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coolly rang the sonnette, and desired the slave who answered it to inform Señora Arguellas that he was about to leave, and wished to see her.

"The brave Englishman is about to place himself under the protection of your aunt's petticoats, Alphonso!" shouted Dupont, with triumphant mockery.

"I almost doubt whether Mr. Starkey is an Englishman," exclaimed Mr. Desmond, who, as well as his two friends, was getting pretty much incensed; "but, at all events, as my father and mother were born and raised in the old country, if you presume to insinuate that—”

Señora Arguellas at this moment approached, and the irate American with some difficulty restrained himself. The lady appeared surprised at the strange aspect of the company she had so lately left. She, however, at the request of the captain, instantly led the way into the house, leaving the rest of her visitors, as the French say, plantés là.

apeak, was brought home; the bows of the ship fell slowly off, and we were in a few moments running before the wind, though but a faint one, for Point Morant.

No one could be many hours on board the Neptune without being fully satisfied that, however deficient in dueling courage her captain might be, he was a thorough seaman, and that his crew-about a dozen of as fine fellows as I have ever seen-were under the most perfect discipline and command. The service of the vessel was carried on as noiselessly and regularly as on board a ship of war; and a sense of confidence, that should a tempest or other sea-peril overtake us, every reliance might be placed in the professional skill and energy of Captain Starkey, was soon openly or tacitly acknowledged by all on board. The weather throughout happily continued fine, but the wind was light and variable, so that for several days after we had sighted the blue mountains of Jamaica, we scarcely appeared sensibly to diminish the distance between them and us. At last the breeze again blew steadily from the northwest, and we gradually neared Point Morant. passed it, and opened up the bay at about two o'clock in the morning, when the voyage might be said to be over. This was a great relief to the cabin-passengers-far beyond the ordinary pleasure to land-folk of escaping from the tedium of confinement on shipboard. There was a con

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Ten minutes afterward we were informed that Captain Starkey had left the house, after impressing upon Señora Arguellas that the Neptune would sail the next morning precisely at nine o'clock. A renewed torrent of rage, contempt, and scorn broke forth at this announcement, and a duel at one time seemed inevitable between Lieutenant Arguellas and Mr. Desmond, the lastnamed gentleman manifesting great anxiety to shoot somebody or other in vindication of his Anglo-Saxon lineage. This, however, was over-straint in the behavior of every body that was ruled, and the party broke up in angry disorder. We were all on board by the appointed time on the following morning. Captain Starkey received us with civil indifference, and I noticed that the elaborate sneers which sat upon the countenances of Dupont and the lieutenant did not appear in the slightest degree to ruffle or affect him; but the averted eye and scornful air of Donna Antonia as she passed with Señora Arguellas toward the cabin, drawing her mantilla tightly round her as she swept by, as if so I perhaps wrongfully interpreted the action-it would be soiled by contact with a poltroon, visibly touched him-only, however, for a few brief moments. The expression of pain quickly vanished, and his countenance was as cold and stern as before. There was, albeit, it was soon found, a limit to this, it seemed, contemptuous forbearance. Dupont, approaching him, gave his thought audible expression, exclaiming, loud enough for several of the crew to hear, and looking steadily in the captain's face: Lache!" He would have turned away, but was arrested by a gripe of steel. "Ecoutez, monsieur," said Captain Starkey: “individually, I hold for nothing whatever you may say; but I am captain and king in this ship, and I will permit no one to beard me before the crew, and thereby lessen my authority over them. Do you presume again to do so, and I will put you in solitary confinement, perhaps in irons, till we arrive at Jamaica." He then threw off his startled auditor, and walked forward. The passengers, colored as well as white, were all on board; the anchor, already

exceedingly unpleasant. The captain presided at table with freezing civility; the conversation, if such it could be called, was usually restricted to monosyllables; and we were all very heartily glad that we had eaten our last dinner in the Neptune. When we doubled Point Morant, all the passengers except myself were in bed, and a quarter of an hour afterward Captain Starkey went below, and was soon busy, I understood, with papers in his cabin. For my part I was too excited for sleep, and I continued to pace the deck fore and aft with Hawkins, the first-mate, whose watch it was, eagerly observant of the lights on the well-known shore, that I had left so many months before with but faint hopes of ever seeing it again. As I thus gazed landward, a bright gleam, as of crimson moonlight, shot across the dark sea, and turning quickly round, I saw that it was caused by a tall jet of flame shooting up from the main hatchway, which two seamen, for some purpose or other, had at the moment partially opened. In my still weak state, the terror of the sight-for the recollection of the barrels of powder on board flashed instantly across my mind—for several moments completely stunned me, and but that I caught instinctively at the rattlings, I should have fallen prostrate on the deck. A wild outcry of “ Fire! fire!"-the most fearful cry that can be heard at sea-mingled with and heightened the dizzy ringing in my brain, and I was barely sufficiently conscious to discern, amid the runnings to and fro, and the incoherent exclamations of the crew, the sinewy, athletic figure of the captain leap up,

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As Donna Antonia, more dead than alive, was about to be lifted into the boat, a gush of flame burst up through the main hatchway with the roar of an explosion; a tumultuous cry burst from the frenzied passengers, and they jostled each other with frightful violence in their efforts to reach the gangway. Dupont forced his way through the lane of seamen with the energy of a madman, and pressed so suddenly upon Antonia that, but for the utmost exertion of the captain's Herculean strength, she must have been precipitated into the water.

as it were, from the companion-ladder to the | beneath their feet. Captain Starkey, aided by deck, and with his trumpet-voice command im- the four athletic seamen he had selected for the mediate silence, instantly followed by the order duty, hurled them fiercely back. "Back, back!" again to batten down the blazing hatchway. he shouted. "We must have funeral order here This, with his own assistance, was promptly--first the women and children, next the old men. effected, and then he disappeared down the fore- Hand Señora Arguellas along; next the young castle. The two or three minutes he was gone lady her daughter: quick!" -it could scarcely have been more than thatseemed interminable; and so completely did it appear to be recognized that our fate must depend upon his judgment and vigor, that not a word was spoken, nor a finger, I think, moved, till he reappeared, already scorched and blackened with the fire, and dragging up what seemed a dead body in his arms. He threw his burden on the deck, and passing swiftly to where Hawkins stood, said in a low, hurried whisper, but audible to me; "Run down and rouse the passengers, and bring my pistols from the cabin-locker. Quick! Eternity hangs on the loss of a moment." Then turning to the startled but attentive seamen, he said in a rapid but firm voice: "You well know, men, that I would not on any occasion or for any motive deceive you. Listen, then, attentively. Yon drunken brute-he is Lieutenant Arguellas' servant-has fired with his candle the spirits he was stealing, and the hold is a mass of fire which it is useless to waste one precious moment in attempting to extinguish."

A cry of rage and terror burst from the crew, and they sprang impulsively toward the boats, but the captain's authoritative voice at once arrested their steps. "Hear me out, will you? Hurry and confusion will destroy us all, but with courage and steadiness every soul on board may be saved before the flames can reach the powder. And remember," he added, as he took his pistols from Hawkins and cocked one of them, "that I will send a bullet after any man who disobeys me, and I seldom miss my aim. Now, then, to your work-steadily, and with a will!"

It was marvelous to observe the influence his bold, confident, and commanding bearing and words had upon the men. The panic-terror that had seized them gave place to energetic resolution, and in an incredibly short space of time the boats were in the water. "Well done, my fine fellows! There is plenty of time, I again repeat. Four of you"-and he named them-" remain with me. Three others jump into each of the large boats, two into the small one, and bring them round to the landward side of the ship. A rush would swamp the boats, and we shall be able to keep only one gangway clear."

The passengers were by this time rushing upon deck half-clad, and in a state of the wildest terror, for they all knew there was a large quantity of gunpowder on board. The instant the boats touched the starboard side of the bark, the men, white as well as colored, forced their way with frenzied eagerness before the women and children-careless, apparently, whom they sacrificed so that they might themselves leap to the shelter of the boats from the fiery volcano raging

"Back, unmanly dastard! back, dog!" roared Captain Starkey, terribly excited by the lady's danger; and a moment after, seizing Dupont fiercely by the collar, he added: "or if you will, look there but for a moment," and he pointed with his pistol-hand to the fins of several sharks plainly visible in the glaring light at but a few yards' distance from the ship. Men," he added, "let whoever presses forward out of his turn fall into the water."

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"Ay, ay, sir!" was the prompt mechanical response.

This terrible menace instantly restored order; the colored women and children were next embarked, and the boat appeared full.

"Pull off," was the order: enough for safety."

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A cry, faint as the wail of a child, arose in the boat. It was heard and understood.

"Stay one moment; pass along Señor Arguellas. Now, then, off with you, and be smart!"

The next boat was quickly loaded; the colored lads and men, all but one, and the three Americans, went in her.

"You are a noble fellow," said Mr. Desmond, pausing an instant, and catching at the captain's hand; "and I was but a fool to-"

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"Pass on," was the reply: there is no time to bandy compliments."

The order to shove off had passed the captain's lips when his glance chanced to light upon me, as I leaned, dumb with terror, just behind him against the vessel's bulwarks.

"Hold on a moment !" he cried. "Here is a youngster whose weight will not hurt you ;" and he fairly lifted me over, and dropped me gently into the boat, whispering as he did so: "Re member me, Ned, to thy father and mother should I not see them again.'

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There was now only the small boat, capable of safely containing but eight persons, and how, it was whispered among us-how, in addition to the two seamen already in her, can she take off Lieutenant Arguellas, M. Dupont, the remaining colored man, the four seamen, and Captain Starkey? They were, however, all speedily smbarked except the captain.

"Can she bear another?" he asked, and although his voice was firm as ever, his countenance, I noticed, was ashy pale, yet full as ever of unswerving resolution.

"We must, and will, sir, since it's you; but we are dangerously overcrowded now, especially with yon ugly customers swimming round us." "Stay one moment; I can not quit the ship while there's a living soul on board." He stepped hastily forward, and presently reappeared at the gangway with the still senseless body of the lieutenant's servant in his arms, and dropped it over the side into the boat. There was a cry of indignation, but it was of no avail. The boat's rope the next instant was cast into the water. "Now pull for your lives!" The oars, from the instinct of self-preservation, instantly fell into the water, and the boat sprang off. Captain Starkey, now that all except himself were clear of the burning ship, gazed eagerly with eyes shaded with his hand in the direction of the shore. Presently he hailed the headmost boat. "We must have been seen from the shore long ago, and pilot-boats ought to be coming out, though I don't see any. If you meet one, bid him be smart: there may be a chance yet." All this scene, this long agony, which has taken me so many words to depict very imperfectly from my own recollection, and those of others, only lasted, I was afterward assured by Mr. Desmond, eight minutes from the embarkation of Señora Arguellas till the last boat left the ill-fated Neptune.

Never shall I forget the frightful sublimity of the spectacle presented by that flaming ship, the sole object, save ourselves, discernible amidst the vast and heaving darkness, if I may use the term, of the night and ocean, coupled as it was with the dreadful thought that the heroic man to whose firmness and presence of mind we all owed our safety was inevitably doomed to perish. We had not rowed more than a couple of hundred yards when the flames, leaping up every where through the deck, reached the rigging and the few sails set, presenting a complete outline of the bark and her tracery of masts and yards drawn in lines of fire! Captain Starkey, not to throw away the chance he spoke of, had gone out to the end of the bowsprit, having first let the jib and foresail go by the run, and was for a brief space safe from the flames; but what was this but a prolongation of the bitterness of death?

The boats continued to increase the distance between them and the blazing ship, amidst a dead silence broken only by the measured dip of the oars; and many an eye was turned with intense anxiety shoreward with the hope of descrying the expected pilot. At length a distinct hail and I felt my heart stop beating at the sound-was heard ahead, lustily responded to by the seamen's throats, and presently afterward a swiftly-propelled pilot-boat shot out of the thick darkness ahead, almost immediately followed by another.

"The Neptune, and that is Captain Starkey on the bowsprit !"

I sprang eagerly to my feet, and with all the force I could exert, shouted: "A hundred pounds for the first boat that reaches the ship!"

"That's young Mr. Mainwaring's face and voice!" exclaimed the foremost pilot. 66 'Hurra, then, for the prize!" and away both sped with eager vigor, but unaware certainly of the peril of the task. In a minute or so another shore-boat came up, but after asking a few questions, and seeing how matters stood, remained, and lightened us of a portion of our living cargoes. We were all three too deep in the water, the small boat perilously so.

Great God! the terrible suspense we all felt while this was going forward. I can scarcely bear, even now, to think about it. I shut my eyes, and listened with breathless, palpitating excitement for the explosion that should end all. It came !—at least I thought it did, and I sprang convulsively to my feet. So sensitive was my brain, partly no doubt from recent sickness as well as fright, that I had mistaken the sudden shout of the boats' crews for the dreaded catastrophe. The bowsprit, from the end of which a rope was dangling, was empty! and both pilots, made aware doubtless of the danger, were pulling with the eagerness of fear from the ship. The cheering among us was renewed again and again, during which I continued to gaze with arrested breath and fascinated stare at the flaming vessel and fleeing pilot-boats. Suddenly a pyramid of flame shot up from the hold of the ship, followed by a deafening roar. I fell, or was knocked down, I know not which; the boat rocked as if caught in a fierce eddy; next came the hiss and splash of numerous heavy bodies falling from a great height into the water; and then the blinding glare and stunning uproar were succeeded by a soundless silence and a thick darkness, in which no man could discern his neighbor. The stillness was broken by a loud, cheerful hail from one of the pilot-boats: we recognized the voice, and the simultaneous and ringing shout which burst from us assured the gallant seaman of our own safety, and how exultingly we all rejoiced in his. Half an hour afterward we were safely landed; and as the ship and cargo had been specially insured, the only ultimate evil result of this fearful passage in the lives of the passengers and crew of the Neptune was a heavy loss to the underwriters.

A piece of plate, at the suggestion of Mr. Desmond and his friends, was subscribed for and presented to Captain Starkey at a public dinner given at Kingston in his honor-a circumstance that many there will remember. In his speech on returning thanks for the compliment paid him, he explained his motive for resolutely declining to fight a duel with M. Dupont, half-a-dozen versions of which had got into the newspapers. "I was very early left an orphan," he said, "and was very tenderly reared by a maternal aunt,

"What ship is that?" cried a man standing in Mrs. -" (He mentioned a name with which the bows of the first boat

hundreds of newspaper readers in England must

hands.

be still familiar). "Her husband-as many here | had long been prepared with their offerings, which may be aware-fell in a duel in the second month almost, in every case, were the work of their own of wedlock. My aunt continued to live dejectedly on till I had passed my nineteenth year; We started on foot; it was genial frosty and so vivid an impression did the patient sorrow weather. At Oslebshausen, which is half-way, of her life make on me-so thoroughly did I we rested, and took a glass of wine. Then we learn to loathe and detest the barbarous practice continued our march, and at last caught sight of that consigned her to a premature grave, that it the windmill, which marks the entrance to the scarcely required the solemn promise she obtain- town. Breakfast was the first thing to be thought ed from me, as the last sigh trembled on her lips, of, so we went and breakfasted in a house situated to make me resolve never, under any circum-in a street called the "Bishop's Needle." Then stances, to fight a duel. As to my behavior we hunted about in various shops, and finally arduring the unfortunate conflagration of the Nep-rived, not a little laden, at the office of the Lestune, which my friend Mr. Desmond has spoken mona omnibus. Here we deposited our goods, of so flatteringly, I can only say that I did no and secured our places; after which, as we had more than my simple duty in the matter. Both a couple of hours before us, we repaired to Stehe and I belong to a maritime race, one of whose hely and Jansen's, the chief café of Bremen, to most peremptory maxims it is that the captain pass the time and read the papers. must be the last man to quit or give up his ship. Besides, I must have been the veriest dastard alive to have quailed in the presence of-of-that is, in the presence of-circumstances which--in point of fact that is-" Here Captain Starkey blushed and boggled sadly: he was evidently no orator; but whether it was the sly significance of Señor Arguellas' countenance, which just then happened to be turned toward him, or the glance he threw at the gallery where Señora Arguellas' grave placidity and Donna Antonia's bright eyes and blushing cheeks encountered him, that so completely put him out, I can not say; but he continued to stammer painfully, although the company cheered and laughed with great vehemence and uncommon good-humor, in order to give him time. He could not recover himself; and after floundering about through a few more unintelligible sentences sat down, evidently very hot and uncomfortable, though amidst a little hurricane of hearty cheers and hilarious laughter.

I have but a few more words to say. Captain Starkey has been long settled at the Havanna; and Donna Antonia has been just as long Mrs. Starkey. Three little Starkeys have to my knowledge already come to town, and the captain is altogether a rich and prosperous man; but though apparently permanently domiciled in a foreign country, he is, I am quite satisfied, as true an Englishman, and as loyal a subject of Queen Victoria, as when he threw the glass of wine in the Cuban creole's face. I don't know what has become of Dupont; and, to tell the truth, I don't much care. Lieutenant Arguellas has attained the rank of major: at least I suppose he must be the Major Arguellas officially reported to be slightly wounded in the late Lopez buccaneering affair. And I also am pretty well now, thank you!

CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY. CHRISTMAS-DAY came-presents were to be exchanged. My friend Albert B and I were deputed to go to Bremen to make purchases, the choice thereof being left to our discretion. This, be it understood, was for the behooft some of our gentlemen friends; the ladies

Toward dusk we reached Lesmona, and our constituents immediately selected, each according to his taste, the articles we had brought them. For my part, as I was that evening a guest at the house of my friend the pastor, I betook myself thither with the trifling gifts I had bought for his children. I was destined to receive in return presents from them and other members of his family. How they were exchanged, I shall presently relate. I begin at the beginning of the ceremony; for the celebration of Christmas-day is, indeed, a ceremony in most parts of Germany.

The pastor's house is, when you look at it in front, a long, low building, with a prodigiously high thatched roof. If you go to the gable, however, you will find that there are actually three stories in it, two being in the said roof. The middle of the ground floor is occupied by a large hall, which gives access to all the chambers, and has a branch leading to one end of the edifice. At this end there is a door, on passing by which, you find yourself in the place where the cows, pigs, and other animals are kept. When I speak of the other animals, I should except the storks, who, on their arrival in spring, from Egypt or elsewhere, find their usual basket-work habitations about the chimneys all ready to receive them. One would imagine, by the way, that they brought from their winter quarters something like the superstition of the old inhabitants of the Nile valley, so great is the worship of the Germans for these birds, and so enthusiastically is their arrival hailed. No one would ever dare to murder a stork. A similar protection is extended to nightingales. The consequense is, that, being unmolested, the "solemn bird of night" becomes very tame. In the suburbs of Hamburg are numerous villas, and there, in a friend's garden, I have passed and repassed under the bough where, within the reach of my arm, a nightingale was singing. He not only showed no fear, but, being of a vain character, as nightingales naturally are, he strained his little throat the more that he saw I listened to him.

But to return to the pastor's house. In the corner of the hall of which I have spoken, was the "Christmas Tree." Some of those who

It is our daily familiarity with Life, which obscures its wonders from us. We live, yet remem ber it not. Other wonders attract our attention, and excite our surprise; but this, the great won

little regarded. We have grown up alongside of Life, with Life within us and about us; and there is never any point in our existence. at which its phenomena arrest our curiosity and attention. The miracle is hid from us by familiarity, and we see it not.

read these sketches may have seen an engraving | compared with it. Life-the soul of the world, of Luther on a Christmas evening, his wife and but for which creation were not! children beside him. The tree represented in that engraving was the exact prototype of the one I now saw. It was of a species of fir, and on all its branches were fixed small wax-tapers. These, at the given hour, were lighted. Imme-der of the world, which includes all others, is diately, a procession of the village-school children entered, and placed themselves in order. Then the pastor appeared, and after a short prayer gave out a psalm. He conducted the music himself, and, as he had for some time been teaching the young people a little singing, it was much better than usual, more especially as there were no braying men to spoil it. The air was that brave old composition of the great reformer, Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (“A strong tower is our God"). Nothing nobler in psalmody exists. After another short prayer, and a few words by way of speech, sundry rewards and prizes were distributed. The greater part of these were the handiwork of the pastor's family. I refer, of course, to the useful articles of dress and other things, which domestic female hands know how to sew, and knit, and embroider. Many tracts were distributed. A blessing was pronounced, and the children withdrew.

It was now our turn. The family assembled in the saloon-a fine apartment, about thirty feet in length. A long table, covered with a white cloth, extended down the centre. At this every one had his place-I among the rest. But it was not for a repast. Each had previously entered and deposited his or her Christmas boxes at the part of the table assigned to those to whom they were offered. We all had thus a little heap. As the greatest secresy is preserved up to the moment of the general entry, we had all the pleasure of a surprise. The curiosity of the children, and also of those who were not children, as they examined their gifts was most amusing. I, for my part, received among other things the following:-Sundry articles got up by the family fingers; a little box, covered with beads, for holding lucifer-matches; a German toy, meant to be instructive; a long chain in beads, intended for the decoration of a pipe. This pipe was in sugar, and was accompanied by a note in verse. The note I still have, but the pipe melted away in the damp of winter. I never could ascertain to whom I was indebted for this gift.

A little later, evening worship was celebrated, and then we supped. Long that night, after I had laid my head on my pillow, was I kept awake by the thoughts raised by the kind, hearty, and genial character of those with whom I had passed the evening, and of the good, old-fashioned, hearty ceremony in which I had participated.

Many a merry Christmas to these my friends!

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Fancy the earth without Life!-its skeleton ribs of rock and mountain unclothed by verdure, without soil, without flesh! What a naked, desolate spectacle,—and how unlike the beautiful aspect of external nature in all lands! Nature, ever-varied and ever-changing-coming with the spring, and going to sleep with the winter-in constant rotation. The flower springs up, blooms, withers, and falls, returning to the earth from whence it sprung, leaving behind it the germs of future being; for nothing dies; not even Life, which only gives up one form to assume another. Organization is traveling in an unending circle.

The trees in summer put on their verdure; they blossom; their fruit ripens-falls; what the roots gathered up out of the earth returns to earth again; the leaves drop one by one, and decay, resolving themselves into new forms, to enter into other organizations; the sap flows back to the trunk; and the forest, wood, field, and brake compose themselves to their annual winter's sleep. In spring and summer the birds sang in the boughs, and tended their young brood; the whole animal kingdom rejoiced in their full bounding life; the sun shone warm, and nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter lays its cold chill upon this scene; but the same scene comes round again, and another spring recommences the same never-ending, still beginning" succession of vital changes. We learn to expect all this, and become so familiar with it, that it seldom occurs to us to reflect how much harmony and adaptation there is in the arrangement-how much of beauty and glory there is every where, above, around, and beneath us.

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But were it possible to conceive an intelligent being, abstracted from our humanity, endowed with the full possession of mind and reason, all at once set down on the earth's surface-how many objects of surpassing interest and wonder would at once force themselves on his attention The verdant earth, covered with its endless profusion of forms of vegetable life, from the delicate moss to the oak which survives the revolutions of centuries; the insect and animal kingdom, from the gnat which dances in the summer's sunbeams, up to the higher forms of sentient being: birds, beasts of endless diversity of form, instinct and color; and, above all, Man-“ Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye;"-these would, to such an intelligence, be a source of almost endless interest.

It is life which is the grand glory of the world

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