A NIGHT'S PERIL 



FOUNDED ON FACT. 

 [MAGA. JANUARY 1846.] 



TWO days before I sailed from Mauritius, I was 

 sitting at breakfast on one of the packages con- 

 taining my traps. The walls were stripped of their 

 pictures, the cherished whips and pipes were gone 

 from the chimneypiece the crockery which minis- 

 tered to my occasions was borrowed. The Sarah 

 transport floated in the harbour, and almost sent the 

 tail of her pendant into my window. 



There was no mistake about it, I was on the 

 move ; and, of course, as I was bound to Old England, 

 I ought to have been in ecstatics. But there is no 

 such thing as " of course " in human affairs. Of 

 them, the tide is subject to so many perturbations, 

 that, like Mrs M'Stinger, there is no saying which 

 way they may head at any moment. For myself, I 

 have ever been somewhat of a cosmopolite, and felt 

 it to be bad policy for a creature of condition so erra- 

 tic as man, to circumvent too closely with particulars 



