“Let her retain it. Has she not been a sultana?” observed the pacha, with some appearance of feeling.

  The old woman’s ears were keen, she had heard the question of Mustapha, and she had heard the reply of the pacha; and she easily imagined the rest.

  “And now, pacha, before I quit your presence, as I have enjoyed your bounty, I will, with your permission, offer you a piece of advice, which, from my knowledge of the world and of people’s countenances, may be of no small service to you. Is it permitted, O pacha?”

  “Speak,” replied the pacha.

  “Then, pacha, beware of that man who sits beside you; for there is that in his face which tells me that he will raise himself upon your fall. Pacha, beware!”

  “Hag of Jehanum!” exclaimed Mustapha, rising from his seat.

  The old woman held up her finger, and walked out of the divan.

  The pacha looked suspiciously at Mustapha, for he was of a suspicious nature; and Mustapha looked anything but innocent.

  “Doth my lord give ear to a lying tongue of an old woman?” said Mustapha, prostrating himself. “Hath not your slave proved himself faithful? Am not I as dust in thy presence? Take my life, O pacha! but doubt not the fidelity of thy slave.”

  The pacha seemed pacified. “What is all this but bosh, nothing?” said he, rising and quitting the apartment.

  “Bosh!” muttered Mustapha. “The cursed old hag! I know better — there is no time to lose — I must be quick. When will that renegade return from Stamboul? It is time.” And Mustapha, with a gloomy countenance, quitted the divan.

  Chapter XXII

  Although the pacha, with the usual diplomacy of a Turk, had, so far from expressing his displeasure against Mustapha, treated him with more than usual urbanity, he had not forgotten the advice of the old woman. Suspicion once raised was not to be allayed, and he had consulted with his favourite wife, Fatima. A woman is a good adviser in cases of this description. The only danger which could threaten the pacha was from the imperial court at Stamboul; for the troops were devoted to him, and the people of the country had no very serious cause of complaint. By the advice of the favourite, the pacha sent as a present to Mustapha, a young and handsome Greek girl, but she was a spy in the service of the favourite, and had been informed that the vizier had been doomed. She was to discover, if she could, whether there was any intercourse between the renegade, who commanded the fleet, and the vizier, as from that quarter alone danger could be anticipated. The Greek had not been a week in the harem of Mustapha, before she ascertained more than was sufficient. The fleet had been sent to Constantinople, with presents to the sultan from the pacha, and its return was hourly expected.

  It was on the afternoon of this eventful day that the fleet hove in sight, and lay becalmed a few miles in the offing. Mustapha hastened to report it to the pacha, as he sat in his divan, hearing complaints, and giving judgment, although not justice. Now when the pacha heard that the fleet had returned, his heart misgave him, and the more so, as Mustapha was more obsequious and fawning than ever. He retired for a short time from the divan, and hastened to his favourite, Fatima.

  “Pacha,” said she, “the fleet has arrived, and Mustapha has already communicated with the renegade. Depend upon it you are lost, if you do not forestall them. Lose no time. But stop,” said she, “do not alarm the renegade by violence to Mustapha. To-morrow the fleet will anchor, and if there is mischief, it will not arrive until to-morrow — but this evening, you will as usual send for coffee, while you smoke and listen to the tales which you delight in. Drink not your coffee, for there shall be death in it. Be all smiles and good-humour, and leave me to manage the rest.”

  The pacha smoothed his brow and returned to the divan. Business proceeded as usual, and at length the audience was closed. The pacha appeared to be in high good-humour, and so was the vizier.

  “Surely,” said Mustapha, when the pipes were brought, “his imperial highness, the sultan will have sent you some mark of his distinguished favour.”

  “God is great, and the sultan is wise,” replied the pacha. “I have been thinking so too, Mustapha. Who knows but that he may add to the territory under my sway by another pachalik?”

  “I dreamt as much,” replied Mustapha, “and I am anxious that the renegade should come on shore; but it is now dark, and he will not leave his vessel.”

  “We must drive away the mists of suspense by the sunbeams of hope,” replied the pacha. “What am I but the sultan’s slave? Shall we not indulge this evening in the water of the Giaour?”

  “What saith Hafiz? It is for wine to exalt men, and raise them beyond uncertainty and doubt. It overfloweth us with courage, and imparts visions of bliss.”

  “Wallah Thaib, it is well said, Mustapha,” said the pacha, taking a cup of coffee, presented by the Greek slave. Mustapha also received his cup. “My heart is light this evening,” said the pacha, laying down his pipe, “let us drink deep of the forbidden juice. Where is it, Mustapha?”

  “It is here,” replied the vizier, drinking off his coffee; while the pacha watched him from the corner of his small grey eye. And Mustapha produced the spirits, which were behind the low ottoman upon which he was seated.

  The pacha put aside his coffee, and drank a large draught. “God is great; drink, Mustapha,” said he, handing him the bottle.

  Mustapha followed the example of the pacha. “May it please your highness,” said Mustapha, “I have without a man, who they say hath stories to recount more delightful than those of Menouni. Hearing that he passed through this city, I have detained him, that he might afford amusement to your highness, whose slave I am. Is it your pleasure that he be admitted?”

  “Let it be so,” replied the pacha.

  Mustapha gave the sign, and to the surprise of the pacha, in came the renegade, commander of the fleet, accompanied by guards and the well-known officer of the caliph, the Capidji Bachi, who held up a firman to his forehead.

  The pacha turned pale, for he knew that his hour was come. “Bismillah! In the name of the Most High, O officer, whom seekest thou?” exclaimed the pacha, with emotion.

  “The sultan, the Lord of Life, has sent this to you, O pacha! as a proof of his indulgence and great mercy.” And the Capidji Bachi produced a silken bowstring, and at the same time he handed the fatal scroll to the pacha.

  “Mustapha,” whispered the pacha, “while I read this, collect my guards; I will resist. I fear not the sultan at this distance, and I can soften him with presents.”

  But Mustapha had no such fellow-feeling. “O pacha!” replied he, “who can dispute the will of heaven’s vicegerent? There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.”

  “I will dispute it,” exclaimed the pacha. “Go out and call my trustiest guards.”

  Mustapha left the divan, and returned with the mutes and some of the guards, who had been suborned by himself.

  “Traitor!” exclaimed the pacha.

  “La Allah, il Allah! there is but one God,” said Mustapha.

  The pacha saw that he was sacrificed. He read the firman, pressed it to his forehead, in token of obedience, and prepared for death. The Capidji Bachi produced another firman, and presented it to Mustapha. It was to raise him to the pachalik.

  “Barik Allah! praise be to God for all things,” humbly observed

  Mustapha. “What am I but the sultan’s slave, and to execute his orders?

  On my head be it!”

  Mustapha gave the sign, and the mutes seized the unfortunate pacha.

  “There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet,” said the pacha. “Mustapha,” continued he, turning round to him with a sardonic smile, “may your shadow never be less — but you have swallowed the coffee.”

  The mutes tightened the string. In a minute a cloak was thrown over the body of the pacha.

  “The coffee,” muttered Mustapha, as he heard the pacha’s last words. “I thought it had a taste. Now he’s sent to Jehanum for his treachery.” And all the visions of power and grandeur, which had filled the mind of the new pacha, were absorbed by fear and dismay.

  The Capidji Bachi, having performed his duty, withdrew. “And now,” exclaimed the renegade, “let me have my promised reward.”

  “Your reward — true. I had forgotten,” replied Mustapha, as the pain occasioned by the working of the poison distorted his face. “Yes, I had forgotten,” continued Mustapha, who, certain that his own end was approaching, was furious as a wild beast, with pain and baffled ambition. “Yes, I had forgotten. Guards, seize the renegade.”

  “They must be quicker than you think for,” replied Huckaback, darting from the guards and drawing his scimitar, while, with his fingers in his mouth, he gave a shrill whistle. In rushed a large body of soldiers and sailors of the fleet, and the guards were disarmed. “Now, pacha of one hour old, what sayest thou?”

  “It is my destiny,” replied Mustapha, rolling on the floor in agony. “There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.” And Mustapha expired.

  “The old fool has saved me some trouble,” observed the renegade. “Take away these carcases, and proclaim Ali as the new pacha.”

  Thus perished the two barbers, and thus did Huckaback, under the name of Ali, reign in their stead. But his reign, and how long it lasted, is one of the many tales not handed down to posterity.

  STORIES OF THE SEA

  CONTENTS

  THE PIRATE.

  THE THREE CUTTERS.

  MOONSHINE.

  THE PIRATE.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One.

  Chapter Two.

  Chapter Three.

  Chapter Four.

  Chapter Five.

  Chapter Six.

  Chapter Seven.

  Chapter Eight.

  Chapter Nine.

  Chapter Ten.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Chapter Twelve.

  Chapter Thirteen.

  Chapter Fourteen.

  Chapter Fifteen.

  Chapter Sixteen.

  Chapter Seventeen.

  Chapter Eighteen.

  Chapter One.

  The Bay of Biscay.

  It was in the latter part of the month of June, of the year seventeen hundred and ninety something, that the angry waves of the Bay of Biscay were gradually subsiding, after a gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of the year. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in fitful, angry gusts, as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but each effort was more feeble, and the dark clouds which had been summoned to the storm, now fled in every quarter before the powerful rays of the sun, who burst their masses asunder with a glorious flood of light and heat; and, as he poured down his resplendent beams, piercing deep into the waters of that portion of the Atlantic to which we now refer, with the exception of one object, hardly visible, as at creation, there was a vast circumference of water, bounded by the fancied canopy of heaven. We have said, with the exception of one object; for in the centre of this picture, so simple, yet so sublime, composed of the three great elements, there was a remnant of the fourth. We say a remnant, for it was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, its upper works only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient repose from their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy. But this was seldom; one moment it was deluged by the seas, which broke as they poured over its gunwale; and the next, it rose from its submersion, as the water escaped from the portholes at its sides.

  How many thousands of vessels — how many millions of property — have been abandoned, and eventually consigned to the all-receiving depths of the ocean, through ignorance or through fear! What a mine of wealth must lie buried in its sands! what riches lie entangled amongst its rocks, or remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is equal in gravity to that which it encircles, there to remain secured in its embedment from corruption and decay, until the destruction of the universe and the return of chaos! — Yet, immense as the accumulated loss may be, the major part of it has been occasioned from an ignorance of one of the first laws of nature, that of specific gravity. The vessel to which we have referred was, to all appearance, in a situation of as extreme hazard as that of a drowning man clinging to a single rope-yarn; yet, in reality, she was more secure from descending to the abyss below than many gallantly careering on the waters, their occupants dismissing all fear, and only calculating upon a quick arrival into port.

  The Circassian had sailed from New Orleans, a gallant and well-appointed ship, with a cargo, the major part of which consisted of cotton. The captain was, in the usual acceptation of the term, a good sailor; the crew were hardy and able seamen. As they crossed the Atlantic, they had encountered the gale to which we have referred, were driven down into the Bay of Biscay, where, as we shall hereafter explain, the vessel was dismasted, and sprang a leak, which baffled all their exertions to keep under. It was now five days since the frightened crew had quitted the vessel in two of her boats, one of which had swamped, and every soul that occupied it had perished; the fate of the other was uncertain.

  We said that the crew had deserted the vessel, but we did not assert that every existing being had been removed out of her. Had such been the case, we should not have taken up the reader’s time in describing inanimate matter. It is life that we portray, and life there still was in the shattered hull thus abandoned to the mockery of the ocean. In the caboose of the Circassian, that is, in the cooking-house secured on deck, and which fortunately had been so well fixed as to resist the force of the breaking waves, remained three beings — a man, a woman, and a child. The two first mentioned were of that inferior race which have, for so long a period, been procured from the sultry Afric coast, to toil, but reap not for themselves; the child which lay at the breast of the female was of European blood, now, indeed, deadly pale, as it attempted in vain to draw sustenance from its exhausted nurse, down whose sable cheeks the tears coursed, as she occasionally pressed the infant to her breast, and turned it round to leeward to screen it from the spray which dashed over them at each returning swell. Indifferent to all else, save her little charge, she spoke not, although she shuddered with the cold as the water washed her knees each time that the hull was careened into the wave. Cold and terror had produced a change in her complexion, which now wore a yellow, or sort of copper hue.

  The male, who was her companion, sat opposite to her upon the iron range which once had been the receptacle of light and heat, but was now but a weary seat to a drenched and worn-out wretch. He, too, had not spoken for many hours; with the muscles of his face relaxed, his thick lips pouting far in advance of his collapsed cheeks, his high cheekbones prominent as budding horns, his eyes displaying little but their whites, he appeared to be an object of greater misery than the female, whose thoughts were directed to the infant and not unto herself. Yet his feelings were still acute, although his faculties appeared to be deadened by excess of suffering.

  “Eh, me!” cried the negro woman faintly, after a long silence, her head falling back with extreme exhaustion. Her companion made no reply, but, roused at the sound of her voice, bent forward, slided open the door a little, and looked out to windward. The heavy spray dashed into his glassy eyes, and obscured his vision; he groaned, and fell back into his former position. “What you tink, Coco?” inquired the negress, covering up more carefully the child, as she bent her head down upon it. A look of despair, and a shudder from cold and hunger, were the only reply.

  It was then about eight o’clock in the morning, and the swell of the ocean was fast subsiding. At noon the warmth of the sun was communicated to them through the planks of the caboose, while its rays poured a small stream of vivid light through the chinks of the closed panels. The negro appeared gradually to revive; at last he rose, and with some difficulty contrived again to slide open the door. The sea had gradually decreased its violence, and but occasionally broke over the vessel; carefully holding on by the door-jambs, Coco gained the outside, that he might survey the horizon.

  “What you see, Coco?” said the female, observing from the caboose that his eyes were fixed upon a certain quarter.

  “So help me God, me tink me see something; but ab so much salt water in um eye, me no see clear,” replied Coco, rubbing away the salt which had crystallised on his face during the morning.

  “What you tink um like, Coco?”

  “Only one bit cloud,” replied he, entering the caboose, and resuming his seat upon the grate with a heavy sigh.

  “Eh, me!” cried the negress, who had uncovered the child to look at it, and whose powers were sinking fast. “Poor lilly Massa Eddard, him look very bad indeed — him die very soon, me fear. Look, Coco, no ab breath.”

  The child’s head fell back upon the breast of its nurse, and life appeared to be extinct.

  “Judy, you no ab milk for piccaninny; suppose um ab no milk, how can live? Eh! stop, Judy, me put lilly fingers in um mouth; suppose Massa Eddard no dead, him pull.”

  Coco inserted his finger into the child’s mouth, and felt a slight drawing pressure. “Judy,” cried Coco, “Massa Eddard no dead yet. Try now, suppose you ab lilly drop oder side.”

  Poor Judy shook her head mournfully, and a tear rolled down her cheek; she was aware that nature was exhausted. “Coco,” said she, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, “me give me heart blood for Massa Eddard; but no ab milk — all gone.”

  This forcible expression of love for the child, which was used by Judy, gave an idea to Coco. He drew his knife out of his pocket, and very coolly sawed to the bone of his fore-finger. The blood flowed and trickled down to the extremity, which he applied to the mouth of the infant.

  “See, Judy, Massa Eddard suck — him not dead,” cried Coco, chuckling at the fortunate result of the experiment, and forgetting at the moment their almost hopeless situation.

  The child, revived by the strange sustenance, gradually recovered its powers, and in a few minutes it pulled at the finger with a certain degree of vigour.