 CHAPTER 1 OF THE FANTOM DEATH AND OTHER STORIES On the 24th of April, 1840, having finished the business that had carried me into the Brazils, I arrived at Rio de Janeiro, where I found a vessel lying nearly loaded and sailing for the Port of Bristol in four or five days. In those times, passenger traffic between Great Britain and the eastern coast of South America was almost entirely carried on in small ships, averaging from 200 to 500 tons. The funnel of the ocean mail steamer, with her gilded saloons and side wheels, which, to the great admiration of all beholders, slapped twelve knots an hour out of the composite fabric, had not yet hove into sight above the horizon of commerce, and folks were very well satisfied if they were no longer than three months in reaching the Brazilian coast out of the River Thames. The little ship in which I took passage was a bark called the Lord of the Isles, her burden was something under four hundred tons. She was a round-boat wagon of a vanished type, with a square sawed-off stern, painted ports, heavy overhanging channels, and as loftily rigged, I was going to say, as a line of battleship, owning to her immense beam, which gave her the stability of a church. I applied to the agent and hired a cabin, and found myself, to my secret satisfaction, the only passenger in the ship. Yes, I was rejoiced to be the sole passenger. My passage out had been rendered memorably miserable by the society of as ill-conditioned, bad-tempered, sulky a lot of wretches as ever turned in of a night into bunks, and cursed the captain in their gizzards in a calm for not being able to whistle a wind up over the sea-line. The name of the skipper of the Lord of the Isles was Joyce. He was unlike the average run of the men in that trade. Instead of being beef-faced and bow-legged, humid of eye, and gay with grog blossoms, he was tall, pale, spare. He spoke low and in a melancholy key. He never swore. He drank wine and water, and there was little or nothing in his language to suggest the sailor. His birth was right aft on the starboard side. Mine was right aft also, next his. Three cabins on either hand ran forward from these two after-births. Two of them were occupied by the first and second mates. Between was a roomy state cabin, as the term then was. A plain interior furnished with an oblong table and fixed chairs, lighted by day by a large skylight, by night by a couple of brass lamps. We sailed away on a Monday morning, as well as I recollect, out of the spacious and splendid scene of the harbor of Rio, and under full breasts of canvas, swelling to the height of a main sky-sail big enough to serve as a mizzen top-gallant sail for a thousand-ton ship of today, and with taut bowlines and yearning jibs, and a heel of hull that washed a two-foot wide streak of greenish copper through the wool-white swirl of froth that broke from the boughs. The lord of the aisles headed on a straight course for the deep solitudes of the Atlantic. All went well with us for several days. Our ship's company consisted of twelve men, including a boson and a carpenter. The forecastle-hands appeared very hearty, likely fellows, despite their peer-head raiment of scotch-cap and broken small clothes, and open flannel shirt and greasy sheath-knife belted to the hip. They worked with a will. They sang out cheerily at the ropes. They went in and out of the galley at mealtime without faces of loathing, and but one complaint came aft before our wonderful mysterious troubles began. The ship's bread crawled, they said, and being found truly very bad, good white flour was served out in lieu. We had been eight days at sea, and in that time had made fairly good way. It drew down a quiet, soft black night with the young moon gone soon after sunset, a trembling flash of stars over the mast-heads, a murky dimness of heat and of stagnation all round about the sea-line, and a frequent glance of sea-fire over the side when a dip of the bark's round bends drove the water from her in a swelling cloud of ebony. I walked the quarter-deck with the captain, and our talk was of England and of the Brazils, and of his experiences as a mariner of thirty years standing. What of the weather, said I, as we came to a pause at the Benical, whose bright disc of illuminated card touched into phantom outlines the hairy features of the jack who grasped the wheel. There's a spell of quiet before us, I fear, he answered in his melancholy, monotonous voice. No doubt a day will come, Mr. West, when the unhappy sea-captain upon whose forehead the ship-owner would be glad to brand the words, prompt dispatch, will be rendered by steam independent of that most capricious of all things, wind. The wind bloweth as it listeth, which is very well whilst it keeps all on blowing, for with our machinery of trusses and perils and braces we can snatch a sort of propulsion out of anything short of hurricane antagonism within six points of what we want to look up for. But of a dead night and of a dead day, with the wind up and down and your ship showing her stern to the thirty-two points in a single watch, what's to be done with an owner's request of look sharp? Will you come below and have some grog? The second mate, a man named Bonner, was in charge of the deck. I followed the captain into the cabin where he smoked a cigar. He drank a little wine and water. I drained a tumbler of cold brandy grog, then stepped above for an hour of fresh air, and afterwards to bed, six bells, eleven o'clock, striking as I turned in. I slept soundly, awoke at seven o'clock, and shortly afterwards went on deck. The watch were at work washing down. The crystal brine flashed over the white plank to the swing of the bucket in the boson's powerful grasp, and the air was filled with the busy noise of scrubbing brushes and of the murmurs of some livestock under the longboat. The morning was a wide radiant scene of tropic sky and sea afar. Right a stern on the light blue verge trembled the mother of pearl canvas of a ship. A small breeze was blowing off the beam. From under the round bows of the slightly leaning bark came a pleasant brook-like sound of running waters, a soft shaling as of a foam over stones, sweet to the ear in that heat as the music of a fountain. Mr. Bonner, the second mate, was again in charge of the deck. When I passed through the companion-hatch, I saw him standing abreast of the skylight at the rail. The expression of his face was grave and full of concern, and he seemed to watch the movements of the men with an inattentive eye. I bade him good morning. He made no reply for little, but looked at me fixedly, and then said, I'm afraid Captain Joyce is a dead man. What is wrong with him? I exclaimed eagerly, and much startled. I don't know, sir. I wish there was a medical man on board. Perhaps you'd be able to tell what he's suffering from if you saw him. I at once went below and found the lad who waited upon us in the cabin preparing the table for breakfast. I asked him if the captain was alone. He answered that Mr. Stroud, the chief mate, was with him. On this I went to the door of Captain Joyce's cabin and lightly knocked. The mate looked out, and seeing who I was told me in a soft voice to enter. Captain Joyce lay in his bunk dressed in a flannel shirt and a pair of white drill trousers. All his throat and a considerable portion of his chest were exposed and his feet were naked. I looked at him scarcely crediting my sight. I did not know him as the man I had parted with but a few hours before. He was swelled from head to foot as though drowned. The swelling contorted his countenance out of all resemblance to his familiar face. The flesh of him that was visible was a pale blue as if rubbed with a powder of the stuff called blue which the laundresses use in getting up their linen. His eyes were open but the pupils were rolled out of sight, and the whites, as they are called, were covered with red blotches. I had no knowledge of medicine and could not imagine what had come to the poor man. He was unconscious and evidently fast-sinking. I said to Mr. Stroud, What is this? The mate answered, I'm afraid he's poisoned himself accidentally. It looks to me like poison. Don't it seem so to you, sir? See how his fingers and toes are curled. I ran my eye over the cabin and exclaimed, Have you searched for any bottles containing poison? I did so when he sent for me at four o'clock and complained of feeling sick and ill. He was then changing colour and his face was losing its proper looks. I asked him if he thought he had taken anything by mistake. He answered no unless he had done so in his sleep. He awoke feeling very bad and that was all he could tell me. I touched the poor fellow's hand and found it cold. His breathing was swift and thin. At moments a convulsion like a wrenching shutter passed through him. Is it, I asked, some form of country sickness, do you think? Some kind of illness that was lying latent in him when we sailed? I never heard of any sort of sickness, he answered, that made a man look like that, not cholera even. And what but poison would do its work so quickly? Depend upon it. He's either been poisoned or poisoned himself unawares. Poisoned, I exclaimed. Who's the man in this ship that's going to do such a thing? It's no natural illness, he answered, looking at the livid, bloated face of the dying man. And he repeated with gloomy emphasis. He's either been poisoned or he's poisoned himself unawares. I stood beside Mr. Stroud for about a quarter of an hour, watching the captain and speculating upon the cause of his mortal sickness. We talked in low voices, often pausing and starting, for the convulsions of the sufferer made us think that he had his mind and wished to sit up and speak. But the ghastly, horrid, vacant look of his face continued fixed by the stubborn burial of the pupils of his eyes. His lips moved only when his frame was convulsed. I put my finger upon his pulse and found the beat threadlike, terribly rapid, intermittent, and faint. Then, feeling sick and scared, I went on deck for some air. The second mate asked me how the captain was and what I thought. I answered that he might be dead even now as I spoke, that I could not conceive the nature of the malady that was killing him, that had apparently fastened upon him in his sleep, and was threatening to kill him within the compass of four or five hours, but that Mr. Stroud believed he had been poisoned or had poisoned himself accidentally. Poisoned, echoed the second mate, and he sent a look in the direction of the ship's galley. What's he eating that we haven't partaken of? A regular case of poisoning? Does the chief officer think it? Oh, no! Oh, no! Who's to do it? The captain's too well liked to allow of such a guess as that. If the food's been fouled by the cook in error, how's it that the others of us who ate at the cabin table aren't likewise seized? There was no more to be said about it then, but in less than half an hour's time the mate came up and told us the captain was gone. He never recovered his senses, never spoke except to talk in delirium, he said. You think he was poisoned, sir? said the second mate. Not willfully, answered Mr. Stroud, looking at me. I never said that, nor is it a thing one wants to think of, he added, sending his gaze round the wide scene of flashing ocean. He then abruptly quitted us and walked to the galley, where for some while he remained out of sight. When he returned he told the second mate with whom I had stood talking that he had spoken to the cook and thoroughly overhauled the dressing utensils and was satisfied that the galley had nothing to do with the murderous mischief which had befallen the skipper. But why be so cock-certain, Mr. Stroud? said I, that the captain's dead of poisoning. I am cock-certain, he answered shortly, and with some little passion. Name me the illness that's going to kill a man in three or four hours and make such a corpse of him as lies in the captain's cabin. He called to the second mate, and they paced the deck together deep in talk. The men had come up from breakfast, and the boson had set them to the various jobs of the morning. But the news of the captain's death had gone forward. It was shocking by reason of its suddenness. Then again the death of the master of a ship lies cold and heavy upon the spirits of a company at sea. Tis the head gone, the thinking part. The mate may make as good a captain, but he's not the man the crew signed articles under. The seamen of the Lord of the Isles wore grave faces as they went about their work. They spoke softly, and the boson delivered his orders in subdued notes. After a bit the second mate walked forward and addressed the boson and some of the men. But what he said I did not catch. I breakfasted and returned on deck. It was then ten o'clock. I found the main top sail to the mast and a number of seamen standing in the gangway whilst the two mates hung together on the quarter-deck talking as though waiting. In a few minutes four seamen brought the body of the captain up through the companion hatch and carried it to the gangway. The corpse was stitched up in a hammock and rested upon a plank over which the English ensign was thrown. I thought this funeral very hurried and dreaded to think that the poor man might be breathing and alive at the instant of his launch, for after all we had but the mate's assurance that the captain was dead. And what did Mr. Stroud know of death? That is, as it would be indicated by the body of a man who had died from some swift subtle nameless distemper as Captain Joyce seemingly had. When the funeral was over the top sails swung and the men returned to their work. I put the matter to the mate who answered that the corpse had turned black and that there could be no more question of his being dead than of his now being overboard. The breeze freshened that morning. At noon it was blowing strong with a dark, hard sky of compacted cloud under which curls and shreds of yellow scud fled like a scattering of smoke and the mates were unable to get an observation. Mr. Stroud seemed engrossed by the sudden responsibilities which had come upon him and talked little. That afternoon he shifted into the captain's birth, being now indeed in command of the bark. It was convenient to him to live in that cabin, for the necessary nautical appliances for navigating the ship were there along with the facilities for their use. Mr. Bonner told me that he and the mate had thoroughly examined the cabin, overhauled the captain's boxes, lockers, shelves, and the like for anything of a poisonous nature, but had met with nothing whatever. It was indeed an amazing mystery, he said, and he was no longer of opinion with Mr. Stroud that poison, accidentally or otherwise taken, had destroyed the captain. Indeed, he now leaned to my view, that Captain Joyce had fallen a victim to some disease which had lain latent in him since leaving Rio, something deadly quick and horribly transforming, well-known maybe to physicians of the Brazils, if indeed it were peculiar to that country. Well, three days passed, and nothing of any moment happened. The wind drew ahead and braced our yards fore and aft for us, and the tub of a bark went to leeward like an empty cask, shouldering the head seas into snowstorms of her heavy round bow, and furrowing a short scope of oil smooth wake almost at right angles with her stern post. Though Mr. Stroud had charge of the ship, he continued from this time to keep watch and watch with Mr. Bonner, as in the captain's life, not choosing, I dare say, to entrust the charge of the deck to the boson. On the evening of this third day that I have come to, I was sitting in the cabin under the lamp, writing down some memories of the past week in a diary, when the door of the captain's berth was opened, and my name was faintly called. I saw Mr. Stroud and instantly went to him. His hands were clasped upon his brow, and he swayed violently as though in pain, with greater vehemence than the heave the deck warranted. His eyes were starting, and by the clear light of the brace of the cabin lamps, I easily saw that his complexion was unusually dusky and darkening even, so it seemed to me as I looked. I cried out, What is the matter, Mr. Stroud? Oh, my God! he exclaimed. I am in terrible pain. I am horribly ill. I am dying. I grasped him by the arm and conducted him to his bunk, into which he got, groaning and holding his head with an occasional strange short plunge of his feet, such as a swimmer makes when resting in the water on his back. I asked him if he was only just now seized. He answered that he was in a deep sleep from which he was awakened by a burning sensation throughout his body. He lay quiet a while, supposing it was a sudden heat of the blood, but the fire increased, and with it came torturing pains in the head and attacks of convulsions. And even whilst he told me this, the convulsive fits grew upon him, and he broke off to groan deeply as though in exquisite pain and distress of mind. Then he'd set his teeth and then presently scream out, Oh, my God! I've been poisoned. I'm dying. I was thunderstruck and terrified to the last degree. What was this dreadful thing, this phantom death that had come into the ship? Was it a contagious plague? But what distemper is there that catching men in their sleep swells and discolors them even as the gaze rests upon them and dismisses their souls to God in the space of three or four hours? I ran on deck but waited until Mr. Bonner had finished bawling out some orders to the men before addressing him. The moon was young but bright, and she sheared sky-like through the pouring shadows, and the light of her made a marvelous, brilliant whiteness of the foam as it burst in masses from the plunge of the bark's boughs. When I gave the news to Mr. Bonner, he stared at me for some moments wildly and in silence, and then rushed below. I followed him as quick as he went, for I had often used the sea, and the giddiest dance of a deck plank was all one with the solid earth to my accustomed feet. We entered the mate's berth, and Mr. Bonner lighted the bracket lamp and stood looking at his shipmate, and by the aid of the flame he had kindled, and the bright light flowing in through the open door, I beheld a tragic and wonderful change in Mr. Stroud, though scarce ten minutes had passed since I was with him. His face was bloated, the features distorted, his eyes rolled continuously, and frequent heavy twitching shutters convulsed his body. But the most frightful part was the dusky hue of his skin that was of a darker blue than I had observed in the captain. He still had his senses and repeated to the second mate what he had related to me, but he presently grew incoherent, then felt delirious. In about an hour's time he was speechless and lay racked with convulsions. Of a horrid blue the features shockingly convulsed, and the whites of his eyes alone showing as in the captain's case. He had called me at about nine o'clock, and he was a dead man at two in the morning, or four bells in the middle watch. Both the second mate and I were constantly in and out with the poor fellow, but we could do no good, only marvel and murmur our astonishment and speculations. We put the captain's steward, a young fellow, to watch him. This was an hour before his death, and at four bells the lad came out with a white face, and said to me, who sat at the table, depressed and awed and overwhelmed by this second ghastly and indeterminable visitation, that the chief mate was dead, had ceased to breathe, and was quickly turning black. Mr. Bonner came into the cabin with the boson, and they went into the dead man's berth, and stayed there about a quarter of an hour. When they came out, the boson looked at me hard. I recollect that that man's name was Matthews. I asked some questions, but they had nothing to tell, except that the body had turned black. What manner of disease can it be that kills in this fashion, said I? If it's the plague, we may be all dead men in a week. It's no plague, said the boson, in a voice that trembled with its own volume of sound. What is it? I cried. Poison, he shouted, and he dropped his clenched fist with the weight of a cannon-ball upon the table. I looked at the second mate, who exclaimed, the boson swears to the signs. He's seen the like of that corpse in three English seamen who were poisoned up at Chewson. Do you want me to make out that both men have committed suicide? I exclaimed. I want to make out that both men have been poisoned, shouted the boson, in his voice of thunder. There was a significance in the insolence of the fellow that confounded and alarmed me, and the meaning was deepened by the second mate allowing his companion to address me in this roaring, affronting way without reproof. I had hoped that the man had been drinking, and that the second mate was too stupid with horror to heed his behaviour to me, and without giving either of them another word, I walked to my cabin and lay down. I have no space here to describe the wild and terrifying fancies which ran in my head. For some while I heard the boson and the second mate conversing, but the cabin bulkhead was stout, the straining and washing noises all about the helm heavy and continuous, and I caught not a syllable of what they said. At what hour I fell asleep I cannot tell. When I awoke, my cabin was full of the sunshine that streamed in through the stern window. I dressed and took hold of the handle of the door, and found myself a prisoner. Not doubting I was locked up in error, I shook the door and beat upon it, and called out loudly to be released. After a few minutes the door was opened, and the second mate stood in the threshold. He exclaimed, Mr West, it's the wish of the men that you should be locked up. I'm no party to the job, but they're resolved. I'll tell you plainly what they think. They believe you've had a hand in the death of the captain and the chief mate. The bosons put that into their heads. I'm the only navigator left, and they're afraid you'll try your hand on me if you have your liberty. You'll be regularly fed and properly seen to, but it's the crew's will that you stop here. With that, and without giving me time to utter a word, he closed and secured the door. I leaned against the bulkhead and sought to rally my wits. But I owned that for a long while I was as one whose mind comes slowly to him after he has been knocked down insensible. I never for an instant supposed that the crew really believed me guilty of poisoning the captain and chief mate. I concluded that the men had mutinied, and arranged with Mr Bonner to run away with the ship, and that I should remain locked up in my cabin until they had decided what to do with me. By the by the door was opened, and the young steward put a tray containing some breakfast upon the cabin deck. He was but a mule of a boy, and I guessed that nothing but what might still further imperil me could come of my questioning him. So in silence I watched him put down the tray and depart. The meal thus sent to me was plentiful, and I drew some small heart out of the attention. Whilst I ate and drank, I heard sounds in the adjoining berth, and presently gathered that they were preparing the body of the chief mate for its last toss over the side. After a bit, they went on deck with the corpse, and then all was still in the cabin. I knew by the light of the sun that the vessel was still heading on her course for England. It was a bright morning with a wild, windy sparkle in as much of the weather as I could see through the cabin window. The plunge of the ship's stern brought the water in a roar of milky froth all about the counter close under me, and the frequent jar of rudder and jump of wheel assured me that the bark was traveling fast through the seas. What in God's name did the men mean by keeping me a prisoner? Did they think me a madman? Or that I, whose life together with theirs depended upon the safe navigation of the bark, would destroy those who alone could promise me security? And what had slain the two men? If poison, who had administered it? One man might have died by his own hand, but not both. But not both. And since both had perished from the same cause, self-murder was not to be thought of. What was it then that had killed them visiting them in their sleep and discoloring, bloating, convulsing, and destroying them in a few hours? Was it some deadly malady subtly lurking in the atmosphere of the after-part of the vessel? If so, then I might be the next to be taken. Or was there some devilish murderer lying secretly hidden? Or was one of the crew the doer of these things? I seemed to smell disease and death, and yearn for the freedom of the deck, and for the sweetness of the wide strong rush of wind. The day passed, the second mate never visited me. The lad arrived with my meals, and when he came with my supper I asked him some questions, but obtained no more news than that the second mate had taken up his quarters in the adjoining berth as acting captain, and that the boson was keeping watch and watch with him. I got but little rest that night. It blew hard, and the pitching of the vessel was unusually heavy. Then again I was profoundly agitated and in deep distress of mind. For supposing the men in earnest it was not only horrible to be thought capable of murder, there was the prospect of my being charged and of having to clear my character. Or supposing the men's suspicion or accusation of villainous pretext. How would they serve me? Would they send me adrift or set me ashore to perish on some barren coast or destroy me out of hand? You will remember that I am writing of an age when seafaring was not as it is now. The pirate and the slaver were still afloat doing a brisk business. There often went a desperate spirit in ship's forecastles, and the maritime records of the time abound with tragic narratives of revolt, seizure, cruelty of a ferocious sort. Another day and another night went by, and I was still locked up in my cabin, and saving the punctual arrival of the lad with my meals no man visited me. Sometime about eight o'clock on the morning of the third day of my confinement, I was looking through the cabin window at the space of grey and foaming sea and shallow flying sky which came and went in the square of the aperture with the lift and fall of the bark's stern, when my cabin door was struck upon and, in a minute afterwards, opened, and the boson appeared. Mr. West, said he, after looking at me for a moment in silence with a face whose expression was made up of concern and fear and embarrassment, I have come on my own part and on the part of the men, sir, to ask your pardon for our treatment of you. We was mistook, and our fears made us too willing to believe that you had a hand in it. We don't know what it is now, but as Jesus is my God, Mr. West, the second mate, he lies dead of the same thing in the next cabin. I went past him too stupefied to speak, and in a blind way sat down at the cabin table and leaned my head against my hand. Presently I looked up, and on lifting my eyes I caught sight of two or three sailors staring down with white faces through the skylight. You tell me that the second mate's dead? said I. Yes, sir, dead of poison, too, so help me God! cried the boson. Who remains to navigate the ship? I said. That's it, sir, he exclaimed. Unless you can do it. Not I. There's no man amongst you more ignorant. May I look at the body? He opened the door of the cabin in which the others had died, and there in the bunk from which the bodies of Captain Joyce and Mr. Stroud had been removed, lay now the blackened corpse of the second mate. It was an awful sight, and a passage of time horrible with the mystery which charged it. I felt no rage at the manner in which I'd been used by that dead man there, and the hurricane lunged seamen alongside of me, and the fellows forward. I could think of nothing but the mystery of the three men's deaths, the lamentable plight we were all in, through our wanting a navigator, with the chance, moreover, that it was the plague, and not poison, mysteriously given, that it killed the captain and mates, so that all the rest of us, as I have said, might be dead men in another week. I returned to the cabin, and the boson joined me, and we stood beside the table conversing, anxiously watched by several men who had stationed themselves at the skylight. What we've got to do, said I, is to keep a bright lookout for ships, and borrow someone to steer us home from the first vessel that will lend us a navigator. We're bound to fall in with something soon. Meanwhile, you're a smart seamen yourself, Matthews, as well qualified as any one of them who have died to sail the ship, and there surely some intelligent sailor amongst the crew who would relieve you in taking charge of the deck. I'll do all I can. The question is, where's the vessel now? said the boson. Fetch me the log-book, said I, and see if you can find the chart they've been using to prick the courses off on. We should be able to find out where the ship was at noon yesterday. I can't enter that cabin. The sight of the poor fellow makes me sick. He went to the berth and passed through the door, and might have left me about five minutes, evidently hunting for the chart, when he suddenly rushed out, roaring in his thunderous voice. I've discovered it! I've discovered it! And fled like a madman up the companion steps. I was startled almost to the very stopping of my heart by this sudden furious wild behavior in him. Then, wondering what he meant by shouting he had discovered it, I walked to the cabin door, and the very first thing my eye lighted upon was a small snake, leisurely coiling its way from the head to the feet of the corpse. Its middle was about the thickness of a rifle barrel, and it then tapered to something like whip-cord to its tail. It was about two feet long, snow-white, and speckled with black and red spots. This then was the phantom death. Yonder venomous reptilate was then that creeping out of some secret hiding-place and visiting the unhappy men one after another had stung them in their sleep in the darkness of the cabin, and vanished before they had struck a light and realized indeed that something desperate had come to them. While Stuy stood looking at the snake, whose horror seemed to gain fresh accentuation from the very beauty of its snow-white speckled skin and diamond-bright eyes, the boson, armed with a long hands-pike and followed by a number of the crew, came headlong to the cabin. He thrust the end of the hands-pike under the belly of the creature and hoeved it into the middle of the berth. Stand clear, he roared, and with a blow or two smashed the reptil's head into a pulp. Open that cabin window, said he. One of the men did so, and the boson with his boot scraped the mess of smashed snake onto the hands-pike and shook it overboard. I told you they were poisoned, he cried, breathing deep. And oh, my God, Mr. West, and I humbly ask your pardon again for having suspected ye. Do you know, sir, whilst I was talking to you just now, I was actually thinking of taking up my quarters in this here cabin this very night. Thus much. And now to end this singular experience in a sentence or two. Three days after the discovery of the snake, we sighted and signaled a large English merchantman bound to London from the Rio de la Plata. Her chief officer came aboard, and we related our story. He asked to see the snake. We told him we had thrown it overboard. On my describing it, he informed me that he guessed it was the little poisonous reptile known in certain districts of South America as the Ibi Baboko. He returned to his ship, and shortly afterwards the commander sent us his third officer, with instructions to keep in company as long as possible. End of Chapter 1 Recording by James K. White, Chula Vista Chapter 2 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For further information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Gareth Rowlands The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell Brokers Bay Brokers Bay is situated on the west coast of England. You may search the map for it in vain, and the reason why I call it by any other name than that it bears will, when you have read this story, be as clear as the mud in the water that brims to the base of Brokers Cliffs. Brokers Bay is a fine, curving sweep of land. For how many centuries the sea has been sneakingly ebbing from it, who can imagine? The time has been when the galleon and the karak strained at their hempen ground tackle at anchor's six fathoms deep, where the white windmill now stands within musket shot of the crown and anchor, and where the church-spire darts the gleam of its weather-cock above the green thickness of a huddle of dwarf trees near the little vicarage. About fifty years ago a company of enterprising souls took it into their heads to reclaim some of the land which the subtly and ceaselessly ebbing sea, rising and falling with moon-like regularity, yet receding ever, though noticeably only in spans of half centuries, was leaving behind it. They armed themselves with the necessary legal powers, they subscribed all the capital they considered needful, and by process of embanking, draining, maneuvering, and the like, they succeeded in raising wheat and grass, vegetables and flowers, where, since and long before the days of the painted Britain, shuddering in the November blast, or perspiring away his small clothes under the July sun, nothing had flourished but the dab and the crab. Yet the speculation on the whole was a failure, it was a patriotic achievement in its way, and those concerned in it deserved well of the nation, for if it be a fine thing to bleed for one's country, how much finer must it be to add to its dimensions, to enlarge its latitude and longitude, and extend the home sovereignty of the monarch. Yet though a pretty considerable village stood hard by the reclaimed land, houses did not increase. The builder, whose Christian name is Jerry, came down to Brokers Bay, and took a look around, and went home again, and did nothing. He was not to be decoyed, he said. Brokers Bay was not the right sort of place to start a town in, he thought. There was too much mud, Mr. Jerry considered. He calculated that when the water was out, there was a full mile and three-quarters of slime. Oh, yes, whilst the slime was still slimy, it reflected the sky just the same as if it had been water, and it took a noble blood-red countenance of a hot sunset evening, when the sea was a pink gleaming streak just under the horizon, and it was very pleasing in that sort of way. But what were the doctors going to say about all that mud, and what opportunities would a waste of slush extending one and three-quarter miles at Ebtide provide the local historian with when he came to write a guidebook and invent Roman and early English names for the immediate district, and deal with the salubriousness of the climate, and give an analysis of the drinking water? And what about the bathing? There was none. And what length of pier would be wanted if the seaward end of it was to be permanently water-washed? The reclaimed ground was divided into lots for building, but nobody built. The soil continued to be cultivated nevertheless. Two market gardeners did very well out of it. A butcher rented thirty acres of the pasture land. The remainder was variously dealt with in small ways for growing purposes. Now that stretch of land had been reclaimed some fifteen years when a certain master mariner, whom I will call Captain Kerry, arrived at the adjacent village with the intention of taking a view of the Brokers Bay foreshore, news that good land was cheap hereabouts had reached him up at Blythe. He had unexpectedly come into a little fortune, had Captain Kerry. For years he had followed the coasting trade, working his way out through the force-cuttle into the captain's cabin, and after thirty years of seafaring rendered more and more uncomfortable by gloomy anticipations of the workhouse in his old age. He had been enriched by the will of an Australian aunt, the amount being something between nine thousand and ten thousand pounds. Captain Kerry had sprung from a west country stock. His wife was a west country woman, and when they came into the Australian aunt's legacy they determined to break up their little home at Blythe and settle somewhere on western soil. So Captain Kerry came to Brokers Bay, and with him travelled his giant son, a youth of prodigious muscle but of weak intellect. A second titan son was at this time at sea, working his way towards the quarter-deck aboard an east Indian man. Captain Kerry's survey of the Brokers foreshore determined him on purchasing a plot of land right amid ships of the fine curve of reclaimed soil. He bought four acres at a very low figure indeed, and then ordered a small house to be built in the midst of his little estate. His wife and her niece joined him on the giant half-witted son at the adjacent village, and there the family dwelt at the sign of the seven bells whilst the house was building. It was quickly put together, and was then gay with a green balcony, and it had motherly, lovely bay windows that made you think of a whaler's boats dangling at cranes, and the entrance was embellished with a singular porch after the design of the retired master mariner, who had recollected seeing something of the sort at Lisbon when he had gone as a boy on a voyage to Portugal. Captain Kerry loved seclusion. Like most retired mariners he hated to be overlooked. This fondness for privacy, which grows out of a habit of it, may be owing to there being no streets at sea, and no over the way. The master of a vessel lives in a cabin all alone by himself, the crucible of the after-part of the ship. He measures his quarter-deck in lonely walks. No eyes glittering above the bulwark rail watch his movements. His behaviour as a man, his judgment as a seamen, but not his mode of life as a private individual, are criticised by his crew. Hence, when a man steps ashore after a long period of command at sea, he carries with him a strong love of privacy, and much resolution of retirement. A great number of little cottages by the ocean are occupied by solitary seamen, who pass their time in looking through a telescope at the horizon, in arguing with lonesome men of their own cloth, in smoking pipes at the lugger in or at the sign of the Lord Nelson, and turning in at night and turning out in the morning. To provide against being overlooked in case others should build hard by, Captain Kerry walled his little estate to four acres with a regular bulkhead of a fence, handsomely spiked on top, and too tall even for his giant son to peer over on tiptoe. In a few months the house was built, prepared, and in all ways completed. It was then furnished and the ground fenced. Captain Kerry and his family now took possession of their new home. There was, first of all, Captain Kerry, then Mrs. Kerry, next the giant young Kerry, who had been known up and blithe by the name of Mother Kerry's chicken, and last Mrs. Kerry's niece, a stout active girl of twenty, who helped Mrs. Kerry in cooking and looking after the house. For Kerry, having been robbed whilst absent on a coasting voyage, of a new coat, a soft hat, a Mirsham pipe, and a few other trifles by a maid of all work, had sworn in hideous folksal language never again to keep another servant. This happy family of Kerry's were very well pleased with their new home. Old Kerry was never weary of stepping out of doors to look at his house. He seemed to find something fresh to admire every time he cast his eyes over the little building. He and his son planted potatoes, onions, cabbages, and other homely vegetables, and dug out and cultivated a very considerable area of kitchen garden. They had not above three miles to walk to attend divine worship. There were several convenient shops in the adjacent village, not more than two miles and a half distant. There was no roadway to speak of to Kerry's house, but in a very few weeks the feet of the family and the tread of the tradespeople trumped out a thin path over the reclaimed land to the village roadway, where it fell with the sweep of the cliff to the level of the reclaimed soil, and the view on the hole from Kerry's windows was fairly picturesque and pleasing, even when the water was out and the scene was a sweeping flat of mud. A far on the dark blue edge of the sea hovered the feather-white canvas of ships, easily resolved into denominationable fabrics by Kerry's powerful telescope. The western sun glowed in the briny ooze till the whole stretch of the stuff resembled a vast surface of molten gold. Here and there, confronting Kerry's house, stood some scores of fangs of rock, and when there was a flood tide and a fresh inshore gale, the sea snapped and beat and burst upon the beach with as much uproar as though it were all fathomless ocean, instead of a dirty stretch of water, with an eighteen-foot rise of tide and foam so dark and thick with dirt that, after it had blown upon you and dried, it was as though you had ridden through some dozen miles of muddy lanes. The family had been settled about three months when the eldest son arrived home from the long voyage he had made to China and the East Indies. He was a tall, powerfully built young man, but his education in his youth had been neglected. Captain Kerry, indeed, had not in those days possessed the means to put him to school. Now, however, that the skipper had come into a little fortune of, call it, ten thousand pounds, he resolved to qualify his son for position on the quarter-deck. Navigation, I can teach him, he said to his wife, and if he was a master-rigor, he couldn't know more about a ship. What he wants is a sort of learning which you and me is deficient in, the being able to talk and write good English, with some sort of knowledge of history and the likes of that, so that should he ever get command of a passenger ship, why then, sitting at the head of the cabin-table, he won't be ashamed of addressing the ladies and joining in the general conversation. So when his son arrived from China and the East Indies, the father, instead of sending him to sea again, put him to read and study with a clergyman who lived in the adjacent village, a gentleman who could not obtain a living and who disdained accuracy. Thus it came to pass that Captain Kerry lived at home with his two sons and wife and wife's niece. He stood in a bay window one day, and it entered his head to dig out a pond and place a fountain in the middle of it. It'll improve the property, said Captain Kerry, turning to his wife and sons, who were lingering at the breakfast-table. We'll fix a pedestal amid ships of the pond and put a female statue upon it, one of them white figures who keep their right hands aloft for the holding of a whirligig fountain. There's nothing prettier than a revolving fountain, a sparkling and a showering down over a nude statue. You'll be striking salt water, father, if you fall a dig in, said the sailor son, named Tom. And what then, exclaimed Captain Kerry, ain't brine as bright to the eye as fresh water, and it's not going to choke the fountain either. Blast if I don't think the fountain might be set a plane by the rise and fall of the tide. When breakfast had ended, the father and the two sons stepped out of doors to decide upon a spot in which to dig the pond for the fountain. After much discussion they agreed to dig in front of the house, about a hundred paces distant, within a stone's throw of the wash of the water when the tide was at its height. The captain's grounds lay open to the sea, though they were jealously fenced, as has been already said, at the back and on either hand. There could be no intrusion on the sea-fronting portion of the grounds. The mud came to the embankment, and the embankment was the ocean limit of Kerry's little estate. There was no path and no right of way if there had been. Selkirk and his goats could scarcely have enjoyed greater seclusion than did Kerry and his family. The father and sons proposed to dig out the pond to the shape, depth, and area decided upon, and then bring in a mason to finish it. They went to work next day. It was something to do, something to kill the time which, perhaps, now and again, lay a little heavy upon this isolated family. The old skipper dug with vehemence and enjoyment. He had been bred to a life of hard work and was never happier than when toiling. His giant half-witted son labored with the energy of steam. The sailor son stepped in when he had done with his parson and his studies for the day, and drove his spade into the reclaimed soil with enthusiasm. This went on for several days, and something that resembled the idea of a pond without any water in it began to suggest itself to the eye. It was on a Friday afternoon in the month of April, as the captain who I am calling Kerry himself informed me, that this retired skipper, who had not felt well enough that day to dig, was seated in his parlor reading a newspaper and smoking a pipe. Suddenly the door was flung open, and the giant half-witted youth whose name was Jack walked in. Father, said he, ain't gold found in the earth? nowhere else, sonny, answered the captain, looking at the giant over the top of the newspaper. There's gold in the pond, father, said Jack. Gold in your eye, exclaimed the captain, putting down his pipe and his newspaper. What sort of gold? said he, smiling. Shiny gold, like the half-sovereign you once gave me, for behaving myself when you was away. On this, Captain Kerry, without another word, put on his hat and walked with his son to the diggings, which were by this time a pretty considerable trench. There, said Jack, pointing, my spade drove upon him, and I've scraped that much clear. The captain looked and perceived what resembled a fragment of a shaft of metal, dull and yellow, with lines of brightness where Jack's spade had scraped the surface. He had once jumped into the trench and bade Jack fetch his spade. They then dug together, and in about a quarter of an hour succeeded in laying bare a small brass cannon of very antique pattern and manufacture. It was pivoted. They dug a little longer and deeper, and exposed a portion of woodwork. The scantling was extraordinarily thick, and the gun was pivoted to it. The captain's face was red with excitement. Run and see if Tom's in, he cried, and if he ain't, leave word that he's to join us with his spade as soon as he arrives, and then come you back, Jack. By the great anchor, if there ain't a foundered ship, call me a guffy. The sailor's son armed with the spade appeared on the scene within twenty minutes. It's an old brass swivel, father, he shouted. Jump in, cried the skipper, and lends a hand to clear way more of this muck. The three plied their spades with might and mane, and before sundown they had laid bare some eight feet of ship's deck, with about five feet breadth of bulwark, measuring four feet high from the plank. Mrs. Carey and the niece came to the edge of the pit to look. The three diggers, covered with sweat and hot as fire, climbed out, threw down their spades, and the family stood gazing. Whatever is it, cried Mrs. Carey. A foundered ship, answered her husband. A whole ship, uncle, exclaimed the niece. A three hundred ton ship, answered the skipper. Do you want to know if she's all here? I can't tell you that. But if there ain't solidness enough for a royal jarg, running for an aft in this unearthed piece, I'm no sailor-man. What sort of ship will she be? said the half-witted jack. Something two hundred year old, if the whole job heights some antiquarian roose, like to the burying of Roman baths for the digging of them up again, as an advertisement for the place. Who was a rain in two hundred year ago? Here every eye was directed at the sailor's son, who, after rubbing his nose and looking hard at the horizon, answered, Crummel. Then it's a ship of Crummel's time, cried the captain, to whom the name of Crummel did not seem familiar. And if so be, she's all here and intact, bloomed if she won't be a fortune to us as a show. That night, both at and after supper, all the talk of the family was about the founded ship in the garden. The giant lad's excitement was such, that even the mother owned to herself, he had never been more fluent and imbecile. Do you think it's a whole ship, Father? said Tom the Sailor. Mourn likely, that their brass cannon ought to give us her age. Haven't I heard tell of a Spanish invasion of this country in bygone years, when the Don's was blowed to the Nord, and a score of their galleons cast away upon the British coasts? At a time like this a man feels not being a scholar. Tom, fetch down your history book, and see if there's a piece wrote in it about that their Spanish job. The Sailor brought a history of England to the lamp, and with fingers square-ended as broken carrots, and with palms dark with dragging upon tarry ropes, groped patiently through the pages, till he came to a part of the story that told of the Spanish Armada. This was read aloud, and the family listened with attention. Well, she may prove to be one of them Spanish galleons after all, said Captain Kerry. She'll not be the first ship that's been dug up out of land which the seas flowed over in its day. There was Jimmy Perkins of Sunderland, and here he spun them a yarn. What'll be inside the ship, I wonder, exclaimed the niece. Ah, said the young giant Jack, opening his mouth. Them galleons went pretty richly freighted, I've heard, said the skipper. When I was a boy, they used to tell if they're going afloat with a store of dollars in their holds. Their bottoms flushed to the hatches with the choicest goods, gold and silver candlesticks and crucifixes in the cabins for the captains and mates to say their prayers are for. Jacky thought the cannon gold, said Mrs. Kerry. He may be right, Thomas, so a little quick in finding out. There may be gold deeper down. Well now, cried the skipper. I'll tell you what I've made up my mind to do. We'll keep this here, find a secret. Tom, you, me and Jack will go to work day after day until we see what lies buried. There's no call for any of us to say a word about this discovery. We're pretty well out of sight, the fence stands high, and if so be as any visitor or tradesman should catch a view of the trench, they'll not be able to see what's inside without drawing close to the brink, which, of course, won't be permitted. If that foundered craft, he cried with great excitement pointing towards the window, is intact, as I before observed, then let her hold contain what it may, all mud or all dollars, all slush or all silk. As a show, she ought to be worth a matter of a thousand pound to us, but not a word to anybody till we've looked inside of her. If there's treasure, why, it's to be our own. There's to be no dividing of it with the authorities, and so I say plainly, let the law be what it will. Here's this house and grounds to be paid for, Tom to be educated and sent to sea in a ship he holds a share in, Jack to be made independent of me, and Alisa to be provided for. And we'll see, he shouted, hitting the table a blow with his clenched fist, if that their foundered ship ain't going to work out this traverse the same as if she was chock-a-block with bullion. Thus was the procedure settled, and next morning early the father and two sons went to work with their spades. It was to prove a long, laborious job. They knew that, but were determined all the same to keep the strange business in the family, and to solve the secret of the buried craft as darkly and mysteriously, as though they were bent on perpetrating some deed of horror. The quantity of soil they threw up formed an embankment, which concealed the trench and their own laboring figures as they progressed. Tom went away to his studies for two or three hours in the day, saving this and the interruption of mealtimes, their toil was unintermittent. In three weeks they had disclosed enough of the poop-royal, poop and quarter-deck of the strangely shaped craft, to satisfy them that, at all events, a very large portion of the after-part of the vessel lay solid in its centuries-old grave of mud. In this time they had exhumed and scraped the whole breadth or beam of her upper decks, to a distance of about twenty-two feet forward from the taff rail. Their notion was to clear her from end to end, betwixt the lines of her bulwarks, only to satisfy themselves that she was a whole ship. Day after day they labored in their secret fashion, and the people of the district never for an instant imagined that they were at work on anything more than an entrenchment of extraordinary size, depth and length, for some purpose known only to themselves. It took them to the middle of July to expose the upper decks of the vessel, and then their lay, a truly marvellous and even beautiful sight, buried some ten feet below the level of the soil, the complete and quite perfect fabric of a little antique ship of war, about one hundred feet long and thirty feet broad, with two after-decks, or poops, descending like steps to the quarter-deck, and the boughs shelving downwards like the slope of a beach into what promised to prove a complicated curling of headboards and some nightmare device of figurehead. Four little brass cannons were pivoted on the poop rails, and on her main deck she mounted eight guns of that ancient sort called sacres. The wood of her was as hard as iron, and black as old oak with the saturation of soil and brine, and time's secret hardening process. The masts were clean-gone from the deck, and there was no sign of a bowsprit. Never was there a more wonderful picture than that ancient ship as she lay in her grave with her grin of old world artillery running the fat squab length of her. The whole structure flat still in the soil to the level of the bulwark rails, affecting the eye as some marvellous illusion of nature, as some wild romantic vegetable or mineral caprice of the drained but sodden soil. Our little family of diggers, having disintombed the decks and bulwarks to the whole length of the giant jack's extraordinary discovery, next proceeded, all as secretly as though they were preparing for some hideous crime, to uproot the covers of the main hatch, which were as hard fixed as though they had been of Portland stone, cemented into a pier. With much hammering, however, and they were three powerful men, they succeeded in splitting the cover, and the stubborn wonderful old piece of timber-frame was picked out of the yawn of the hatch in splinters. And now they looked down into a black well from which Captain Carey speedily withdrew his head, sniffing and spitting. Run for a candle, Jack! said he. A candle was lighted and lowered, and when it had sunk half a dozen feet, the flame went out as though the wick had been suddenly pinched by the fingers of a spirit. So that a current of air should sweeten the hold, they went aft with their hatchets and hammers, and, after prodigious labour, splintered and cleared away the cover of a little booby-hatch just under the break of the lower poop. They next got open the small forehatch, and at the end of two days, when they lowered a lighted candle, the flame burnt freely. Now, what did they find inside this buried ship? Carey had counted upon mud to the hatchways, and scores of curios and amazing relics of crumples or another's period to be dug out of the solid mass. Instead, the interior was as dry as a nut whose kernel has rotted into dust. This was as extraordinary as any other feature of the discovery. The three men, each bearing a lighted lantern, descended the ladder they had lowered through the hatch, and gained the bottom of the ship, where they walked upon what had undoubtedly been cargo in its time, though it might now have passed for a sort of dunnage of lava—dry, harsh, and gritty—and powdering under the tread. A basket was loaded with the stuff, and hoisted into the daylight and examined, but the family could make nothing of it. As far as could be gathered, the original freight of the ship had been bale goods, skins, fine wool, and the like. East India or spice island commodities, which some sort of chemical action had transformed into a heap of indistinguishable stuff, as slender in comparison with its radical bulk as the cinders of a rag to the rag that is burnt. Nothing to make our fortune with here, said Captain Carey, as he stood in the bottom of this wonderful old ship's hold with his two sons, the three of them holding up their lanterns and glancing with gleaming eyes and marvelling minds around. What's a-baffed that bulkhead? We'll see to it are to dinner. They went to dinner, and then returned to the ship, and applied themselves to hacking at the bulkhead, so as effect an entry. This bulkhead, which partitioned the after from the main and four holds, was of the hardness of steel. They let fly at it in vain. The hollow hold reverberated the blows of axe and chopper with the clanger of an iron ship-building-yard. We must enter by an after-hatch of if it's to be done, said Captain Carey. With infinite labour, which expended the day and ran into the hold of the following morning, they contrived to break their way through the front of the lower poop. Here the air was as foul as ever it had been in the hold. They could do nothing for many hours. When at last the atmosphere was sweet enough to breathe, they entered and found themselves in a cabin that was unusually lofty, owing to the superstructure of the poop-royal. The interior was as dry as the hold had been. So, if actually had accident or contrivance, or the secret processes of the ship's grave sealed every aperture, that standing in this now-wind-swept cabin, you might have supposed the little fabric had never shipped a bucketful of water from the hour of her launch. Several human skeletons lay upon the deck. The Captain and his sons held the lanterns to the bones and handled the rags which had been their raiment, but the colourless stuff went to pieces. It moulded in the grasp as dry sand streams from the clenched fist. Five cabins were bulkheaded off this black, long-buried interior. The Captain and his sons searched them, but everything that was not of timber appeared to have undergone the same transformation that was visible in what had doubtless been the cargo in the hold. They found chairs of a venerable pattern, crescent-like lamps, such as Milton describes, bunk bedsteads upon which were faintly distinguishable the tracings of what might have been paintings and guilt-work. What do you think of this, boys, for a show? cried Captain Kerry, whose voice was tremulous with excitement and astonishment. If there ain't two thousand pound on the job as a sight-going concern, tell me we're all a dreaming and that the whole boilings a lie, and now to see what's under hatches here. A small square of hatchway was visible just about the black oblong table that centred the interior. They opened this hatch without labour. The cementing process of the ship's grave had not apparently worked very actively in this cabin. Yet the foul air of the after-hold forced them once more upon no less than three days of inactivity. For to sweeten the place, they were obliged to construct a wind-sail whose breezy heel rendered the atmosphere fit for human respiration in a few hours. On descending they found just such another accumulation of lava-like remains of freight as they had met with in the main hold. But they also noticed a bulkhead ten feet above the stern post. They chopped their way through it and stood for a while peering around them under the lanterns which they held above their heads. The gleams illuminated a quantity of ancient furniture, sofas and chairs and little tables, and framed squares and ovals of obliterated paintings. Captain Carey put his hand upon a couch and drew away his fist full of pale and rotted upholstery. Are those things cases yonder? said the sailor son, and the three of them made their way to a corner of the hold and stood looking for a moment or two at four square chests heavily clamped with iron. What's here? said Captain Carey. The giant jack stooped and strove to stir one of the boxes. Stand aside! roared the skipper, and with half a dozen strokes of his axe he split open the lid of one of the chests. The three faces came together in a huddle, and the light shone upon lines of linked and minted metal. Pick out one of them, Tom! said Captain Carey in a faint voice. My hands are a-trumbling too much to do it. They were Spanish silver coins, subsequently ascertained to have been minted in times which proved the age of this sunken and recovered ship contemporaneous with the early years of the reign of our second Charles. Captain Carey told me that he realized six thousand four hundred pounds on them. But this lucky family did better yet with their incredible discovery. For after the Captain had secreted the money in his house, he called in workmen who dug away the soil from the buried ship until she was exposed to the bludge on which she rested. This done he carried out his resolution to make a show of her by erecting a shed for the fabric, stationing a doorkeeper at the entrance, and charging six pounds for admission. Many hundreds, indeed many thousands, came from all parts to view the wonderful ship that was ascertained by what is called an expert in naval affairs, to have been the Sancta Ineos, captured by the privateer Amazon, and lost whilst proceeding in charge of a prize crew to an English port. It was further discovered that her lading had consisted of coffee, cochineal, indigo, hides in the hair, bales of fine wool, and fur. But down to this hour it was never known that Captain Carey had found hidden, and in course of time cleverly turned into good English money, four chests of Spanish silver, worth at all events to this happy family of Brokers Bay, six thousand four hundred pounds. For my own part I have honourably kept my worthy friend's secret. End of Chapter 2 Chapter 3 of The Phantom Death and Other Stories This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by David McKay The Phantom Death and Other Stories by William Clark Russell Chapter 3 The Lazarette of the Huntress I stepped into the Brunswick Hotel in the East India Docks for a glass of ale. It was in the year 1853 and a wet hot afternoon. I had been on the tramp all day, making just three weeks of a wretched, hopeless hunt after a situation on shipboard, and every bone in me ached with my heart. My precious timbers, how poor I was. Two shillings and thruppants, that was all the money I possessed in the wide world. And when I had paid for the ale, I was poorer yet by tuppence. A number of nautical men of various grades were drinking at the bar. I sat down in a corner to rest, and abandoned myself to the most dismal reflections. I wanted to get out to Australia, and nobody, it seems, was willing to ship me in any situation, on any account whatever. Captains and mates howled me off if I attempted to cross their gangways. Nothing was to be got in the shipping yards. The very crimps sneered at me, when I told them that I wanted a birth. Shake your head, my hawbuck, said one of them, in the presence of a crowd of grinning seamen, that the Johns may see the hay-seed fly. What was I, do you ask? I'll tell you. I was one of ten children whose father had been a clergyman, and the income from all sources of that same clergyman had never exceeded two hundred and thirty pounds a year. I was a lumbering, hulking lad without friends, and as I am now perfectly sensible without brains, without any kind of taste for any pursuit, execrating the notion of clerkships and perfectly willing to make away with myself sooner than me glued to a three-legged stool. But enough of this. The long and short is, I was thirsting to get out to Australia, never doubting that I should easily make my fortune there. I sat in my corner in the Brunswick Hotel, scowling at the floor, my long legs thrust out, and my hands buried deep in my breeches' pockets. Presently I was sensible that someone stood beside me, and looking up, I beheld a young fellow, staring with all his might, with a slow grin of recognition, wrinkling his face. I seemed to remember him. Mr. William Peplow, ain't it? said he. Why, yes, said I, and you, and you, you don't remember Jemback then, sir? Yes, I do perfectly well. Sit down back. Are you a sailor? I am so deadbeat that I can scarcely talk. Jemback brought a tankard of ale to my table, and sat down beside me. He was a youth of my own age, and I knew him as the son of a parishioner of my father. He was attired in nautical clothes, yet somehow he did not exactly look what is called a sailor man. We fell into conversation. He informed me that he was an understeward on board a large ship called the Huntress that was bound out of the Thames in a couple of days for Sydney, New South Wales. He had sailed two years in her, and hoped to sign his head steward next voyage in a smaller ship. There'd be a good deal of waiting, this bout, said he. We're taking a cutty full of swells out. There's Sir Thomas Mason. He goes as governor. There's his lady and three daughters, and a sort of suet. He meant sweet, sails along with the boiling. So he rattled on. Can't you help me to find a birth in that ship? said I. I'm afraid not, he answered. What could you offer yourself as, sir? They wouldn't have you forward, and aft were chock-a-block. If you could manage to stow yourself away, they wouldn't chuck you overboard when you'd turned up at sea. They'd make you useful, and land you safe as if you was the governor himself. I thought this a very fine idea, and asked back to tell me how I should go to work to hide myself. He seemed to recoil, I thought, when I put the matter to him earnestly. But he was an honest, kindly-hearted fellow, and remembered my father with a certain degree of respect, and even of affection. He had known me as a boy. There was the sympathy of association and of memory between us. He looked at the old suit of clothes I sat in, and at my hollow, anxious face. And he crooked his eyebrows with an expression of pain when I told him that all the money I had was too and a penny, and that I must starve and be found floating a corpse in the dockyard basin if I did not get out to Australia. We sat for at least an hour over our ale, talking very earnestly. And when we arose and bat each other farewell, I had settled with him what to do. The huntress was a large frigate-built ship of fourteen hundred tons. On the morning of the day on which she was to haul out of dock, I went on board of her. Nobody took any notice of me. The vessel was full of business, clamorous with the life and hurry of the start for the other side of the world. Cargo was still swinging over the main hold, down whose big, dark square, a stall, strong, red-bearded chief mate was roaring to the stevedore's men engulfed in the bowels of the ship. A number of drunken sailors were singing and cutting capers on the forecastle. The main deck was full of steerage, or as they were then termed, tween-deck passengers, grimy men and seedy women and wailing babes and frightened, staring children. I did not pause to muse upon the scene, nor did I gaze aloft at the towering spars, where, forward, up in the dingy sky of the isle of dogs, floated that familiar similar of departure, Blue Peter. I saw several young men in shining buttons and cloth caps with gold badges, and knew them to be midshipmen, and envied them. Every instant I expected to be ordered out of the ship by someone with hurricane lungs and a vast command of injurious language, and my heart beat fast. I made my way to the cutty front, and just as I halted beside a group of women at the booby hatch, James Back came to the door of the saloon. He motioned to me with a slight toss of his head. Don't look about you, he whispered. Just follow me straight. I stepped after him, into the saloon. It was like entering a grand drawing-room. Mirrors and silver lamps sparkled. The panelled bulkheads were rich with hand paintings. Flowers hung in plenty under the skylight. Goldfish gleamed as they circled in globes of crystal. These things and more I beheld in the space of a few heartbeats. I went after James Back, down a wide staircase that sank through a large hatch, situated a dozen paces from the cutty front. When I reached the bottom, I found myself in a long corridor, somewhat darksome, with cabins on either hand. Back took me into one of those cabins, and closed the door. Now listen, Mr. Peplow, said he. I'm going to shut you down in the lazarette. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, on which was a rude tracing. This is the inside of the lazarette, he continued, pointing to the tracing. There are some casks of flour up in this corner. They'll make you a safe hiding place. You'll find a bag of ship's biscuit, and some bottles of wine and water, and a panicin, stowed behind them casks. There's cases of bottled ale in the lazarette, and plenty of tinned stuffs and grub for the cabin table. But don't broach anything if you can hold out. When am I to show myself? When we're out of soundings. Where's that, said I? Clear of the chops, he answered. If you come up when the land's still inside, the captain will send you ashore by anything that'll take you, and you'll be handed over to the authorities and charged. How shall I know when we're clear of the chops, said I? I'll drop below into the lazarette on some excuse and tell you, he answered. You'll be very careful when you turn up, Mr. Peplow, not to let them guess that anybody's lent you a hand in this year hiding job. If they find out I'm your friend, then it's all up with Jim Back. He's a stone-broke young man, and his parents will be wishing of themselves dead, rather than they should have lived to see this hour. I have sworn, and you may trust me back. Right, said he. And now, is there a question you'd like to ask before you drop below? When does the ship haul out? They may be doing of it even whilst we're talking, he said. Can I make my escape out of the lazarette? Shall I feel very ill, or as if I was going to suffocate? Yes, the hatch is a little and the cargo sits tall under him, and you can stand up and shove the hatch clear of its bearing should anything go seriously wrong with you. But don't be in a hurry to feel ill or short of breath. There's no light, but there's air enough. The united smells, perhaps, ain't all violets, but the place is warm. He paused, looking at me inquiringly. I could think of nothing more to ask him. He opened the door, warily peered out, then whispered to me to follow, and I walked at his heels to the end of the corridor near the stern. I heard voices in the cabins on either hand of me. Some people came out of one of the after-births, and passed us, talking noisily. But they took no heed of me, or thought of me as if they were but they took no heed of me, or of my friend. They were passengers and strangers to the ship, and would suppose me a passenger also, or an under-steward like Jim Back, who, however, now looked his vocation, a tire as he was in a camelot jacket, black cloth breeches, and a white shirt. We halted at a little hatch-like trapdoor a short way forward of the bulkheads of the stern cabins. Back grasped the ring in the center of the hatch, and easily lifted the thing, and laid open the hold. All's clear, said he, looking along the corridor, down with you, Mr. Peplow. I peered into the abyss as it seemed to me. The light hereabouts was so dim that but little of it fell through the small square of Hatchway, and I could scarcely discern the outlines of the cargo below. I put my legs over and sank, holding on with the first voyager's grip to the combing of the hatch. Then, feeling the cargo under my feet, I let go, and the instant I withdrew my hands, back popped the hatch on. The blackness was awful. It affected me for some minutes like the want of air. I thought I should smother, and could hardly hinder myself from thrusting the hatch up for light and for the comfort of my lungs. Presently, the sense of suffocation passed. The corridor was uncarpeted. I heard the sounds of footsteps on the bare planks overhead. I'd never knowing but that at any moment somebody might come into this lazarette. I very cautiously began to grope my way over the cargo. I skinned my hands and my knees, and cut my small clothes against all sorts of sharp edges in a very short time. I never could have realized the like of such a blackness as I was here groping through. The deepest midnight overhung by the electric cloud would be as bright as dawn or twilight compared to it. I carried, however, in my head the sketch back had drawn of this interior, and remembering that I had faced aft when my companion had closed me down. I crawled in the direction in which I imagined the casks and my stock of bread and wine lay. And to my great joy, after a considerable bit of crawling and clawing about, during which I repeatedly wounded myself, I touched a canvas bag, which I felt, and found full of ship's bread, and on putting my hand out in another direction, but close by where the bag was, I touched a number of bottles. On this I felt around, carefully stroking the blackness with my maimed hands, and discovered that I had crawled into a recess formed by the stowage of a number of casks on their bilge. A little space was left behind them in the ship's wall. It was the hiding place back had indicated, and I sat down to breathe and think and to collect my wits. I had no means of making a light, but I don't believe that in any case I should have attempted to kindle a flame, so great would have been my terror of setting the ship on fire. I kept my eyes shut, fancying that that would be a good way to accustom my vision to the blackness. And here I very inopportunely recollected that one of the most dreadful prison punishments inflicted upon mutinous and ill-behaved felons is the locking of them up in a black room, where it is thought proper not to keep them very long lest they should go mad. And I wondered how many days or hours it would take to make a lunatic of me in this lazarette that was as black certainly as any black room ever built for refractory criminals. I had no clothes, save those I wore. Stowaways is a rule to not carry much luggage to see with them. I had heard tell of ships' slop chests, however, and guessed when I was enlarged and put to work, the captain would let me choose a suit of clothes and pay for them out of my wages. I did not then know that it is not customary for commanders of ships to pay Stowaways for their services. Indeed, I afterwards got to hear that far better men than the average run of Stowaway were in their anxiety to get abroad very willing to sign articles for a shilling a month and lead the lives of dogs for that wage. I had come into the ship with a parcel of bread and cheese in my pocket. Feeling hungry, I partook of this modest refreshment, and clawing round touched a bottle, pulled the loosely fitted cork out, and drank. This small repast hardened me. I grew a little less afraid of the profound blackness and of the blue and green lights which came and went upon it, and began to hope I should not go mad. The hours sneaked along. Now and again the sort of creaking noise ran through the interior, which made me suppose that the ship was proceeding down the river in tow of a tug. Occasionally I heard the tread of passengers overhead. It pleased me to hear that sound. It soothed me by diminishing the intolerable sense of loneliness spread by the midnight blackness in which I lay. The atmosphere was warm, but I drew breath without difficulty. The general smell was indeed a complicated thing. In fact, the lazarette was a storeroom. I seemed to taste ham, tobacco, cheese, and fifty other such matters in the air. I had slept very ill on the preceding night, and after I had been for some hours in the lazarette I felt weary and stretched myself along the deck between the casks and the ship's wall, and pillowed my head on my coat. I slept, and my slumber was deep and long. My dreams were full of pleasing imaginations, of nuggets of extraordinary size chiefly, and leagues of rich pasture land whitened by countless sheep all branded with a letter P. But after I had awakened and gathered my wits together, I understood that I had lost all count of time, that I should not know what a clock it was and whether it was day or night until I had got out. I was glad to find that the blackness was not so intolerable as I had dreaded. I felt for the biscuits and bottles, and ate and drank as appetite dictated. Nobody in all this while lifted the hatch. No doubt the steward had plenty of stores for current use in hand, and there might be no need to break out fresh provisions for some weeks. I had lain according to my own computation very nearly two days in this black hole when I felt a movement in the ship which immediately upset my stomach. The vessel I might suppose was in the channel. Her pitching grew heavier, the lazarette was right aft, and in no part of the vessel saving the boughs could her motion be more sensibly felt. I was speedily overcome with nausea, and for many long hours lay miserably ill, unable to eat or drink. At the expiration of this time the sea ran more smoothly. At all events the ship's motion grew gentle. The feeling of sickness suddenly passed, leaving me, indeed, rather weak. Yet not so helpless but that I could sit up and drink from a bottle of wine and water, and eat a dry ship's biscuit. Whilst I was munching the tasteless piece of sea bread, sitting in the intense blackness, pining for the fresh air and the sunshine, and wondering how much longer I was to wait for back summons to emerge, the hatch was raised. I shrank and held my breath, with my hand grasping the biscuit, poised midway to my mouth, as though I had been withered by a blast of lightning. A faint sheen floated in the little square. It was the dim luster of distant lamp-light, whence I guessed it was night. The figure of a man cautiously dropped to the hatchway, and by some means, and all very silently, he can drive to readjust the hatch, shutting himself down, as back had shut me down. The motion of the ship, as I have said, was gentle. The creaking noises throughout the working fabric were dim and distant. Indeed, I could hear the man breathing, as he seemed to pause after bringing the hatchway to its bearings over his head. I did not suppose that the captain ever entered this part of the ship. The man, for all I could conjecture, might be one of the mates, or the boat-sway, or the head-steward, visiting the lazarette on some errand of duty, and coming down very quietly that the passengers who slept in the cabins on either hand the corridor should not be disturbed. Accordingly, I shrank into the compactest posture I could contort myself into, and watched. A lucifer match was struck. The flame threw out the figure of a man standing on the cargo just under the hatch. He pulled out a little bull's-eye lamp from his pocket, and lighted it, and carefully extinguished the match. The long, misty beam of the magnified flame swept the interior like the revolving spoke of a wheel, as the man slowly turned the lens about in a critical search of the place, himself being in darkness. The line of light broke in on the casks behind which I crouched, and left me in deep shadow, unperceived. After some minutes of this sort of examination, the man came a little way forward and crouched down upon a bale, or something of the sort, directly abreast of the casks, through whose cant lines I was peering. He opened the lamp and placed it beside him. The light was then full upon his figure. He might have been an officer of the ship for all I knew. His dress was not distinguishable, but I had his face very plain in my sight. He was extremely pale. His nose was long and aquiline. He wore mustaches, whiskers, and a short beard, black but well streaked with gray. His eyebrows were bushy and dark, his eyes were black, and the reflected lamp light shot in gleams from them, like to that level-spoked radiance with which he had swept this lazarette. His hair was unusually long even for that age of the fashion. And his being without a hat made me guess he was not from the deck, though I never doubted that he was one of the ship's company. When he opened the bull's-eye lamp and put it down, he drew something out of his pocket, which glittered in his hand. I strained my sight, yet should not have managed to make out what he grasped, but for his holding it close to the light, I then saw that it was a small circular brass box, a kind of little metal cylinder, from whose side fell a length of black line, just as tape draws out of a yard measure. He talked to himself, with the sort of wild, scowling grin upon his face, whilst he inspected his brass box and little length of line. He then shut the lamp and flashed it upon what I saw was a medium-sized barrel, such perhaps as a brewer would call a four-and-a-half gallon cask. It rested on its bilge, after the manner in which the casks behind which I lay hidden were stowed. I now saw him pull a spile or spike of wood out of the head of the barrel, and insert the end of the black line attached to the small brass piece in the orifice. This done, he fitted a key to the brass box and wound it up. He may have taken twenty turns with the key, but the lazarette was so quiet that I could distinctly hear the harsh grit of the mechanism as it was revolved. All the while he was thus employed, he preserved his scowling smile and whispered to himself. After he had wound up the piece of clockwork, he placed it on the bale where his lamp had stood, and taking the light made for the hatchway, under which he came to a stand whilst he extinguished the bullseye. I then heard him replace the hatch, and knew he was gone. The arrangement he had wound up ticked with the noise of a Dutch clock. I had but little brains in those days, as I have told you, and in sad truth I am not overloaded with that particular sort of cargo at this hour, but I was not such a fool as not to be able to guess what the man intended to do, and what that hollow, desperate ticking signified. Oh, my great God, I thought to myself, it is an infernal machine, and the ship will be blown up. My horror and fright went far beyond the paralyzing form. They ran a sort of madness into my blood and vitalized me into desperate, instant action. Utterly heedless now of hurting and wounding myself, I scrambled over the casks and directed by the noise of the ticking stretched forth my hand and grasped the brass machine. I fiercely tugged it, then feeling for the slow match as I guessed the line to be. I ran it through my fingers to make sure I had pulled the end out of the barrel. The murderous thing ticked in my hand with the energy of a hotly revolved capstan. Whilst I stood, breathing short, considering what I should do, whilst the perspiration soaked through my clothes as though a bucket of oil had been upset over me. Heavens, the horror of standing in that black lazarette, with an infernal machine ticking in my hands and a large barrel of gunpowder, as I easily guessed, within reach of a kick of my foot. I trembled in every limb and sweated at every pore and seemed to want brains enough to tell me what ought next to be done. How long I thus stood, irresolute, I don't know, still clutching the hoarsely ticking piece of clockwork. I crawled in the direction in which I supposed lay the casks behind which I had hidden. I had scarcely advanced half a dozen feet when the mechanism snapped in my fingers. A bright flash, like to the leap of a flame in the plan of a flint musket, irradiated the lazarette. The match was kindled and burnt freely. The first eating spark was but small. I extinguished the fiery glow between my thumb and forefinger, squeezing it in my terror with the power of the human jaw. The ticking ceased. The murderous thing lay silent and black in my hand. I waited for some minutes to recover myself and then made up my mind to get out of the lazarette and go on deck, and tell the people that there was a barrel of gunpowder in the after-hold, and that I had saved the ship from having her side or stern blown out. I pocketed the brass box and match, but it took me above half an hour to get out of the infernal hole. I fell into crevices, went sprawling over pointed edges, and twice came very near to breaking my leg. Happily I was tall, and when I stood on the upper tier of cargo I could feel the deck above me, and once, whilst thus groping, I touched the edge of the hatchway, thrust up the cover, and got out. I walked straight down the corridor, which was sewn with passengers' boots, mounted the wide staircase, and gained the quarter-deck. I reeled and nearly fell, so intoxicating was the effect of the gushing draught of sweet, fresh night wind after the stagnant, cheesy atmosphere of the lazarette. A bull's eye shone on the face of a clock under the break of the poop. The hour was twenty minutes after two. Nothing stirred on the main deck and waste. The forward part of the ship was hidden in blackness. She was sailing on a level keel before the wind, and the pallid spaces of her canvas soared to the trucks, wand as the delicate curls and shreds of vapor which floated under the bright stars. I ascended a flight of steps which led to the poop, and saw the shadowy figures of two midshipmen walking on one side of the deck, whilst on the other side, abreast of the mizzen rigging, stood a third person, I guessed by his being alone that he was the officer of the watch, and stepped over to him. He drew himself erect as I approached, and sang out, Hello, who the devil are you? I'm just out of your lazarette, said I, where I've saved this ship from having her stern blown out by an infernal machine. He bent his head forward and stared into my face. But it was too dark for him to make anything of me. I reckoned he was the second mate. His outline against the stars defined a square, bullet-headed, thick-necked man. On a sudden he bawled out to the two midshipmen, who had come to a stand on the other side of the skylight. Mr. Freeling, jump below and call the captain. Make him to come on deck at once, young gentleman. The midshipman rushed into the cutty. What's this yarn about blowing out the ship's stern, continued the second mate, as I rightly took him to be. I related my story as straightforwardly as my command of words permitted. I told him that I had wanted to get to Australia, that I was too poor to pay my passage, that I had been unable to find employment on board ship, that I had hidden myself in the lazarette of the huntress, and that whilst there, and within the past hour, I had seen a man fit a slow match into what I reckoned was a barrel of gunpowder, and disappear after setting his infernal machine a-going. And thus speaking, I pulled the machine out of my pocket and put it into his hand. At this moment the captain arrived on deck. He was a tall man, with a very deep voice, slow, cool, and deliberate in manner and speech. What's the matter, he inquired, and instantly added, Who is this man? The second mate gave him my story almost as I had delivered. The captain listened in silence, took the infernal machine, stepped to the skylight under which a lamp was dimly burning, and examined the piece of mechanism. His manner of handling it, by some mean spraying the trigger, which struck the flint, and there flashed out a little sun-bright flame that fired the match. I jumped to his side and squeezed the fire out between my thumb and forefinger as before. The captain told the two midshipmen to rouse up the chief mate and send the boat swain carpenter aft. Let there be no noise, said he to the second mate. We want no panic aboard us. Describe the man, said he, addressing me, whom you saw fitting this apparatus to the barrel. I did so. Do you recognize the person by this lad's description? said the captain to the second mate. The second mate answered that he knew no one on board who answered to the likeness I had drawn. Gentlemen, I swear he's in the ship, I cried, and described him again as I had seen him when the open bull's eye allowed the light to stream fair upon his face. But now the arrival of the chief officer, the boat swain, and the carpenter occasioned some bustle. My story was hastily retold. The carpenter fetched a lantern, and the whole group examined the infernal machine by the clear light. There's no question as to the object of this piece of clockwork, sir, said the chief officer. None exclaimed the captain. It flashed a few minutes ago in my hand. The thing seems alive. Softly now. The passengers mustn't hear of this. There must be no panic. Take the boat swain and carpenter along with you, Mr. Morritt, into the lazarette. But mind your fire. And he then told them where the barrel was stowed, as I had described it. The three men left the poop. The captain now examined me afresh. He showed no temper whatever at my having hidden myself on board his ship. All his questions concerned the appearance of the man who had adjusted the machine, how he had gone to work, what he had said when he talked to himself. But this question I could not answer. When he had ended his inquiries, he sent for the chief steward, to whom he related what had happened. And then asked him if there was such a person in the ship, as I had described. The man answered there was. What's his name? He's booked as John Howland, sir. He's a steerage passenger. His cabin's number two on the starboard side. His meals are taken to him into his cabin. And I don't think he's ever been out of it since he came aboard. Go and see if he's in his cabin, said the captain. As the steward left the poop, the chief mate, the boatswain, and carpenter returned. It's as the young man states, sir, said Mr. Morit. There's a barrel of gunpowder stowed where he says it is, with a hole in the head ready to receive the end of a fuse. Presently clear it out and get it stowed away in the magazine, said the captain calmly. This has been a narrow escape. Carpenter, go forward and bring a set of irons along. Is there only one barrel of gunpowder below, do you say, Mr. Morit? No more, sir. How could such a thing find its way into the lazarette, said the captain, dressing the second mate? God alone knows, burst out the other. It'll have come aboard masked in some way, and it deceived me. Unless there's the hand of a lumper in the job. Does he know no more about it than what he says? He cried, rounding upon me. At this moment the steward came rushing from the companion way, and said to the captain in a trembling voice, The man lies dead in his bunks, sir, with his throat horribly cut. Come you along with us, said the captain, addressing me, and the whole of us, saving the carpenter and second mate, went below. We walked along the corridor, obedient to the captain's whispered injunction to tread lightly and make no noise. The midnight lantern faintly illuminated the length of the long after-passage. The steward conducted us to a cabin that was almost right aft, and threw open the door. A bracket lamp filled the interior with light. There were two bunks under the porthole, and in the lower bunk lay the figure of the man I had beheld in the lazarette. His throat was terribly gashed, and his right hand still grasped the razor, with which the wound had been inflicted. Is that the man, said the captain? That's the man, I answered, trembling from head to foot, and sick and faint with the horror of the sight. Steward, fetch the doctor, said the captain, and tell the carpenter we shan't want any irons here. The narrative of my tragic experience may be completed by the transcription of two newspaper accounts which I preserve pasted in a commonplace book. The first is from the Sydney Morning Herald. After telling about the arrival of the huntress and the disembarkation of his excellency and suite, the writer proceeds thus. When the ship was five days out from the Thames, an extraordinary incident occurred. A young man named William Peplow, a stowaway whilst hidden in the lazarette of the vessel, saw a man enter the place in which he was hiding, and attach a slow match and an infernal machine to a barrel of gunpowder stored amid ships of the lazarette and from what we can gather on top of the cargo. When the man left the hold, young Peplow heroically withdrew the match from the powder and carried the machine on deck. The youth described the man who proved to be a second-class passenger, who had embarked under the name of John Howland. When the villain's cabin was entered, he was found lying in his bunk dead, with his severe wound in his throat inflicted by his own hand. No reason is assigned for this dastardly attempt to destroy a valuable ship and cargo in a company of souls numbering two hundred and ten, though there seems little reason to doubt that the man was mad. It is certain that but for the fortunate circumstance of young Peplow lying hidden in the lazarette, the ship's stern or side would have been blown out, and she must have gone down like a stone, carrying all hands with her. On the passengers in due course being apprised of their narrow escape, a purse of a hundred guineas was subscribed and presented by his excellency to young Peplow. The captain granted him a free passage and provided him with a comfortable outfit from the ship's slop chest. It is also understood that some situation under government has been promised to Mr. William Peplow in consideration of the extraordinary service rendered on this memorable occasion. My next quotation is from the pages of the nautical magazine, dated two years subsequent to the publication of the above in the Australian paper. A bottle was picked up in March last upon the beach of Tersera, one of the Azores, containing a paper bearing a narrative which, unless it be a hoax, seems to throw some light on the mysterious affair of the Huntress, for the particulars of which we refer our readers to our volume of last year. The paper, as transmitted by the British consul, is as follows. Ship Huntress, at sea, such and such a date, 1853. I, who am known on board this vessel, as John Howland, am the writer of this document. Twenty years ago I was unjustly sentenced to a term of transportation across seas, and my treatment at Norfolk Island was such that I vowed, by the God who made me to be revenged on the man who, acting on the representation of his creatures, had caused me to be sent from Hobart Town to that hellish, penal settlement. That man, with his wife and children, attended by a sweet, is a passenger in this ship, and I have concerted my plan to dispatch him, and those who may be dear to him, to that devil to whom the wretch consigned my soul, when he ordered me to be sent as a further punishment to Norfolk Island. The destruction of this ship is ensured, nothing can avert it. The barrel of gunpowder was stowed by well-bribed hands in the East India Docks in the Lazarette, to which part of the hold-access is easy by means of a small trap-door. I am writing this three-quarters of an hour before I proceed to the execution of my scheme, and the realization of my dream of vengeance. When I have completed this document I will place it in a bottle, which I shall carefully cork and seal, and cast into the sea through my cabin-portal. I am sorry for the many who must suffer because of the sins of one, but that one must perish, and immediately, in which hope, craving that, when this paper is found, it may be transmitted to the authorities at home, so that the fate of my bitter enemy may be known. I subscribe myself. Israel, Thomas Wilkinson. X Convict, Antiquitive Leave, Man.