May.] THE MASSACRE. 411 



For the love of God, give way, and rescue your shipmates !" But 

 they required not this extra inducement to exertion. Their very souls 

 seemed to be concentred in their vigorous muscular arms, and I 

 thought I could see the intensity of their anxiety in the agony of their 

 countenances, which of course were turned to the Antarctic. As I 

 gazed on their lessening boat, I could scarcely hold my glass, for the 

 straining of my own muscles and sinews, which instinctively kept 

 timely motion with their oars, as if I could lend them strength, and 

 assist in propelling the boat. If the reader has ever experienced a 

 similar sensation, arising from nervous sympathy, he will understand 

 me. If not, I am unable to describe it. 



In the mean while, my gallant ill-fated lads on shore were selling 

 their lives at as dear a rate as possible. After receiving the volley of 

 arrows before-mentioned, when emerging from the thicket, the gallant 

 Wallace (whose bravery, virtues, and melancholy fate declare his 

 descent more unequivocally than his name) rallied his men, and well 

 supported by his friend the chivalric Wiley, led them forward to 

 play the desperate game of life or death, with such fearful odds 

 against them. Perceiving that indiscriminate slaughter was the de- 

 termined object of the savages, from whom no quarter could be ex- 

 pected, this undaunted Briton, with three arrows then in his body, 

 thus exclaimed to his men, as they were plucking the pointed shafts 

 from their own flesh. His words as I was informed by a survivor, 

 were in substance these : — " My fine fellows, you see our fate ! Let 

 us die like men ! — keep close together ! draw your cutlasses, and follow 

 me ! If safety can be found at all, we must seek it at close quarters." 

 With these words he rushed forward to the charge, dealing death at 

 every blow, in which he was closely followed and closely imitated by 

 Wiley and the rest. The savages shrank back with astonishment, as 

 these brave fellows literally mowed down their ranks, opening a spa- 

 cious path for themselves through the thickest of their host. For 

 every white man that fell, half a dozen black cannibals bit the dust ; 

 until the few survivors of our party were covered with wounds, and 

 faint with exertion and the loss of blood. 



But what avails human bravery under such desperate circumstances ! 

 Fifty arrows were now sticking in the body of the undaunted Wallace, 

 protruding like the quills of a porcupine. Some of the wounds were 

 deep. His strength was exhausted — nature could do no more, and he 

 fell on the beach, by the side of his friend Wiley, who had received his 

 death-wound in protecting him from the stroke of a war- club. Even 

 in the agonies of death, Wallace still encouraged his men. " Fight on," 

 he exclaimed, as the blood was streaming from his body and limbs — • 

 " fight on, my brave fellows ! — for the honour of seamen — sell your 

 lives dearly — they are worth a great price ! Never let it be said that 

 England or America produced a coward — die like men S" 



These were his last words — I mean in substance. He then, by a 

 sudden effort, took his dying friend's hand ; and these two brave offi- 

 cers, who had cut down more than five times their number of savages, 

 with their blood-died cutlasses, now turned their faces towards the 



