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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78318 ***
+
+
+
+
+                                                                 [No. 7.
+
+THE
+
+DEMON SHIP,
+
+OR
+
+THE PIRATE
+
+OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+EDINBURGH: PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY J. BRYDONE, SOUTH HANOVER STREET.
+
+
+
+
+THE DEMON SHIP, &c.
+
+
+I was the only son of a widowed mother, who, though far from affluent,
+was not pennyless;--you will naturally suppose, therefore, I was a
+most troublesome, disagreeable, spoiled child. Such I might have been,
+but for the continual drawback on all my early gratifications, which
+my maternal home presented, in the shape of an old dowager countess,
+a forty-ninth cousin of my mother’s. Whatever I was doing, wherever
+I was going, there was she reproving, rebuking, exhorting, and all
+to save me from idling, or drowning, or quarrelling, or straying, or
+a hundred etceteras. I grew up, went to school, to college--finally,
+into the army, and with it to Ireland; and had the satisfaction, at
+five-and-twenty, to hear the dowager say I was good for nothing. She
+was of a somewhat malicious disposition, and perhaps I did not well
+to make her my enemy. At this time I had the offer of a good military
+appointment to India, and yet I hesitated to accept it. There was in
+my native village a retired Scotch officer, for whom I had conceived a
+strong attachment. His daughter I had known and loved from childhood,
+and when this gave place to womanhood, my affection changed in kind
+while it strengthened in degree. Margaret Cameron was at this period
+seventeen, and, consequently, eight years my junior. She was young,
+beautiful, and spoiled by a doating parent--yet I saw in her a fine
+natural disposition, and the seeds of many noble qualities. To both
+father and daughter I openly unfolded my affection. Captain Cameron,
+naturally, pleaded the youth of his daughter. Margaret laughed at the
+idea of my even entertaining a thought of her, and declared she would
+as soon think of marrying an elder brother as myself. I listened to her
+assertions with profound silence, scorned to whine and plead my cause,
+bowed with an air of haughty resignation, and left her.
+
+When next I saw Margaret I was in a travelling dress at her
+father’s residence. I found her alone in the garden, occupied
+in watering her flowers. ‘I am come, Margaret,’ I said, ‘to bid
+you farewell.’--‘Why, where are you going?’--‘To London, to sea,
+to India.’--‘Nonsense!’--‘You always think there is nonsense
+in truth; every thing that is serious to others is a jest to
+you.’--‘Complementary this morning.’--‘Adieu, Margaret; may you retain
+through life the same heartlessness of disposition. It will preserve
+you from many a pang that might reach a more sensitive bosom.’--‘You
+do my strength of mind infinite honour. Every girl of seventeen can
+be sentimental, but there are few stoics in their teens. I love to
+be _coldly great_. You charm me.’--‘If heartlessness and mental
+superiority are with you synonymes,’ I said, with gravity, ‘count
+yourself, Miss Cameron, at the very acmé of intellectual greatness,
+since you can take leave of one of your earliest friends with such easy
+indifference.’--‘Pooh! pooh! I know you are not really going. This
+voyage to India is one of your favourite threats in your dignified
+moments. I think this is about the twentieth time it has been made.
+And for early friends, and so forth, you have contrived to live within
+a few hundred feet of them without coming in their sight for the last
+month; so they cannot be so very dear.’--‘Listen to me, Margaret,’
+said I, with a grave, and, as I think, manly dignity of bearing; ‘I
+offered you the honest and ardent, though worthless gift of a heart,
+whose best affections you entirely possessed. I am not coxcomb enough
+to suppose that I can at pleasure storm the affections of any woman;
+but I am man enough to expect that they should be denied me with some
+reference to the delicate respect due to mine. But you are, of course,
+at full liberty to choose your own mode of rejecting your suitors;
+only, as one who still views you as a friend, I would that that manner
+shewed more of good womanly feeling, and less of conscious female
+power. I am aware, Margaret, that this is not the general language of
+lovers; perhaps if it were, woman might hold her power more gracefully,
+and even Margaret Cameron’s heart would have more of greatness and
+generosity than it now possesses.’ While I spoke, Margaret turned
+away her lovely face, and I saw that her very neck was suffused. I
+took her hand, assured her that the journey I had announced was no
+lover’s _ruse_, and that I was really on the point of quitting my
+native land.--‘And now, Margaret,’ I said, ‘farewell--you will scarce
+find in life a more devoted friend--a more ardent desirer of your
+happiness, than him you have driven from your side.’ I stretched out my
+hand to Margaret for a friendly farewell clasp. But she held not out
+her’s in return; she spoke not a word of adieu. I turned an indignant
+countenance towards her, and, to my unutterable surprise, beheld my
+beautiful young friend in a swoon. And was this the being I had accused
+of want of feeling! We left the garden solemnly plighted to each other.
+But I pass briefly over this portion of my history. I was condemned by
+the will of Captain Cameron, and by the necessity of obtaining some
+professional promotion, to spend a few years in India before I could
+receive the hand of Margaret.
+
+I reached my Asiatic destination--long and anxiously looked for
+European letters--took up one day by accident an English paper, and
+there read--‘Died, at the house of Captain Cameron, in the village of
+A----, Miss Margaret Cameron, aged eighteen.’ I will not here dwell on
+my feelings. I wrote a letter of despair to Captain Cameron, informing
+him of the paragraph I had read, imploring him, for the love of mercy,
+if possible, to contradict it, and declaring that my future path in
+life now lay stretched before me like one wild waste. The Countess of
+Falcondale answered my epistle by a deep, black-margined letter, with
+a sable seal as large as a saucer. My sole parent was no more;--for
+Captain Cameron--he had been seized by a paralytic affection in
+consequence of the shock his feelings had sustained.
+
+The appearance of my name about five years afterwards, among the
+‘Marriages’ in the Calcutta Gazette, was followed by successive
+announcements among the ‘Births and Deaths,’ in the same compendious
+record of life’s changes. My wife perished of malignant fever, and two
+infant children speedily followed her. I set out to return over-land to
+my native country, a sober, steady, and partially grey-haired colonel
+of thirty-six. My military career had been as brilliant as my domestic
+path had been clouded. I arrived at a port of the Levant, and thence
+took ship for Malta, where I landed in safety.
+
+At this period, the Mediterranean traders were kept in a state of
+perpetual alarm by the celebrated ‘DEMON SHIP.’ Though distinguished by
+the same attractive title, she in nowise resembled the phantom terror
+of the African Cape. She was described as a powerful vessel, manned
+by a desperate flesh-and-blood crew, whose rapacity triumphed over
+all fear of danger, and whose cruelty forbade all hope of mercy. Yet,
+though she was neither ‘built’ of air, nor ‘manned’ by demons, her
+feats had been so wonderful, that there was at length no other rational
+mode of accounting for them than by tracing them to supernatural,
+and, consequently, demoniacal, agency. She had sailed through fleets
+undiscovered; she had escaped from the fastest pursuers; she had
+overtaken the swiftest fugitives; she had appeared where she was not
+expected, and disappeared when even her very latitude and longitude
+seemed calculable. Her fearful title had been first given by those
+who dreaded to become her victims; but she seemed not ill pleased by
+the appalling epithet, and shortly shewed the word DEMON in flaming
+letters on her stern. Some mariners went so far as to say that a smell
+of brimstone, and a track of phosphoric light, marked for miles the
+pathway of her keel in the waves. Others declared that she had the
+power, through her evil agents, of raising such a strange, dense,
+and portentous mist in the atmosphere, as prevented her victims from
+descrying her approach until they fell, as it were, into her very jaws.
+Innumerable were the vessels that had left different ports in the
+Mediterranean to disappear for ever. It seemed the cruel practice of
+the Demon to sink her victims in their own vessels.
+
+The Demon Ship was talked of from the ports of the Levant to Gibraltar;
+and no vessel held herself in secure waters until she had passed the
+Straits. Of course, such a pest to these seas was not to be quietly
+suffered; so several governments began to think of preparing to put
+her down. To the surprise, however, of all, she seemed suddenly to
+disappear from the Mediterranean. Some said that her crew, having sold
+themselves to the father of all evil for a certain length of time, and
+the period having probably expired, the desperadoes were now gone to
+their own place, and the seas would consequently be clear again. Others
+deemed that the Demon Ship had only retired for some deep purpose, and
+would shortly reappear with more fearful power.
+
+Most of the trading vessels then about to quit the port of Valetta,
+had obtained convoy from a British frigate and sloop of war, bound
+to Gibraltar, and thence to England. So eager were all passengers
+to sail under such protection, that I had some difficulty in
+obtaining a berth in any of the holes and corners of the various
+fine fast-sailing copper-bottomed brigs, whose cards offered such
+‘excellent accommodations for passengers.’ At length, I went on
+board the ‘Elizabeth Downs,’ a large three-masted British vessel,
+whose size made the surrounding brigs dwindle into insignificance,
+and whose fresh-painted sides seemed to foreshew the cleanliness
+and comfort that would be found within. One little hen-pen of a
+cabin on deck alone remained at the captain’s disposal. However, I
+was fond of a cabin on deck, and paid half my passage-money to the
+civil little captain, who testified much regret that he could not
+offer me the ‘freedom of the quarter-deck,’ as the whole stern end
+of the vessel had been taken by an English lady of quality, who
+wished for privacy. He added that she was a dowager countess. ‘I
+hate dowager countesses,’ said I, irreverently; ‘what is the name of
+your passenger?’--‘Passenger!’--‘Well--countess--what is the title
+of your countess?’--‘The Countess of Falcondale.’--‘What!’ thought
+I; ‘cannot I even come as near to my former home as Malta, without
+again finding myself under her influence? My dear fellow, give me back
+my passage-money, or accept it as a present at my hands, for I sail
+not with you,’ said I. But a man at thirty-six will hardly sacrifice
+his personal convenience to the whimsies of twenty-five; so I stood
+to my bargain, determined to keep myself as much as possible from
+the knowledge of my old tormentor. Conscious of my altered personal
+appearance, I resolved to travel charmingly _incog._, and assumed the
+name and title of Captain Lyon, which had been familiar to me in my
+childhood, as belonging to a friend of Captain Cameron.
+
+It was the month of June, and the weather was oppressively hot. There
+was so little wind stirring after we set sail, that for several days
+we made scarcely any way under all the sail we could carry. The first
+night I stretched my limbs on a long seat which joined the steps of the
+quarter-deck. I was now then really on my way to my native shores, and
+should not step from the vessel in which I sailed until I trode the
+land of my fathers! Naturally enough, my thoughts turned to former days
+and old faces. From time to time, these thoughts half sunk into dreams,
+from which I repeatedly awoke, and as often dozed off again. At length,
+my memory, and consequently my dreams, took the shape of Margaret
+Cameron. The joyous laugh of youth seemed to ring in my ears; and when
+I closed my eyes, her lovely bright countenance instantly rose before
+them. Yet I had the inconsistent conviction of a dreamer that she was
+dead, and as my slumber deepened, I seemed busied in a pilgrimage
+to her early grave. I saw the church-yard of A----, with the yellow
+sunlight streaming on many a green hillock; and there was one solitary
+grass grave, that, as if by a strange spell, drew my steps, and on an
+humble head-stone I read the name of ‘Margaret Cameron, aged 18.’ To
+my unspeakable emotion I heard, beneath the sods, a sound of sweet and
+soothing, but melancholy music. While I listened with an attention that
+apparently deprived my senses of their power, the church-yard and grave
+disappeared, and I seemed, by one of those transitions to which the
+dreamer is so subject, to be sailing on a lone and dismal sea, whose
+leaden and melancholy waves reflected no sail save that of the vessel
+which bore me. The heat became stifling, and my bosom oppressed, yet
+the music still sounded, low, sweet, and foreboding in my ear. A soft
+and whitish mist seemed to brood over the stern of the ship. According
+to the apparently established laws of spiritual matter, the mist
+condensed, then gradually assumed form, and I gazed, with outstretched
+arms, on the figure of Margaret Cameron. She seemed in my vision as
+one who, in quitting earth, had left not only its passions but its
+affections behind her; and there was something forbidding in the wan
+indifference of that eye. Yet was her voice passing sweet, as still its
+sad cadences fell on my ear, in the words of a ballad I had once loved
+to sing with her--
+
+    ‘The green sod is no grave of mine,
+      The earth is not my pillow, The
+    grave I lie in shall be _thine_,
+      Our winding sheet--the billow.’
+
+I awoke,--yet for a moment appeared still dreaming; for there, hovering
+over the foot of my couch, I seemed still to behold the form of
+Margaret Cameron. She was leaning on the rail of the quarter-deck, and
+overlooking my couch. I sat up, and gazed on the objects around me,
+in order to recover my apparently deluded senses. The full moon was
+in her zenith. The heat was intense, the calm profound. There lay the
+different vessels of our little squadron, nought seen save their white
+sails in the moonlight, and nought heard save their powerless flapping,
+and the restless plashing of the becalmed waves, only agitated by
+the effort of our vessel to cleave them. Still the moonlight fell on
+the white form and pale countenance of Margaret. I started up. ‘This
+is some delusion,’ said I, ‘or because one of the countess’s women
+resembles my early idol, must I turn believer in ghost-stories, and
+adopt at thirty-six what I scouted at sixteen?’ The suddenness of my
+rising seemed to scare my fair phantom; and, in the hastiness of her
+retreat, she gave ample proof of mortal fallibility by stumbling over
+some coils of cable that happened to lie in her way. The shock brought
+her to her knees. I was up the steps in one instant; seized an arm and
+then a hand, soft, delicate, and indubitably of flesh and blood, and
+restored the lady to her feet. She thanked me in gentle tones that
+sent a thrill through all my veins, and made me again half deem that
+‘the voice of the dead was on mine ear.’ I now expressed my fears that
+my sudden gestures had been the cause of this little accident. ‘I
+fear,’ she replied, ‘my reckless song disturbed your slumbers.’ After
+a few more words had passed between us, I ventured to ask in a tone
+as indifferent as I could assume, whether she claimed kindred with
+Captain Hugh Cameron, of A----? The striking likeness which she bore to
+his amiable and deceased daughter must, I observed, plead my apology.
+She looked at me for a moment with unutterable surprise; then added,
+with dignity and perfect self-possession, ‘I have then, probably, the
+pleasure of addressing some old acquaintance of Captain Cameron? How
+the mistake arose which induced any one to suppose that his child was
+no more, I confess myself at a loss to imagine. I am the daughter of
+Captain Cameron; and, after this self-introduction, may, perhaps, claim
+the name of my father’s former acquaintance.’ You may be sure I was in
+no mood to give it. I rushed to the side of the vessel, and, hanging
+over it, gasped with an emotion which almost stopped respiration.
+It is inexpressible what a revulsion this strange discovery made in
+my feelings. I felt that there had been treachery. I became keenly
+sensible that I must have appeared a traitor to Margaret, and hurriedly
+resolved not to declare my name to her until I had in some way cleared
+my character.
+
+I was still sufficiently a man of the world to have my feelings in
+some mastery, and returned to the side of Margaret with an apology
+for indisposition, which in truth was no subterfuge. I verily
+believe, as the vessel had given a sudden lurch at the moment she had
+discovered herself, and my pendant posture over the ship’s side might
+be an attitude of rather dubious construction, she passed on me the
+forgiveness of a sea-sick man. Margaret added, that she presumed she
+had the pleasure of addressing her fellow-passenger, Captain Lyon? She
+had often, she observed, heard her father mention his name, though not
+aware until this moment of his identity with her brother-voyager. I was
+not displeased by this illusion, though I thus found myself identified
+with a man twenty years my senior. I remarked, with an effort at
+ease, that I had certainly once the advantage of Captain Cameron’s
+acquaintance, but that a lapse of many years had separated me from him
+and his family. ‘There was, however,’ I remarked, ‘a Captain, since
+made Colonel, Francillon, in India, who had been informed, or rather,
+happily for her friends, _mis_informed, of the death of Miss Cameron.’
+Margaret smiled incredulously; but with a dignified indifference,
+which created a strange feeling within me, seemed willing to let the
+subject pass. Margaret’s spirits seemed to have lost their buoyancy,
+and her cheek the bloom of youth. But there was an elegance, a sort
+of melancholy dignity in her manner, and a touching expression on her
+countenance, to which both before had been strangers. Observing her
+smile, and perceiving that, with another graceful acknowledgment of my
+assistance, she was about to withdraw, I grew desperate, and ventured,
+with some abruptness, to demand if she had herself known Colonel
+Francillon? She answered, with a self-possession which chilled me, that
+she had certainly _in her youth_ been acquainted with a Lieutenant
+Francillon, who had since been promoted in India, and probably was
+the _officer_ of whom I spoke. ‘Perhaps,’ observed I, ‘there is not
+a man alive for whom I feel a greater interest than for Colonel
+Francillon.’--‘He is fortunate in possessing so warm a friend,’ said
+Margaret, with careless politeness; but I thought I perceived, through
+this nonchalance, a slight tone of pique, which was less mortifying
+than her indifference. ‘I know not,’ said I, ‘any thing which causes
+such a sudden and enchantment-like reversion of the mind to past scenes
+and feelings, as an unexpected rencontre with those who were associated
+with us in the earliest and freshest days of our being.’--‘Nothing
+certainly,’ answered Margaret, ‘reminds us so forcibly of the _change_
+that has taken place in our being and our feelings.’--‘True,’ replied
+I; ‘yet for the moment the change itself seems annihilated; our hearts
+beat with the same pulse that before animated them, and time seems
+to have warred on their feelings in vain.’--‘Perhaps to have taught
+a lesson in vain,’ said my companion. I added, rather diffidently,
+‘and what lesson _should_ time teach us?’--‘It should teach us,’ she
+answered, ‘that our heart’s best and warmest feelings may be wasted
+on that which may disappoint, and cannot satisfy them.’--‘I read your
+lesson with delight,’ answered I; ‘the only danger is lest we mistake
+the coolings of time for the conquests of principle.’ She seemed
+pleased by the sentiment, and by the frankness of the caution.’ ‘It
+may be,’ she said, ‘in the power of Time and Disappointment to detach
+from the world, or at least to produce a barren acknowledgment of its
+unsatisfactoriness, but it is beyond their unassisted power to attach
+the soul with a steady and _practical_ love to the only legitimate,
+the only rational source of happiness. Here is the touch-stone which
+the self-deceiver cannot stand.’ I was silent. There was a delicious
+feeling in my bosom that is quite indescribable.--‘These,’ I said,
+‘are the sentiments of Colonel Francillon; and since we have been
+on the subject of old friends, I could almost make up my mind to
+give you his history. It really half resembles a romance. At least,
+it shows how often, in real life, circumstances--I had almost said
+adventures--arise, which in fiction we should deride as an insult to
+our taste, by the violence done to all probability. Come, shall I
+give you the history of your former _acquaintance_?’--‘Give _me_ the
+history!’ said Margaret, involuntarily, and with some emotion--it
+seemed the emotion of indignation.--‘Ay, why not? I mean, of course,
+his Indian history; for of that in England, perhaps, as your _families_
+were acquainted, you may know as much as I can.’
+
+I confess my heart began to beat quick and high, as, taking advantage
+of Margaret’s silence, I began to tell my own history.--Francillon
+had, I observed, arrived in India, animated in his endeavours to
+obtain fortune and preferment by one of the dearest and purest motives
+which can incite the human bosom. Here Margaret turned round with a
+something of dignified displeasure, which seemed to reprobate this
+little delicate allusion to her past history. I proceeded as though I
+marked not her emotion.--Francillon was under an engagement to a young
+and lovely compatriot, whose image was the idol of his bosom, but whose
+name, from natural and sacred feelings, had never passed his lip to
+human being. Here I thought Margaret seemed to breathe again. So I told
+my history simply and feelingly, and painted my grief on hearing of the
+death of Margaret with such depth of colouring, that I had well nigh
+identified the narrator with the subject of his biography. She said, in
+a peculiar tone, with which an assumed carelessness in vain struggled,
+‘It is singular that a married man should have thus grieved over the
+object of an unextinguished attachment.’--‘Captain Francillon,’ I
+observed, ‘was not married until five years after the period we speak
+of,--when he gave his hand to one of whom I trust he has too much manly
+feeling ever to speak save with the tender respect she merited, but to
+whom he candidly confessed that he brought but a blighted heart, the
+better half of whose affections lay buried in the grave of her who had
+first inspired them.’
+
+I continued my history--brought myself to Malta, and placed myself on
+board an _English vessel_. Here, I confess, my courage half-failed me;
+but I went on.--‘Francillon,’ I said, ‘now began to realize his return
+to his native land. On the first night of his voyage, he threw himself,
+in meditative mood, on the deck, and half in thought, half in dreams,
+recalled former scenes. But there was one form which constantly arose
+before his imagination. He dreamed, too, of something--I know not
+what--of a pilgrimage to the lone grave of her he had loved and lost;
+and then a change came upon his slumbering fancy, and he seemed to be
+ploughing some solitary and dismal sea; but even there a form appeared
+to him, whose voice thrilled on his ear, and whose eye, though it had
+waxed cold to him, made his heart heave with strange and unwonted
+emotion. He awoke--but oh!--the vision vanished not. Still in the
+moonlight he saw her who had risen on his dreams. Francillon started
+up. The figure he gazed on hastily retreated. He followed her in time
+to raise her from the fall her precipitate flight had occasioned,
+and discovered that she whom he beheld was indeed the object of his
+heart’s earliest and best feelings--was Margaret Cameron!’ I believe
+my respiration almost failed me as I thus ended. Margaret sprang to
+her feet with astonishment and emotion. ‘Is it possible!--have I then
+the pleasure to see--I am sure--I am most fortunate--’ again and again
+began Margaret, and gave way to an honest flood of tears. I felt
+that I had placed her in an embarrassing situation. Seating myself,
+therefore, by her, and taking her hand,--‘Margaret,’ I said, ‘I fear
+I have been somewhat abrupt with you. Forgive me if I have been too
+bold in thus forcing on you the history of one for whom I have little
+reason and less right to suppose you still interested. Bury in oblivion
+some passages in it, and forgive the biographer if he have expanded a
+little too freely on feelings which may be unacceptable to your ear.’ I
+stretched out my hand as I spoke, and we warmly shook hands, as two old
+friends in the first moment of meeting.
+
+I had been longing to know somewhat of Margaret’s own
+history,--wherefore she had visited Malta, &c.; but she seemed to have
+no intention of gratifying my curiosity, and I only too feelingly
+divined that her parent’s altered circumstances had sent her out the
+humble companion of the Countess of Falcondale. ‘I am aware,’ I said,
+smiling, ‘that I have more than one old acquaintance in this vessel;
+and, in truth, when I heard that my former friend--I had nearly said
+enemy--the Countess of Falcondale, was on board, I felt half-inclined
+to relinquish the voyage.’ Margaret hesitated--then said, half-smiling,
+half-sad, ‘I cannot _autobiographize_ as my friend has done.
+But--but--perhaps you heard of the unhappy state of my dear parent’s
+affairs--and his daughter was prevailed on to take a step--perhaps
+a false one. Well, well, I cannot tell my history. Peace be with
+the dead!--every filial, every _conjugal_ feeling consecrate their
+ashes!--but make yourself easy; my _mother-in-law_ is not here. You
+will find but one dowager-countess in this vessel, and she now shakes
+your hand, and bids you a good night.’ Margaret hastily disappeared
+as she spoke, and left me in a state--but I will teaze no one with my
+half-dream like feelings on that night.
+
+Well, I failed not to visit my _noble_ fellow-passenger on the morrow;
+and day after day, while we lay on those becalmed waves, I renewed
+my intercourse with Margaret. It can easily be divined that she had
+given her hand to save a parent, and that she had come abroad with a
+husband, who, dying, had there left her a widow, and, alas for me!
+a rich widow. If limits would allow, I could tell a long tale of
+well-managed treachery and deception; how the ill-natured countess
+suffered me to _remain_ in the belief that the death of Captain
+Cameron’s niece, which occurred at A----, was that of my own Margaret;
+how, in her character of supreme manager of the paralytic officer’s
+affairs, she kept my letters; how she worked on Margaret’s feelings
+to bring about a marriage with the Earl of Falcondale, in the hope of
+again acquiring a maternal footing in her son’s house, and the right of
+managing a portionless daughter-in-law; how Margaret held out stoutly
+until informed of my broken faith; and how her marriage was kept from
+the public papers. One night, I thought, as I bade the countess good
+night, that I perceived a light breeze arising. This I remarked to
+her, and she received the observation with a pleasure which found no
+correspondent emotion in my own bosom. As I descended to my berth, I
+fancied I descried among the sailors one Girod Jacqueminot, whose face
+I had not before remarked. He was a Frenchman, to whom I had, during my
+residence abroad, rendered some signal services, and who, though but a
+wild fellow, had sworn to me eternal gratitude. He skulked, however,
+behind his fellows, and did not now, it appeared, choose to recognise
+his benefactor.
+
+I believe I slept profoundly that night. When I awoke, there was a
+sound of dashing waves against the vessel, and a bustle of sailors’
+voices, and a blustering noise of wind among the sails and rigging; and
+I soon perceived that our ship was scudding before a stiff, nay, almost
+stormy gale. I peeped through the seaward opening of my little cabin.
+The scene was strangely changed. It was scarcely dawn. I looked for
+the white sails of our accompanying vessels, and our convoy. All had
+disappeared. We seemed alone on those leaden-coloured billows. At this
+moment, I heard a voice in broken English say, ‘Confound--while I reef
+tose tammed top-sails, my pipe go out.’--‘Light it again, then, at the
+binnacle, Monseer,’ said a sailor.--‘Yes, and be hanged to de yard-arm
+by our coot captain for firing de sheep. Comment-faire? Sacrebleu! I
+cannot even _tink_ vidout my pipe. De tought! Monsieur in de leetle
+coop dere have always de lamp patent burning for hees lecture. He
+sleep now. I go enter gently--light my pipe.’ He crept into my cabin
+as he spoke. ‘How’s this, my friend?’ said I, speaking in French;
+‘does not your captain know that we are out of sight of convoy?’ Girod
+answered in his native language,--‘Oh! that I had seen you sooner. You
+think, perhaps, I have forgotten all I owe you? No--no--but ’tis too
+late now!’ He pointed to the horizon. On its very verge one sail was
+yet visible. A faint rolling noise came over the water. ‘It is the
+British frigate,’ said Girod, ‘firing to us to put our ship about, and
+keep under convoy. But our captain has no intention of obeying the
+signal; and if you get out of sight of that one distant sail, you are
+lost.’--‘Think you, then, that the Demon Ship is in these seas?’ said
+I, anxiously. Girod came close to me. With a countenance of remorse
+and despair which I can never forget, he grasped my arm, and held it
+towards heaven,--‘Look up to God!’ he whispered; ‘_you are on board the
+Demon Ship!_’ A step was heard near the cabin, and Girod was darting
+from it; but I held him by the sleeve. ‘For heaven’s sake, for miladi’s
+sake, for your own sake,’ he whispered, ‘let not a look, a word, shew
+that you are acquainted with this secret. All I can do is to try and
+gain time for you. But be prudent, or you are lost!’ and quitted the
+cabin as he spoke. When I thought how long, and how fearlessly, the
+‘Elizabeth’ had lain amid the trading-vessels at Valetta, and how
+she had sailed from that port under a powerful convoy, I was almost
+tempted to believe that Girod had been practising a joke on me. ‘What
+have you been doing there?’ said a voice I had never heard before,
+and whose ruffianly tones could hardly be subdued by his efforts at a
+whisper. ‘My pipe go out,’ answered Girod Jacqueminot, ‘and I not so
+imprudent to light it at de beenacle. So I go just hold it over de lamp
+of Monsieur, and he sleep, sleep, snore, snore all de while, and know
+noting. I have never seed one man dorme so profound.’
+
+I now heard the voices of the captain, Girod, and the ruffian, in
+close and earnest parlance. The expletives that graced it shall be
+omitted. But what first confirmed my fears, was the hearing our captain
+obsequiously address the ruffian-speaker as commander of the vessel,
+while the former received from his companion the familiar appellative
+of Jack. They were walking the deck, and their whispered speech only
+reached me as they from time to time approached my cabin, and was
+again lost as they receded. I thought, however, that Girod seemed,
+by stopping occasionally, as if in the vehemence of speech, to draw
+them, as much as possible, towards my cabin. I then listened with an
+intentness which made me almost fear to breathe. ‘But again I say,
+Jack,’ said the voice of the real captain, ‘what are we to do with
+these fine passengers of ours? I am sick of this stage-play work; and
+the men are tired, by this time, of being kept down in the hold. We
+shall have them mutiny if we stifle them much longer below. Look how
+that sail is sinking on the horizon. She can never come up with us now.
+There be eight good sacks in the forecastle, and we can spare them due
+ballast. That would do the job decently enough for our passengers--ha!’
+‘Oh! mine goot captain, you are man of speeret,’ observed Jacqueminot;
+‘but were it not wise to see dat sail no more, before we shew dat
+we no vile merchanters, but men of de trade dat make de money by de
+valour.’--‘There is something in that,’ observed Jack; ‘if the convoy
+come up, and our passengers be missing, ’tis over with us.’ ‘And de
+coot sacks wasted for noting,’ said Jacqueminot, with a cool ingenuity
+that contrasted curiously with his vehement and horror-stricken manner
+in my cabin. ‘Better to wait one day--two day--parbleu! tree day--than
+spoil our sport by de precipitation.’--‘I grudge the keep of these
+dainty passengers all this while,’ said the captain, roughly;--‘my lady
+there, with her chickens, and her conserves, and her pasties; and Mr
+Molly-flower Captain here, with his bottles of port and claret, and
+cups of chocolate and Mocha coffee. Paying, too, forsooth! with such
+princely airs for every thing, as if we held not his money in our own
+hands already. Hunted as we then were, ’twas no bad way of blinding
+governments, by passing for traders, and getting monied passengers
+on board; but it behoves us to think what’s to be done now?’--‘My
+opinion is,’ said Jack, ‘that we keep up the farce another day or two
+until we get into clear seas again. That vessel, yonder, still keeps
+on the horizon, and she has good glasses on board.’--‘And the men?’
+asked the captain. ‘I had rather, without more debate, go into this
+hen-pen here, and down into the cabin below, and in a quiet way _do_
+for our passengers, than stand the chance of a mutiny among the crew.’
+Here my very blood curdled in my veins. ‘Dat is goot, and like mine
+brave capitain,’ said the Frenchman; ‘and yet Monsieur Jean say well
+mosh danger kill at present; but why not have de crew _above_ deck
+vidout making no attention to de voyagers. Dey take not no notice.
+Miladi tink but of moon, and stars, and book; and for de _sleeping
+Lyon dere_, it were almost pity to cut his troat in any case. He
+ver coot faillow; like we chosen speerit. Sacre-bleu! I knew him a
+boy.’--[I had never seen the fellow until I was on the wrong side of
+my thirtieth birth-day.]--‘Alvays for de mischief,--stealing apples,
+beating his school-fellows, and oder lite speerited tricks. At last,
+he was expell de school. I say not dis praise from no love to him;
+for he beat me one, two time, when I vas secretaire to his uncle; and
+den run off vid my _soodheart_--so I vas well pleased make him bad
+turn.’--‘Look, look!’ said Jack, ‘the frigate gains on us; I partly
+see her hull, and the wind slackens.’ I now put my own glass through
+my little window, and could distinctly see the sails and rigging and
+part of the hull of our late convoy. I could perceive that many of her
+crew were aloft. It was a comfortable sight to see a friendly power
+apparently so near; and there was a feeling of hopeless desolation
+when, on removing the glass, the vessel shrank into a dim, grey speck
+on the horizon. The captain uttered an infernal oath, and called aloud
+to his sailors, ‘Seamen--ahoy--ahoy! Make all the sail ye can. Veer out
+the main-sheet--top-sails unreefed--royals and sky-sails up,’ [&c. &c.]
+‘Stretch every stitch of canvass. Keep her to the wind--keep her to the
+wind!’ I was surprised to find that our course was suddenly changed,
+as the vessel, which had previously driven before the breeze, was now
+evidently sailing with a side wind.
+
+The Demon Ship was made for fast sailing, and she literally flew like a
+falcon over the waves. Once more I turned to the horizon. God of mercy!
+the frigate again began to sink upon the waters.
+
+I felt that in a few hours I might not only be butchered in cold blood
+myself, but might see Margaret--that was the thought that unmanned
+me. I tried to think if aught lay in our power to avert our coming
+fate. Nothing offered itself. We were entirely in the power of the
+Demon buccaneers. And I saw that all Girod could do was to gain a few
+hours’ delay. My earnest desire now was to inform Margaret as quickly
+as possible of her coming fate. But after Girod’s parting injunction,
+I feared to precipitate the last fatal measures by any step that
+might seem taken with reference to them. I therefore lay still until
+morning was farther advanced. I then arose, and left my cabin. It was
+yet scarcely broad day, but many a face I had not before seen met
+my eye, many a countenance, whose untameable expression of ferocity
+had doubtless been deemed, even by the ruffian commander himself,
+good reason for hitherto keeping them from observation. All on the
+quarter-deck was quiet, and it seemed that the countess and her female
+attendants were still enjoying a calm and secure repose. I longed to
+descend and arouse them from a sleep which was so soon to be followed
+by a deeper slumber.
+
+I had now an opportunity of discovering the real nature of my
+sentiments towards Margaret. They stood the test which overthrows many
+a summer-day attachment. I felt that, standing as my soul now was on
+the verge of its everlasting fate, it lost not one of its feelings of
+tenderness. The sun arose, and the countess appeared on deck. I drew
+her to the stern of the vessel, so that her back was to the crew, and
+there divulged the fearful secret which so awfully concerned her.
+At first, her cheek was pale, her lips bloodless, and respiration
+seemed almost lost in terror and overpowering astonishment. She soon,
+however, gained comparative self-possession. ‘I must be alone for a
+few moments,’ she said; ‘perhaps you will join me below in a brief
+hour.’ When I joined her at the time she had appointed, a heavenly calm
+had stolen over her countenance. ‘Come and sit by me, my friend; our
+moments seem numbered on earth, but, oh! what an interminable existence
+stretches beyond it. In such a moment as this, how do we feel the
+necessity of some better stay than aught our own unprofitable lives can
+yield!’ Margaret’s Bible lay before her. It was open at the history of
+_His_ sufferings on whom her soul relied. She summoned her maidens, and
+we all read and prayed together. Her attendants were two sisters, of
+less exalted mind than their mistress, but whose piety, trembling and
+lowly, was equally genuine.
+
+It was a difficult day to pass, urged by prudence, and the slender
+remains of hope, to appear with our wonted bearing before the crew.
+Too plain indications that our sentence was at length gone forth soon
+began to shew themselves. Margaret held me to her with a gentle and
+trembling tenacity, that rendered it difficult for me to leave her
+even for a moment; but I felt the duty of ascertaining whether any aid
+yet appeared in view, or whether Girod could effect aught for us. I
+walked, towards evening, round the quarter-deck--not a sail was to be
+seen on the horizon. I endeavoured to speak to Girod, but he seemed
+studiously and fearfully to avoid me. The captain was above, and the
+deck was thronged. I believe this desperate crew was composed of ‘all
+people, nations, and languages.’ Once only I met Girod’s eye as he
+passed me quickly in assisting to hoist a sail. He looked me fixedly
+and significantly in the face. It was enough: that expressive regard
+said, ‘Your sentence has gone forth!’ I instantly descended to the
+cabin, and my fellow-victims read in my countenance the extinction of
+hope. We now fastened the door, I primed my pistols, and placed them
+in my bosom, and clinging to one another we waited our fate. Margaret
+put her hand in mine with a gentle confidence, which our circumstances
+then warranted, and I held her close to me. She stretched out her other
+hand to her female attendants, who, clinging close together, each held
+a hand of their mistress. ‘Dear Edward!’ said Margaret, grasping my
+arm. It was almost twelve years since I had heard these words from her
+lips. Unrestrained, at such a moment, by the presence of the domestics,
+Margaret and I used the most endearing expressions, and, like a dying
+husband and wife, bade solemn farewell to each other. We all then
+remained silent, our quick beating hearts raised in prayer, and our ear
+open to every sound that seemed to approach the cabin. The ocean must
+undoubtedly be our grave; but whether the wave, the cord, the pistol,
+or the dagger, would be the instrument of our destruction, we knew not.
+
+The sun sunk in the waters, and the wind, as is often the case at
+sunset, died on the ocean. At this moment, I heard the voice of the
+captain--‘Up to the top of the mainmast, Jack, and see if there be any
+sail on the horizon.’ We distinguished the sound of feet running up the
+shrouds. A few moments elapsed ere the answer was received. At length,
+we heard a--‘Well, Jack, well?’--which was followed by the springing
+of a man on deck, and the words, ‘not a sail within fifty miles, I’ll
+be sworn.’--‘Well, then, do the work below!’ was the reply. ‘But (with
+an oath) don’t let’s have any squealing or squalling. Finish them
+quietly. And take all the trumpery out of the cabin, for we shall hold
+revel there to-night.’ A step now came softly down the cabin stair,
+and a hand tried the door, but found it fastened. I quitted Margaret,
+and placed myself at the entrance of the cabin. ‘Whoever,’ said I,
+‘attempts to come into this place, does it at the peril of his life.
+I fire the instant the latch is raised.’--A voice said, ‘Laissez moi
+entrer donc.’ I then unfastened the door. Girod entered, and locked
+it after him. He dragged in with him four strings, with heavy stones
+appended to them, and the same number of sacks. The females sunk on
+the floor. In the twinkling of an eye, Girod rolled up the carpet of
+the cabin, and took up the trap-door, which every traveller knows is
+to be found in the cabins of merchantmen. ‘In--in,’ he said in French
+to the countess and myself. I immediately descended, received Margaret
+into my arms, and was holding them out for the other females, when the
+trap-door was instantly closed and bolted, the carpet laid down, the
+cabin door unlocked, and Girod called out, ‘Here you, Harry, Jack,
+how call you yourselves, I’ve done for two of dem. I can’t manage
+no more. Dat tamned Captain Lyon, when I stuff him in de sack, he
+almost brake de arm.’ Heavy feet trampling over the cabin floor, with
+a sound of scuffling and struggling, were now heard over our head.
+A stifled shriek, which died into a deep groan, succeeded--then two
+heavy splashes into the water, with the bubbling noise of something
+sinking beneath the waves, and the fate of the two innocent sisters was
+decided. ‘Where’s Monsieur Girod?’ at length said a rough voice.--‘Oh,
+he’s gone above,’ was the reply; ‘thinks himself too good to kill any
+but _quality_.’--‘No, no,’ answered the other, ‘I’m Girod’s, through to
+the back-bone--the funniest fellow of the crew. But he had a private
+quarrel against that captain down at the bottom of the sea there, so
+asks our commander not to let any body lay hands on him but himself.
+A very natural thing to ask. There--close that locker, heave out the
+long table, there’ll be old revel here to-night.’--At this moment,
+Girod again descended. ‘All hands aloft, ma lads,’ he cried, ‘make no
+attention to de carpet dere--matters not, for I most fairst descend,
+and give out de farine for pasty. We have no more cursed voyagers, so
+may make revel here to naight vidout no incommode.’ He soon descended
+with a light into our wooden dungeon.
+
+‘Poor Katie, poor Mary. Alas! for their aged mother!’ she said, while
+looking with horror at Girod.--‘I would have saved you all, had it
+been possible,’ said Jacqueminot, in French. ‘But how were all to be
+hid, and kept in this place? What I have done is at the risk of my
+life. But there is not a moment to be lost. I have the keeping of the
+stern-hold. Look you--here be two rows of meal sacks fore and aft. If
+you, miladi, can hide behind one, and you, colonel, behind the other,
+ye may have, in some sort, two little chambers to yourselves; or if
+you prefer the same hiding-place, take it, in heaven’s name, but lose
+not a moment.’--‘And what will be the end of all this?’ asked I, after
+some hurried expressions of gratitude.--‘God knoweth,’ he replied. ‘I
+will from time to time, when I descend to give out meal, and clean
+the place, bring you provisions. How long this can last--where we are
+going--whether in the end I can rescue you, time must be the shewer.
+Hide, hide--I dare not stay one moment longer.’ He rolled down a heap
+of biscuits, placed a pitcher of water by them, and departed.
+
+That night the Demon crew held their wild revelry over our head. Their
+fierce and iniquitous speech, their lawless songs, their awful and
+demoniac oaths, their wild intoxication, made Margaret thrill with a
+horror that half excited the wish to escape in death from the polluting
+vicinity of such infernal abominations. The light streamed here and
+there through a crevice in the trap-door, and I involuntarily trembled
+when I saw it fall on the white garment of Margaret, as if, even in
+that concealment, it might betray her. We dared scarcely whisper a word
+of encouragement or consolation to each other--dared scarcely breathe,
+or stir even a hand from the comfortless attitude in which we were
+placed. The captain expressed his regret that we had not, as matters
+turned out, been earlier disposed of, and made a sort of rough apology
+to his shipmates for the inconvenience our prolonged existence must
+have occasioned them. At length, the revellers broke up. I listened
+attentively until I became convinced that no one occupied the cabin
+that night.
+
+Towards morning, as I supposed, I again distinguished voices in the
+cabin. ‘It blows a stiff gale,’ was the observation of Jack.--‘So
+much the better,’ replied the captain; ‘the more way we make, the
+farther we get from all those cursed government vessels. I think we
+might now venture to fall on any merchantman that comes in our way.
+We must soon do something, for we have as yet made but a sorry sum
+out of our present voyage. Let’s see--four thousand sterling pounds
+that belonged to the captain there--rather to us--seeing we had taken
+him on board.’--‘Yes, yes, we have sacked the captain,’ observed
+Jack, facetiously. His companion went on--‘His watch, rings, and
+clothes; and two thousand dollars of the countess’s, and her jewels.
+This might be a fine prize to a sixteen-gun brig of some dozing
+government, but the Demon was built for greater things.’--‘I suppose,
+captain,’ said Jack, ‘we go on our usual plan, eh? The specie to be
+distributed among the ship’s company, and the jewels and personals to
+be appropriated, in a quiet way, by the officers? I hope there be no
+breach of discipline, Captain Vanderleer, in asking where might be
+deposited that secret casket, containing, you and I and one or two more
+know what? I mean that we took from the Spanish-American brig.’--‘It
+is in the stern-hold, beneath our feet at this moment,’ answered the
+captain.--‘A good one for dividing its content,’ said Jack. ‘I’ll fetch
+a light in the twinkling of an eye.’--‘No need,’ replied the captain.
+‘I warrant me I can lay my hand on it in the dark.’ Without the warning
+of another moment the Demon commander was in our hold. I suppose it
+was about four in the morning. I had laid Margaret down on some old
+signal flags, in that division of the hold which Girod had assigned
+her, and had myself retired behind my own bulwark of meal-sacks, in
+order that my companion might possess, for her repose, something like
+the freedom of a small cabin to herself. I had scarcely time to glide
+round to the side of Margaret ere the merciless buccaneer descended. We
+almost inserted ourselves into the wooden walls of our hiding-place,
+and literally drew down the sacks upon us. The captain felt about the
+apartment with his hand, sometimes pushing it behind the sacks, and
+sometimes feeling under them. And now he passed his arms through those
+which aided our concealment. Gracious heaven! his hand discovered
+the countess’s garments; he grasped them tight; he began to drag her
+forward; but at this moment his foot struck against the casket for
+which he was searching. He stooped to seize it, and, as his hold on
+Margaret slackened, I contrived to pass towards his hand a portion of
+the old flag-cloth, so as to impress him with the belief that it was
+the original object of his grasp. He dragged it forward, and let it
+go. But he had disturbed the compact adjustment of the sacks; and as
+the vessel was now rolling violently in a tempestuous sea, a terrible
+lurch laid prostrate our treacherous wall of defence, and we stood full
+exposed, without a barrier between ourselves and the ruffian commander
+of the Demon. He had gone to the light to pass his casket through the
+trap-door. The sun was rising, and the crimson hues of dawn meeting no
+other object in the hold save the depraved and hardened countenance
+of our keeper, threw on its swart complexion such a ruddy glow,
+as--contrasted with the surrounding darkness--gave him the appearance
+of some foul demon emerging from the abodes of the condemned, and
+bearing on his unhallowed countenance the reflection of the infernal
+fires he had quitted. That glow was, however, our salvation. The
+captain turned with an oath to replace the fallen sacks, and we felt
+half-doubtful, as he pushed them with violence against the beams where
+we stood, whether he had not actually discovered our persons, and taken
+this method of at once destroying them by bruises and suffocation. His
+work was, however, only accompanied by an imprecatory running comment
+on Girod’s careless manner of stowage. We were now again buried in
+our concealment; but another danger awaited us. Jacqueminot descended
+to the cabin. An involuntary though half-stifled shriek escaped him
+when he saw the trap-door open. He sprang into the hold, and when he
+beheld the captain, his ghastly smile of enquiry, for he spoke not,
+demanded if his ruin were sealed. ‘I have been seeing all your pretty
+work here, Monsieur,’ said the gruff captain, pointing to the deranged
+sacks, behind which we were concealed. I caught a glimpse through
+them of Girod’s despairing countenance. It was a fearful moment, for
+it seemed as if we were about to be involuntarily betrayed by our
+ally, at the very instant when we had escaped our enemy. Girod’s teeth
+literally chattered, and he murmered something about French gallantry
+and honour; and the countess being a lady, and the Captain Francillon
+an old acquaintance. ‘And so because you cut the throats of a couple
+of solan geese, you think he must not even see to the righting of his
+own stern-hold?’ said the captain, with a gruff and abortive effort at
+pleasantry, for he felt Girod’s importance in amusing and keeping in
+good-humour his motley crew. Jacqueminot’s answer shewed that he was
+now _au fait_; and thus we had a fourth rescue from the very jaws of
+death.
+
+Day after day passed away, and still we were the miserable,
+half-starved, half-suffocated, though unknown prisoners of this Demon
+gang. Girod at this period rarely dared to visit us. He came only
+when the business of the ship actually sent him. The cabin above
+was occupied at night by the captain and some of his most depraved
+associates, so that small alleviation of our fears was afforded us
+either by day or by night. At length, I began to fear that Margaret
+would sink under the confined air, and the constant excitement. It was
+agony indeed to feel her convulsed frame, and hear her faintly-drawn
+and dying breath, and know that I could not carry her into the
+reviving breezes of heaven, nor afford a single alleviation of her
+suffering, without at once snapping that thread of life which was now
+wearing away by a slow and lingering death. At length, her respiration
+began to partake of the loud and irrepressible character which is so
+often the precursor of dissolution. She deemed her hour drawing on,
+yet feebly essayed, for my sake, to stifle those last faint moans
+of expiring nature which might betray our concealment. I supported
+her head, poured a faltering prayer into her dying ear, wiped the
+death-dews from her face, and essayed to whisper expressions of deep
+and unutterable affection. At this moment, Girod descended to the
+hold. He put his finger on his lips significantly, and then whispered
+in French--‘Courage--Rescue! There is a sail on our weather bow. She
+is yet in the offing. Our captain marks her not; but I have watched
+her some time with a glass, and she appears to be a British sloop of
+war.’ I grasped Margaret’s hand. She faintly returned the pressure,
+but gently murmured, ‘Too late.’ Ere the lapse of a moment, it was
+evident that our possible deliverer was discovered by the Demon crew,
+for we could hear by the bustle of feet and voices that the ship
+was being put about; and the ferocious and determined voice of the
+buccaneer chief was heard, giving prompt and fierce orders to urge
+on the Demon. Girod promised to bring us more news, and quitted us.
+The rush of air into the hold seemed to have revived Margaret, and my
+hopes began to rise. Yet it was too soon evident that the motion of
+the vessel was increased, and that the crew were straining every nerve
+to avoid our hoped-for deliverer. After a while, however, the stormy
+wind abated; the ship became steadier, and certainly made less way in
+the waves. A voice over our head said distinctly in French--‘The sea
+is gone down, and the sloop makes signal to us to lay to.’ A quarter
+of an hour elapsed, and the voice again said, ‘The sloop chaces us!’
+Oh! what inexpressibly anxious moments were those. We could discover
+from the varying cries on deck that the sloop sometimes gained on the
+Demon, while at others the pirate got fearful head of her pursuer.
+At length, Girod descended to the hold. ‘The die is cast!’ he said
+in his native language. ‘The sloop gains fast on us. We are about to
+clear the deck for action.’--‘God be praised!’ I ejaculated.--‘Amen!’
+responded a faint and gentle voice.--‘Do not praise him too soon,’
+said Girod, shrugging his shoulders; ‘our captain is preparing for a
+victory. The Demon has mastered her equals, ay, and her superiors, and
+this sloop is our inferior in size and numbers. The captain has hoisted
+the Demon flag, and restored her name to the stern.’--‘But has his
+motley crew,’ whispered I, anxiously, ‘ever encountered a _British_ foe
+of equal strength?’--‘I cannot tell; I have been in her but a short
+time, and will be out of her on the first occasion,’ said Girod, as
+he hastily quitted us. We now heard all the noise of preparation for
+an engagement. Cannon were lashed and primed; concealed port-holes
+opened, and guns placed at them. Seeing ultimate escape impossible, the
+captain took in sail, and determined to give his vessel the advantage
+of awaiting the foe in an imposing state of preparation for action. He
+harangued his men in terms calculated to arouse their brute courage,
+and excite their cupidity. I heard the captain retire to that part
+of the vessel which had been the countess’s cabin, and there take a
+solemn and secret oath of his principal shipmates, that they would, if
+boarded by a successful enemy, scuttle the Demon, and sink her, and her
+crew, and her captors, in one common grave. It appeared, then, that
+either the failure or the success of the sloop would alike seal our
+destruction.
+
+Not a ray of light now penetrated through the chinks of the trap-door,
+and, from the heavy weights which had fallen over it, I was inclined to
+think that shot, or even cannon-balls, had been placed over the mouth
+of our prison. I listened anxiously for a signal of the sloop’s nearing
+us. At length, a ship-trumpet, at a distance, demanded, safe and
+unhurt, the persons of Colonel Francillon, the Countess of Falcondale,
+and two female domestics. It was then evident that the pirate’s
+stratagem at Malta had transpired. The Demon’s trumpet made brief and
+audacious reply:--‘Go seek them at the bottom of the sea.’ A broadside
+from the sloop answered this impudent injunction, and was followed by a
+complement in kind from the Demon, evidently discharged from a greater
+number of guns. Long and desperately raged the combat above us; but the
+pirates’ yells waxed fainter and fainter; while the victorious shouts
+of the British seamen, mixed with the frequent and fearful cry, ‘No
+quarter, no quarter to the robbers!’ became each instant louder and
+more triumphant. At length, every sound of opposition from the Demon
+crew seemed almost to cease. But there was still so much noise on deck,
+that I in vain essayed to make my voice heard;--and for the trap-door,
+it defied all my efforts--it was immovable. At this crisis, the ship,
+which had hitherto been springing and reeling with the fierce fire
+she had received from her adversary, and the motion of her own guns,
+suddenly began to _settle_ into an awful and suspicious quiescence. But
+the victors were apparently too busy in the work of retribution to heed
+this strange and portentous change. _I_ perceived, however, only too
+clearly that the Demon was about finally to settle for sinking. After
+the lapse of a few seconds, it seemed that the conquerors themselves
+became at last aware of the treacherous gulf that was preparing to
+receive them; and a hundred voices exclaimed, ‘To the sloop!--to
+the sloop! The ship is going down--the ruffians are sinking her!’ I
+now literally called out until my voice became a hoarse scream. I
+struck violently against the top of our sinking dungeon. I pushed the
+trap-door with my whole force. All was in vain.--I heard the sailors
+rushing eagerly to their own vessel, and abandoning that of the pirates
+to destruction. I took Margaret’s hand, and held it up towards heaven,
+as if it could better than my own plead there for us. All was silent.
+Not a sound was heard in the once fiercely manned Demon, save the
+rushing of the waters in at the holes where she had been scuttled by
+her desperate crew. At last, as if she had received her fill, she began
+to go down with a rapidity which seemed to send us, in an instant, many
+feet deeper beneath the waves, and I now expected every moment to hear
+them gather over the deck, and then overwhelm us for ever. I uttered
+a prayer, and clasped Margaret in my arms. But no voice, no sigh,
+proceeded from the companion of my grave.
+
+At this moment, voices were heard; weights seemed to be removed from
+the trap-door! It was opened; and the words, ‘Good heaven! the fellow
+is right; they are here, sure enough!’ met my almost incredulous ear.
+I beheld a British officer, a sailor or two, and Girod, with his hands
+tied behind him. I held up my precious burden, who was received into
+the arms of her compatriots, and then, like one in a dream, sprang
+from my long prison. Perhaps it might be well that Margaret’s eye was
+half-closed in death at that moment; for the deck of the sinking Demon
+offered no spectacle for woman’s eye. I shall never forget the scene
+of desolation presented by that deck, lying like a vast plank or raft
+of slaughtered bodies, almost level with the sea, whose waters dashed
+furiously over it, and then receding from their still ineffectual
+attempt to overwhelm the vessel, returned all dyed with crimson to
+the ocean; while the sun setting in a stormy and angry sky, threw his
+rays--for the last time--in lurid and fitful gleams on the ruined Demon.
+
+As we hurriedly prepared to spring into the boat, I saw that Girod’s
+pinioned members refused him the prompt aid necessary for effecting
+an escape at such a moment. I returned, seized a bloody cutlass that
+lay on deck, and, without leave of the officer, cut at once through
+the bonds which confined our first deliverer. ‘This man,’ I said,
+as we seated ourselves, ‘has been the instrument of Heaven for our
+preservation. I will make myself answerable for his liberty and kind
+treatment.’ Girod seized my hand, which received a passionate Gallic
+salute. Our sailors now rowed hard to avoid being drawn into the vortex
+of the sinking ship. Merciful God! we were then _out of the Demon_! I
+supported Margaret in my arms; and as I saw her bosom heave, a renewed
+glow of hope rushed to my heart.
+
+We had not been on board the sloop many minutes, ere, slowly and
+awfully, the Demon sunk to the same eternal grave to which she had so
+often doomed her victims. We saw the top of the main-mast, which had
+borne her fatal flag above the waters, tremble like a point on their
+very surface, and then vanish beneath them. A frightful chasm yawned
+for a moment--it was then closed by the meeting waters, which soon
+rolled peacefully over the vessel they had engulfed; and the Demon, so
+long the terror of the seas and the scourge of mariners, disappeared
+for ever.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Should any reader have felt just sufficient interest in the narrative
+to _wonder_ whether Margaret died, and whether Colonel Francillon
+attended her funeral as chief-mourner; or whether she recovered, and
+was married to the Colonel,--I can only briefly say, that the sloop
+put into Naples, where the countess was soon placed under a skilful
+physician. He pronounced her case hopeless, and my relative had only
+the melancholy satisfaction of reflecting that her dying hour would
+be peaceful, and her lovely remains honoured by Christian burial.
+She passed from the hands of her physician into those of the British
+ambassador’s chaplain; but I do not think it could have been for the
+purpose of religious interment--as I enjoyed, for nearly forty years
+after this period, the inestimable privilege of calling the colonel and
+the countess my revered father and mother!
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+  1. All spelling kept as in the original, including variations in
+     hyphenation.
+
+  2. Letters missing from original scan. Best approximation of the text
+     is, “I vas well pleased make him bad turn.”
+
+  3. Page 15, line 13: best effort was made to account for the missing
+     words in the original scan: “Once more I turned to the horizon.
+     God of mercy! the frigate again”.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78318 ***