1830.] The Demon Ship, 635 



you have driven from your side." I stretched out my hand to Margaret 

 for a friendly farewell clasp. But she held not out her's in return ; she 

 spoke not a word of adieu. I turned an indignant countenance towards 

 her, and, to my unutterable surprise, beheld my beautiful young friend 

 in a swoon. Now this to the cold reader sounds the very common-place 

 of sickly romance, but it threw me into a confusion and agitation inex- 

 pressible. And was this the being I had accused of want of feeling ! 

 At that moment I felt that the world held nothing so dear to me as Mar- 

 garet I felt, better still, that I was dear to her. I will not go over the 

 ten-thousand-times-trodden ground of lovers' explanations, and self- 

 reproaches, and betrothals we left the garden solemnly plighted to 

 each other. But I pass briefly over this portion of my history. I 

 was condemned, by the will of Captain Cameron, and by the necessity 

 of obtaining some professional promotion, to spend a few years in India 

 before I could receive the hand of Margaret. 



I reached my Asiatic destination long and anxiously looked for 

 European letters took up one day by accident an English paper, and 

 there read (( Died, at the house of Captain Cameron, in the village of 



A , Miss Margaret Cameron, aged eighteen." I will not here 



dwell on my feelings. I wrote a letter of despair to Captain Cameron, 

 informing him of the paragraph I had read, imploring him, for the love 

 of mercy, if possible, to contradict it, and declaring that my future path 

 in life now lay stretched before me like one wild waste. The Countess 

 of Falcondale answered my epistle by a deep, black-margined letter, 

 with a sable seal as large as a saucer. My sole parent was no more ; 

 for Captain Cameron he had been seized by a paralytic affection in 

 consequence of the shock his feelings had sustained. His circumstances 

 were in irreparable disorder, and the Countess was residing with him 

 in order, at his earnest request, to manage all his affairs. I remitted 

 handsomely but delicately to my old friend. 



The appearance of my name, about five years afterwards, among the 

 " Marriages" in the Calcutta Gazette, was followed by successive an- 

 nouncements among the " Births and Deaths," in the same compendious 

 record of life's changes. My wife perished of a malignant fever, and two 

 infant children speedily followed her. I set out, to return over-land to 

 my native country, a sober, steady, and partially grey-haired colonel of 

 thirty-six. My military career had been as brilliant as my domestic 

 path had been clouded. The habitual complexion of my mind, how- 

 ever, was gravity a gravity which extended itself to my countenance, 

 and there assumed even a shade of melancholy. Yet I was a disap- 

 pointed, not discontented, man ; and my character had, I trust, under* 

 gone some changes for the better. I arrived at a port of the Levant, 

 and thence took ship for Malta, where I landed in safety. 



At this period the Mediterranean traders were kept in a state of peri 

 petual alarm by the celebrated " DEMON SHIP." Though distinguished 

 by the same attractive title, she in nowise resembled the phantom terror 

 of the African Cape. She was described as a powerful vessel, manned 

 by a desperate flesh- and-blood crew, whose rapacity triumphed over all 

 fear of danger, and whose cruelty forbade all hope of mercy. Yet, 

 though she was neither " built" of air nor " manned" by demons, her 

 feats had been so wonderful, that there was at length no other rational 

 mode of accounting for them than by tracing them to supernatural, and 



4 L 2 



