that unconstitutional band of gens--how I was introduced to the atd'-armes created for the direct pur- tention of a magistrate, and recordposes of tyranny, and held up to the ed in the diurnal page of the newsindignation of al! England by the paper-all this must be left to other weekly eloquence of the Despatch historians to narrate. CHAP. V. WHAT STORY IT WAS THAT HUMPY HARLOW TOLD AT JACK GINGER'S. At three o'clock on the day after the dinner, Antony Harrison and I found ourselves eating bread and cheese-part of the cheese-at Jack Ginger's. We recapitulated the events of the preceding evening, and expressed ourselves highly gratified with the entertainment. Most of the good things we had said were revived, served up again, and laughed at once more. We were perfectly satisfied with the parts which we had respectively played, and talked ourselves into excessive good humour. All on a sudden, Jack Ginger's countenance clouded. He was evidently puzzled; and sat for a moment in thoughtful silence. We asked him, with Oriental simplicity of sense," Why art thou troubled?" and till a moment he answered "The story begins with Humphries told me," said Bob. "And," proceeded Joe, " for our lives we cannot recollect what it was." "Wonderful!" we all exclaimed. "How inscrutable are the movements of the human mind!" And we proceeded to reflect on the frailty of our memories, moralizing in a strain that would have done honour to Dr Johnson. "What was the story which Humpy Harlow told us about eleven o'clock last night, just as Bob Burke was teeming the last jug ?" "It began," said I, "with Humphries told me.' "It did," said Antony Harrison, cutting a deep incision into the cheese. "I know it did," said Jack Ginger; "but what was it that Humphries had told him? I cannot recollect it if I was to be made Lord Chancellor." Antony Harrison and I mused in silence, and racked our brains, but to no purpose. On the tablet of our memories no trace had been engraved, and the tale of Humphries, as reported by Harlow, was as if it were not, so far as we were concerned. While we were in this perplexity, Joe Macgillicuddy and Bob Burke entered the room. "We have been just taking a hair of the same dog," said Joe. "It was a pleasant party we had last night. Do you know what Bob and I have been talking of for the last half hour?" We professed our inability to conjecture. "Why, then," continued Joe," it was about the story that Harlow told last night." "Perhaps," said I, " Tom Meggot may recollect it." Idle hope! dispersed to the winds almost as soon as it was formed. For the words had scarcely passed "the bulwark of my teeth," when Tom appeared, looking excessively bloodshot in the eye. On enquiry, it turned out that he, like the rest of us, remembered only the cabalistic words which introduced the tale, but of the tale itself, nothing. Tom had been educated in Edinburgh, and was strongly attached to what he calls metapheesicks; and, accordingly, after rubbing his forehead, he exclaimed— "This is a psychological curiosity, which deserves to be developed. I happen to have half a sovereign about me," (an assertion, which, I may remark, in passing, excited considerable surprise in his audience,) "and I'll ask Harlow to dine with me at the Rainbow. I'll get the story out of the humpy rascal-and no mistake." We acquiesced in the propriety of this proceeding; and Antony Harrison, observing that he happened by chance to be disengaged, hooked himself on Tom, who seemed to have a sort of national antipathy to such a ceremony, with a talent and alacrity that proved him to be a veteran warrior, or what, in common parlance, is called an old soldier. Tom succeeded in getting Harlow to dinner, and Harrison succeeded in making him pay the bill, to the great relief of Meggot's halfsovereign, and they parted at an early hour in the morning. The two Irishmen and myself were at Ginger's shortly after breakfast; we had been part occupied in tossing halfpence to decide which of us was to send out for ale, when-Harrison and Meggot appeared. There was conscious confusion written in their countenances. "Did Humpy Harlow tell you that story?" we all exclaimed at once. "It cannot be denied that he did," said Meggot. 66 Precisely as the clock struck eleven, he commenced with Humphries told me "Well-and what then?" "Why, there it is," said Antony Harrison, “may I be drummed out if I can recollect another word." "Nor I," said Meggot. The strangeness of this singular adventure made a deep impression on us all. We were sunk in silence for some minutes, during which Jerry Gallagher made his appearance with the ale, which I omitted to mention had been lost by Joe Macgillicuddy. We sipped that British beverage, much abstracted in deep thought. The thing appeared to us perfectly inscrutable. At last I said "This never will do—we cannot exist much longer in this atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty. We must have it out of Harlow to-night, or there is an end of all the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and assent. "I have credit," said, I, "at the widow's, in St Martin's Lane. Suppose we all meet there to-night, and get Harlow there if we can ?" "That I can do," said Antony Harrison, "for I quartered myself to dine with him to-day, as I saw him home, poor little fellow, last night. I promise that he figures at the widow's to-night at nine o'clock." So we separated. At nine every man of the party was in St Martin's Lane, seated in the little back parlour; and Harrison was as good as his word, for he brought Harlow with him. He ordered a sumptuous supper of mutton kidneys, interspersed with sausages, and set to. At eleven o'clock precisely, the eye of Harlow brightened, and putting his pipe down, he commenced with a shrill voice Humphries told me ". Aye," said we all, with one accord, "here it is-now we shall have it-take care of it this time." "What do you mean?" said Hum py Harlow, performing that feat, which by the illustrious Mr John Reeve is called "flaring up." "Nothing," we replied, "nothing, but we are anxious to hear that story." "I understand you," said our broken-backed friend. "I now recollect that I did tell it once or so before in your company, but I shall not be a butt any longer for you or any body else." "Don't be in a passion, Humpy," said Jack Ginger. Sir," replied Harlow, "I hate nicknames-it is a mark of a low mind to use them-and as I see I am brought here only to be insulted, I shall not trouble you any longer with my company." Saying this, the little man seized his hat and umbrella, and strode out of the room. "His back is up," said Joe Macgillicuddy, "and there's no use of trying to get it down. I am sorry he is gone, because I should have made him pay for another round." But he was gone, not to return again—and the story remains unknown. Yea, as undiscoverable as the hieroglyphical writings of the ancient Egyptians. It exists, to be sure, in the breast of Harlow; but there it is buried, never to emerge into the light of day. It is lost to the world and means of recovering it, there, in my opinion, exist none. The world must go on without it, and states and empires must continue to flourish and to fade without the knowledge of what it was that Humphries told Harlow. Such is the inevitable course of events. For my part, I shall be satisfied with what I have done in drawing up this accurate and authentic narrative, if I can seriously impress on the minds of my readers the perishable nature of mundane affairs-if I can make them reflect that memory itself, the noblest, perhaps the characteristic, quality of the human mind, will decay, even while other faculties exist and that in the words of a celebrated Lord of Trade and Plantations, of the name of John Locke, "we may be like the tombs to which we are hastening, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the imagery is defaced, and the inscription is blotted out for ever!" THE CRUISE OF THE MIDGE. CHAPTER II. "Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field."—Othello. WHEN I came to myself I was sitting in the small muddy path through which our antagonists had been driven. About a fathom from me, partly hid by the mangrove bushes, lay the dead body of one of the white crew of the polacre. He had fallen across a stout branch, that shot out horizontally from one of the trees at a height of about a foot from the ground, so that, while his feet and legs rested on the soft black alluvial soil on one side of it, his head and relaxed arms hung down on the other. He was dressed in the striped shirt already mentioned, largely open at the breast, and wide white fisherman's drawers, that reached to the knee, made of some strong cotton stuff of the same fabric as the India salampore, so that the garment looked like a Greek kilt. It was fastened at the waist by a red silk sash, one end of which hung down over the branch across which he lay, apparently saturated and heavy with black blood, that gave it the appearance of a large purple tassel. His collapsed loins, where he was doubled over the branch, looked as thin and attenuated as if he had been shot in two, and his prominent chest and lower extremities merely connected by his clothing. His feet and legs, as well as his arms, were bare-his shirtsleeves extending only three inches below his shoulder; and it was a fearful sight to look on the death-blue colour of the muscles, which no longer stood out in well-defined and high relief, but had fallen and assumed the rounded appearance of a woman's limbs. The crown of his head touched the ground, resting on his long black hair, that had been worn turned up into a knot, but was now spread out in a rich tress, a foot beyond him. He had ear-rings in his ears, and a broad gold crucifix tied round his neck by a cord of spun hair-Alas for her whose raven locks composed the strands of it! His mouth was open, but his eyes were VOL. XXXV. No. CCXX. closed as if he slept; and a small coal black tuft of hair on his chin, under his nether lip, startled one, from its conspicuousness in contrast with the deathly pallor of his face. He was a very handsome youth, yet the features inverted, as his head hung down, assumed from this circumstance an expression so unusual, yet so soft and so touchingly melancholy, that although I had often looked on death before, even in my own miserable plight I could not help noticing it, and being moved by it. There was no wound that I could see, but thick black gouts were slowly trickling from the white fresh splintered end of the branch that had been split off in the rush, across which he lay; but this was only noticeable at the splinter-mark, the sluggish stream being invisible, while it crept from his body along the dark green bark of the limb of the mangrove-tree. A small pyramid had already been formed on the ground, directly below the end of the branch, by the dropping of the coagulating blood. The whole scene was pervaded by the faint mysterious light of the subdued sunbeams, as they struggled through the screen of motionless leaves, above where the dead corse slept in the deep cold shadow, that to the eye of one suddenly withdrawn from the glare of the tropical noontide, appeared to approach absolute darkness; still a soft green ray, or pensil, like moonlight piercing the thick woven leaves of a summer arbour, fell on and floated over the face and one of the naked arms, until the still features appeared to become radiant of themselves-as if they had been blanched by it into the self-luminous whiteness of fresh hewn alabaster. It was in truth a most piteous sight, and as the image of my aged parent rose up, in my extremity, before my mind's eye at the moment, I held up my feeble hands to heaven, and prayed fervently unto the Al 2 H mighty to bless her declining years, and, if that my race were indeed run, and that now in very truth my place was to know me no more, that my sins might, for Christ's sake, be forgiven me. "Alas, alas!" thought I, bowed down by intense suffering to the very dust, " may he too not have had a mother?" For a mi nute, as I slowly recovered from the stunning effects of the shot, I sat ob serving all this, and pressing the torn skin of my forehead to my temples with one hand, whilst with the other I kept clearing away the blood as it flowed into my eyes; but by the time I had perfectly recovered my recollection, my sympathy vanished, all my thoughts became absorbed, and my energies, small as they were at the time, excited in almost a supernatural degree by the actual approach of a hideous, and, in my helpless condition, probably the most appalling danger that a human being could be threatened with. For a second or two I had noticed that the branch across which the dead Spaniard lay, was slightly moved now and then, and that some object was advancing from beneath it, out of the thicket beyond. I was not long left in doubt, for one of the noble blood-hounds now dragged himself into the light, and wriggled from amongst the mangroves to within a fathom of me. At first when he struggled from beneath his mas ter's body, he began to lick his face and hands, and then threw his head back with a loud whine, in expectation of some acknowledgment. Alas! none came; and after another vain attempt, pain seemed to make the creature furious, and he seized the arm next me by the wrist, making the dead bones crackle between his teeth in his agony. All at once he began to yell and bark, although at intervals he turned his fierce eyes on me, and then swung his head violently back, and again howled most piteously. All this time I could hear the loud shouting of our people in the distance, and a scattering shot now and then, but the work nearer home was more than sufficient to occupy me, for the dog, after another moment of comparative repose, suddenly raised himself on his fore- paws, and for the first time I could see that he had been shot through the spine, near the flank, so that his two hindlegs were utterly powerless, and trailing on the ground. He scrambled on a foot or two further towards me-again all was still, and he lay quiet with his nose resting on the ground, as if he had been watching his prey; but the next moment pain appeared suddenly to overcome him again, and once more he stretched out his fore-paws straight before him, and throwing his head back, he set up the most infernal howl, that ear ever tingled to. "Merciful powers! can he mean to attack me?" thought I, as the fierce creature left the dead body he appeared to be watching, and reared himself on his fore-legs, with open mouth, and tongue hanging out, uttered the most fearful cries, between a fierce bark and a howl, and again attempted to drag himself towards me. I made a desperate effort to rise, but could not; and in the prospect of so dreadful a death, I shouted for aid, as loud as my feebleness would let me. Once more suffering seemed to overcome the creature's ferocity, and he stopped and yelled again. Although I was still in some degree bewildered, and almost blinded from the blood that continued to flow down my forehead, and the flap of skin that covered my left eye, so as effectually to seal it, acting as a deadlight as it were; still, for dear life, I grasped my cutlass-alas, the blade was broken short off by the hilt! My left hand then mechanically clutched my belt where my pistol hung-" Ah, it is there, any how." I instantly changed the broken blade into my other hand, and with the coolness of despair cocked the pistol in my right, and lay still, awaiting the approach of my fierce antagonist, under the tremendous persuasion that my fate was inevitable if I missed him. As I looked in breathless dread, he suddenly gave a scrambling wallop towards me-" I am done for-God have mercy on me, and receive my soul!" Another scramble. I felt his hissing hot breath; and the foam that he champed from his fangs, as he tossed his head from side to side in a paroxysm of rage and pain, fell like snow-flakes over my face. "Now is the time!" I thrust the pistol into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. Almighty powers! it flashed in the pan! With my remaining strength I endeavoured to thrust it down his throat, as he coughed up blood and froth into my face; he shook his head, clutched the weapon in his teeth, and then threw it from him, as if in disappointment that it had not been part and portion of his enemy, and again made a snap at my shoulder. I struck at him with my broken cutlass-he seemed not to feel the blow -and throwing myself back as far as I could, I shrieked in my extremity to that God whom I had so often slighted and forgotten, for mercy to my miserable soul. Crack-a bullet whizzed past me. The dog gave a loud, long howl, gradually sinking into a low murmur as his feet slid from under him, and his head lay open-jawed on the mud-a quivering kick of his feet-and he was dead in reality as I was figuratively from fear. "Hillo," quoth old Clinker, the master-at-arms, who had come up from the boats, "who is this fighting with beasts at Ephesus, eh?" The moment he recognised me, the poor fellow made his apology, although, Heaven knows, none was required. "Beg pardon, sir; I little thought it was you, Mr Brail, who was so near being worried by that vile beast." I breathed again. The bullet that had so nearly proved my quietus at the commencement of the action, had struck me on the right temple, and, glancing, had ran along my whole forehead, ploughing up the skin, as I once saw a fallow field torn by a thunderbolt, until it reached the left eye, where it detached a large flap of the skin, that, as already mentioned, hung down by a tag over my larboard daylight, fairly blinding me on that side. "Here, Quintin, and Mornington," said Clinker, to two of the people, who followed him," here, lend a hand to bring Mr Brail along, will ye?" They raised me on my legs, and gave me a mouthful of grog from a canteen, and we proceeded, following the voices of our shipmates. Comforted by the cordial, I found my strength return in some measure; and when I was once satisfied that no bones were broken, that I was in fact only and simply kilt, my spirits revived, and before we overtook our allies, having bathed my wound with rum, and bound it with my handkerchief, I was quite able to walk, and talk, and in a certain degree to take care of myself. The path continued for about half a mile farther, and in all that route we no longer heard or saw any indications of our comrades. "Why, there is no use in all this," said old Clinker; "they must have taken another direction, so we had better return, and wait the young flood to enable us to back out of the scrape." I considered this the wisest advice that could be given, and right-aboutface was the word, when a scapegrace of a marine, who had straggled from the main body, suddenly came running at the top of his speed from the advance, and sung out," Lord, sir, and messmates, come here, come here!" "Why, what do you see?" responded Clinker. "Why, sir, here is the queerest sight I ever see'd in all my born days." "What is it, man? what is it?" exclaimed one of the old quartermasters of the ship, as we bowled along, following the man; but the fellow gave no answer, but skipped on before us like a dancing-master. Presently we arrived at an open space, situated apparently at the head of the tortuous mangrove-fringed creek that we had landed in. The channel of it was dry, all above the crook, about fifty yards from us, where it bent towards the east, and full of black slimy mud, overarched entirely by the black snake-like roots and branches of the mangroves, whose upper branches, as usual, supported a thick matted canopy of green leaves, while all below was bare naked convolutions of green weather-stained stems and branches. The muddy canal seemed to end at this spot, under the dark green shade of the bushes. In its obscene channel, hauled close up to the head of the creek, lay a large Eboe canoe, about fifty feet long, the bottom hollowed out of one single tree, but the top-sides were built of some kind of hardwood plank, so as to raise the gunwale about a foot above the ledge of the original vessel. The two bamboo masts were unshipped, and stowed amidships on the thwarts, and |