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Show I I D SC! RODNEY; 1 j I Or, The Adventures of ; An Eton Boy... $ 5 j BY JAMES GRANT. j but they ridiculed the story of the poor I man, chiefly, I thoughr, because "It was ! tt-; yar- of a Hollander." "Though I am a Scotchman," btgan Kislop "And come of a people naturally su- , perstitlous," suggested Weston, parenthetically paren-thetically "As all large-brained races are." retorted re-torted the mate, while filling hi3 clay pipe with tobacce. "Well, what were you about to say?" asked Weston. "But first fill your glass and pass over the tobacco bag." "I was simply about to reiterate that I don't believe in ghosts, or value them any more than I do the Yankea sea serpent, a rope's end, or a piece of old junk; I never saw one, or knew a man who had seen one; but every one has heard of a man that knew another man who saw, or believed he saw, a ghost. It is at variance with the laws of nature, which are so ordered that no such erratic spirit can be." "I don't know about that," replied Weston; "earth and water have their inhabitants, so why not the air also?" "And why not the fire?" "There you go, right before the wind, into the troubled sea of argument you Scotchmen are all alike." "Ghosts are at variance with the workings of Divine wisdom, and we all know what Jones of Nayland says thereupon." "No, we don't," said Weston; "who the deuce was he what port did he hail from?" "He who cannot see the workings of a Divine wisdom in the order of the heavens, the change of the seasons, the flowing of the tides, the operation of the wind and other elements, the struc- ture of the human body, the circulation of the blood, the instincts of beasts, and the growth of plants, is sottlshly blind and unworthy the name of man." "You hear him, Mr. Rodney," said Weston; "now he has got both his anchor an-chor and topsails a-trip; he can pay out whole speeches In this fashion, all at a breath, as fast as the chain-cable running through the hawse-pipe." Being fresh from Eton, I was not going to let our learned Scotch mate have it all his own way, when Weston Wes-ton resumed: Look alive there, lads," he added, "or as sure as my name is Sam Weston, I'll give the volt to the last man off the deck! " This threat, so unusual in one so good-natured, together with the bellowing bel-lowing of the wind, the dapping of the wetted canvas, the rattle of the blocks and cordage, and the laboring of the brig, which was so deeply laden that every timber groaned, all gave such indications of a rough night that I sprang from my berth and proceeded to dress again in haste. To my astonishment, at that moment mo-ment I heard the hoarse rattle of the chain cable, as it rushed with a roaring roar-ing sound through the iron mouth of the hawse hole; then I was sensible of a violent shock, which made the brig stagger, and tumbled me headlong against the paneled bulkhead which separated the cabin from the after-hold. after-hold. Hislop, who had been dozing on the cabin-locker in his storm jacket, started start-ed up with alarm in his face. "Have we come to anchor?" I asked. "Anchor in more than three hundred fathoms of water!" he exclaimed, as he rushed on deck, whither I followed, and found that a very strange incident had occurred. In the murky obscurity of the stormy night a large Dutch lugger, in ballast apparently, and running right before the wind, with steering canvas set, came suddenly athwart us, and hooked the anchor from the cathead on our larboard bow by some unwonted neglect neg-lect It was not yet on board, nor had the cable been unbent with her star- linmi1 fnTDriirffinff o time tM-iyo DWOV CHAPTER IV. (Continued.) On perceiving that I was awake, a hand bell waa rung by the captain, and hot coffee, accompanied by the last slice of shore-bread that remained, was hrought to me by Billy, the cabin-boy, and then, after a time, I was requested to state what craft that was from which I had been taken, my name, and so forth, that Mr. Hislop might enter all the particulars among the "remarks" "re-marks" in his log-book. I soon satisfied them as to all this. "And where am I now?" I inquired. "Pretty far out upon the open sea, my lad," replied the captain with a smile, as he threw the end of his cheroot che-root Into the empty grate. "The open sea still the open sea!" I reiterated with dismay, which I cared not to conceal. "Yes; we saw the last glimpse of the rugged Start on the day before yesterday, yes-terday, and this morning, just an hour before picking you up, we bade goodbye good-bye to old England, for the Lizard Light was bearing you had the dead watch, Hislop; how did it bear?" "About twelve miles off, on the weather quarter." "How shall I return home?" They both laughed as I despairingly made this inquiry. "By the way you left it, I suppose; that is by water," said Capt. Weston. "You spoke of the Start; what is that?" "A cape of the Channel, on tho southeast coast of Devonshire, about nine miles to the southward of Dartmouth," Dart-mouth," he replied, while casting a cas-al cas-al glance at a chart which lay on the with it, until the chain came to bear, when there was a tremendous shock. Several feet of our bulwark were torn away, and two seamen, Tattooed Tom, and an old man-o'-war's man named Roberts, were nearly swept into the sea, where, in such a night, and amid the confusion of such an incident, they would inevitably have perished unaided. un-aided. Then we heard a shout, mingled with a crash upon the bellowing wind, as the Dutchman's foremast snapped by the board, and then, fortunately, our anchor tumbled from his side into the sea, where it swung at the whole length of the chain cable. We manned both windlass and capstan cap-stan got the anchor, which was drifting, drift-ing, roused to the cathead, hoisted it on board, unbent the cable, and stowed it in the tier; but long ere all this was done we had lost sight of our lubberly friend, who, when last seen, was tossing toss-ing about like a log in the darkness, and drifting far astern of us. But for some defect in the pawls and notches of the windlass collar, I am doubtful if the chain would have run out so freely; free-ly; but as to this I cannot say. We had hard squalls and a sea that ran high until daybreak; there was lightning, too; red and dusky; it seemed seem-ed at time3 to fill the whole horizon. We could see for an instant the black summits of the waves as they rose and fell between us and the glare; and when it passed away, all again would be obscurity and gloom. "More canvas must be taken off the brig, sir," suggested Hislop, looking aloft and then over the side, where the foam-flecked sea whirled past us. "Well, in with the trysail, foretop-sail, foretop-sail, and maintopsail," ordered Weston. "If you will listen you shall hear a strange story in which I bore a prominent prom-inent part." "As the ghost?" said I. "No; but you will soon acknowledge whether or not I had cause for fear." And after he had replenished his glass and pipe, Capt. Sam Weston began be-gan in this manner: "About fifteen years ago I found myself at Matanzas, in Cuba, the same port we are bound for now adrift, without a ship, and almost without a penny in my pocket, among foreigners, .Spaniards and mulattoes, mestees and quadroons, black, white and yellow. I had gone there as second mate of a ship from Boston, but the tyranny of our skipper wellnigh drove me mad. During Dur-ing the voyage he had nearly killed three of our men for being slow in sending down the top-gallant yards on a squally night. He beat them until they were black and blue with a handspike, hand-spike, and kept them for forty-eight hours, lashed to ringbolts in the ice-scupppers, ice-scupppers, that the sea might break over them, as he said, and cure their sores. "When I interfered to save a poor cabin boy, whom he had hung up by the heels from the main-boom, and was scourging with a heavy colt till his back was covered with blood, he produced pro-duced a bowie knife and revolver, threating to 'shoot or rip me up.' "Just at that moment we were passing pass-ing a Spanish ship of war which was at anchor in the bay, about half a mile from us, and had the red and yellow jack of Castile and Leon flying at his gaff peak. One of the poor fellows who had been so severely beaten was then in the foretop, so I hailed him to make a signal of distress to the Spaniard." (To be continued.) tauie I had thus, before being rescued so -Evidentially, drifted more than a hundred miles from Erlesmere, and It was marvelous that the schooner had floated so far unseen. "Well, what is to be done now?" ai.ked the captain. "We are bound for the West Indies,' but we may put you aboard the first craft that passes us, hoineward-bound; or you are free to remain, if we cannot do better for you." I thought of my mother, my father, my two sisters; and my heart was so full of gratitude to heaven for preserving preserv-ing me to the end, that I might see and embrace them all again, that I had no words to reply. After a time I exclaimed: ex-claimed: "Home, home! let me go home to Erlesmere!" weeping as I spoke, for the thought of them all made me a very child again. The captain and mate exchanged glances of inquiry. "It's no use piping your eye now, my lad," said the former, coming toward my berth; "but answer me quietly. You said that your name was Rodney?" "Yes." "And you spoke of Erlesmere; are you a son of old Dr. Rodney, the rector?" rec-tor?" "Do you know my father, then?" I exclaimed. "CaJi't say exactly that I have the honor of being known to him; but I know of him, right well. Why, Master Rodney, I have sailed your uncle's ships many a time, and know his gloomy old office in the city, as well as the buoy at the Nore; so you are as safe and as welcome aboard the Eugenie Eu-genie as if in the old rectory house at home." This wag pleasant intelligence, at all events; but my earnest desire was to return a design which was not fated to be speedily gratified. For several days we passed only outward-bound vessels, or others which were at such a distance that the task of signaling and speaking with them would have delayed the Eugenie longer i than Capt. Weston could risk. Two ! that passed near us, when we showed j our ensign, replied by displaying the ! tricolor of France or the red and yellow yel-low bars of Spain; so there was nothing noth-ing for me now but to remain contentedly content-edly on board the Eugenie, which was bound for Matanzas with a solid cargo of steam machinery and coal. The master had no doubt of getting a return freight direct for London; thus six or eight months might elapse before I could return to Erlesmere. I gradually became reconciled to the novelty of my situation; I looked forward for-ward hopefully to the time when the Borrow of those I had left behind would be alleviated, and began to enjoy to the utmost the prospect of a voyage in i .ni,inr hviar to the shores of Cuba. As the lignt or aawn stoie over tae angry sea, through clouds of mingled mist and rain, the gale abated, and all but the watch went below. Calm weather and heavy rains succeeded suc-ceeded the gale; but the Eugenie steadily stead-ily kept her course, and two days after, when spanking along before a fine topgallant top-gallant breeze, we picked up a bottle, which was described by the watch, floating and bobbing in the water a v fathoms distant from the brig. She Tas at once hove in the wind, and Hislop His-lop went in the stern boat to bring the bottle on board. As the most trivial incident becomes of interest on board of ship, where the daily occurrences are so few, and the circle of society so limited, considerable consider-able concern was excited by the appearance ap-pearance of this bottle, which seemed to have been freshly corked; and on its being broken, we found a scrap of papertorn pa-pertorn apparently from a notebook whereupon a hurried and agitated hand had penciled this brief notice: "The Mary, clipper ship, of Boston, 20th Nov., 1S61, momentarily expected to go down pumps worn out, and the ;inr Pnntnln ftnii first mate. teaKs fertniius v..." with all the boats, washed away God help us!" "The 20th ot November? It was on that night we encountered the heavy gale," said Weston. We had been on the skirt of the tempest, tem-pest, as Hislop maintained, while the Yankee ship had probably suffered all the fury of It. From the main-cross-trees Capt. Weston swept the sea with bis telescope, in vain, for any trace of her; so if that melancholy scrap of pa-per'told pa-per'told truth, all was doubtless over long since with the Mary and her crew. In the cabin that night a conversation conversa-tion on the probabilities of her de-! de-! struction or escape led to a recurrence 1 to the miraculous manner in which the unlucky Dutch schooner hod floaterl so : long with me; and I mentioned to Weston Wes-ton and Hislop the additional terrors i I had endured by the effect of imagina-! imagina-! tion and a recollection of the strange j Incidents told me by Capt. Zeervogel; CHAPTER V. The Voyage to Cuba. - I resolved not to be an idler or lob-lollv lob-lollv bov, and was allowed by Captain nd j Weston to take my watches and share I,' of deck dutv with the rest of the crew; ' ! and at intervals I worked hard at a " ! Spanish grammar with Marc Hislop. V i who would read "Don Quixote" in the original, with a fluency that even my 8 ! old tutor at Eton might have envied. ; - ! We were now clear of the Channel: . :,7e ! and, after a hard battle with the wind ' and sea, we left the long roll of the rulghtv Atlantic. On the third night after my rescue. we encountered dark and cloudy weath-3 weath-3 i er with a strong gale, which set all i the cabin afloat. My watch was over. ! and I had just turned in. when I heard 3 The voice of Capt. Weston, who was - ! on deck, shouting through his trumpet 9'ito "close reef the maintopsail, hand j the mainsail, fore-sail, and foretop.aH. |