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Show ifiKRODNEY; if I or. The Adventures of 5 An Eton Boy... 2 m E5V JAJWE3 GRANT. 2 J j .v---'- St, . , ..,iac.i;ntcs.ai;sl tf 6- f frf-MSi" should tire of roasted and broiled, Jack Burnet, the ship's cook, contrived to boil some pieces of a goat in its own skin, stretched upon sticks, with a fire underneath, salt for a spice, and sliced pumpkin for vegetables. Of the hoi ns, when carefully senped and cleaned, we mads very efficient drinking cups, in which our rum. dulv mixed with water, was doled out to us by Hislop, the keeper of our provision pro-vision store. The eggs of the sea birds were a constant" object of search, and being I ?n expert climber, I frequently collect-I collect-I ed great numbers of those laid in the 1 crevices of the rocks by the sea gull CHAPTER XXJJX. (Continued.) j The wild boars that lurked in. the Thin flanked, active and strong, they t began to grunt and gambol, and to woods baffled our efforts for a long I time. By the edge of the hatcher, we i possessed I fashioned for my own use a kind of spear, about six feet long, hewn out of a piece of fine teak wood, which I found upon the beach. This weapon I made and pointed with great care, and armed with it frequently lay in watch for the sea-lions, sea-lions, but without success. On the shore, at this season, wnen the sunshine was reflected from the sloping faces of the volcanic rocks and i from the surface of the sea, the heat splash up the glittering w.uei, m. suddenly they caught sight of us. and j all fled, save one, a tierce old boar, which, after tearing up the grass with his hind feet, came resolutely forward, showing a pair of tusks that made me tremble for the calves of my legs if ! I ventured to run off, and still, more ' for those of poor Kislop. who was ! alike unable to escape or confront him. ; Fortunately I had my teakwood spear. j While keeping a tree between me j and the boar, he prepared for the of- ar.d storm-finch. Our life was one of perpetual exposure expos-ure and daily activity. Though over-powerir.ciy over-powerir.ciy hot at noon, the atmosphere atmos-phere of the morning and evening was delightful, and. as these portions oi the day were spent in hunting for food, the time passed rapidly, but II'.s-lcp's II'.s-lcp's chief few was that if we weva not taken off by some ship before tha rainy sensor, set in. our discomfort and danger from agues would become very great. Hv i he time we had been fourteen was beyond all description intense, breathless and suffocating, so that the j I lungs would collapse painfully in the i difficulty of respiration. ! To breathe was like attempting it. ; at the mouth of a newly-opened fur-; fur-; nace, and so I usually retired inland ' and sought the cool solitude of the ; i deep thickets, or wandered througn groves of solemn, impiessive and ma jestic old trees; for some were there I so old that they must have cast the- .shadows of their foliage on Alphonso ri de Albuquerque or Tristan da Cunha ; .and their bearded followers. How many ocean storms had swept their leaves into the waste of waters slnce then! . We had now been five days on the j island without a sail being seen, : though more than half our time was tensive by wnettmg nis ternuie ius against a stone and grunting hoarsely. Excited and bewildered, as he came on at a quick run, I charged my weapon weap-on full at him, and by the mercy of Providence, the point entered one of his fierce, glittering eyes, which made him Tear up and recoil, while in his rage and pain the bristles on his ridgy back rose up like little blades of steel. "Into his throat with your spear!" cried Hislop; hut 1 anticipated the sug- gestion, for ere the words had left his lips I had buried thrusting deep with all the force that excitement and terror ter-ror gave me the pointed teakwood shaft down his red and gaping throat. Choking in blood, in foam and fury, the great boar writhed upon his back, and in doing so twitched from my hands the weapon, which still remained days on the island he was recovered so" far as to be able to join me in making an exploration of it, or rather in walking all around it. The circumference of the largest isU is only four "leagues, but its shores am so steep and rocky in some places that traversing them proved a most arduous ardu-ous task. On the eastern side we found a great cascade pouring fioui a brow of rock upon the beach. The latter was covered cov-ered almost everywhere by a broad-leaved broad-leaved seaweed, the dark and slimy tendrils of which were several yards in length and were termed by Kislop "the gigantic fucus." So day after day passed, and. amid our various means of procuring; food, we never failed to keep a keen lookout :spent in watching the horizon; and so 'Tom Lambournes' old shirt still waved 3n vain from the boom-end on the mountain-top. 1 On the fifth day, however, to our ' surprise, the signal was no longer visible, vis-ible, so we supposed that a gust of wind had overthrown it in the night. Lamhourne, Carlton and Probar wedged in his throat and tongue, ana rendered him almost powerless. I knew not what to do now, for if he snapped it through, and thus released himself, we, or at least I, would be lost. But as he lay there on his back and sides alternately, snorting, roaring and covering the grass with bloody froth, to seaward for a passing sail; but none came near that lonely islet of the southern si a. One morning I found there had drifted ashore near our hut a mass of that mysterious substance, the origin of which has puzzled so many naturalists natural-ists ambergris. It must have weighed weigh-ed more than a hundred pounds, and started for the mountain-top to restore re-store it, while Hislop and I rambled Into the woods, where we had a view of the shining sea to the westward. . The waves came in long rollers, as there was a fresh breeze blowing from the west, and the foam rose white and high on the tremendous bluffs of the-Inaccessible the-Inaccessible Isles, as we named them. All the water between them was a sheet of sparkling and snowy froth,, amid which, had we been nearer, we should doubtless have seen the black ; heads of the sealions, as they sported ; In the spray and sunshine. On asking Hislop how far he thought, i we were from the continents of Africa, and South America, he replied, without. and tearing it by his bristles, ttisiop sprang forward and though weak with many half-healed wounds, drove a clasp-knife repeatedly into the throat and stomach of the monster, which soon lay still enough. When it was quite dead I drew out my teakwood spear, and found the point almost uninjured, for I had hardened hard-ened it in fire. We thrust two crooked branches through the tendons of the boar's hind legs, and by these drew it to our hut, which was about half a mile distant; there our prize caused great congratulation congratu-lation among our crew, and I obtained no little praise for performing so hardy a feat. when we threw some of it into the lire it melted and diffused around a most agTeeable perfume. This marine production, pro-duction, which is only to be found in the sens or on the shores of Africa and Brazil, is alleged by some to bo a : concretion formed in the stomach of the spermaceti whale. i On the fifteenth morning after our landing a seaman named Henry Warren, War-ren, who went to milk our goats, which had been tethered to a large tree near the hut, returned In haste, to announce that the ropes which had secured them were cut. apparently by a sharp instrument ci clean through and that the goats, the capture of which had cost us so much labor, worn hesitation: "We are about fifteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, on the westward, and twelve hundred odd from the Cape of Good Hope on the east; but there is land nearer to us " "Land nearer!" I reiterated. "There are the three isles of Tristan da Cunha, and about five hundred miles southwest of us a desolate rock called the Isle of Diego Alvarez; and fortunate fortu-nate it is indeed for us that we were not cast away there, as it yields only mossy grass and now and then a few seals or sea-elephants may be seen up-,on up-,on the reefs about it. Dut, Dick Rod-mey, Rod-mey, does it not make one long to be afloat again, with a good ship under- Our return diverted lor a time some excitement and surprise which had been caused by the return of Tom Lamhourne, Probart and Carlton from the mountain top, with tidings that the studding sail boom had vanished, and that not a trace of it was to be found anywhere! CHAPTER XXX. A New Perplexity. The disappearance of the boom and of Tom's old striped shirt, which had waved from it like a banner, excited considerable speculation and some-, some-, thing of alarm. If simply overturned by the wind, it must have lain where it fell; at all gone. "Cut? By whom?" asked every one. Before we had time to consider this, llislop came out of the hut, and stated that one of our three bread bags had also been cut open, by a slash from a knife, apparently, and that several pounds of biscuits had been abstracted. The strange alarm, and what w worse, the doubt of each other, which these discoveries excited, were painful and bewildering. We examined Iho place where the goats had been tethered, but could discover dis-cover no traces of feet, and nothing remained but the ends of the ropcii (the long boat phcets and halliards tied to the stem of a tree. (To be continued.) foot, both tacks and the breeze, too, jift? a cloud of canvas, carrying the three masts into one when seen astern the lower studding-sail booms rigged rig-ged out and dipping in the flying spray as she rolls from side to side j does it not, I say, bring all this to mind, when from here we can watch , the waves that rose, perhaps, between the shores ot Mexico, rolling in foam between these rocky isles? Do you ' remember Homer's description of the j curling wave?" And without waiting my reply he began to recite from the j Iliad with wonderful facility: j -"As on the hoarse, resounding shore, j when blows the stormy west, The billowy tide comes surging wide, 'j from ocean's dark blue breast; : First in mid-sea 'tis born, then swells ! and rages more and more. events, it could not have rolled far from the calm, or pile of stones, in the center of which we had wedged it. By what agency had this disappearance disap-pearance come to pass? That it was the work of wild animals ani-mals could not for a moment be conceived; con-ceived; so the event filled us with vague, but very alarming conjecture. With his hatchet, Probart the carpenter car-penter cut down and prepared a long and slender tree to replace the lost boom on the top of the Devil's mountain, moun-tain, as we now termed it; and while one portion of ns assisted him in this, the other set about the capture or some of the wild goats with which the. woods abounded, as we were anxious to procure the milk of the females, and ' the flesh of their kills. ti.Id t.- a mos.1 ardnoiis tn.k as And rolling on with snowy back, comes thundering near the shore; Then rears it crest, firm and sublime, and wilh tumultuous bray Smites the grim front of the rugged i rock, and spits the briny spray." j How far Hislop, in his classical en- j thuslasm might have pursued his free translation, till we hi'd ail the deeds of Agamemnon and others on that tremendous tre-mendous day before the wai'.s of Troy, I cannot say, had not a crashing sound they were so fleet of fool; and when pursued, or when in search of those bitter and astringent plants of which they are so fond, they could gain the most dangirous pinnacles and ledger of rock that overhung the si-a. In such places there grew a kind of wild laburnum, labur-num, and Hislop did not fail to remind re-mind me that Theocritus desirib:'il it ah the f.ivorile fond of the gnat, j We ofter saw I'm-se agile nuadru-i nuadru-i i,c-(U s"r:i ('. without pause, fear or in tne aujaceiu uiii-,.-i ! vu "u alarmed us. ; We started up and bad just time to t conceal ourselves behind the trunk of I a tree when a herd of seven wild boars I came plunging out of the thicket to i drink at a runnel which fiownl toward j the sea. ' They were unlike any of the swin-j swin-j lsh race we had ever seen before, and nerilation. from pinnacle to pinnacle, or from ledge to ledge of ruck, where, had they missed footing, they iuu:;t bave fa!kn a thousand feet or more, :-ilhur into the ocean on me side, or some ravine on lb" other, nnd there, perihed far aloft, they would remain, loobir.g r.t us quietly, and reminding inn of the cnupM : ! "iiih hur.g in air the hoary goat rc- tut lor our va;;i'e .,--..!.... u. I we could have v,at,!,-d iIkti with! pleasure, as they i:.s rt'd t'l'ir lone, , ' fierce s.i-oies in U: wa:-r th'.t rinrkk-1 j under the fores' b aves , They were ail 1" -a 1-s hoc! d ..-1 an':- i t rrals. with hig't ct'.-ls ai.d th:--k. j ' bristly marcs, and a" were black iri ' color or darb'-y b'-'n '.bd. j : Unlike those nf lb" s.y-fed b'.ss, to ; which we had w"ie'"i):l at: home, their erotcd hrb-tb-r- shone like Silver C polih'd :: in tb" rays of j sunshine that f'll 'hrmh the waving tranche?, their '? w f-. f!..:--hi).? and ! clear, and th'-ir sbins were ail rican, i as if washed far a show of prize pigs-i clim-d. His Rt reaming b'ard the sport of every I wind." Py great industry, and the exertion of Infrcdihle labor and activity, we . :;i i-r-ed'-d in cap'uring five, by Isolating Isolat-ing them from their flocks, and cha-S,,K cha-S,,K vbm into tiis'iti" and corners frm.T which they had no means of e-r-a;,, and then we secured th'-m by the running i lgring nf the long boat. Scone of ti e females alforded milk, a raiiti- and roui ishn.ent to us who had lee-i'so iom- at sea. The flh of a kid j we thought delicious, nui lent we |