1830.] The Demon Ship. 637 



" I hate dowager countesses/' said I, irreverently " what is the name of 

 your passenger ?" " Passenger !" " Well countess what is the title 

 of your countess?" " The Countess of Falcondale." " What/' thought I, 

 " cannot I even come as near to my former home as Malta without again 

 finding myself under her influence ? My dear fellow, give me back my 

 passage-money, or accept it as a present at my hands, for I sail not with 

 you/' said I. But a man at thirty-six will hardly sacrifice his personal 

 convenience to the whimsies of twenty-five ; so I stood to my bargain, 

 determined to keep myself as much as possible from the knowledge of 

 my old tormentor. Conscious of my altered personal appearance, I 

 resolved to travel charmingly incog., and carelessly assumed the name 

 and title of Captain Lyon, which had been familiar to me in my child- 

 hood, as belonging, I believe, to a friend of Captain Cameron. 



It was the month of June, and the weather, though clear, was 

 oppressively hot. There was so little wind stirring after we set sail, 

 that for several days we made scarcely any way, under all the sail we 

 could carry. I had no mind the first night to encoffin myself in my 

 berth. I therefore, comfortably enough, stretched my limbs on a long 

 seat which joined the steps of the quarter-deck. I was now then really 

 on my way to my native shores, and should not step from the vessel in 

 which I sailed until I trod the land of my fathers ! Naturally enough, 

 my thoughts turned to former days and old faces. From time to time 

 these thoughts half sunk into dreams, from which I repeatedly awoke, 

 and as often dozed off again. At length my memory, and consequently 

 my dreams, took the shape of Margaret Cameron. The joyous laugh of 

 youth seemed to ring in my ears ; and when I closed my eyes, her 

 lovely bright countenance instantly rose before them. Yet I had the 

 inconsistent conviction of a dreamer that she was dead, and as my slum- 

 ber deepened, I seemed busied in a pilgrimage to her early grave. I 

 saw the church-yard of A , with the yellow sunlight streaming on 

 many a green hillock ; and there was one solitary grass grave that, as if 

 by a strange spell, drew my steps, and on an humble head-stone I read 

 the name of " Margaret Cameron, aged 18." Old feelings, that had 

 been deadened by collision with the busy, heartless world, revived within 

 me, and I seemed to hang in a suffocating grief, that even astonished my- 

 self, over the untimely tomb of my first ay, my last love. To my 

 unspeakable emotion I heard, beneath the sods, a sound of sweet and 

 soothing, but melancholy music. While I listened with an attention 

 that apparently deprived my senses of their power^ the church-yard and 

 grave disappeared, and I seemed, by one of those transitions, to which 

 the dreamer is so subject, to be sailing on a lone and dismal sea, whose 

 leaden and melancholy waves reflected no sail save that of the vessel 

 which bore me. The heat became stifling, and my bosom oppressed,' 

 yet the music still sounded, low, sweet, and foreboding in my ear. A 

 soft and whitish mist seemed to brood over the stern of the ship. Ac- 

 cording to the apparently-established laws of spiritual matter (the sole- 

 cism is not so great as it may appear), the mist condensed, then gra- 

 dually assumed form, and I gazed, with outstretched arms, on the figure 

 of Margaret Cameron. But her countenance looked, in that uncertain 

 light, cold and pale as her light and unearthly drapery that waved not, 

 though a mournful wind was sighing through the shrouds of our vessel. 

 She seemed in my vision as one who, in quitting earth, had left not only 

 its passions but its affections behind her ; and there was something for- 



