the honest industrious Dutchman the victim. Thus, in seventeen hundred and sixty-eight, a band of daring fellows, hovering on the Kent and Sussex shores, defied for a long period all attempts to catch them. Making the port of Hastings their rendezvous, they boarded and robbed numbers of ships coming up Channel, and lived for seven years wholly upon the fruit of their depredations. At length the ruffians, encountering a large richly-freighted Dutch ship that offered unusual resistance, murdered the whole crew and burned the vessel; after which, they returned to Hastings to dispose of the plunder and enjoy themselves. Fortunately, one of the miscreants was overheard jesting with a comrade, respecting the enter taining manner in which one of the murdered Dutchmen "wriggled" about, after having his backbone nearly severed with an axe. Information was forwarded to the authorities in London, who despatched a strong party of military to Hastings, while a vessel of war anchored in the roadstead. On the day following the arrival of the soldiers, which had been managed with great secresy, the mayor was openly accosted by one of the pirate gang, who demanded the meaning of the war-ship's appearance, and the rumour of the arrival of military. His worship, refusing explanation, was instantly set upon by his questioner, and by others of the band who had been lurking near; but some soldiers opportunely arriving, a fight ensued, resulting in the capture of the pirates, who, with other of their associates subsequently taken, were sent to London and lodged in the Marshalsea. In seventeen hundred and twenty-nine occurred the singular case of John Smith, whose real name was Gow. This worthy sailed as mate in the George, from a Scotch haven. The crew consisted of twenty-four. At the head of eight of these, Gow rose one night upon the officers, murdered the captain, surgeon, chief mate, and supercargo, and, hoisting the black flag, steered for Spain. Four more of the crew had voluntarily cast in their lot with them; the rest were retained to do the harder work of the ship and treated with extreme cruelty. They had a tolerably successful cruise, but, having become somewhat notorious in that locality, it became advisable to shift the scene, and Gow accordingly steered for the Orkneys. While lying at anchor in a secluded bay, one of the crew, who had been detained against his will, escaped, and hastening to Kirkwall, alarmed the authorities. Ten more of the dissatisfied crew departed in the long-boat. In spite of these ominous circumstances, the daring leader not only did not put to sea, but organised a land expedition, in which they plundered the house of Mr. High-Sheriff Honeymar of all that was portable: compelling that gentleman's piper to head the return procession, playing a triumphal march. From hence, Gow proceeded to call upon (and plunder) an old friend and schoolfellow, Mr. Fea, who resided at the small adjacent island, Calf Sound. Mr. Fea was a man of courage and discretion. By the joint exercise of these qualities, he not only made prisoners of the party sent ashore, but ultimately of the whole of the dangerous and desperate band, twenty-eight in number. Gow, and six others, suffered at Execution Dock; the former's case being rendered more notable by his obstinate refusal to plead. However, when on the point of being pressed to death, he relented, and was convicted with the rest. Among the last of the "gentlemen of fortune" who courted that goddess's favour in British waters, was Mr. George Wood, who sailed from Bristol in seventeen hundred and sixty-nine, in the Black Prince. They were barely at sea before the crew mutinied, made the officers prisoners, and were debating as to the mode in which they should be put to death, when the earnest entreaties of the victims induced them to consent that they should be simply turned adrift in a small boat, slenderly provisioned. After doing this at such a distance from land that the unfortunate men set adrift were never heard of again, the pirates hoisted the black flag and sailed for Brazil, making prizes in their way. While in port, one of their company fell under the suspicion of a purpose to run away: whereupon a regular court-martial was held and the culprit sentenced to be hanged at the yard-arm, the execution being deferred only long enough to enable the exemplary captain to read a long printed sermon to the condemned. It was reserved for a brutal miscreant, named Philip Roche, to cap the horrors of modern piracy. This man, residing at Cork, resolved to turn sea-robber, and, drawing one Neal, a fisherman, two brothers, Cullen, and a man named Wise, into a confederacy, took passage with them in a French vessel about to sail for Nantz. Roche was himself so able a sailor, that he was frequently allowed to take charge of the ship. One dark November night-the master and mate being both asleep in their cabinRoche and his accomplices seized and murdered the four Frenchmen left on deck; not, however, without resistance; Roche himself declaring, in his subsequent confession, that they were "all over wet with blood, as if they had been dipped in water. Nor did they regard it more." The poor master and mate, alarmed, and hastening on deck, were seized, tied back to back, and thrown into the sea. Roche now steered for Lisbon; but meeting with very bad weather, ran back, and put into Dartmouth, where he hired three more hands, and sailed again for Rotterdam. Here a gentleman, named Annesley, freighted and took passage in their vessel to England; but on the way, in a rude and stormy night, "it being very dark, they took up their passenger, and flung him overboard-who swam about the ship a pretty while, calling out for life, and telling them they should have all his goods for ransom, but in vain." Roche was shortly afterwards taken, and immediately proposed to turn evidence, promising to convict three others, "worse than himself." Justice readily accepted these conditions; and Roche only discovering two, who were comparatively innocent, paid well deserved forfeit at Execution Dock. It may be permitted, by way of postscript to these notes, to refer to a very singular story lately revived by a gentleman who addressed a public meeting on the subject of the American "difficulty," and who, in doing so, also named Captain Wilkes, of the San Jacinto, as the hero of the tale. Friends of the latter gentleman, have since separated his name from any concern in the matter; but seeing that time has let slip some few of the attendant circumstances and has misrepresented others, here, in brief, is the true narrative: The United States brig-of-war Somers, ten guns, the ship's company numbering in all seventy-five persons, was returning home in December, eighteen hundred and forty-two, from the African station, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Slidell Mackenziebrother, it is understood, of the Southern Commissioner, he having assumed the latter name. every ship they could, murder all the males, and sink the vessel, so that nothing should be left to tell the horrible tale. The arrangements for division of spoil, and the allotment of female prisoners, with other laws, were also drawn up in detail in Spencer's handwriting. The whole plan was interlarded with Greek characters, by way of disguise; and the test oath was to be "Do you swear that you have no fear of shedding blood?" A painful responsibility rested upon Captain Mackenzie, in dealing with a case so new and terrible. Who could say how far the contamination had spread? To crush it at all hazards was his solemn duty. A drum-head court-martial was convened, and it was decided that the safety of the vessel and the lives of all on board, demanded nothing short of the prompt and immediate execution of the three ringleaders. One hour was accorded to the guilty and unhappy men, and, at its expiration, the three were hanged at the yard-arm, in presence of the whole crew. Between ten and twenty sailors, suspected of complicity, were placed in irons, and conveyed to New York for trial. When within three days' sail of St. Thomas's, it came to the captain's knowledge that a mutiny was projected on board, under the direction Some attempt has been made to fix upon of Midshipman Philip Spencer, a youth of nine- Captain Mackenzie the charge of over-severity, teen, the son or nephew of the then secretary-as also to show that the extreme penalty was at-war. The other ringleaders being Samuel Cromwell, boatswain's mate, and Elisha Small, seaman. The informant was the purser's steward, Wales, to whom the conspirators had imparted a portion of their scheme, and who affected cooperation in order to learn more. He was, nevertheless, so narrowly watched, that, finding it impossible to communicate with the captain, he revealed the whole to the purser, who promptly made it known. Thereupon Spencer, Cromwell, and Small were secured, and the former's papers being examined, the whole nefarious plot appeared, set forth to the minutest detail. The brig was to be captured at Saint Thomas's, because at that port she could be best provided with stores, water, &c., for the piratical cruise which was to follow. (It may be mentioned that the Somers was a new vessel, a very fast sailer; in fact, in construction, size, and speed, the beau ideal of a pirate!) At the time agreed upon, a scuffle was to be raised on the forecastle, while the deck was in charge of Midshipman Rogers, who was to be seized and flung overboard. Spencer was then to enter the cabin and kill the captain: while others, stationed at the steerage-hatch, were to murder the whole of the remaining officers as they came up: the surgeon excepted. The crew were then to be mustered, and all who refused to join the mutineers were to be thrown overboard. This completed, they were to make for the Isle of Pines, where they were to meet a confederate, then cruising off New York, capture thus promptly carried out in opposition to the wishes and earnest entreaties of most of the officers. There is no ground whatever for the latter assertion. As to the former, we may leave Captain Mackenzie's defence to the pen of an American commentator of the time: "Let the mind for a moment picture to itself the fastest vessel in our service, fully manned and equipped, a piratical brig, hovering on our shores, and laying wait for vessels between this port and every other in the world. Imagine but a portion of the horrors that must have resulted from the consummation of this hellish purpose, and then, if you can, condemn him who has fearlessly discharged a most painful duty, and assumed the power to carry into effect the spirit of our laws, when in a position where its forms could not be complied with.” The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the 0e No. 6, Wellington Street, Stranu. Printed by C, WHITING, i autori ilous ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. No. 149.] SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 1862. A STRANGE STORY. BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. CHAPTER LXXXI. MARGRAVE now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman drew the black curtains round him. I walked on, as the guide, some yards in advance. The air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of the Australasian sirocco. We passed through the meadow-lands, studded with slumbering flocks; we followed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source in the mountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom of stunted, misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which makes one of the signs of the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in all her pomp of light, mid-heaven amongst her subject stars, gleamed through the fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay the relics of antediluvian races, and rested, in one flood of silvery splendour, upon the hollows of the extinct volcano, with tufts of dank herbage, and wide spaces of paler sward, covering the gold below-Gold, the dumb symbol of organised Matter's great mystery, storing in itself, according as Mind, the informer of Matter, can distinguish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing. Hitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the rear with the white-robed skeleton-like image that had crept to my side unawares with its noiseless step. Thus, in each winding turn of the difficult path at which the convoy, following behind me, came into sight, I had seen first the two gaily-dressed armed men, next the black bier-like litter, and last the Black-veiled Woman and the White-robed Skeleton. But now, as I halted on the table-land, backed by the mountain and fronting the valley, the woman left her companion, passed by the litter and the armed men, and paused by my side, at the month of the moonlit cavern. There for a moment she stood, silent; the procession below mounting upward laboriously and slow; then she turned to me, and her veil was withdrawn. The face on which I gazed was wondrously beautiful, and severely awful. There, was neither youth nor age; but beauty mature and majestic as that of a marble Demeter. [PRICE 2d. "I have no belief," was my answer. True science has none. True science questions all things, takes nothing upon credit. It knows but three states of the mind-Denial, Conviction, and that vast interval between the two, which is not belief, but suspense of judgment." The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a crag above that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had first discovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the clouds had given the rushing life of the cataract, but which now, in the drought and the hush of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones. The litter now ascended the height; its bearers halted; a lean hand tore the curtains aside, and Margrave descended, leaning, this time, not on the Black-veiled Woman but on the White-robed Skeleton. There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form; on his face, resolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed outlines and sicklied hues. He raised his head, spoke in the language unknown to me, and the armed men and the litter-bearers grouped round him, bending low, their eyes fixed on the ground. The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came to his side, motioning away, with a mute sign, the ghastly form on which he leant, and passing round him silently, instead, her own sustaining arm. Margrave spoke again, a few sentences, of which I could not even guess the meaning. When he had concluded, the armed men and the litter-bearers came nearer to his feet, knelt down, and kissed his hand. They then rose, and took from the bier-like vehicle the coffer and the fuel. done, they lifted again the litter, and again, preceded by the armed men, the procession descended down the sloping hill-side, down into the valley below. This Margrave now whispered, for some moments, into the ear of the hideous creature who had made way for the Veiled Woman. The grim skeleton bowed his head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through the long grasses; the slender stems, trampled under his stealthy feet, relifting themselves, as after a passing wind. And thus he, too, sank out of sight down into the valley below. On the table-land of the hill remained only we 'three-Margrave, myself, and the Veiled Woman. 149 She had reseated herself apart, on the grey to these solitudes ? and if so, why not bid me be crag above the dried torrent. He stood at the armed?" entrance of the cavern, round the sides of which clustered parasital plants, with flowers of all colours, some amongst them opening their petals and exhaling their fragrance only in the hours of night; so that, as his form filled up the jaws of the dull arch, obscuring the moonbeam that strove to pierce the shadows that slept within, it stood now-wan and blighted-as I had seen it first, radiant and joyous, "literally framed in blooms." CHAPTER LXXXII. "So," said Margrave, turning to me, "under the soil that spreads around us, lies the gold which to you and to me is at this moment of no value, except as a guide to its twin-born-the regenerator of life!" "You have not yet described to me the nature of the substance which we are to explore, nor of the process by which the virtues you impute to it are to be extracted." "The Eastern slaves fulfilling my commands, will wait for my summons, where their eyes cannot see what we do. The danger is of a kind in which the boldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps, than the daintiest Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a panther and laugh at a ghost. In the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure into that realm of nature which is closed to philosophy and open to magic, there are races in the magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in the world of a drop. For the tribes of the drop, science has its microscope. Of the hosts of yon azure Infinite, magic gains sight, and through them gains command over fluid conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these races, some are wholly indifferent to man; some benign to him, and some dreadly hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditions of mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yon vacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions by which man plies the clockwork, that measures his hours coil,-strives to pass over those boundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends;' then, he is like all other travellers in regions unknown; he must propitiate, or brave, the tribes that are hostile, must depend for his life on the tribes that are friendly. Though your science discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs you that all alchemists were not ignorant impostors; yet those whose discoveries prove them to have been the nearest allies to your practical "Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing the life-amber, so let me call it, I will point it out to your own eyes. As to the pro-and stops when its chain reaches the end of its cess, your share in it is so simple, that you will ask me why I seek aid from a chemist. The life-amber, when found, has but to be subjected to heat and fermentation for six hours; it will be placed in a small caldron which that coffer contains, over the fire which that fuel will feed. To give effect to the process, certain alkalies and other ingredients are required. But these are prepared, and mine is the task to commingle them. From your science as chemist I need and ask nought. In you I have sought only the aid | knowledge, ever hint in their mystical works at of a Man." the reality of that realm which is open to magic "If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all?-ever hint that some means less familiar than why not confide in those swarthy attendants who doubtless are slaves to your orders ?" "Confide in slaves! when the first task enjoined to them would be to discover, and refrain from purloining, gold. Seven such unscrupulous knaves, or even one such, and I, thus defenceless and feeble! Such is not the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that is the least of the reasons which exclude them from such confidence, and fix my choice of assistant on you. Do you forget what I told you of the danger which the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him a second time to brave ?" "I remember, now; those words had passed away from my mind.” "And because they had passed away from your mind, I chose you for my comrade. I need a man by whom danger is scorned." "But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible danger, unless the ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes." "It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons." "What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves? But, if so, why lead them furnace and bellows, are essential to him who explores the elixir of life. He who once quafis that elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright fluid by which he transmits the force of his will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants unseen in the space. And, here, as he passes the boundary which divides his allotted and normal mortality from the regions and races that magic alone can explore, so, here, he breaks down the safeguard between himself, and the tribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and man? Let a race, the most gentle and timid and civilised, dwell on one side a river or mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if it pass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. But, if ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, with design to subdue and enslave the populations they boldly invade, then all the invaded arise in wrath and defiance-the neighbours are changed into foes. And, therefore, this process by which a simple though rare material of nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life which brings with its glorious resistance to Time, desires, and faculties to subject to its service beings that dwell in the earth, and CHAPTER LXXXIII. climbed up the sides of the cave with its antediluvian relics. The gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removing the loose earth round the roots of the plant, we came on- -No, I will not-I dare not, describe it. The gold-digger would cast it aside, the naturalist would pause not to heed it, and did I describe it, and chemistry deign to subject it to analysis, could chemistry alone detach or discover its boasted virtues? the air, and the deep, has ever been one of the same peril which an invader must brave when THE gold has been gained with an easy labour. he crosses the bounds of his nation. By this I knew where to seek for it, whether under the key alone, you unlock all the cells of the alche-turf or in the bed of the creek. But Margrave's mist's lore; by this alone, understand how a eyes, hungrily gazing round every spot from labour, which a chemist's crudest apprentice which the ore was disburied, could not detect could perform, has baffled the giant fathers of the substance of which he alone knew the outall your dwarfed children of science. Nature, ward appearance. I had begun to believe that that stores this priceless boon, seems to shrink even in the description given to him of this from conceding it to man-the invisible tribes material he had been credulously duped, and that abhor him, oppose themselves to the gain that no such material existed; when, coming that might give them a master. The duller of back from the bed of the watercourse, I saw a those, who were the life-seekers of old, would faint yellow gleam amidst the roots of a giant have told you how some chance, trivial, un-parasite plant, the leaves and blossoms of which looked for, foiled their grand hope at the very point of fruition; some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defect in the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in the bellows, or a pupil, who had but to replenish the fuel, fell asleep by the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselves visible where they can frustrate the bungler, as they mock at his toils from their ambush. But, the mightier adventurers, equally foiled in despite of their patience and skill, would have said, 'Not with us rests the fault; we neglected no caution, we failed from no oversight. But out from the caldron dread faces arose, and the spectres or demons dismayed and baffled us.' Such, then, is the danger which seems so appalling to a son of the East, as it seemed to a seer in the dark age of Europe. But we can deride all its threats, you and I. For myself, I own frankly I take all the safety that the charms and resources of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have the cultured and disciplined reason which reduces all phantasies to nervous impressions, and I rely on the courage of one who has questioned, unquailing, the Luminous Shadow, and wrested from the hand of the magician himself the wand which concentred the wonders of will!" To this strange and long discourse I listened without interruption, and now quietly answered, "I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on my guard against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapour can scarcely bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain-land. I believe in no races like those which you tell me lurk viewless in space, as do gases. I believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread not its terrors. For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage-the courage that comes from despair. I submit to your guidance, whatever it be, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to the quack, who says, "Take my specific and live!' My life is nought in itself; my life lives in another. You and I are both brave from despair; you would turn death from yourself, I would turn death from one I love more than myself. Both know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both, therefore, turn to the promisers most audaciously cheering: Dervish or magician, alchemist or phantom, what care you and I? And if they fail us, what then? They can not fail us more than the colleges do!" Its particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming readily to crystallise with each other, each in itself of uniform shape and size, spherical as the egg which contains the germ of life, and small as the egg from which the life of an insect may quicken. But Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms upcast by the light of the moon. He exclaimed to me, "Found! I shall live!" And then, as he gathered up the grains with tremulous hands, he called out to the Veiled Woman, hitherto still seated motionless on the crag. At his word she rose and went to the place hard-by, where the fuel was piled, busying herself there. I had no lesiure to heed her. I continued my search in the soft and yielding soil that time and the decay of vegetable life had accumulated over the Pre-Adamite strata on which the arch of the cave rested its mighty keystone. When we had collected of these particles about thrice as much as a man might hold in his hand, we seemed to have exhausted their bed. We continued still to find gold, but no more of the delicate substance, to which, in our sight, gold was as dross. "Enough," then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting. "What we have gained already will suffice for a life thrice as long as legend attri butes to Haroun. I shall live-I shall live through the centuries." "Forget not that I claim my share." "Your share-yours! True-your half of my life!-it is true." He paused, with a low, ironical, malignant laugh, and then added, as he rose and turned away, "But the work is yet to be done." CHAPTER LXXXIV. WHILE we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel where the moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the table-land-a part of it already piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close at hand-and by the pile |