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fellows whom I had not seen before climbed out of the forehold. vessel was in the hands of pirates, sure enough.

"That night, coiled up in my little forepeak berth, watching the crowd carousing and playing cards, I learned the wild scheme they had on hand. Through some confederates in England, they had been informed that the ship Thrace,' a merchantman, was coming across with a million dollars in gold on board, that is the figure they put it at. Their intent was to waylay her on the banks and by some artifice, board and take possession of her. Their leader, the tall man, Bygrave by name, had seen more or less of the sea. He took the sun daily and figured out our position. There was among the number a pale actor-fellow who was eternally striking attitudes and spouting dramatic lines. As for the remainder, they were all of a piece, as vicious and desperate a lot as ever pitched their tents with Walker in the pampas. They had managed to smuggle a small cannon on board and this was now lashed to the lanyards of the mainrigging, pointing seaward. No particular attention was paid to me. When I attempted to go aft to ascertain the condition of the Captain I was minded that if I was ever caught again with my feet on the quarter deck I would be immediately thrown overboard. As one of our dories was missing two days before we arrived on the banks, I guessed the Captain's fate.

"Well, we made a fair trip to the banks and were soon in the track of westerly bound vessels. Every sail that came out of the horizon was carefully examined by by Bygrave with a long, powerful glass and

then our schooner was kept away. These tactics continued for three or four days and I guess the pirates were beginning to think that they had missed their prey for one night they were all assembled in the forecastle talking over a scheme to beach the vessel on the Newfoundland coast and scatter. Toward the evening of the next day, however, things began to happen.

"It was a flat calm, a heavy fog hung over us and we lay rolling in a long swell, our jib-block rattling over the traveller and our sheets slatting back and forth. Our fog horn was kept going at regular intervals and late in the afternoon we made out an answering horn. As blast replied to blast, it became evident that the two vessels were rapidly drifting together. Suddenly, the hull of a large vessel loomed dimly through the fog. Bygrave was forward, peering into the fog bank, when the bowsprit and part of the ship's prow pierced the mist.

"Look, boy!' he said to me, your eyes are young, can you make out that name?'

"I took the glass offered and levelled it at the prow disclosed. Some light cordage hid the forepart of the word, but I managed to spell slowly and distinctly the letters: 'T-H-R-A-C-E.' Bygrave ran aft, leaving the glass in my hands. In a moment there was a great stir on board. Some of the men ran below, some began secreting pistols and knives, of which there was a plentiful supply on board, in their clothing. Others took to the pumps.

"It's our meat! I heard Bygrave say to one of the crew, 'seems like a special providence running across her like this. Here, boy,' he said to me, 'come!'

"I followed him down the forecastle companion way and as we reached the door leading from the forecastle into the hold, he stood aside and bade me enter. My foot had scarcely crossed the bulkhead when a push from behind sent me floundering in two feet of water. A large hole had been chopped in the vessel's side and the ocean was now pouring in like a torrent. I listened as a hail from the ship beside us fell on my ears. There came an answering hail from our deck: "Schooner "Watercress" - banker we are foundering-take us off!' That was their game, then! And I was shut up like a rat in the hold to go down with the scuttled vessel. With all my strength and weight I threw myself against the door that had been barred behind me. It yielded. I ran up the companion way. The slide was drawn and the lock was inserted in the staples. I shouted, I cursed the pirate crew. Realizing the futility of appealing to such desperadoes, I reëntered the hold and climbing on the head of a barrel I attempted to push open the forehatch. It was battened down. The height of the fountain that was leaping upward from the gaping wound in the vessel's side was momentarily growing lower and the water in the hold rising higher. If I would save myself from immediate death by drowning I must act quickly. Seizing the cook's axe I made my way into the after hold. Knocking down the uprights that supported the empty fish-bins I swung back my axe and drove it with the energy of desperation into the after bulkhead. The soft pine gave way and I crawled through the aperture made into the cabin. One man was there, the actor.

Rolled up in his hands was the pirate emblem, and I knew by the wild light in his eyes that the excitement of the situation had upset a mind that was never overly well balanced. He paid no attention to me and I followed him up the companion way.

"Every man of the desperate company was massed forward on the maindeck. As I crouched behind the wheel box in the hopes of escaping detection, I heard distinctly these orders given on the ship near us: 'Clear away the first cutter-clear away the third cutter -stand by to lower-all you first cutters away!' At that moment the actor-fellow descended from the mainrigging, deliberately depressed the breech of the little gun amidships, stepped back, struck an attitude and pulled the lanyard. There was a deafening report followed by a shriek of anguish on board the ship. Bygrave leaped forward and with a blow of his clenched fist, struck the wretched actor to the deck. In the brief interval of dead silence that followed, a puff of wind came along and rolled up the fog that hung between the two vessels as you would draw back a curtain. and there, close aboard, the dumbfounded and cowering wretches on the maindeck beheld, first the yardarms, then the topmasts, and now the twin-streaked and ported hull of a British frigate, twenty-four guns! On her stern I saw in letters of gilt: 'H.M.S. Samothrace!' The same wind that rolled up the fog lifted the pirate emblem in our mainrigging and flaunted it in the face of the Union Jack at the frigate's peak.

"The terror-stricken crowd on the maindeck were given no time to par

ley, no time to explain. On board the frigate I heard a hoarse voice cry out: 'Mr. Wells! Mr. Wells! beat to quarters! There was the sharp roll of a drum, the shrill piping of whistles, the patter of hurrying feet, the creaking of blocks and pulleys and the half-suppressed cries of excited men. Then sternly and evenly the commands rang out: 'Port men to station-raise your ports-load-by broadside, on the upward roll-fire!' The warship beside us seemed to explode. dozen sheets of flame and smoke gushed from her hull. The whole starboard side of our little vessel was crushed in like an eggshell. I saw our mainmast tottering and with the quickness of thought, I reached over and threw the sheet from the bit and the spar pitched forward, carrying the boom and sail

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the wounded and shrieking wretches forward. Not one of the pirate crew escaped. I saw the tall form of their leader cut completely in two, the upper portion of his body falling one way, his nether limbs another. Something passed near me with the whir of a bird from its nest and the anterior part of my body seemed pressed against my spine and for some seconds I could not take my breath. How I wholly escaped the death-fire and the flying splinters can only be accounted for by my position in the extreme aftermost part of the vessel. The waves soon began to wash over our decks, and the doubly stricken schooner, her stern rising in the air, began to slide forward and downward. I climbed out on the taffrail, and as I prepared to leap astride the now uncovered rudder, I lived for one moment in the hope that the air caught in the

afterhold would cause her to turn turtle. Suddenly, a stern plank flew out with a loud report. Then I leaped far out. I was an expert swimmer and I strove with all my strength against the power that was dragging me down. When I shot out of the water my head struck against a section of our mainmast. It was a glancing blow and it rendered me partially unconscious for I must have remained in a bewildered state some little time clinging to the spar. I was at length conscious of the ring of rowlocks and the sound of voices, and then through the clear space that always lies between the surface of the water and a bank of fog, I saw the lapstreaks of a boat, but the crew that manned her could not see me. I attempted to cry out and make my presence known, but the power of speech seemed paralyzed and for the moment suspended. In vain I essayed to utter a shout, in vain beat upon the spar with my open palm. The boat circled around me and then boarded the frigate. A few brief commands and the ship, propelled by the light wind that had sprung up, glided away in the mist, and I was left alone on the wide Atlantic.

"We die heroically with the crowd looking on. I have stood shoulder to shoulder with my fellow man in the face of death and feared not,— that is the courage of association; but now as I beheld the moon staring ghostly down through the mist, and looked into. the the cavern-like space that stretched away between the ocean and the fog bank, I was struck with a chill of terror.

"All about me things from the foundered vessel began coming to the surface. An empty water cask

with its lashings attached rolled up, turned over and over two or three times and then spun round like a top. Next our foremast shot half its length out of the water, falling back with a splash. Soon a dory appeared bow foremost, showed half her yellow side, seemed about to turn bottom up and then slipped back and lay rocking on the surface, level full. A pair of oars was fastened within her and the baler still stuck in the rising. Here was salvation, but how to free her from the water she held! In her present condition she might as well have been a thousand miles away. I could not bale her from without, for, although it was comparatively a flat calm, the gentle swell was running right across her. Johnson did that in midocean, but his dory had compartments. I could slip over the side, a trick I was skilled in, but my weight would but carry her gunwales further beneath the surface. A happy thought struck me. Swimming out I secured the painter of the dory and running it through the lashings on the water cask, belayed it short. Hand over hand I now passed along the gunwale, and seizing on the stern, by a vigorous use of my legs I slowly but surely propelled the dory to the mast. Steadying myself by the dory I now stood erect on the spar, and grasping the stern becket I leaned far back and pulled with all my strength. The dory slid easily some few feet on the mast while the cask kept her nose from sinking beneath the surface. I now reached over and extracted the plug and then to my great joy I heard the water running out of the dory. But it was slow work. On a receding swell the water ran out freely, but when it

rolled back I had hard work to hold the ground won by partly stopping the plughole with the butt end of my oar. After a time that seemed an age the dory would bear my weight with the gunwales above the surface and then I leaped in and finished the task with the baler.

"By this I was completely exhausted and, after wringing the water from my saturated clothing, I stretched myself in the stern of the dory and fell into a profound sleep. When I awoke, in steaming garments and shivering like one with the ague, the sun blazed on the edge of the eastern horizon like a ship on fire. Not a sail, not a breath of air vexed the wide expanse of waters that stretched away on either hand. I was the exact centre of a ring that was vaulted with blue and floored as with glass.

"I had a fair idea of the position of our vessel and the lay of the land when she met her strange fate, but under what part of the round horizon lay that land now! I stood up and, extending both arms, faced the sun. And now for the life of me I could not tell whether my right hand pointed to the north or to the south. While I vainly endeavored to recall the rule, becoming more and more uncertain every moment, a flock of gannets passed over my head.

"These birds were, led by their instinct, bound for the fall run of mackerel at Cape Breton; that is, to the northward. The Newfoundland coast then was directly between the rising sun and the course of the birds, northeast. Buoyed up by the hope and the energy of youth I took to my oars. Briefly, I was four days and four nights in an open dory."