RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



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wishes to his seamen, who seldom heard him speak except in a 

 strange compound of Saxon and Danish execrations. Gestures, 

 furious grimaces, and blows, were his usual eloquence, even to his 

 wife and child, though this miserable wife seemed sinking under 

 the hardships of a long voyage to a bitter climate. They soon 

 terminated the struggles of a broken heart, and her body was 

 given to the sea, without even a look from her husband or a tear 

 from her darling boy, whose attention was fixed at that instant on 

 a white bird which had fallen, exhausted by a long emigration, on 

 the deck. He sprung to catch it as it lay gasping and fluttering ; 

 but a blow aimed at it by one of the crew in wantonness or cruel- 

 ty, fell on his hand, and crushed it. His father, who had seen 

 the act and the effect, levelled the offender at his feet, exclaiming 

 in the Hanoverian dialect, which he had never been heard to use 

 before — " Dog ! the blood which drops from that boy's hand is 

 the richest in thy country." ' More shall follow it," said the sur- 

 ly Saxon, putting his drawn knife suddenly into his own sleeve. 

 The captain, construing this movement into a threat of assassina- 

 tion, ordered him to be instantly and heavily ironed. No one 

 hesitated to obey, and Sturm was dragged to the yard-arm to re- 

 ceive his punishment ; but Hendrig, the commander's son, leaped 

 on his neck, and entreated pardon for the accidental blow he had 

 received. Either the caresses of his child, or the silent submis- 

 sion of the mutineer, relaxed Eric's wrath, and he scornfully bade 

 him thank Hendrig for his life. " I will owe it to you, not to the 

 boy," said Sturm, turning his back — " I keep my accounts with 

 men." 



At the third watch of that night, while the vessel was sailing 

 tranquilly, her captain's sleep was broken by a singular noise. 

 He roused himself, and found the door of his cabin barred against 

 him. Eric's frame was as vigorous as his spirit, and seizing his 

 cutlass and his pistols, he hurled the door from its hinges, and had 

 mounted half the ladder with one step, when twenty knives and 

 bludgeons assailed him. His desperate courage forced his way, 

 and thrusting his pistol into the powder-room, he called on the 

 mutineers to see him fire it, at the instant that Sturm's knife en- 

 tered his back, and he fell dead. Sturm coldly put his foot on the 

 body — and seizing the boy, who ran shripking to his father, said 

 to his comrades — " We have closed accounts with the man — let 

 me pay the child." 



