal. It seemed as if the negro had determined to obey me unto the death; and thus my heart grew more and more towards him. I bitterly regretted that he could not converse with me. Still I continued to address him, for the mania of much speech was upon me; and I thought, also, that my words might, in some measure, divert his thoughts in our melancholy strait. Thereupon, the following remarkable monologue ensued.

"Jugurtha is a good man."

He shook his head mournfully in the negative. "Jugurtha does not love to shed blood."

Another unequivocal sign of dissent.

"But Jugurtha good man-he loves his white brother-and he will do for that love, what his white brother bids him."

He came and kissed my hand affectionately and respectfully. I was much moved.

"For why does my brother love me, his white friend, so well?"

He stood up, and with the most eloquent pantomine that I ever beheld, he made me understand more fully than words could do, that he loved me for my kindness to himself and to his shipmates, and that I, of all men, had never spurned nor insulted him. I now found that conversation was not difficult.

"How came you, Jugurtha, to lose your tongue?"

He lay down in the bottom of the boat, upon his back, imitated the passing of bands or chains over his arms and legs, then took out his knife, and went through the action of excising the member of speech. "In the name of the merciful! who, who?"

But his pantomine could not spell a name; I endeavoured to get it from him by interrogatories.

"Black man in Jugurtha's country?"

Replied to by a dissenting and indignant shake of the head. "Buckra body?"

A savage and vindictive assent.

"But who, who could dare do this in a civilized country?" This poor Jugurtha could not explain.

After this, we were for some time silent, when the idea struck me like the flash of a sunbeam in the darkness of a dungeon, that Jugurtha, my elected brother, standing as he did with me, on the very threshold of death, might not be a Christian. If so, what a duty had I to perform-and in a space of time, how short!

I questioned him. He knew nothing of God or of redemption-he had never prayed. He had no idea of an hereafter; or, at least, so I understood him by his action, for when I asked him where he would go to after death, he expanded his arms suddenly, so as to imitate the bursting of a bubble, and expelling the breath violently from his mouth, he then passed his hand impatiently across his face.

"Jugurtha," said I, "the great Being who made that sun, and you, my friend, and me, and all things, made them in love, and for loveto be happy with trials here, and happy without trials after we are dead, for ever, and ever, and ever. You hear that, Jugurtha :-now, the great Being did not make us all with his own hand, but by his eternal law; but he made the first man and the first woman with his own hands himself-our father and our mother and so, Jugurtha, we are all brothers and sisters-never mind colour-that come from hot sun in one country, from cold weather in other country."

Jugurtha seemed to understand me very well, and so I proceeded. "But your first father and mother, and my first father and mother, too, whom I told you God made with his own hands, behaved very bad-did what God told them not to do, and told falsehoods, and thus sin came upon them, and upon all the race, and upon you and me, and death, too, which before sin came, was not, so, for that, we all must die."

At this announcement, the negro seemed very miserable; but this feeling I soon removed, for I continued, in this familiar manner, to explain to him, not the mysteries, but the facts of the resurrection

of man, and then the ineffable and loving sacrifice of the redemption. I opened his soul to the eternal beneficence: I exalted him to immortality, and he wept genuine tears of joy. This was not done in a moment: I had to repeat and to re-repeat-but I wearied not. I forgot my hunger and my thirst, and that I was desolate on the lone waters;-if his body was lost, I panted to save his soul: of a surety, I had then the gift of tongues:-as yet it was inspiration; and, just as the sun was setting-may God pardon me if the act was impious, I baptized the negro with the salt and bitter waters that were destroying us, and that I thought so shortly would prove our graves.

After this ceremony, imperfect only in form and not in spirit, I prayed with him through the short twilight, and then we lay down much comforted and resigned to die, if God so willed it.

It was evident to me that the negro was sinking fast. He was much older than myself, and had toiled more, previously to the foundering of the Jane. For myself, I was labouring under over-excitement; I had spoken too much; my mind began to wander. Jugurtha was no longer the shipwrecked and dying negro, but the imperial Numidian that had battled so long with all-subduing Rome: yet I could not conceive how it was that the mighty warrior lay so quietly and so attenuated at my feet.

"Up, son of Manastabal!" I wildly exclaimed, "the Roman legions are upon thee! Why sleepest thou here? Marius with his cohorts and his eagles are upon thee. Charge with the Mauritanian horse-call to thy comrade, King Bocchus ;-but I remembered not that thou art dumb:-a pretty king, truly!--how wil. thou plead before the Roman senate against the injured and nuch-wronged Adherbal ?-thou wilt murder him:-very well-but have I not just baptized thee in the name of the blessed triune Deity?-and we have promised to have no more blood. Jugurtha, methinks that thou art but a sorry king after all-what dead?-yes :-I know that it took six days to starve thee to death, and I thank God, I have not yet seen my third of starvation." And thus my senses rambled.

I can just remember that the thought struck me amidst my coming madness, that, to hesitate longer to devour the poor dog would have been an indirect suicide, and that I was fumbling for the knife of the prostrate black, when I fell off into utter unconsciousness.

The next morning, when the sun was two hours old, I awoke, or, perhaps, I should rather say, recovered from my long swoon, mad, but with a blessed, a heavenly insanity :-the memory of it will never leave me it was burnt indelibly into my scorched-up brain by the seething sun. It must live while I have life; perchance after the death of mortality, it may prove something more than a mania vision.

I arose from my recumbent posture, stiff and weak, but sweetly tranquil in mind. I looked around me, and it was calm. Even the long and measured swell of the day before had gone down. At my feet lay the negro and the dog. Pulsation was going on in each, but they were both insensible. My attempts to rouse Jugurtha produced only a lethargic motion of impatience, and I soon forbore to disturb him. Hunger, thirst, anxiety, terror, the fear of death, every feeling had disappeared excepting that of a delicious weakness; it seemed