"Heaven knows," muttered he, "if any human skill is to avail one who"-a slight shudder involuntary crept across the muscles of his countenance, and after a silence of a few seconds he resumed-" if any skill may avail to shun our fate, here, notwithstanding all that's come and gone, we may live long, and die quietly at last. What are the points from which we have anything to fear? Detection?-Who is there to tell the tale?-Not the dead-they keep a secret well enough; and none other who ever knew what we really are, exist anywhere but in our own possession. Detection therefore is unlikely. But suppose detection-if it can only be deferred a few years, till our population and means increase-what power could ever force those reefs? Say that even three passages exist round this little island to the shore, instead of the one I found with so much difficulty—it is but to command them with batteries on land, and a single spar knocked away, or a man shot at the wheel, and the best handled craft in the world is in pieces on those coral beds in a few seconds. The island, with moderate cultivation, might always be made to yield produce sufficient to support its inhabitants; and even if a hostile landing should by any unforeseen events take place, a determined garrison in such an impregnable strong-hold as the citadel might be able to weary out and exterminate, from their commanding position, a very superior force. On the other hand, should these auguries of ill prove unfounded, here may be found every requisite to make up the sum of man's happiness, in a calm and tranquil existence!"

Forced into vehement and deadly action as the mutineer had ever been through life, he felt that there was that within him which longed for this repose; and as he thought of this, his eye seemed to fix upon the blue horizon in search of something that was still wanting to make the chance of joy complete.

"Then-then, indeed," muttered he, "I might at last own that life was worth enduring. Weak fool that I amyet can I not persuade myself to lay the burden down. Well, since it it so, I will try how far I can mould bad materials to a useful end, and be the founder of a little state that may some day prove a worthier community than a host of buccaneers. Yet was this our fault?"

How far the answer to such a question should go, we leave to our readers, while, in the progress of our story, we watch how much of the muser's plans "the gods accept," and how much, to continue the thought of Homer, they "dispersed to idle air."

CHAPTER XXV.

Long o'er the brine th' adventurous corsairs roam,
Till island deserts yield the joys of home;

Love hides their guilt-affection smooths each care,
For woman's smiles and gentleness are there."

R. POWELL DAVIS.

As soon as the corporal had arisen from his reveries, and the barge's crew had concluded their dinner, he called them together, and proceeded to fell a small tree with the axes they had brought, and cut it up into short junks, ready for buoying, on their return to the ship, the various turns in the passage which they had discovered through the reefs. For once more discovering this important channel, the corporal now chiefly relied on his own strong memory, and such bearings as he had been enabled to take at the moment.

This arrangement made, the party embarked about four o'clock, just as the tide had nearly reached low water once more; and, full of merriment and confidence in the joys of the future, they set out to regain the ship.

Finding, during the intervening hours since they left the frigate, that she had stood away a considerable distance to windward, the corporal caused three muskets to be fired at once, as a signal of their return; and the watch on board the Flying Dutchman understanding its purport, her helm was put up, and she herself came swiftly bearing down with all the canvass she could show.

After some difficulty, the passage through which they had gained the shore was again found, and now came the dangerous task of laying down buoys at the various points where the channel wound out of a direct line. Coolness and perseverance at length accomplished this object; and as the sun sank beneath the horizon, the barge's crew tossed up their oars once more alongside their ship, and hastened aboard with the joyful news of having at last alighted on the desired land of milk and honey, which was, moreover, in its position, more inaccessible than a hedge-hog in his skin, and as snug as a snail in his shell. Alas! few in

quired whether the hedge-hog might not be worried, and the snail be crushed!

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The barge hoisted up, the ship stood out to sea once more, to make a good offing for the night. This gained, her sails were reduced to double-reefed topsails, jib, and driver; and herself being thus made as "snug" as the island, the corporal gave orders to splice the main brace," in commemoration of the day's success. "Sweethearts and wives" were drank and caressed in abundance, and night fell upon these rude children of the sea, as happy in their rough, unthinking mode, as if no crime had stained their lives, nor tree nor hemp were growing to form the gibbet or the halter.

With far different emotions the intelligence of the day's success was received in the cabin, which the kindness of the corporal had given up to his female prisoners. There many a soft heart fluttered with anxious hope, or drooped beneath the last emotions of despair. The very sound of shore, and the report brought them by their servants and husbands, that it was a shore of great beauty and plentiful promise, was, despite of concurrent circumstances, refreshing to spirits worn to death by their long voyage, and the additional confinement to which many of them had chosen to condemn themselves, rather than be the subject of their captors' gaze.

On the other hand, while they were afloat, there always existed the hope, however distant, that the pirates might be captured, and themselves restored to liberty and their friends. To a third party there was a source of emotion, perhaps more stirring than any other.

The officers of the ship who had refused to join the mutineers, had been allowed to mix freely with the other prisoners; and as idleness begets love, or that degree of attachmant which assumes its name, so there were very few of the young spinsters or bachelors aboard, who were not more than inclined to become Benedicts.

The arrival, therefore, of the frigate at an island, likely to prove the head-quarters of the mutineers, became a crisis in their fate. Many a soft hand trembled that night, as the usual party in the cabin broke up-many a fair bosom courted sleep in vain-while the officers, accustomed to be the sport of Fortune, and to make the most of her slightest smiles, fell readily into the soft path that seemed opening for them in the midst of peril: only too happy that amidst their troubles chance gave them so large and unexpected a recompense as a home, and some one whom

they loved to share it, without the anxiety of counting ways and means, as they must have done in England, or the responsibility of seeking the duties that it imposed.

At first the mutineers were much inclined to resent and interfere with the opportunities which the captive officers enjoyed of gaining the affections of the “young leddies;” but the corporal very cunningly persuaded them that he had permitted affairs to take this course solely for the benefit of his crew.

"When once," said he, "we get them all fairly in love, or married, they will have neither time nor inclination to watch or surprise us. Leave it but to me, and I'll take prizes enough to find wives for the whole of you; and if everything else fails, it is but to make a stretch over to the Spanish American coast, and we may carry off and choose from fifty villages."

A gentleman who could sing promissory notes to this compass was sure to charm his audience; and fully believing that earth was very shortly to yield up all its most delightful possessions for their enjoyment, the mutineers agreed to fall in with their leader's views, and put off their own courtships till the next cruise.

Early on the ensuing morning, after the landing of the corporal, the ship's boats were all hoisted out, lowered down, and provided with tow-ropes, and every other requisite which any emergency might demand. They were then veered astern, and just before the turn of low water the frigate stood towards the entrance of the buoyed channel. Here all the boats were manned and sent ahead to tow in case of accidents, each boat being conned by one of the bargemen who had landed the day before, and the corporal himself conning the frigate from the starboard cathead.

The gale had by this time subsided down into a light breeze, the surface of the water was comparatively calm, and though the swell beating on the reefs was still very heavy, it was perhaps as light as ever the immense impetus of that vast ocean permitted it to be.

On the quarter-deck, abaft the mizenmast, were crowded all the prisoners, dressed out as gaily, and looking, many of them, as happy as if mere voluntary passengers to some enchanting island of Calypso, where a new existence of love and idleness awaited all.

Indeed, as far as the mere appearance of their new home went, it might have been easily held to stand for that or any other region of romance; and even those whose "eyes

grew dim at thoughts of home," could not refrain from giving some slight pause to sorrow, as the frigate, after wending her way unhurt through all the dangers of the coral reefs, stood slowly on beneath that lovely shore; the deep and musical voice of her seamen chanting out from her chains, at intervals, the depths of those soundings which their hand leads gave, and every bend of the romantic shore unfolding scenes whose beauty nothing could surpass.

So fortunate is it for man, the sport of such a variety of accidents, that his nature is formed insensibly to adapt itself to the pressure of the moment, and find comfort and relief in the mere changes of his sorrows!