THERE glides the dashing Spankaway over the smooth surface of the ocean, whilst, close in her wake, moves the vanquished Hippolito. The damages have been repaired so as to be scarcely perceptible; the shot-holes have been well plugged and secured; and the two frigates appear more like consorts on a cruise than enemies so recently engaged in deadly strife. The breeze is a royal breeze; and gallantly the beautiful ships are splitting the yielding waters, whilst the watches are employed in necessary duties. Near the taffrail of the Spankaway stand two prominent figures, both remarkably fine-looking men, who might be taken for brother officers but for the difference in their uniforms. The one on the larboard hand has his head erect, his chest thrown forward, his left hand thrust into his waistcoat, and his right foot in advance planted firmly on the deck; he is indulging in high-wrought and proud feelings as he silently gazes on the prize; his voice is not heard, but there is a speaking meaning in his look as he contemplates the red cross of St. George upon a white field floating majestically above the tricolour, whilst his own untarnished ensign waves singly at his peak. The individual on the starboard hand has a cast of melancholy on his countenance; his head is depressed, his arms are folded on his breast; and, though sensible that he has done his duty, and defended his command as long as his crew rendered it tenable, yet he knows that he was not well supported by his fellow-citizens, among whom equality is the order of the day; and he is suffering from a sense of deep humiliation at the degraded condition in which he is placed. These are the captains of the two frigates,— the victor and the vanquished.

Upon the quarter-deck of the Hippolito is Mr. Seymour, hurrying to and fro, issuing his orders, and rendering the prize as effective as possible. There is a laughing glee upon his features that plainly evidences the pleasure he cherishes in his heart; he looks around with exultation as he anticipates the moment when he himself shall have such a desirable command. One step he makes sure of; a few hours more may perform fresh wonders; and his mind, with all the vividness of a seaman's hope, is making a hop, skip, and a jump progress to certain conclusions favourable to promotion. The fact is, Seymour had been long neglected; he was an excellent officer, and a brave man; had fought in several actions, been severely wounded on more than one occasion; but the coveted distinction had been withheld because he was not a first licutenant. Now, however, he made sure of

it; and he already began to feel the weight of the epaulette on the left shoulder, with an ardent determination to do something that would transfer it to the right shoulder.

But whither are the frigates steering? their heads are not on the compass-point for a friendly port, but directly the reverse. Night is coming on; they are running into the gulf of Genoa. There are the Hieres, a little open on the larboard bow, just rising from the sea. South-west should carry them to Gibraltar, and there are they going away north-east.

"Your undertaking is rather hazardous, my lord," said Citizen Captain Begaud; "there are ships of the line in the immediate neighbourhood, and the English fleet may have again resumed its station."

"If the latter is the case," replied Lord Eustace, "I can run no hazard; for Lord Nelson will have a bright eye upon the enemy. On the other hand, the enterprise is worth a little risk; and, though I despise the fellows who gave me the information, yet it is my duty, as well as according with my inclination, to make the most of it."

"Vous avez raison, milord," rejoined the Frenchman; “mais—” he paused: "sacré ! the rascal who told you merits the guillotine; he is a disgrace to the grande nation."

"Well, I'm blow'd if I can make any thing o' this here!" exclaimed old Savage, the boatswain, to his subordinate, Jack Sheavehole, as they stood upon the forecastle; "it beats my larning out and out. Here we captures a French frigate, and has all the prisoners in limbo, when, instead of seeing her into a place of safety, why here we goes happy-go-lucky right down into the bight of Ginoar, slap into the enemy's teeth."

"Is that why you calls it a bite, Mr. Savage?" asked Jemmy Ducks, touching his hat with all due respect.

"Calls what a bite, you egg-sucker?" responded the boatswain somewhat roughly, at the presumption of the inquirer in addressing an officer of his distinction so freely. "Calls what a bite ?"

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Going into the enemy's teeth, sir!" answered the humble poulterer, again touching his straw covering.

Did you ever hear such an hignoramus, Jack?" said the boatswain to his veteran mate, in a tone of extreme contempt.

Why, for the matter o' that, not often, sir," answered the individual addressed, "thof it is but nat'ral for him;" and, seeing that the boatswain was twiddling his rattan with his fingers, as a prelude to castigation, he turned to the poulterer, and, giving him a friendly shove, exclaimed, " Away out o' that, Jemmy; there's the cow's babby bleating for you;" and off he went.

"The sarvice is going to Jack !" said Mr. Savage; "the captain arn't half strict enough with them there 'long-shore lubbers, as pay no more respect to an officer than they do to a timber-head! and, in the regard o' that, his lordship himself too often speaks to 'em as if they had flesh and blood like his own, when, Lord love you! they arn't got never no such thing. And where his lordship is bound to now, puzzles my calculations. I say, Muster Blueblazes," to the gunner, who approached them, "what's all this here about?"

"Flannel cartridges," replied the gunner, passing on in a hurry, and calling to his several mates to descend to the magazine. "Flannel devils !" retorted old Savage. That's all the answer I

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gets for my pains! Pray, Muster Nugent, may I presume to ax you if you can just deligthning my mind as to what cruise we 're going on in this course, seeing as it takes us slap down into the bight of the bay?"

"Gulf, Mr. Savage,-not bay," replied the junior lieutenant, "the gulf of Genoa, named after a celebrated city that formerly monopolised the commerce of the world. Christopher Columbus was a Genoese. Did you never read about Christopher Columbus?"

"Can't say as I have, sir," returned the impatient boatswain ; " are we bound in chase of him, sir?"

"In chase of whom? Columbus ?" responded the lieutenant, laughing; "why, he's been dead nearly two hundred years. No, no, Mr. Savage; we 're going"

"Mr. Nugent!" shouted Lord Eustace from the quarter-deck; and, to the great vexation of the boatswain, who was on the qui-vive to ascertain where they were bound, the young officer instantly responded, and went aft.

"That's just the way I'm al'ays sarved," said Savage petulantly, and applying his rattan to the shoulders of a poor unfortunate lad who passed him without touching the locks that hung clustering on his forehead, for hat or cap he had none. "Here's a pretty knownothing! Do you forget, sir, that an officer's an officer, sir? and it's customary, sir, to pay proper respect, sir, to your superiors, sir, your betters, sir, you scape-grace, lubberly blackguard, sir ;" and down came the stick at every "sir." The boy made the best of his way across the forecastle; but was again stopped by the boatswain. "Come back here, you wagabone. Don't you know, sir, that it's a great mark of disrespect, sir, to run away when an officer's starting you, sir? There, go along, you useless lumber! pretty regylations we shall have by and by, when such hard bargains as you fall aboard the King's biscuit! We're all going to the devil together, Jack!" and he turned to look over the bows.

"If we are going to the devil," muttered Jack to the captain of the forecastle, "I hopes he'll sarve out his infarnal favours as the Lords of the Admiralty shares the prize-money,-three parts among the

officers."

Lovely is a Mediterranean twilight in those balmy months that breathe the odorous incense of exulting Nature in all its richest perfumes! then is the hour for contemplation! it is then the mind ranges over its best affections; and hearts, though oceans divide them, hold a mysterious communing with each other.

"Deeper, oh twilight, let thy shades increase

Till every feeling, every pulse, is peace."

It is the poet alone that can describe its influences, for the art of the painter is baffled; he cannot produce the deepening tints as the web of darkness appears to be progressively weaving over the face of the heavens.

"I love this season," said Lord Eustace to his captive, as they still stood side by side abaft; "there is a holy tranquillity about it that calms every turbulent passion, and soothes the heart in its sorrow."

"C'est vrai, milord," returned the Frenchman, mournfully enough for one of his country; "and yon star there," pointing to Algol in Medusa's head, "has ever been to me the star of my destiny. Three days since I quitted Toulon; that orb at night was dim, and a heavy

foreboding rested on my spirit; on the following night its brightness, even its dimensions, had decreased, and then I knew the doom of my honour was at hand."

"Whatever presentiment you might have had," said Lord Eustace, "rest satisfied your honour remains untarnished. You fought your ship well, and be assured my account of the action shall do you ample justice. But I should like to know why you consider that particular star as connected with your fortunes."

"You shall be gratified then," responded the Frenchman, "if you have no objections to a tale of horror."

"None, none,-not in the least!" answered the noble captain; "the hour, the quiet, the dubious light, it is just the time for such a thing. Pray favour me, and I will gaze on the Gorgon, and listen with profound attention."

"We are both of us young, my lord," commenced the Frenchman; "I am but six-and-twenty, and you

"One year your junior, Monsieur Capitaine," uttered his lordship; "but I fancy I have seen more active service than you?"

"Afloat, 'tis probable, my lord," rejoined Begaud. "I was not at first destined for the marine: my early career was in the army of the North, when your Duke of York, deserted by the allied powers, (who received your money whilst they negotiated with the Directory,) retreated before our victorious troops. But I am forestalling my narrative, heaving ahead of my reckoning, I think you'd call it. I am by birth a native of Paris, and the night of my entering the world was one of wailing, lamentation, and death. It was that on which three thousand persons were killed and wounded during a grand exhibition of fire-works, displayed in honour of the marriage of the Dauphin to the Archduchess Antoinetta Maria. Thus was I ushered into existence amidst shrieks and groans; and neither of my parents ever beheld their child. My father perished in the streets; the circumstance was indiscreetly announced to my mother; it brought on premature labour, and the living infant was taken from a corpse. What could be expected of such an introduction into life? I had an uncle residing upon the vine-clad hills that rise near the banks of the Garonne, a few leagues from Bordeaux, and there I passed my boyhood; but he was an austere man, and, having a large family of his own, I was looked upon as an incumbrance, and the only individual who appeared to commiserate my fate was an aged woman who lived in a cottage upon the estate, and was looked upon as a sibyl of no mean pretensions. She it was who first taught me to look upon yon star, and watch its capricious changes, so as to connect them with the occurrences of my life; and she it was who read my future fate on the tablets of inspiration. And who was this female? Twenty years before she had been the favourite of fortune, enjoying the luxuries of the capital, yet with an unblemished reputation. She had an only child, a daughter, resplendent in her opening beauty of girlhood,a type of that loveliness with which we characterise the angels. She was seen in the garden of the Tuileries by that depraved debauchee, the Fifteenth Louis; his agents secretly forced her to the Parc aux Cerfs; and the distracted mother, ascertaining the lost condition of her child, spoke publicly and loudly of the cruel grievance. But there was a Bastile then, monsieur," added he, with bitter emphasis, "engines of torture and iron cages to silence babblers; and thither

was the parent sent by order of that monarch, who held the daughter in his unchaste embraces. That fellow was a wretch, my lord. It was he, and such as he, that deluged France with blood. The measure of their iniquity ran over. But the Bourbons were ever an accursed race. The property of the mother was seized upon by the emissaries of the police; and when a few years afterwards, she was released from her imprisonment, it was to find herself a homeless outcast, and her daughter,—the beauteous child of her soul's affections,—the inmate of a madhouse. Kings should be the protectors, the benefactors of their subjects; not their bane, their curse, the agents of their torture. Monsieur, that woman was my relative, and early did she stamp upon my young heart that hatred to royalty which remains unconquerably the same to this very hour. Yes, here it is," and he pressed his hand with energetic firmness over the seat of life; “here, —here it is, and, like a memorial carved on the bark of a sapling, it has become enlarged with my growth, and deeper indented with my years. It is my fate, monsieur,—it is my fate.

"The days of my boyhood passed on in mental misery. I felt for the injuries that had been heaped upon my only friend; I yielded to her instructions to be prepared against the hour of vengeance, when retributive justice should sweep tyranny from the throne; I nursed the hope in the secret recesses of my breast; I cherished it in my heart's core; it was the subject of my nightly dreams and waking thoughts; and, whilst other lads sought amusement in boyish pastimes, the demon of revenge led me into solitary nooks, where I hoarded up my ardent desire to redress the wrongs of Madame T--. Such, monsieur, was Jacques Begaud in his thirteenth year, when, tired of a vegetative life, I quitted my uncle's house, which, though it had been a place of shelter, had never been a home to me, and travelled on foot to Toulon. My small stock of money was soon expended; but yet I wanted for nothing. A piece of bread and a little fruit, with some wine, no one denied me; and, monsieur, I felt the sweets of liberty. Why I went to Toulon I do not know, for Paris was my aim; and Madame T had prophesied, there was something terrible in her denunciations,—she had prophesied desolation and destruction to the house of the Bourbons; and as rumours were spreading of disunion at court, so did she eagerly feed upon them, and urge me to redress her wrongs. It is true the debauchee was in his grave; but then there was his grandson, the celebration of whose marriage had made me an orphan even before my birth; and, boy as I was, with a mind care-worn and cankered, I even looked upon that event as a legitimate cause of hatred."

"But the star, the star!" exclaimed Lord Eustace; "I am anxious to learn in what manner you considered yourself influenced by the star."

"Madame T― made it the source of her divination," returned Citizen Begaud. "She would sit and silently gaze upon it for hours; and at my departure she bade me observe it on the first day of every month. If in full splendour, my career for the time would be prosperous; if shorn of its glory, I was then to expect adversity. I strictly followed her directions, and my fortunes were as varied as the brightness of yon orb. At Toulon I was much struck with the naval yard and arsenal; and in the former I laboured for several months in the humble occupation of an oakum-picker, gaining not