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Show I DSCirRODNEY; 1 1 l o-, The Adventures of J I I An Eton Boy... J J JflmES GRANT. spired by soma emotion of malic or mischief, he alone was the culprit; and If not loud, their wrath was fieep against him. These variations of our compass set the busy brain of Marc Hislop to work, and in a day or two he declared that he had discovered a plan for preventing prevent-ing the repetition of tricks so dangerous danger-ous by Insulating the needle so as to protect the compass from attractions false or dangerous. I am uncertain whether he perfected this experiment, but Antonio soon went to work another way; for one day, when he was supposed to be busy in the maintop, he shouted,- "Stand from under!" and ere Hislop. who was just beneath, could give the usual response, re-sponse, "Let go!" a heavy marlinspike, the same which had been found in the binnacle, slipped from the hand of Antonio An-tonio and fell crashing through the topgrating. The iron bar crashed into the deck at the feet of Hislop; -A-hether this occurred oc-curred by inadvertence or i-sign we knew not, but the Scotsman thought the latter. "That rascally Spanish picaroon will work us some serious mischief before we overhaul our ground-tackla or see the Cape," said Weston, who was enraged en-raged by this new incident, and the narrow escape of Hislop, for whom he had a great regard. "Aye, he has a hang-dog look about him that I never liked," replies tie latter. "He seems to be always down by the head, somehow. We should have left him in his skiff, Just as we found him, like a bear adrift on a grating, grat-ing, or a pig in a washing tub." On another occasion he injured Will White, one of the crew, by letting the topmaul fall from the foretop, where It usually lay, for driving hame the fid of the mast. His dreams again -became a source of annoyance to all in the forecastle bunks; and on being closely and severely se-verely questioned by Captain Weston and the men as to whether he had ever killed any one, by accident or otherwise, after being long badgered, he drew his ugly knife from its sharkskin shark-skin sheath and replied sullenly: "Only a Chinaman or so, when in California." "Well, I wish you would clap a stopper on your mouth when you go to sleep, or turn in out of earshot in a topgallant studding sail as far off as you choose, and the further off the better," said old Roberts, sulkily, after the ravings of the Cubano had kept him awake for several nights. "You seem to dream a great deal, Antonio," said Weston, with a keen glance, beneath which the Spaniard quailed. "Si, Senor Capitano,',' he stammered. "How is this?" "I am very fond of dreams," he replied, re-plied, with a bitter smile on his lip and a scowl in his dark eye. "Have you pleasant ones?" "I cannot say that they are always so, but I should like to procure them." "Shall I tell you how to do so?" shipmate?" "If you please, senor," growled the Spaniard. "Go to sleep, if you can, with that which is better than the formula of prayers, which at times you pay out like the line running off a log reel." "And what is it you mean, mio cap-itano?" cap-itano?" "A good conscience," replied Weston, with a peculiar emphasis. A black scowl came over the Spaniard's Span-iard's swarthy visage, as he touched the rim of his hat, darted a furious glance at his chief accuser, the white-haired white-haired seaman Roberts, and to end the examination walked forward. (To be continued.) C11APTKU XVI.- (Continued.) Most of the houses are built of good "tone, but have all their windows Iron-barred without and barricaded within, for the population (of which our shipuiato Antonio was a. striking specimen) consists of about thirty thousand olive-skinned Spaniards and double that number of slaves and Tree mulattoes, all loose, reckless, flery and apt to use their knives on trivial occasions. oc-casions. There was not a ship lying there for England, or any other craft by which Weston could have sent me home. A Spanish steam-packet was on the eve of departing for Cadiz, but being wearied by the monotony of my long voyage, I was scarcely in a mood for the saa again, and wished to spend a little more time on shore instead of leaving with her. However, I wrote to my family by the Spanish mail, acquainting them of my safety, with the strange incident which had so suddenly torn me from them, and adding that I would return by tho first ship bound for any part of England; if possible, with the Eugenie, Eu-genie, which would probably be freighted for London. After the packet sailed with my letter let-ter in her capacious bags, I experienced experi-enced an embtion of greater happiness and contentment than I had ever done since leaving home, for the sorrow which I knew all there must have suffered, suf-fered, and would still be suffering, hung heavily on my heart. As we were returning to the brig, which had now been warped alongside the mole, when passing through the street which contains the great hospital, hospi-tal, we heard the sound of trumpets, and saw the glittering of lances with long streamers above the heads of a dense crowd of people of all shades of color black, yellow, and brown and we had to doff our hats with due respect re-spect as they passed, for in the midst, surrounded by a staff of officers, epau-letted epau-letted and aiguletted, their breasts sparkling with medals and crosses, and each of them riding with a cocked hat under his left arm, came the present Captain General of Cuba, a marshal of the Spanish army, Don Francisco Serrano Ser-rano de Dominguez, attended by an escort of mulatto lancers, all mounted on Spanish hoi ies. He '?,s a. ? e-looking man, and although al-though febS'-i, had all the bearing of what he' was, or, I should say, is a grandee of old Castile. On returning to the Eugenie we found Antonio the Cuban working among the crew as lustily and as actively ac-tively as any man on board. Weston now offered him remuneration for the time that he had been with us, with a hint that he might find a berth elsewhere; else-where; but our castaway evinced the greatest reluctance to leave the brig, and begged that he might be permitted permit-ted to remain on board, as three of our best hands had been sent ashore, sick, to the hospital. So short-sighted is man that Captain Cap-tain Weston, despite the dislike of the crew and the advice of Marc Hislop, ordered that the name of Antonio be entered on the ship's books as foremast fore-mast man. Three weeks after our arrival the brig was careened to starboard, when clear of all the cargo, and had her copper scraped and .cleaned, an op---ation which the constant rains of the season greatly retarded. There was much in Cuba to feed an imaginative mind, and mine was full of the voyages, the daring adventures adven-tures and the vast discoveries of Columbus, Co-lumbus, with the exploits of the buccaneers, buc-caneers, whose haunts were amid these wild and, in those days, savage shores. I thought of the gaily plumed and barbarously armed caciques whom- Columbus Co-lumbus had met in their fleet pirogues, or had encountered in the dense forests for-ests which clothe the Cuban mountains moun-tains forests, old, perhaps, as the days of the deluge of the yellow-skinned yellow-skinned women writh their long, flowing flow-ing black hair and with plates of polished pol-ished gold hanging in their ears and noses; of the fierce warriors streaked with sable war paint and armed with cane arrows shod with teeth or poisoned poi-soned fish bones, that fell harmless from the Spanish coats of mail; of the wild Caribs, who devoured their prisoners pris-oners with whom a battle was but a precursor of a feast; and of the famous fa-mous fighting women the terrible Amazons of Guadaloupe. I thought of the story of Columbus writing the narrative of his wonderful discoveries, his perils and adventures, on a roll of parchment, which he wrapped in oilcloth covered over with wax inclosed in a little cask, and then cast' into the sea, with a prayer, and the hope that if he and his crew perished per-ished this record of their achievements achieve-ments might be cast by the ocean on the shore of some Christian land. As I sat by the sounding sea that rolled into the bay of Matanzas. what would I not have given to havo seen the 'waves cast that old cask, covered with weeds and barnacles, at m feet' i But now the plodding steam tug and the rusty merchant trader ploughed e waters of the bay instead of the gilded Spanish caravels, or the long war Pirogues of the Indian warriors where they fought their bloodiest TJtll o" the wooded shore, or in the green savanna, where the painted cacique ca-cique and the mailed Castilian met hand to hand in mortal strife, the smoke of the steam mill, grinding coffee cof-fee or boiling sugar, darkened the sky, and the songs of the negroes were heard as they hoed In the plantations, or in gangs of forty trucked mahogany logs, each drawn by eight sturdy oxen, to the sea. And so, in a creek of the bay the same place where the Dutch Admiral Heyn sank the Spanish plate fleet I was wont to sit dreamily for hours, with the murmur of the waves in my ears, with the buzz of insects and the voice of the mocking-birds among the palmettos, while watching the sails that glided past the headlands of the bay on their way to the Bahama Channel Chan-nel or the great Gulf of Florida. This was my favorite resort. A wood of cocoanut and other trees shaded the place and made it so dark that I have seen the fire-flies glance about at noon. The cocoas are about the height of Dutch poplars, and are covered with oblong leaves, which, when young, are of a pale red. As spring drew on, the branches became covered with scarlet and yellow flowers. Over these the vast corral tree spread its protecting foliage, whence the Spaniards, in their beautiful language, lan-guage, name it La Mad re del Cocoa, the smallest of which has at times a thousand thou-sand lovely scarlet blossoms, CHAPTER XVII. An Evil Spirit. We sailed from the Bay of Matanzas at 2 o'clock a. m., on the 3d of April, bound -for the Cape of Good Ho-pe, which we were fated never to reach. The Eugenie had been freighted for that colony with a rich cargo of molasses, mo-lasses, sugar, coffee, and tobacco, and arrangements had been made that from Cape Town she would be chartered for London. Thus I had a fair prospect of seeing nearly a half of this terrestrial globe before I repassed my good old father's threshold at Elsmere. I earnestly hoped that we might encounter no more waterspouts or tornadoes, tor-nadoes, as they were not at all to my taste; but from other causes than phenomena phe-nomena or the war of the elements it was my fortune, or, rather, my misfortune, mis-fortune, to undergo such peril and suffering suf-fering as were far beyond my conception concep-tion or anticipation. By 8 o'clock on the morning of our departure the light on Piedras Key was hearing south by east, sinking into the waves astern, and going out as we-bade we-bade a long farewell to the lovely shores of Cuba. Three of our men had died of yellow yel-low fever in hospital, so we sailed from Matanzas with ten able-bodied hands, exclusive of three ship boys, the captain, cap-tain, first and second mates. In the waters, after the rainy season, sea-son, the sky is so cloudless In the forenoon fore-noon that the heat of the sun becomes almost insupportable; thus we were soon glad to resort to the use of wind-sails wind-sails rigged down the open skylight to an awning over the quarter-deck for coolness, and to skids for the prevention preven-tion of blisters on the sides of the brig; but in the starry night the land-wind which comes off these fertile isles, laden with the rich aroma of their spice-growing savannas, is beyond description de-scription grateful and delicious. Without any incident worth recording, record-ing, we ran through the sea of the Windward Isles, thence along the coast of South America, and when we approached ap-proached the calm latitudes, as that tract of the ocean near the equator is named, we became sensible of the overpowering over-powering increase of heat, while the breezes were but "fanning ones," as the sailors term those which, under the double influence of the air and motion of the hull, are just sufficient to make the lighter canvas collapse and sweil again. We were soon aware of other annoyances an-noyances than mere heat, for now it seemed as if there was an evil spirit on board the Eugenie, and that nothing went right within or about her. The crew sulked and quarreled among themselves as if the demon of mischief lurked in the vessel, and daily something unfortunate occurred. Halyards Hal-yards or braces gave way, by which the yards were thrown aback ;and in one instance the brig nearly lost her mainmast. main-mast. Standing and running rigging were found to be mysteriously fretted, and even cut, as if by a knife; and then the crew wrhispered together of Antonio el Cubano that horrid, dark, mysterious fellow, whose character none of us could fathom. Twice our compasses went wrong, and remained so for days! and before the cause was discovered the Eugenie had drifted far from her course. This varying was inexplicable, until Hislop, who set himself to watch, and frequently saw Antonio hovering near the binnacle at night, unshipped the compass box and found there were concealed con-cealed near it an iron marlinspike on one side and a lump of tallow on the other, either of which was sufficient to affect the magnetic needle. After their removal the compass worked as well as before. The crew were strictly questioned; all vowed total to-tal ignorance of the transaction, and Antonio summoned every saint in the Spanish calendar to attest his innocence, inno-cence, but none, however, appeared. The crew now felt convinced that, in- |