back he would have carried into execution without troubling anybody's head but his own.
"Ours is a desperate case," said Martin. "Plainly. The place is deserted; its failure must have become known; and selling what we have bought to any one, for anything, is hopeless, even if it were honest. We left home on a mad enterprise, and have failed. The only hope left us: the only one end for which we have now to try, is to quit this settlement for ever, and get back to England. Any how! by any means! Only to get back there, Mark."
"That's all, Sir," returned Mr. Tapley, with a significant stress upon the words: "only that!"
"Now, upon this side of the water," said Martin, "we have but one friend who can help us, and that is Mr. Bevan."
"I thought of him when you was ill," said Mark.
"But for the time that would be lost, I would even write to my grandfather," Martin went on to say, "and implore him for money to free us from this trap into which we were so cruelly decoyed. Shall I try Mr. Bevan first?"
"He's a very pleasant sort of a gentleman," said Mark. "I think so."
"The few goods we bought here, and in which we spent our money, would produce something if sold," resumed Martin; "and whatever they realise shall be paid him instantly. But they can't be sold here."
"There's nobody but corpses to buy 'em," said Mr. Tapley, shaking his head with a rueful air, "and pigs."
"Shall I tell him so, and only ask him for money enough to enable us by the cheapest means to reach New York, or any port from which we may hope to get a passage home, by serving in any capacity? Explaining to him at the same time how I am connected, and that I will endeavour to repay him, even through my grandfather, immediately on our arrival in England?"
"Why to be sure," said Mark: "he can only say no, and he may say yes. If you don't mind trying him, Sir—"
"Mind!" exclaimed Martin. "I am to blame for coming here, and I would do anything to get away. I grieve to think of the past. If I had taken your opinion sooner, Mark, we never should have been here, I am certain."
Mr. Tapley was very much surprised at this admission, but protested, with great vehemence, that they would have been there all the same; and that he had set his heart upon coming to Eden, from the first word he had ever heard of it.
Martin then read him a letter to Mr. Bevan, which he had already prepared. It was frankly and ingenuously written, and described their situation without the least concealment; plainly stated the miseries they had undergone; and preferred their request in modest but straightforward terms. Mark highly commended it; and they determined to despatch it by the next steam-boat going the right way, that might call to take in wood at Eden,—where there was plenty of wood to spare. Not knowing how to address Mr. Bevan at his own place of abode, Martin superscribed it to the care of the memorable Mr. Norris of New York,
