The demon ship, or The pirate of the Mediterranean

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Title: The demon ship, or The pirate of the Mediterranean

Author: Unknown


        
Release date: March 28, 2026 [eBook #78318]

Language: English

Original publication: Edinburgh: J. Brydone, 1859

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78318

Credits: Mairi, Finkler and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the National Library of Scotland [NLS].)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEMON SHIP, OR THE PIRATE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN ***




                                                                 [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”.






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