Spanish captain and about forty of his crew showed a determined front, cutlass and pistol in hand-we charged them-they stood their ground. Tailtackle (who, the moment he heard the boarders called, had jumped out of the magazine, and followed me) at a blow clove the Spanish captain to the chin; the lieutenant, or second in command, was my bird, and I had disabled him by a sabre-cut on the sword-arm, when he drew his pistol, and shot me through the left shoulder. I felt no pain, but a sharp pinch, and then a cold sensation, as if water had been poured down my neck.

Jigmaree was close by me with a boardingpike, and our fellows were fighting with all the gallantry inherent in British sailors. For a moment the battle was poised in equal scales. At length our antagonist gave way, when about fifteen of the slaves, naked barbarians, who had been ranged with muskets in their hands on the forecastle, suddenly jumped down into the waist with a yell, and came to the rescue of the Spanish part of the crew.

I thought we were lost. Our people, all but Tailtackle, poor Handlead, and Jigmaree, held back. The Spaniards rallied, and fought with renewed courage, and it was now, not for glory, but for dear life, as all retreat was cut off by the parting of the grapplings and warps that had lashed the schooner alongside of the slaver, for the Wave had by this time forged ahead, and lay across the brig's bows, in place of being on our quarter, with her foremast jammed against the slaver's bowsprit, whose spritsail-yard crossed our deck between the masts. We could not therefore retreat to our own vessel if we had wished it, as the Spaniards had possession of the waist and forecastle; all at once, however, a discharge of round and grape crashed through the bridleport of the brig, and swept off three of the black auxiliaries before mentioned, and wounded as many more, and the next moment an unexpected ally appeared on the field. When we boarded, the Wave had been left with only Peter Mangrove; the five dockyard negroes; Pearl, one of the captain's gigs, the handsome black already introduced on the scene; poor little Reefpoint, who was badly hurt; Aaron Bang, Paul Gelid, and Wagtail. But this Pearl without price, at the very moment of time when I thought the game was up, jumped on deck through the bowport, cutlass in hand, followed by the five black carpenters and Peter Mangrove, after whom appeared no less a personage than Aaron Bang himself and the three blackamoor valets, armed with boarding-pikes. Bang flourished his cutlass for an instant.

"Now, Pearl, my darling, shout to them in Coromantee-shout;" and forthwith the black quartermaster sung out, "Coromantee Sheik Cocoloo, kockernony populorum fiz," which, as I afterwards learned, being interpreted, is, "Behold the Sultan Cocoloo, the great ostrich, with a feather in his tail like a palm branch; fight for him, you sons of female dogs." In an instant the black Spanish auxiliaries sided with Pearl, and Bang, and the negroes, and joined in charging the white Spaniards, who were speedily driven down the main hatchway, leaving one-half of their number dead or badly wounded on the blood-slippery deck. But they still made a desperate defence by firing up the hatchway. I hailed them to surrender.

"Zounds!" cried Jigmaree, "there's the clink of hammers; they are knocking off the fetters of the slaves."

"If you let the blacks loose," I sung out in Spanish, "by the Heaven above us, I will blow you up, although I should go with you! Hold your hands, Spaniards! Mind what you do, madmen!"

"On with the hatches, men," shouted Tailtackle.

They had been thrown overboard, or put out of the way, they could nowhere be seen. The firing from below continued.

Cast loose that carronade there; clap in a canister of grape-so-now run it forward, and fire down the hatchway." It was done, and taking effect amongst the pent-up slaves, such a yell arose-O God! O God!--I never can forget it. Still the maniacs continued firing up the hatchway.

"Load and fire again." My people were now furious, and fought more like incarnate fiends broke loose from hell than human beings.

Run the gun up to the hatchway once more. They ran the carronade so furiously forward, that the coaming or ledge was split off, and down went the gun, carriage and all, with a crash into the hold. Presently smoke appeared rising up the fore-hatchway.

"They have set fire to the brig; overboard! regain the schooner, or we shall all be blown into the air like peels of onions!" sung out little Jigmaree.

But where was the Wave? She had broke away, and was now a cable's length ahead, apparently fast leaving us, with Paul Gelid and Wagtail, and poor little Reefpoint, who, badly wounded as he was, had left his hammock, and come on deck in the emergency, making signs of their inability to cut away the halyards;

and the tiller being shot away, the schooner had become utterly unmanageable.

"Up, and let fall the foresail, men-down with the foretack-cheerily now-get way on the brig, and overhaul the Wave promptly, or we are lost," cried I. It was done with all the coolness of desperate men. I took the helm, and presently we were once more alongside of our own vessel. Time we were so, for about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, whose shackles had been knocked off, now scrambled up the fore-hatchway, and we had only time to jump overboard when they made a rush aft; and no doubt, exhausted as we were, they would have massacred us on the spot, frantic and furious as they had become from the mur derous fire of grape that had been directed, down the hatchway.

But the fire was quicker than they. The smouldering smoke, that was rising like a pillar of cloud from the fore-hatchway, was now streaked with tongues of red flame, which, licking the masts and spars, ran up and caught the sails and rigging. In an instant the fire, spread to every part of the gear aloft, while the other element, the sea, was also striving for the mastery in the destruction of the doomed vessel; for our shot, or the fall of the carronade into the hold, had started some of the bottom planks, and she was fast settling down by the head. We could hear the water rushing in like a mill-stream. The fire in creased her guns went off as they became heated-she gave a sudden heel-and while five hundred human beings, pent up in her noisome hold, split the heavens with their piercing death-yells, down she went with a heavy lurch, head foremost, right in the wake of the setting sun, whose level rays made the thick dun wreaths that burst from her as she disappeared glow with the hue of the amethyst; and while the whirling clouds, gilded by his dying radiance, curled up into the blue sky in rolling masses, growing thinner and thinner, until they vanished away, even like the wreck whereout they arose,-and the circling eddies created by her sinking no longer sparkled and flashed in the red light,—and the stilled waters where she had gone down, as if oil had been cast on them, were spread out like polished silver, shining like a mirror, while all around was dark blue ripple,-a puff of fat black smoke, denser than any we had yet seen, suddenly emerged, with a loud gurgling noise, from out the deep bosom of the calmed sea, and rose like a balloon, rolling slowly upwards, until it reached a little way above our mastheads, where it melted and spread out into

1

a dark pall, that overhung the scene of death, as if the incense of such a horrible and polluted sacrifice could not ascend into the pure heaven, but had been again crushed back upon our devoted heads, as a palpable manifestation of the wrath of Him who hath said—“Thou shalt not kill."

For a few moments all was silent as the grave, and I felt as if the air had become too thick for breathing, while I looked up like another Cain.

Presently, about one hundred and fifty of the slaves, men, women, and children, who had been drawn down by the vortex, rose amidst numberless pieces of smoking wreck to the surface of the sea; the strongest yelling ke fiends in their despair, while the weaker, the women, and the helpless gasping little ones, were choking, and gurgling, and sinking all around. Yea, the small thin expiring cry of the innocent sucking infant torn from its sinking mother's breast, as she held it for a brief moment above the waters, which had already for ever closed over herself, was there. But we could not perceive one single individual of her white crew; like desperate men, they had all gone down with the brig. We picked up about one half of the miserable Africans, and

my pen trembles as I write it-fell necessity compelled us to fire on the remainder, as it was utterly impossible for us to take them on board. Oh that I could erase such a scene for ever from my memory! One incident I cannot help relating. We had saved a woman, a handsome, clear-skinned girl of about sixteen years of age. She was very faint when we got her in, and was lying with her head over a port-sill, when a strong athletic young negro swam to the part of the schooner where she was. She held down her hand to him; he was in the act of grasping it, when he was shot through the heart from above. She instantly jumped overboard, and, clasping him in her arms, they sank, and disappeared together. "Oh, woman, whatever may be the colour of your skin, your heart is of one only!" said Aaron.

Soon all was quiet; a wounded black here and there was shrieking in his great agony, and struggling for a moment before he sank into his watery grave for ever; a few pieces of wreck were floating and sparkling on the surface of the deep in the blood-red sunbeams, which streamed in a flood of glorious light on the bloody deck, shattered hull, and torn sails and rigging of the Ware, and on the dead bodies and mangled limbs of those who had fallen; while some heavy scattering drops of rain fell sparkling from a passing cloud, as if

Upon the southern bank of the Tweed stand the ruins of the celebrated abbey of Melrose, surrounded by the little village of the same The ruins of this ancient monastery, or rather of the church connected with it (for the domestic buildings are entirely gone), afford the finest specimen of Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture of which this country can boast. By singular good fortune Melrose is

also one of the most entire, as it is the most

port of the roof are still extant. It is to these objects that the attention of travellers is chiefly directed.

It is not to the zeal of Reformers alone that the desecration of our best old religious buildings is to be attributed. The enthusiasm of individuals in more recent times has sometimes

These, harmless

done that which the Reformers left undone : as is testified by a notorious circumstance told by the person who shows Melrose. On the eastern window of the church there were formerly thirteen effigies, supposed to represent our Saviour and his apostles.1 and beautiful as they were, happened to provoke the wrath of a canting weaver in Gattonside, who, in a moment of inspired zeal, went up one night by means of a ladder, and with a hammer and chisel knocked off the heads and limbs of the figures. Next morning he made no scruple to publish the transaction, observ

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair,

We start, for soul is wanting there.
Its is the loveliness in death,

That parts not quite with parting breath;
But beauty with that fearful bloom,
That hue which haunts it to the tomb.

Its is not the beauty of summer, but the melancholy grace of autumn; not the beauty of a blooming bride, but that of a pining and death-stricken maiden. It is not that this is a thing of perfect splendour that we admire it, but because it is a fragment which only represents or shadows forth a matchless whole which has been, and whose merits we are, from this shattered specimen, completely disposed to allow.

Melrose Abbey was first built by David I. in the year 1136, dedicated to St. Mary, and devoted to the use of a body of Cistercian monks. The church, which alone remains, measures 287 feet in length, and 157 at the greatest breadth. It is built in the most ornate style of the Gothic architecture, and therefore decorated with an infinite variety of sculptures, │ most of which are exquisitely fine. While the

western extremity of the building is entirely ruined and removed, the eastern and more important parts are fortunately in a state of tolerable preservation; in particular, the oriel window, and that which surmounts the south door, both alike admirable, are almost entire. It is also matter of great thankfulness that a good many of the shapely pillars for the sup

person whom he met, that he had "fairly stumpet thae vile paipist dirt nou!" The people sometimes catch up a remarkable word when uttered on a remarkable occasion by one of their number, and turn the utterer into ridi cule by attaching it to him as a nickname; and it is some consolation to think that this monster was therefore treated with the sobriquet of "Stumpie," and of course carried it about with him to his grave.

It would require a distinct volume to do justice to the infinite details of Melrose Abbey: for the whole is built in a style of such elaborate ornament, that almost every foot-breadth has its beauty, and every beauty is worthy of notice. I shall content myself with merely adding the description which Sir Walter Scott has given of it in his Lay of the Last Minstrel:

If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins gray.
When the broken arches are dark in night,
And each shafted oriel glimmers white;
When the cold light's uncertain shower
Streams on the ruin'd central tower;
When buttress and buttress, alternately,
Seem framed of ebon and ivory;
When silver edges the imagery,

And the scrolls that teach thee to live and die;
When distant Tweed is heard to rave,

And the howlet to hoot o'er the dead man's grave,

1 In the drawing of Melrose Abbey in Slezer's Theatrum Scotia, the niches are all filled with statues. Slezer took his drawings early in the reign of King

William.