of us; and the Spaniards set to work to
discharge our cargo into her. They all worked
hard except the pilot ; and he came, from time
to time, with his lantern, to have another
look at me, and to grin and nod always in the
same devilish way. I am old enough now not
to be ashamed of confessing the truth; and
I don't mind acknowledging that the pilot
frightened me.

The fright, and the bonds, and the gag, and
the not being able to stir hand or foot, had
pretty nigh worn me out, by the time the
Spaniards gave over work. This was just as the
dawn broke. They had shifted good part of our
cargo on board their vessel, but nothing like all
of it; and they were sharp enough to be off with
what they had got, before daylight. I need
hardly say that I had made up my mind, by this
time, to the worst I could think of. The pilot,
it was clear enough, was one of the spies of the
enemy, who had wormed himself into the confidence
of our consignees without being suspected.
He, or more likely his employers, had got
knowledge enough of us to suspect what our cargo
was; we had been anchored for the night in the
safest berth for them to surprise us in; and we
had paid the penalty of having a small crew,
and consequently an insufficient watch. All
this was clear enough — but what did the pilot
mean to do with me?

On the word of a man, it makes my flesh
creep, now, only to tell you what he did with
me.

After all the rest of them were out of the
brig, except the pilot and two Spanish seamen,
these last took me up, bound and gagged as I
was, lowered me into the hold of the vessel, and
laid me along on the floor; lashing me to it with
ropes' ends, so that I could just turn from one
side to the other, but could not roll myself fairly
over, so as to change my place. They then left
me. Both of them were the worse for liquor;
but the devil of a pilot was sober—mind that!—
as sober as I am at the present moment.

I lay in the dark for a little while, with my
heart thumping as if it was going to jump out
of me. I lay about five minutes so, when the
pilot came down into the hold, alone. He had
the captain's cursed flat candlestick and a
carpenter's awl in one hand, and a long thin twist
of cotton yarn, well oiled, in the other. He put
the candlestick, with a new "dip" lighted in it,
down on the floor, about two feet from my face,
and close against the side of the vessel. The
light was feeble enough; but it was sufficient to
show a dozen barrels of gunpowder or more, left
all round me in the hold of the brig. I began
to suspect what he was after, the moment I
noticed the barrels. The horrors laid hold of
me from head to foot; and the sweat poured off
my face like water.

I saw him go, next, to one of the barrels of
powder standing against the side of the vessel,
in a line with the candle, and about three feet,
or rather better, away from it. He bored a hole
in the side of the barrel with his awl; and the
horrid powder came trickling out, as black as
hell, and dripped into the hollow of his hand,
which he held to catch it. When he had got a
good handful, he stopped up the hole by
jamming one end of his oiled twist of cotton-yarn
fast into it ; and he then rubbed the powder into
the whole length of the yarn, till he had
blackened every hairsbreadth of it. The next
thing he did — as true as I sit here, as true as the
heaven above us all — the next thing he did was
to carry the free end of his long, lean, black,
frightful slow-match to the lighted candle along-
side my face, and to tie it, in several folds, round
the tallow dip, about a third of the distance
down, measuring from the flame of the wick to
the lip of the candlestick. He did that; he
looked to see that my lashings were all safe ;
and then he put his face down close to mine ; and
whispered in my ear, "Blow up with the brig!"

He was on deck again the moment after; and
he and the two others shoved the hatch on over
me. At the farthest end from where I lay, they
had not fitted it down quite true, and I saw a
blink of daylight glimmering in when I looked
in that direction. I heard the sweeps of the
schooner fall into the water — splash! splash!
fainter and fainter, as they swept the vessel out
in the dead calm, to be ready for the wind in
the offing. Fainter and fainter, splash! splash!
for a quarter of an hour or more.

While those sounds were in my ears, my eyes
were fixed on the candle. It had been freshly
lit—if left to itself it would burn for between
six and seven hours—the slow-match was twisted
round it about a third of the way down—and
therefore the flame would be about two hours
reaching it. There I lay, gagged, bound, lashed
to the floor; seeing my own life burning down
with the candle by my side—there I lay, alone
on the sea, doomed to be blown to atoms, and
to see that doom drawing on, nearer and nearer
with every fresh second of time, through nigh
on two hours to come; powerless to help myself
and speechless to call for help to others. The
wonder to me is that I didn't cheat the flame,
the slow-match, and the powder, and die of the
horror of my situation before my first half-hour
was out in the hold of the brig.

I can't exactly say how long I kept the
command of my senses after I had ceased to hear
the splash of the schooner's sweeps in the water.
I can trace back everything I did and everything
I thought, up to a certain point; but, once past
that, I get all abroad, and lose myself in my
memory now, much as I lost myself in my own
feelings at the time.

The moment the hatch was covered over me,
I began, as every other man would have begun
in my place, with a frantic effort to free my
hands. In the mad panic I was in, I cut my
flesh with the lashings as if they had been knife-
blades; but I never stirred them. There was
less chance still of freeing my legs, or of tearing
myself from the fastenings that held me to the
floor. I gave in, when I was all but suffocated
for want of breath. The gag, you will please
to remember, was a terrible enemy to me; I
could only breathe freely through my nose—and