than from land. One evening, after leaving
Hammerfest, we were all assembled on deck to
witness its setting and rising, if thus it can be
termed. It was about eleven o'clock. The
sky was of a brilliant gold-colour, and the sea
lay all around us like a burnished mirror. In
the zenith it assumed a delicate rose-coloured
tint, merging into an apple green. The effect
of the sunlight on the bluff headlands was
wondrously beautiful, for, as the sun sank lower and
lower, chameleon-like their tints kept changing,
till at last they seemed to be bathed in a
vermilion hue. It was now midnight by the
chronometer. In a few minutes we noticed the
sun gradually rising higher and higher; and now,
strange to say, the colours we had noticed
before its setting were of a totally different hue.
Altogether it was the most lovely and varied
scene I have ever witnessed. Day had
succeeded night almost imperceptibly. It required
no little attention to prevent confusion in our
journals. I can well imagine that one can
readily "lose a clay" up there.

TAKEN IN TOW.

"WILL you take the oath of allegiance, sirree?
Answer me that, Mister Britisher," said the
Federal commander, very harshly.

"I must decline doing anything of the sort,"
was my answer. "I, as an Englishman, and a
mere temporary sojourner in the States, have
nothing whatever to do with this unhappy
struggle, and——"

"And yet we found you doctorin' them rebel
scum, didn't we?" roughly asked a stout man,
who sat on the colonel's left hand, and who was,
I believe, Deputy Provost Marshal of the force,
which, under General Sturgis, was scourging
the counties that lie between Grand Gulf and
Bolivar, in the State of Mississippi. And the
speaker emphasised his meaning by pointing
with a fat forefinger at several ghastly figures,
some with bandaged limbs, others with pieces
of bloodstained rag wrapped around their heads,
who lay motionless on straw at the other end of
the barn. These poor wretches, who might have
been thought dead but for the low moan that
from time to time was wrung by pain from one
or other of their dismal company, were my
patients—Confederate guerillas. They were too
severely wounded to share the flight of their
comrades when the Northern troops arrived,
and had been of necessity abandoned. As for
myself, how I got into the scrape in which I found
myself is soon told: I was merely one of the
many young surgeons, who, finding no sphere of
action in the crowded old country, had made my
way across the Atlantic without greatly bettering
my prospects by doing so. I had just returned
from Pike's Peak, whither I had been lured by
flattering reports of the lucrative practice to be
obtained there among the miners, and had found
that all is not silver that glitters on the slopes
of the Rocky Mountains. While still in that
savage region, and uncertain as to my future
course, I had received a letter addressed to me
at St. Louis by a friend in South America.
This gentleman, an engineer, high in the employ
of the Argentine Republic, had written to
suggest that I should establish myself at a town
some leagues beyond Buenos Ayres, a thriving
place, where numerous European emigrants had
established sheep-farms and factories, and where
his influence would avail to procure me the post
of chief surgeon to the government hospital. In
my position, such an offer was not to be refused,
and it was while making my way to New
Orleans, with a view to embarking for Buenos
Ayres, that I had fallen in with an armed band
of Confederates, and had been in a manner
impressed into rendering my professional services
to their wounded.

All this I had related, frankly and freely, to
the members of the Federal court-martial,
producing at the same time my friend's letter, and
other papers that corroborated my statement.
However, those into whose hands I had fallen
persisted in regarding me as a prisoner of war,
inasmuch as I had been found in attendance on
rebel patients, and my plea of neutrality was
derided. It was decided that I should be sent
to General Butler, then commanding the department,
and that my future destiny should depend
upon his good will and pleasure.

"You've escaped merely by the skin of your
teeth, Britisher, I can tell you," said an old
captain of artillery, by far the most good natured
of the party, when he came afterwards to the
negro hut to which I had been removed, to
communicate to me the sentence of the court-
martial. " Provost Noakes was for severity,
and so was the colonel, but the major and I
begged you off."

"Severity?" asked I, in some perplexity.
"May I ask what the word implies in this
case?"

My informant directed a jet of tobacco-juice
against the whitewashed wall, and watched the
result with great apparent interest, before he
replied with the most matter-of-course air
possible: "Just hanging, mister! But you've
got off cheap. You're to go down river in one
of the gunboats, the old Mohawk, most like, and
I'll give a hint to Captain Hopkins to treat you
well."

"But my patients? Poor fellows, they are
not in a fit condition to be left," said I, lingering.
However, the artillery officer curtly
informed me that I should have quite enough to
do in minding on which side my own slapjacks
were buttered, that hempen cravats were easily
come by, and that I had better be off before the
colonel changed his mind once more, a thing
likely enough to happen, since he was generally
"ugly after liquoring:" an expression which I
took to mean that the colonel was cross in
his cups. And further debate was cut short by
the arrival of a file of soldiers with fixed bayonets,
under whose care I was marched off, having
only just time to snatch my valise and medicine-
chest, and to utter a word or two of thanks to
my rugged preserver. The latter stood in the