gle for life, you contrived to make your teeth nearly meet in the wrist of your adversary?"

The captain trembled excessively as this question was put to him; and with a few seconds' thought, answered in a tone of horror,-" Now that you recal it to my mind, I do remember such a fact."

The stranger heard the reply, and, after regarding its deliverer with the utmost scorn, he turned in silence to the president. Holding up to the view of all his powerful right arm, the previously ripped sleeve fell back, disclosing the enormous fascia of muscles, and he pointed to two semicircular scars on the fleshy part of the wrist. "These, gentlemen," cried he, "were the wounds made by the teeth of Captain Livingstone that night!—and foul fall the arm that could so slovenly have performed the duty of ridding the world of a tyrant. I it was who tried to take his worthless life, and nothing but the conscious guilt of a persecuting coward, conjuring up as his only foe the man he had most injured, could ever have confounded me with Mr. Ramsay."

"And do you dare to tell us this in a court of justice?" exclaimed the president, starting to his feet, and drawing his sword in common with his brother officers. "Provost marshal, secure the doors!-Beat the guard to arms! Who are you, sir, that thus prove yourself guilty of the worst of crimes?"

The muscular intruder answered only by a glance of scorn, and folding his arms upon his breast, stood quietly amid his mortal enemies, the very picture of confident defiance.

"Can no one tell me who this wretch is ?" demanded the president, looking round the court. A name was whispered at the furthest corner of the cabin-caught up repeated in a louder key-in louder still re-echoed—and then one thril. ling tone resounding from every deck in the ship announced to the startled president-"THE FLYING DUTCHMAN!"

"THE FLYING DUTCHMAN!" reiterated the president. "What! the chief of the mutineers? Seize him, Seize him, guard!" addressing the file of marines, who, with fixed bayonets and hasty yet measured pace, now showed the head of their glittering column as it entered the cabin door.

"It is as idle now to dispute about names," said the daring man thus hemmed in," as it is for you gallant of ficers, with forty armed men, to fear me who have no wea

pon. If I had not intended to surrender myself, I should hardly have ventured as much for an innocent man as I have this day. Marines, you will have little need for your bayonets, unless your superiors wish for the pleasure of seeing men slaughtered unresistingly. This only I wish to declare, that I was never able to prevail on Mr. Ramsay in any way to sanction our mutiny by deed or expression. The conversation reported by Pierson, as overheard between him and myself, was harmless on his side at least, and only parts of a very different whole, of which this is a more correct copy:" and he flung on the table a paper which contained the correct version as recorded in the eleventh chapter of the first volume. "All the allurements

I ever could hold out were unable for a moment to shake either his loyalty or honour. Now, then, having discharged my duty, I am ready for its reward."

CHAPTER XLIV.

46

For good intent can be mysterious too."

HEYWOOD.

THE last tramp of the guard, as they marched off The Flying Dutchman heavily ironed to the prison cells on the middle deck, had died away some seconds, before the equanimity of the court was sufficiently restored to enable them to decide on the course now rendered proper.

The first step was to exclude the public while they consulted as to the plan which ought to be adopted. This was accordingly done, and none having been left within the cabin but the members of the court themselves the whole bearings of the subject were earnestly debated.

But nature waited for no forms, whatever ceremonies art might impose on man for the subjection of his fellows. The feelings of the bosom seemed, regardless of all other consideration, to overleap every barrier. Within a few minutes after the closing of the court, the husband, the wife, the father, the prisoner to be tried, and those who, though unfettered, had gone through, if possible, a yet more afflicting trial, were all locked in each other's arms.

But comparatively slight was the suspense now in store for them. The two hours' debate, which deeply occupied the court-martial, slipped swiftly by in that absorbing reunion; and when at length the prisoner was again placed at the bar, the president arose and addressed him.

"After a long and most impartial investigation of the various circumstances connected with this trial, and a most deliberate consideration of the confession by the wretched being now in custody of the provost marshal, I am happy in being, as president, the organ of the court to inform you that they do not think it necessary to call upon you for any defence of the crime with which you stand charged, but at once to pronounce you in every particular not guilty. In so doing, the extraordinary features of your case have led them to depart from the strict forms ordinarily observed in the proceedings of courts-martial, in order to spare to an innocent individual any unnecessary Q*

suspense in transmitting the finding of the court to His Majesty for approval before promulgation.

66

'It is still more gratifying for me to be enabled to add, that the court deem you have ever held your duty and allegiance untainted, even in the midst of mutiny and disaffection; and that taking into consideration your redeeming conduct after your former trial by court-martial, and your late severe imprisonment, the court will humbly recommend to the consideration of his most gracious Majesty whether you might not be restored to your former rank, with credit to yourself and benefit to the service, as an example to all classes to maintain unsullied their loyalty and integrity under every temptation, in the firm confidence that their king and country will requite them at the last for every sacrifice. Provost marshal, you will discharge your late prisoner."

Stung, as we often are in this world, to the last pitch of human endurance, by sorrow and distress in every form, there is no one truth so valuable for its uses, so desirable to be remembered, or so frequently forgotten, as the quick succession which so often chances, of our brightest happiness upon our deepest woe-our severest trials upon our most prosperous fortunes. Everything in life forms a perpetual cycle; and to the reflecting mind this disposition of human affairs might almost seem moulded upon the form of the globe which bears us. The loftiest portion of the wheel must in some moment of its perpetual revolution bite the dust; and that which is thrust into the mire will still, at some period, however distant, ride supreme. How much of all that is good and beautiful in the human heart may be taught us by the simple lesson! From the one portion of it we learn forbearance-from the other we may gather fortitude.

But it is only the delightful, or rather dangerous lot of a comparative few, to pass from the depth of one position to the heights of the other, without any intermediate state; while on the contrary, to how many thousand wretches does it not daily happen, to descend from all that was enviable to all that is the reverse-to estimate the blessings of life by their truest but most bitter test-that of their loss!

Happily for our friends, it is not to the shadows, but the lights of the picture, that we have now to turn our eyes. Harassed, persecuted in every direction, and fearing from the past the worst for the future, the appearance and avowal of the Flying Dutchman conveyed the utmost

transport to the minds of Ramsay's wife and father. But if they thus rejoiced at learning the innocence of one so near to them, how infinitely were their transports increased by the sentence of the court-martial! Not only were they rejoiced that his character would be justified to the world by a bare acquittal of his innocence, but that the reward of all his trials was at the same time proffered to him by the promised restoration which his unwearied integrity so well deserved.

As soon as they had all regained sufficient composure, they availed themselves of Ramsay's lately restored freedom, to be rowed together to the shore. Whoever has enjoyed the sudden transition from woe to happiness, may imagine the rapture with which the evening passed at the hotel of Ramsay's father; but that it might not be too unalloyed, and too cloying amid this world of sorrow, there was still one subject that awoke feelings of the strongest interest, if not pain:-this was the situation of the Flying Dutchman.

On the minds of all three the deepest impression had been made, by the self-devotion with which that mysterious individual had come forward to avow himself the intentional assassin, in order to screen from the head of an innocent man that obloquy which ought to light on his own alone.

The question of who or what he could be, or what might be the cause of his deadly enmity against a man not seemingly belonging to his own grade of life, was a question that occured to all, more especially to the mind of Ramsay's father. The fierce hatred proclaimed by those large and fiery eyes, the determined ferocity of the attack, the deadly spirit of revenge that characterised it, the cool and hardy adroitness that had so nearly completed his design, and more than all, the unparalleled audacity with which it was avowed,-all combined to render the Flying Dutchman, with all his deadly crimes, an object of the deepest interest to those whose safety was owing to one of the few virtues that marked his chequered character. To the elder Ramsay more especially, hitherto unaccustomed to imagine the possibility of such a being, every anecdote that related to his character, every incident that in the son's recollection marked his eventful life, was an object of greedy curiosity and discussion. With the

utmost excitement he listened to all the details relating to the mutiny, the setting Ramsay ashore, the taking of the frigate from the officers, the finding of the island, the laws