“‘They are pretty likely to stand what I require them to,’ said the Yankee, proudly. ‘But I can make it all right for them. Prizes are not very scarce articles. Here, give me the papers! Who is your owner?’
“‘My father,’ said I.
“‘All right! Madam,’ said he, bowing, ‘I wish to make you a small present.’
“‘If you wish to do me a favour,’ said I, ‘make your present to my husband.’
“He smiled, as he looked from one to the other, and seemed to understand the state of the case in an instant.
“‘You are quite right, madam,’ said he; ‘it shall be as you desire.’
“Then he endorsed the ship’s manifest with the fact of her capture, and he made over ship and cargo to Captain Walter. It was not a legal document, of course, but it had its weight with my father.
“Our captor took his leave, with such stores as we could get him to accept. His boat’s crew looked at them wonderingly as they were passed over the side to them, and even still more wonderingly at the manner in which their captain took his leave of us.
“In a week more we were safe in an English harbour and on English ground. The war lasted two or three years, and many prizes were taken on both sizes, and some hard battles fought by land and sea, but I never heard that any ship ever escaped as we did.”
This was my dear little aunt’s story as we sat under the willows. She said no more, but sat in a reverie, looking into vacancy—looking as if she saw a ship on the far horizon. I stole softly to her and kissed her little hand, and then glided noiselessly away, for I knew that she was thinking of her captain, and that the great blue sea was now to her but as the grave of him she loved. But she was not sad long nor often, for she believed that “the sea shall give up her dead.”
THE LATEST FROM SPIRIT-LAND.
It was an evening late in this last July. The place was a large drawing-room, or gallery, in one of the most fashionable localities of the west-end of London. Nine persons were present, five ladies and four gentlemen; of the latter, one was a clergyman, one a military officer of high rank, another was an artist, the fourth was a man famous in the scientific world. Altogether, the persons assembled might have been taken as fairly representing the rank and education of English society. It was about half-past nine; the room would have been totally dark, were it not for a faint glimmer that entered from without, through the tops of the partially closed windows. This glimmering of light was just sufficient to enable a few objects, such as the white dresses of the ladies, to be dimly visible. The moon rose later in the evening, but though none of the rays entered the room, the reflection from without in some slight degree lessened the darkness within.
The party were seated round a circular table, with their hands resting on its surface, as it was understood that being thus placed in reference to the piece of furniture, as well as in juxta-position with an individual who shall be mentioned again presently, would be the means of calling forth certain manifestations, both visible and audible, from the world of spirits. That the spirits of the departed, in fact, would then and there come visibly before the assembly, and communicate with them mouth to mouth, eye to eye, hand to hand, as one man to another. The individual through whose mediumship the spirits were enabled to manifest themselves, was a small weakly-looking woman of some twenty-five years of age, without anything that would indicate the Pythoness in her appearance; on the contrary, she seemed, in a peculiar degree, fragile, artless, and childlike.
The party had been seated at the table for some five minutes. Conversation had not been altogether suspended, but had been carried on in the low, suppressed muttering, and the abrupt sententious manner, that the present writer supposes is customary with persons waiting in momentary expectation of a spiritual visitation. One of the party (a gentleman) was extremely deaf; but, strange to say, he heard the sounds that announced the approach of the spirit visitors, as loud, or indeed louder, than any other of the assembly; indeed, sounds of spirit-footsteps on the table, that were quite inaudible to others, were loud and distinct to him. Presently the table began to sway, to rise, to fall, to tilt, to balance itself; and, finally, it gave out such a peal of raps, that, for sustained continuity, the writer can only compare to a violent shower of large hailstones on a skylight, or to the noise made by Perkins’s patent steam-gun. It was communicated to the assembly, through the medium, that these sounds were preliminary to something quite out of the way and special in the forthcoming manifestations, which were not to consist of mere sentences rapped out on the table, as is usually the case, but the visible presence of the spirits might confidently be expected, and each person was commanded (modern Pythonesses, in all cases, command imperatively) to look intently into the darkness of the long gallery, and state what she or he perceived. Each individual would seem to have received a separate and different visual impression. One young lady saw wreaths of such beautiful little stars; another saw winged forms, indistinct from their luminosity. The gentlemen were, for the most part, duller in their perception; but one of them, known as a man of considerable scientific acquirements, could clearly see through the walls of the house into a long vista of scenes beyond. The present writer was evidently the most dull, the most clod-like, the least spiritual (if not something much worse), of the whole party, as he looked above and around him where the others were gazing, but he could see nothing; “not on him was the tongue of flame,” but something infinitely less desirable; for, casting his eyes on a distant corner of the gallery, the glimmering light just enabled him to perceive, squatted on the ground, a hideous, crawling, reptile-like form, apparently gigantic in size, and distinguishable from the light colour of the carpet by its sooty blackness. The writer looked again