University of Virginia Library

2. BOOK II.
THE EFFECT.

Old Ballad.

1. CHAPTER I.

Five years have elapsed since the events narrated
in the last book transpired. In the interim,
the seed then sown has had time to ripen to the
germe; the germe to bud, and blossom, and bear
fruit: youth has advanced to manhood; the characters
then forming, formed; and the effects of the
various causes then in operation fully wrought, and
apparent to every eye. The scene, as well as the
time of the story, is now changed, and, with its
actors, transformed from the Old to the New World.

In the year 1695, William the Third appointed
Richard, Earl of Bellamont, governor of the province
of New-York. He did not, however, receive
his commission until eighteen months afterward,
nor arrive in his government until April, 1698. At
this period the American coast, from New-England
to the Capes of Virginia, were infested by a daring
bucanier, who not only swept the seas with his fast-sailing
vessel, but frequently run boldly, in open day,
into the harbours of New-York, Boston, and New-port.
To such an extent did his depradations reach,

so fearful became the terrible name of “Kyd,”
that at length the fisherman feared to launch his
boat, the mariner to spread his sail, and citizens
trembled for their safety within the very centre of
their fortified towns.

Such being the state of things, Lord Bellamont,
on assuming the administration of colonial affairs,
was especially instructed by the English government
to make use of all the means placed at his
command to remedy an evil so alarming, and fraught
with consequences so fatal to the growth and prosperity
of the colonies. For this purpose, immediately
after his arrival at New-York, he had despatched
the light-armed vessel which had brought
him over from England in pursuit of the pirate.

She had been absent some time, and her arrival
in the bay was hourly and anxiously looked
for by the honest Dutch citizens. As the time for
her return drew nigh, it was the custom of certain
of these worthies, after the humble occupations of
the day were over, to assemble at eventide about
the stoope of frau Jost Stoll's tavern by the water
side, and with their long pipes supported in their
mouths with one hand, and a mug of double beer
or mum held in the other, steadfastly to gaze down
the bay, in expectation of the return of the crusier,
the while gravely discussing their doubts of the
bold bucanier's captivation by mortal ship; and by
times relieving their discourse with dark tales of his
marvellous and bloody exploits on the high seas.

Before entering further upon this division of the
story, it perhaps may be necessary, for the proper
understanding of it, to describe New-York as it
was at this period. On the north side of the present
Wall-street there extended from East River,
then called Salt River, to the North River, a palisade

ten feet high, constructed of piles firmly driven
into the earth, strengthened and sustained by crosspieces
of timber. The interstices were filled with
earth and stone, and it was in every part ball-proof.
South of this palisade lay all that then was New-York.
Beyond were forests, and a vast tract called
“King's Farms,” now embraced between Canal and
Liberty streets. This wall was perforated midway
between the two rivers by a gateway, through which
passed the road to Albany: this avenue is now
called Broadway. At the eastern extremity of the
wall, at the foot of Wall-street, and facing the water,
was a half-moon fort, called a Rondeel: another was
at Coenties-slip, or “Countess-slip,” so called in
honour of the fair Lady of Bellamont; and a third,
equidistant from it, on the site of what is now the
corner of State-street and the Battery. From
Broadway, west, there was a sloping shore to the
beach, there being neither wharf nor landing on
this side of the town; and on the south, the tides
came up nearly to the iron gate of the Battery that
at present opens into Broadway—the site of the
present “Marine Park” being at low tide a sandy
beach strewn with vast fragments of rock, and
called “The Ledge,” where fishermen spread their
nets and dried their fish.

At the foot of Broad-street, then called “Here
Graft,” and at that time the principal street of
New-Amsterdam, were two great docks, called
“West” or “East Dock,” as they chanced to be on
the east or west side of Broad-street. Through this
street nearly to Wall-street also run a creek, widened
into a canal, and spanned by bridges wherever
it was intersected by streets. Near the head
of this canal was the abode of the city ferryman,
who conveyed passengers in a wherry either to the
Island or Jersey shore. The houses of the better

class stood principally on William and Pearl streets,
the latter being open to the water, with dwellings
only on the west side facing it. Maiden-lane was
then a green lane with a fine spring at its head
where the Dutch maidens were accustomed to
bleach the linen they wove. Fronting the river
stood the Stadt Huys (the ancient City Hall), a
massive stone structure two stories high, with battlements
rising above the gable ends. The lower
story was used as the colonial prison. Opposite
the Stadt Huys stood the fish-market. In the Bowling
Green, then an oblong square, surrounded by
locust-trees, was the City Market, which was held
three times a week, and opened and shut by the ringing
of a bell. The gate of the city was formed of a
pair of massive leaves of oak, strengthened with bars
of iron: they were shut at night on the setting of
the watch, and opened at sunrise by ringing of bells.
The citizens took watch by turns or were fined.
They were to be “good men and true, and free from
cursing and swearing.” It was their duty to watch
by the gate and the bridges, and thrice during the
night to take the rounds of the city, particularly to
see that neither Indians nor negroes were abroad, or
lying about in the market-places. In cases of emergency
or alarm, they were commanded to call on
the nearest citizen for aid; each householder being
required to keep always in his house a “goode fire-locke,”
and at least six rounds of balls thereto. Gutters
run through the centre of all the streets, which
were unpaved; and in the middle of Broadway,
near Wall, and also in Pearl-street, were public
wells and pumps. The houses were built mostly
in the Dutch style, with gable-ends to the street,
and stoopes.

The “Rondeel,” or crescent before mentioned,
that defended the south side of the town at the

foot of Broadway, was erected on the top of a large
mound, fourteen feet high, with a green sloping glacis
on every side. The wall of the fort was still
twenty feet above the glacis, strongly constructed
of stone, with two square wings, the centre being in
the shape of a half-moon. On the north side stood
a few apple-trees and an aged linden that over-topped
the walls, from the parapet of which was
a near view of the market, of the fields about the
“Bowline Greene,” the hay-scales, and the north
gate of the city. In the centre of this fort stood a
small stone chapel, the first Dutch church erected
in New-York. Four cannon were mounted on the
water side, and a heavy gun, of vast calibre, planted
on the north side of the wall, commanded the gate
of the palisades. East of the fort was a forest of
several acres, in which were kept the governor's
deer. Nearly hid among its old trees, yet open to
the bay, stood, within a stone's throw of the gate of
the fort, the gubernatorial mansion of the earl, a
stately Dutch edifice of stone, painted white and
ornate with scalloped gables, turret-like chimneys,
a cupola, latticed galleries, and “stoopes.” The
ground before it sloped in a smooth lawn to the
glittering beach; and from its door the eye embraced
the whole of the far-extended bay, with its green
and wooded islands, and a distant glimpse of the
sea. On the east of this mansion, which, from its
white exterior and imposing appearance, was named
by the admiring burghers “Der Vite Sals,” or White
Hall, a name the site has retained to this day, commenced
Pearl, then called Dock street. It was on
the corner of this and Broad-street, and within one
hundred yards of the White Hall, that the publichouse
of frau Jost Stoll was situated.

This ancient, well-frequented, and popular inn,
the humble progenitor of the numerous costly and

palatial hotels that now adorn the modern city, was
one story high, and extended far back on both
streets, showing a front on each. Its roof was tiled
with glazed Dutch tiles, and ascended almost perpendicularly
to a great height, where it met a second
or super-roof, which was clapped over it like
an extinguisher. In its descent towards the ground,
however, it took a horizontal curve outward, and
projected full seven feet from the walls across the
sidewalk, supported along its eaves by a row of
rude columns. The gable-ends rose ambitiously
above the roof, from which be it said projected
sundry dormant windows, which were cut into steps
or half-embrasures, giving the building a sort of
castellated aspect. Its windows, and they were
many of divers shapes, square, circular, oval, and
diamond, were placed in all possible positions, as the
fancy of the architect dictated. On each street was
a broad door, with a narrow carved canopy above
it, and beneath a stoop with seats on either side.
To these, for the accommodation of her numerous
customers, the bustling Dutch hostess had of
late placed four long benches, two on each side of
the house, against the wall and just beneath a row of
windows with little three-cornered panes of glass set
in leaden sashes. The advantage of two fronts to
the inn is apparent, and was a very great convenience
to the worthy citizens. In the summer mornings
they were wont to sit on the south and shady
side, which looked down the bay; and in the afternoon
on the east and now shady side, which commanded
not only a side view of the harbour, but a
full view of the muddy dock, alive with ducks, at
their feet, and the clumsy stone bridge that crossed
it. But, since they had begun to watch for the reappearance
of the “Ger-Falcon,” the name of the vessel
which was despatched in pursuit of the pirate,
the south front, notwithstanding it was in the month
of June, and the level sun lighted up the little windows
of the inn like an illumination, had become the
most frequented and popular; and, on the evening of
the day in question, the east side was deserted by all
save a tawny slave, a recumbent Indian, and one or
two sleepy dogs. On the south front, therefore, at
the time of the opening of the second part of this
story, were gathered, towards sunset, beneath the
shade of the projecting roof, a motley group, composed
of some of the best burghers of New-Amsterdam,
and, what is more, the choicest customers of
frau Stoll. They were seated on benches on either
side of the stoop, the two seats of which were
occupied by a little, short, fat member of the corporation,
and a tall, thin, long-nosed churchwarden,
the chiefest dignitaries of the church and state.
Besides these worthies, there were several artisans,
and other worthy citizens of the ancient town.

“Dere vill be moche fear dat de tamt pucanier
hash got de king's ship, and no te king's ship haav
got te pucanier,” said one of the worthy burghers,
sagely shaking his head after a long look down the
bay; and taking his pipe from his mouth and emitting
a generous cloud of smoke, he looked round to
see how his opinion was received.

“'Tis quite time, Mynheer Vandersplocken, that
the ship should be back; but whether she brings a
prize or no is another thing,” said the warden,
blowing through his pipe to ignite the tobacco therein.

“I'll ventur' to say you are right dere, Mynheer
Varder,” said an antiquated Dutch skipper, blowing
forth with his words a volume of smoke that
for a time rendered his round, rubicund visage and
portly paunch invisible; “dis skipper Kyd ish not
to pe taken sho easily. Schnaps and tunder! he

would plow up his yocht to de tyfil first. Ay! he
vill never haav te hemp cravat, te plack rogue.”

“Is he black?” asked the warden, eagerly.

“Ay—ish't plack he ish, schipper Schenk?” repeated
the burgher.

“Goot! schipper Schenk, den hash seen him!
how doesh dou know dat he ish plack?” asked a
third, who, from his greasy apparel, was the tallow-chandler
of the town, laying his pipe across his
oily knee and looking him in the face with the air
of a man who expected to hear something marvellous.

“'Tish not plack in te face I mean, put in te
heart,” said the skipper. “I have seen him, as you
say, Mynheer Schnops; and his hair vas white as
te lint, and his eye plue as te sky, and his skin
fair as te lantlaty's taughter here. A fair young
man he vas to look upon.”

“And cruel as fair,” said the warden. “Tell us,
worthy skipper Schenk, o' the time you saw this
bold rover; doubtless it will be a tale to listen to.”

“Ay, good schipper!” “Yaw, schipper Schenk,
gif us te story,” cried several voices.

Ashes were knocked from some of the pipes,
and others were refilled; the more distant listeners
moved nearer to the skipper, who, looking round
with the patronising and superior air of a man who
hath seen more danger than his fellows, settled
himself into the attitude of a story-teller, and took
a long-drawn whiff at his meerschaum:

“It vas in te Long Island Sount,” he began,
“just after the last line gale. I vas in mine little
yocht, te Half Moon, and, haaving carried away
my powsprit, put into a creek unter Sachem's Heat
to cut another from te treesh dere. I left te men
to vork hewing te spar, and valks about on te shore,
looking rount, and tinking vat a nice plaace it vas

—te Sachem's Heat—for a city, if te lant vas lower,
so tat a tyke micht be made all rount it.”

“A tyke, sure; vat is te citee mitout te tyke? vera
goot,” were the approving ejaculations of his listeners.

“Ton't interrupt me, or tish tyfil a pit more you
get o' mine shtory. Now vere vas I? Vell, as I
vas saying, I vas valking by mineself ven I comes
to te oder side of te heatlant, ant tere lay anoder
vessel mitout a mast, ant more tan fifty men at
vork putting new spars into her. Vell, I vas vondering
vat craft it vas, for she vas carry many kuns,
vhen somepoty vas lay a hant on mine shoulter,
ant I looked rount ant vas see a tall, hantsome,
ant fair young man, mit plue eyes ant light locks,
mit pistols at belt ant swort py his side.

“`Goot tay, Mynheer Schipper,' says he, in a
free ant easy vay. `Ish tat your craft pelow in
te creek?'

“`It ish, mynheer,' says I. `Dis gale has put
us poth into von bipe, if tat ish your craft pelow
dere.'

“`It ish, schipper; vill you go on boart?'

“`Ish must get my repairs tone ant pe off,' I
sait.

“`I haav a flasche of goot Scheitam, mynheer,'
sait he.

“So I vent aboart, ant ve hat a merry time mit
te Scheitam ant te bipe.

“`Tis ish te real shuniper from Deutch-lant,
captain,' says I, pouring te last trop out of te
flasche.

“`It's made from the Italian shuniper, schipper,'
says he.

“`Deutch or Italian,' says I, `it's te oil ov life;
ant never pefore tid I trink such shin.'

“`I am glat you like it,' says he; ant he mate

a negro, in golt ant green jacket ant brocken, put
on anoder flasche.

“By-ant-py, says I, `Vat's te name o' your craft,
captain,' tinking it a ship in te king's navy.

“`Te Silfer Arrow,' says he.

“`Te Silfer Arrow. I haav not hear tis name
in te navy.'

“`Nor ever vill,' sait he. `Fill your glass,
schipper, I vill give you a toast.'

“So I filled to te top, ant, rising up, swore I't
trink it on mine legs, if he gave te tyfil himself, for
te Scheitam vas in me. So I helt on to te taple-corner,
ant he sait,

“`I give te healt of Kyt.'

“`Nefer,' sait I; ant smashed my glass on te
taple in a tousant atoms. `I vill trink to te tyfil,
put not to Kyt,' says I.

“His eyes flashed like coals ov vire, ant he put
his hant on a pistol; put ten he laughed ant sait,

“`Drink to my healt, ten, good schipper.'

“`I'll trink your healt, captain, from te neck ov
te flasche, till tere pe not von trop left pehint.'

“`Pledge me, den,' sait he.

“So ve filled, ant I trank a bumper to his goot
healt.

“`Very vell, schipper. You haav done as I
wished,' he sait, smiling. `Who, tink you, is your
entertainer?'

“`Te'il care I,' sait I; `I know te Scheitam, tat
is enough for schipper Schenk to know.'

“`Did you ever hear of te Adventure Galley?'
says he.

“`It's Kyt's vessel,' sait I, `tat he scours te sea
mit.'

“`Look here, schipper, ant reat,' said he, shoving
asite a sliting panel above te transum.

“I looked, ant reat, in large letters,

“`The Adventure Galley.'

“`Vat te tyfil!' sait I, laying a hant on my cutlass,
`tish is not te—'

“`Te Adventure Galley, ant I am Captain Kyt,'
says he.

“So I drew my cutlass ant mate a lunge at him,
supposing I vas in for a death; but he wrested it
vrom me, ant mate me sit down ant vinish te pottle,
ant we soon got right vell acquainted.

“`Vhen do you leave te creek, schipper Schenk?'
says he.

“`It vill take me two tays yet, mit my three
men, to set te bowsprit. It's a pad pusiness, dish
delay; ant I vish I vas vell out of dis place'—for I
pegan to fear for my throat, notmitstanding ve
drank Scheitam togedder. But Captain Kyt vas
de shentleman. He sent his men to help mine, ant
in four hours I vas ready for sea again, sount as
ever. He came to see me off, sent two flasches ov
de Scheitam, ant shook hants mit me, mit many
pleashant vords, ant gave me dis arrow, saying,
`Tese are my passports for my frients. If you
ever are in any tanger from my peoplesh, it vill pe
your safeguart.' Ant he spoke true; for it hash
twice saven my cargoesh.”

As the skipper concluded, he held up to view a
small silver arrow the length of his fore-finger, on
which the warden discovered, as it was passed
round from one to the other, the words:

“Respect the sign. Kyd.”

“Strange — it ish vonderful — vera goot!” exclaimed
severally those to whom it was handed.

“He is not so wicked after all, then, schipper
Schenk,” said the warden.

The skipper shook his head, and replied mysteriously,
“I vish I may alvays gif him a goot vide
berth, datsh all, Mynheer Vorden, notmitstanding
te Schietam.”

“I can tell you a tale that will give you a different
opinion, Master Warden,” said an English mate,
who formed one of the party of listeners.

“By all means let us hear it,” said the warden,
knocking the ashes from his pipe against his shoe,
and refilling the bowl from a leathern pouch by his
side wherein he was accustomed to carry a pound
of loose Turkish cut.

“Ve vill lishten; tell it, skipper Jack,” all cried,
directing their eyes first down the bay to see if
they could discover an approaching sail, and then
turning and fixing them upon the face of the seaman.

“Well, shipmates,” said the sailor, dropping from
his mouth carefully into the palm of his hand a huge
quid of tobacco, and sprinkling a shower of saliva
over the pavement; “you see as how it was in the
West Indies. Captain Kyd had captured a trader
bound from Newport to Barbadoes, and, having
taken out all the valuables, set fire to her, with every
soul on board save a young gentleman and young
lady—one being sweetheart to the other, you must
know. These he took on board his vessel, the
'Ventur' Galley, and told the young lady, who was
very rich, that if she would pay forty thousand dollars
for her ransom, she should go free. So she
went into the cabin with him, and wrote the order
for the money. `Now,' says she to him, `I will not
give it to you unless you promise to give me what
I love best on earth.' `Now,' says he to her, `fair
lady, what do you love best on earth?'

“`My betrothed husband,' said she.

“`Would you have his heart rather than all else
in the world?' asked he.

“`Yes.'

“`I comply with your demand—but first you
must dine with me,' said he.

“So a great dinner was served up, and only Kyd

and the lady sat down to it—for he treated her with
great respect all the time, and more like a gentleman
than a bucanier. After they had dined, she
said, `Now grant me my wish, and let me have
what I love best on earth.'

“`You have had it,' said he.

“`Where—what?' she asked, trembling all over
at his fearful looks, and hardly knowing what to
dread.

“`Your lover's heart.'

“`Where?' she asked.

“`You have just dined off of it,”' said he.

“What became of the lady?” asked the warden,
after the exclamations of horror and surprise had
subsided.

“She became a maniac, and in three days was
buried in the sea,” replied the narrator, replacing his
quid and taking a hearty draught at a can of ale
handed him by Frau Stoll herself.

“Donder ant blixen! I don't pelieve it—tish not
true, I vould shwear,” said the skipper. “He ish
pad enough, put not so pad ash dat—tish one of te
itle shtories tat peoplesh frighten von oder mit.”

“'Tis said he always gets devil's luck, before he
sails, from them as has dealings with the Evil One,
and always burns a Bible on his capstan every time
he weighs anchor,” said the sailor, without regarding
the incredulous skipper.

“The last time he was here, when he walked our
streets so boldly, with a score of armed bucaniers
at his back, before he set sail I heard how he got
evil charms from the witch at Hell Gate,” observed
the warden, in a low, cautious tone.

“I can give ye a wrinkle on that point, I guess,”
said a lank, half-farmer, half-sailor looking being,
who commanded a trader between the Rhode Island
plantations and New-York—one of the first of the

species now so numerous. “I anchored once,
waiting for the flood tide to take me through the
gate, close alongside the rock her hut is on. Feeling
kind o' neighbourly, and not knowin' then who
lived there, I got into my yawl, and pulled ashore
to scrape acquaintance and talk a bit. As I came
up to the hut I heard a strange noise, and smelt
a brimstonish smell, and so thought I'd reconnoitre
afore goin' in. Looking through the window, I see
the old Witch of Endor and Captain Kyd, as I
learned a'terward it was, goin' through the awfullest
hellifications ever hearn tell on. She hanged
a piece o' yarn round his neck, and then said as how
he had a charmed life. Gracious! and the way it
lightened and thundered jist then was a sin to death!
Blue blazes an' brimstone—great guns and little
guns—big devils and little devils, mixed up with
owls and hobgoblins, snakes and catamounts, with
a sprinkling o' hell-cats and flying sarpents, touched
off with the tarnellest yells, 'nough to lift a feller
right off his feet by the hair of his head. I thought
creation was comin' to an eend, and dropped down
on my marrow-bones and prayed away like a disciple.
Soon as I could get on my legs, I showed
'um some purty tall walkin' till I got to my yawl
again, I tell ye! I expected nothin'd be left o' me
when I got there but my eyebrows and shirt risbands.”

“She is a fearful woman,” said the warden; “and
little thanks do we owe them for sending her among
us. 'Tis said, before she was transported to the colony
from Ireland, that she had spirited away by her
foul charms the son of some noble house. Ill has
fared the colony the three years she has been in't.”

“She shoult pe purned for von vitch vooman,”
said the skipper; “I would pe te first to make te
fagot plaze.”

“I'll be there to help you a bit, I guess, too,” said
the Rhode Islander. “I han't been to Salemtown
in New-England for nothin', I guess. The way
they do with the critters there is a little the cutest.
If they want to tell for sartin if an old woman's a
real witch, they throw her into a pond. If she's
drownded she's no witch; but if she swims, its
gospel proof she is—coz what old woman could
swim if she warn't a nat'ral witch. They then tie
her to a stake and set fire to her.”

“Mit your leave, goot peoplesh, I vill shay vat
dey doesh mit vitches in mine countree,” said the
Dutch burgher, deliberately taking the pipe from
his mouth. “Virst, dey tries her py veighing her in
te scales mit von Piple; if she be heavier nor te
Piple, she ish prove von olt vitch voomans. Dis
ish vera goot! Secont, dey tries to shoot her mit
silver pulletsh, ant den dey tiesh her heelsh ant het
bot' togedder, and drops her into te deep vater.
Dat is alsho more vera goot!”

“What are ye gathered here for, ye idle knaves
and fat burghers, ye masses of smoked flesh—
sponges steeped in ale—and paunches like your own
pint-pots, frightening each other's cowardly ears
with tales of fear. Who is it ye would kill with
your silver bullet, Master Von Schmidt?”

The company started at the harsh, stern voice
that addressed them so unexpectedly, and uttered,
as they looked up, divers exclamations and interjections
of surprise, not unmingled with apprehension.
The warden rose from his wooden bench, and, hurrying
away, disappeared quickly round the corner
of the inn; the tallow-chandler upset his can of
ale in his over-eagerness to gain the taproom; the
burgher broke the long stem of his pipe by striking
it against the door-sill as he crowded in on the tallow-chandler's
heels; and on each countenance and

in every gesture of those who remained was depicted
consternation and anxiety.

The personage who had caused this sudden
movement was a female of low stature, deformed
and hideous in person, with a stern aspect, and a
wild, restless eye—indeed, none other than Elpsy
the sorceress. Suspected of having made way with
the young Lester—the illegitimate Lester—she had
been arrested by the countess and thrown into
prison. But confessing nothing on trial, and the
circumstances not being sufficient in themselves to
convict her, after remaining in prison two years, she
was sent, with other criminals and dangerous persons,
to the colonies. Forbidden by the worthy
burghers to harbour in the town, she had selected,
as more in unison with her wild and wandering life,
and the mysterious character she claimed, a lonely
abode, once a fisherman's lodge, on the rocky islet
on the right of the outlet of Hurl Gate, still known
as the Witch's Rock. Here she performed her unholy
rites, and far and wide her fame spread as a
sorceress. Seamen, as they shot through the dangerous
pass, propitiated her; and those who would
have fair winds sought them of her in full faith.
The good came to her for good, and the evil for evil.
The tender Dutch maiden would do pilgrimage
there to ask after the fate of an absent lover, or
seek assurances of his happy and speedy return.
There were tales, too, that she favoured the bucaniers
who swarmed the coasts, and that their success
was owing to the heavy bribes of gold they
gave her for prosperous cruises. Occasionally she
visited the town, to the consternation of its worthy
citizens, who never failed to presage evil to “scot
and lot” from her presence.

“What is it ye fear, Master Warden—what is
it leads ye to leave your bench, schipper—is't your

own shadows ye fear?” she now cried, fixing her
eyes darkly and angrily upon each countenance.

“It ish out ov reshpect, Frau Elpshy,” replied
the half-tipsy schipper, mustering his physical to
the aid of his moral courage, and speaking in a deprecatory
tone. “We knowsh your power, ant make
reverensh to it by getting up, ash you say.”

“Ye are a hypocritical and fear-stricken set, all
of ye—ever gulping ale, ye have only ale courage.
Jost Stoll, woman, give me a can of thy best Island
spirits. I have walked far, and am athirst and
weary.”

The strong potation was given her by the reluctant
hostess, who dared not refuse her demand, lest,
in the evil that she would visit upon her hearth-stone
and roof-tree, she might lose far more than the value
of a goblet. The weird woman quaffed the beverage
at a draught, and, placing the cup on the bench with
an emphasis, turned and looked down the bay with
a steady gaze. Every eye followed hers. The sun
had just touched the hills of Jersey with his lower
edge, and the evening haze lifting from the water
gave a dimness to distant objects. For some seconds
she continued to gaze, and then suddenly cried,

“He comes!”

“Sail ho!” instantly shouted the Rhode Islander.
At the same moment, a universal exclamation from
the observers upon the stoope showed that all eyes
had discovered the object that had attracted the attention
and caused the sudden outcry of the woman.

Far down the bay, near its junction with the
sea, diminished to a mere speck by the distance,
and appearing not bigger than a snow-flake floating
above the water, or a white gull riding on
the waves, a vessel was seen entering the Narrows
and standing towards the town. Instantly
all was excitement. The noise and rumour of

its approach flew from the Rondeel on the south
even to the wall on the north. The worthy citizens,
attended by their fraus and their little folk,
maids and matrons, old and young, black and white,
slaves and Indians, and everything that had life in
New-Amsterdam, assembled in front of Jost Stoll's
inn, with their eyes directed down the bay. With
a steady, onward course, the vessel came gallantly
up the channel, and such was the way she made
that she promised to drop anchor off against the
fort ere the twilight should be deepened into night.
Gradually, as she approached, her form and size
began to grow more distinct to the eye, and her
proportions to stand out clearer.

“She is a brig—but not the Ger-Falcon, I am
thinking,” said the warden, who had again taken his
place among the crowd, his curiosity overcoming his
superstitious fears—albeit, he gave the sorceress a
wide berth. Nor indeed was he alone in his aversion
to her society; for every one present seemed
instinctively to avoid her neighbourhood: so that
she stood alone in an open space before the inn,
intently watching, without heeding those around
her, the advancing sail.

“Vat oder prig can it pe, put te Sher-Falcon,” said
the skipper. “Dere ish none expected here till next
Shaint Andrew's tay. De Barbadoesh packet vash
just sail—de Glasgow merchantman ish not due till
Christmash, and tere ish put one oder prig dat trade
here, vich is gone to te Golt Coast for negroesh.
'Tis te Ger-Falcon, or te pucanier Kyt himself.”

“Got forbid!” was the exclamation from every
tongue.

“She should carry her colours boldly aloft if she
were an honest trader,” said the warden. “'Tis
suspicious.”

“The Ger-Falcon, neighbour, was a square-rigger,

I guess,” said the Rhode Islander, making a
focus of his closed hands, and looking long and scrutinizingly
at the stranger; “if I know a mainsail
from a spanker, that craft is a 'morfydite, with a
reg'lar straight stem for a mainmast.”

“It ish true; tish not te king's vesshel,” said
the schipper, looking eagerly at her. “She ish not
square-rigged; nor ish she von 'morfridyte neider.
She ish polacca-rigged, and has von cut-vater like
a pike's nose. Dat craft ish here for no goot.”

As the skipper spoke he felt in his pouch anxiously,
and, drawing forth his little arrow, looked at
it between doubt and confidence, and, shaking his
head bodingly, walked into the taproom to comfort
his spirits with a fresh can of “mum.”

The oracular shake of the skipper's head seemed
to have affected all present. Glances of apprehension
and words of trembling inquiry were interchanged;
and, fluctuating between hope and fear,
they continued anxiously to watch the approaching
stranger, at times turning their glances towards the
witch, to see if, on her dark features, they could read
a confirmation of the fears the skipper's words and
mysterious manner had awakened. As the vessel
came nearer, it was clearly apparent to the most unpractised
eye that she was not the vessel sent out
in search of the bucanier, and for which they had so
long been on the watch. There was something,
too, in the shape and air of the stranger, that roused
their suspicions of his pacific character, and the
dreaded monosyllable “Kyd” was whispered under
breath from one to the other. Many an anxious
eye was turned towards the Rondeel, to see if the
vigilance of the town's defenders was roused, and,
to the confirmation of their fears, they saw that the
little garrison was on the alert; that armed men
were on the walls; that the tompions were taken

from the guns; and that its captain stood with his
glass on the outer bastion watching the vessel, while
ever and anon an order, hastening the warlike preparations,
reached their ears.

The stranger, a long, sharp, polacca-rigged brigantine,
came swiftly on, boldly passed Red Hook,
disappeared a few moments behind the wooded
swell of Governor's Island, and reappeared on the
east side, within gunshot of the town. Just as the
more timid citizens began to think of withdrawing
to the protection of the fort or the covert of their
stout stone houses, and just as a warning gun was
fired from the Rondeel, she rounded to, her canvass
shivered in the wind, her after sails descended to
the deck by the run, and her fore sails one after the
other rapidly disappeared: a moment afterward,
with everything furled, she dropped her anchor,
and, swinging slowly round to it, remained, dimly
seen through the thickening twilight, as stationary
as the island off which she was anchored. After
commenting upon her appearance and character,
and giving vent to their doubts and suspicions, one
by one the worthy citizens retired to their well-defended
mansions, trusting to the governor to keep
and hold the city should it be placed in peril before
the coming dawn. Elpsy was left alone where she
had stood all the while, watching the vessel's approach:
the red light of the western sky lighted up
her dusky features with a baleful glare, and her
features worked with some deep, inward emotion.
She would one moment strain her eyes towards the
reposing vessel, and the next, with an exclamation
of disappointment, stride, with an impatient step,
to and fro the narrow strand before the alehouse.

“'Tis he,” she said, looking fixedly in the direction
of the vessel. “'Tis the day he said he should
return, and he has not deceived me. Now will I

bring about that I have laboured five long years to
accomplish. He shall obey me; he shall do it; he
shall do what I command—fulfil it to the letter, or
he shall die. No boat yet!” she said, pausing and
looking over the water. “He waits for night. He
will scarce think to meet me here; but he shall
not come and go again without seeing me. He escapes
me no more. Let me lay my hand on his
heart and get his promise to see me, and I will go
back to my rock; for I know then he will come to
me there.”

The stars at length came out, and night took the
place of the glowing twilight. The customers of
Jost Stoll had returned to their homes, or were
seated within, under protection of the massive shutters
and bars, which, earlier than at her accustomed
time, the fore-guarding landlady had placed over
her windows. All was still throughout the town
save the tread of the sentinel on the parapet of the
Rondeel, the tramp of the night-guard going with
quicker and more determined tread than usual to
their posts, the regular dash of the waves on the
beach, and occasionally the low, deep voice of the
weird woman soliloquizing. At length, after many
an earnest look and impatient word, the distant dip
of oars in the direction of the brigantine reached
her ears, and in a few minutes afterward, faintly
visible through the darkness, a boat was seen approaching
the entrance of the canal below the inn.
With a glad exclamation she hastened forward to
meet it.

2. CHAPTER II.

The worthy burghers assembled before the inn
of frau Jost Stoll had not been alone in their anxiety
for the return of the Ger-Falcon, nor in their
curiosity about the strange vessel which had sailed
so boldly into their harbour.

Between the Rondeel and the alehouse, amid a
park of majestic trees with a lawn before it sloping
to the water, stood, as has been before described,
the ancient White Hall, the gubernatorial residence
of the Earl of Bellamont. It was an antiquated,
rambling edifice, with divers bastion-like projections,
chimneys terminating in turrets, lofty-peaked
gables, and long, low wings. Running along the
whole front was a balcony, upon which the windows
of the second story opened, converting it into an
airy and elevated promenade for the occupants of
the suite of rooms connecting with it. At the
eastern extremity of this terrace, which here wound
round an octagonal-shaped tower obtruding from
the angle, was a deep curtained window, which led
into a boudoir. The slanting rays of the setting
sun fell in rich tints through it upon the carpet, and,
reflected from its crimson curtains, diffused a roseate
light throughout the chamber. Near the centre
of this apartment, which was furnished with the

most costly articles of luxury, stood a superb harp,
with its music lying open upon a stand beside it,
as if just deserted. Paintings, of subjects tastefully
appropriate for such a scene, from the pencils of
the old masters, hung upon the walls, and shelves
of gilded books filled the sides of a niche, in which,
on a pedestal of black marble, stood a snowy statue
of Calliope. In an opposite recess answering to
it was a Clio; and in a third, fronting the window,
was a Madonna and child, by Guido, before which,
on a tall tripod of silver and ivory exquisitely carved,
was placed a crucifix of gold, set with precious
stones, and several books of prayer and of pious
reading.

By the open window which faced the south sat
a female, in the white and flowing evening costume
of the times. Her face lay in the palm of her right
hand, which rested on a slab supported by bronze
lions that stood beneath a lofty mirror half hidden
in tapestry. A guitar lay unheeded upon her lap, on
the silent strings of which her fingers unconsciously
lingered, while her eyes were turned towards
the sea, whither, it was plain, her thoughts had also
flown. At her feet was a silken flag, on which was
embroidered the crest of Bellamont—a boar's head
—and beneath, in Gothic characters, the letters R.
F., the latter unfinished, with the needle left in it.
She was exceedingly lovely, beautiful as the houris
that awake the glowing lyre of the Persian bard.
Her beauty was oriental too—soft, languishing,
dreamy, and most dangerous to look upon. The
amorous sun lingered and still lingered on her olive
brow, rioting on its beauty, and, to the last, entwined
his golden rays among her glorious hair. And such
hair! It was dark as the midnight cloud. Evenly
parted on her forehead, it was turned back from her
blue veined temples to the top of the head, and

braided to resemble the crest of a helmet; but several
flowing waves of the luxuriant braid had burst
the bondage of the fillet, and now sported about her
superb neck in the gentle evening wind.

Five years had passed, and Kate Bellamont had
become the lovely woman she now appeared. She
had grown taller, being now a little above the common
height, and her ripened figure was moulded
in the most finished model of feminine grace. Nothing
could be more fascinatingly perfect than the
undulating outline of her person; and from the
rounded arm and elegant hand, to the symmetrical
foot just peeping from beneath her robe, resting its
tip on an ottoman, all was grace and harmony.
Her features, too, were in keeping with the enhanced
beauty of her person. The expression of her
face was something loftier and more decided, but
blending, nevertheless, much sweetness with that
peculiar and graceful dignity becoming a very beautiful
woman. Her dark, floating eyes were fuller
of passion and thought, and far more fatal to the beholder
were their animated glances. The budding
loveliness of her ruby, laughing lip had changed to
a sweeter and more quiet character; yet love, now
a practised archer, lay hidden there still, nestled
amid smiles and dimples; perhaps, too, they bore
a stronger impress of pride of birth and firmness
of character than heretofore. Indeed, all that the
youthful maiden had promised was fulfilled in the
more matured woman, and the unfolding bud had
burst into glorious flower.

As she gazed forth from the window, and looked
long and anxiously down the bay, which stretched
before her reflecting all the hues of the gorgeously
painted sky, a pensive shadow would at times steal
across her features, and a sigh escape her bosom;
then, with a conscious blush, she would drop her

eyes, thrum a nervous note or two on the guitar,
and again bend her searching, wishful gaze over the
water.

At length, just as the sun was setting, a vessel
appeared afar off in the entrance of the harbour,
and with an exclamation of joy she bounded to the
balcony, and watched, with no less interest than the
skipper and his companions had done, its approach
towards the town. As it came nearer, a look of
disappointment clouded her features, and anxiety
and suspicion began to take the place of hope.

“No, it is not he; such was not the fashion of
his sails; nor does the flag of England fly from her
mast as it is wont to do. Heaven forbid that accident
should have befallen him. Oh, that he would
return and relieve my anxious watching.—Yet perhaps
this stranger may bring me news of him.”

As this thought occurred to her, she watched the
motions of the vessel with renewed interest, until
she dropped anchor within gunshot of the town.
The gun from the Rondeel, and the confused murmur
of voices from the inn below, increased her
curiosity; and the deepening twilight still found her
at the window, with her eyes fixed on the scarcely
visible hull, as if, although it might not contain him
she looked for, it was yet in some way connected
with her destinies.

Elpsy, it will be remembered, after her appearance
at the inn of Jost Stoll, waited until nightfall,
and then, hearing the approach of a boat from the
strange vessel, hastened to meet it. It pulled in
close by a large rock; and as the person it bore
stepped to the beach, she at once knew him by his
bearing to be him she sought. He gave a few
brief orders to his men, warning them to be guarded
against surprise, and then, wrapping his mantle
about him, first loosening his sword in its scabbard

and bringing his pistols round to be ready for use,
he moved across the beach towards the silent inn.
She permitted him to pass her unseen, and followed
him till he reached the open space in front of the
alehouse, when, seeing him pause as if to reconnoitre,
she approached him from behind and lightly
touched his arm.

Quick as lightning, his hand was upon her
throat, and a pistol was held to her heart. But as
quickly the hand was released and the weapon
put up.

“Is it thou, Elpsy? Thou shouldst come less
stealthily upon a man who is accustomed to the
use of steel. Had I not recognised thy accursed
shape, not to be mistaken even in this faint star-light,
thou wouldst have caused me to shed thy
blood. What wouldst thou?”

“The fulfilment of thy promise.”

“Have they come?”

“All. 'Tis five weeks since the ship that bore
them from the old country anchored in the harbour.”

“All?”

“All, even thy—that is, even to the Lady Lester!”

“Ah, the poor lady! Does she live?”

“Scarcely. For years she shut herself in her
castle; but the Earl of Bellamont, pitying her loneliness
and her sorrows, a year since did prevail on
her to take up her abode at Castle Cor.”

“And so, when he was appointed governor, she
came hither with him? I would see her, Elpsy.”

“Nay, thou hadst better not. There is one who
alone will demand all thy time and thought! Hast
thou the will to perform? will no faint-heartedness
come over thee?”

“None, I love her still. Time only increases

my passion. Five years has given me worldly
lessons. I am ready to fulfil the vow I made to
thee when in port a few months ago, in expectation
of her arrival, and now assert my claim to the rank
and title of Lester, for I have been taught that
kings have been bastards, and bastards kings.”

“And to this title seek to annex that of the house
of Bellamont?”

“But will she hear me still? I fear even thy art,
aided by thy subtlest filters, could not make her
love if love has once died in her heart.”

“It will depend on thee—as it chance that thou
love her or her title more.”

“I care not for her title so I be once more her
accepted wooer. Elpsy,” he said, with animation,
“I have loved this maiden well; never, save when
sleeping—nor even then, for my dreams were of
her alone—have I ceased to think of her. There
is none, save thyself, that know I am not the true
Lester?”

“None. Even Lady Lester still mourns thee
as her son, and would be first to hail thee.”

“The Mark Meredith?”

“Is lost at sea, and so thou art the only claimant.”

“Canst prove it?”

“His name appeared, 'tis said, in every print, as
one lost in a king's ship, that went down at sea, in
a storm off Calais four years ago.”

“'Tis better than I thought. Yet he was a brave
lad! Does Lady Lester know of thy presence here?”

“She lives secluded in the White Hall, and
knows naught that passeth in the world. But did
she, am I not beyond the reach of justice, should
she seek my death on suspicion of slaying thee?
Was I not tried and nothing found against me—as
how should there be? I am an exile and under
sentence. Ha, ha, law cannot reach me; and man,

unaided by it, dare not. I reign here; I rule all
minds. It is they who fear, not I. They are the
slaves of superstition, and I make them obedient to
my will. Even thou, proud man, dost acknowledge
my power.”

“I do, Elpsy.”

“Therefore shalt thou have its aid in thy wooing.”

“Nay, first let me try my fortunes on the footing
of our former love.”

“If she will not listen to thee?”

“She will.”

“Wilt thou resign her if she will not?”

He was silent for a moment, and then said,

“What would you have me do?”

“Take her with thee to thy vessel—once there,
thy will must be her will. I shall give thee neither
rest nor peace, on sea or land, till thou art the acknowledged
Earl of Lester, and, by marriage, Lord
of Bellamont. Go. Where you see the light
burning in yonder window is her chamber. I saw
her there as the sun went down. Go, and when
thou hast spoken with her, come to my hut and
tell me how thou art received. See thou lag not,
for I have prepared the rites thou hast sought of
me—and if thou wouldst have thy buried treasures
hid from mortal eyes, and prosper in what thou
undertakest, see thou art with me before the midnight
hour.”

“Stay, Elpsy; should she discover that Kyd and
Lester are the same?”

“Then,” said the woman, in a sneering and malicious
tone of voice, “thou wilt have to woo the
rougher, and 'twill be more to thy credit if thou
carry her off. Would it humble thy pride to have
her know it?”

“By Heaven, did I believe she did, I would not
go near her.”

The witch laughed in such a way that he half
suspected her of betraying him. He laid his hand
on her shoulder, and said quickly,

“Woman, thou hast told her, to gratify thy malicious
soul.”

“Think you I would crush the seed, when, by a
little patience, I can pluck the fruit of the full-grown
tree? Go, boy!”

As she spoke she pointed towards the White
Hall. He left her without replying, and walked in
the direction of the mansion, which stood silent and
majestic amid its noble grove of oaks.

As the night advanced, lights were brought into
the boudoir of Kate Bellamont. Turning away
from the window with a sigh of disappointment, she
struck a few sad notes on her guitar, and then, throwing
it aside, took up the flag she was embroidering,
and began mechanically to ply the needle, occasionally
pausing in her graceful toil, with her head
inclined towards the open window, as if she fancied
she heard sounds from the water. Suddenly she
started and sprung to the balcony. The regular dip
of oars now struck distinctly upon her ears, each instant
approaching nearer and nearer, and a dim object
soon advanced from the distant gloom; and, as
it came swiftly on, she could distinguish the bodies of
men and the outline of a boat boldly relieved against
the glassy flood. In a few seconds it was hidden by
an oak and a clump of shrubbery, but she could hear
it still as it made its way towards the entrance of the
canal in front of the “Boat and Anchor,” as the
inn of Jost Stoll was designated. After listening
a while longer, and hearing nothing to confirm her
hopes that it bore a message to the White Hall,
she re-entered her boudoir and once more resumed
her embroidery. This in a little while she restlessly
cast aside, and, approaching her harp, struck

its golden chords, and, accompanying it by her
voice, sung, in a wild and thrilling strain, a popular
Irish air. Now slow and solemn sounded the
deep, majestic notes; now light and free; now soft,
and touching, and most melancholy, even to sadness,
they wailed beneath the magic touch of her
fingers—her voice, or deep as an angel's trumpet,
or soft as a guitar, or clear as a flute, or wild and
high like a clarion, following in faultless harmony
through the rangeless fields of melody.

The last notes of the music were trembling on
the chords, and the maiden stood as if entranced by
her own strains, when a noise like the flitting of a
humming-bird in the chamber caused her to start,
and, at the same instant, something glittered past
her eyes and fell at her feet. She stooped to lift it
from the carpet with an exclamation between fear
and surprise.

“A silver arrow! What can it mean? Ha!
surely I have seen it before—no, no, it cannot be!
I will examine it! what strange recollections—
what long buried memories start up! I will see if
my suspicions are true!”

She held it to the light with a trembling hand,
and with undisguised astonishment read:

“Merciful Heaven!” she almost shrieked, “it
is—it is the same! Who can have done this?
Whence came it? 'Tis Lester!”

“It is Lester!” repeated a deep, rich voice.

She turned with a half cry and startled look towards
the window, and, to her terror, beheld standing
just without on the balcony, in the shadow of
the curtain, a tall dark figure enveloped in a cloak,
his features shaded by sable plumes drooping over
his brow from a Spanish hat looped boldly up in
front.

She would have shrieked, but her surprise and
alarm for a moment denied her utterance. She
leaned on her harp for support, and gazed on the
intruder without the power to move. He advanced
a step and stood within the window. The
movement restored her presence of mind, and with
a degree of self-possession that surprised herself,
and in the tone and manner of one who feels herself
insulted by intrusion rather than intimidated by the
presence of the intruder, she cried,

“Stand, sir, whoever thou art! Approach no
nearer, or I alarm the Hall.”

As she spoke she extended her hand towards a
silver bell that stood on a table near her. Quicker
than thought, the stranger's hand was upon hers, and
he was kneeling, without cloak or bonnet, at her
feet. Surprise, rather than fear, rooted her to the
spot. She gazed on him with astonishment; and, as
she gazed, her features worked with extraordinary
emotion. The light shone full upon his face, and exhibited
the features of a fair, handsome man, scarce

twenty-five, with light flowing hair, an eye like a
hawk's, and a figure of the most noble and manly
proportions. He wore a short Flemish cloak of
green cloth, richly embroidered, and a short Spanish
sword, with a jewelled hilt, hung at his side. His
face was lifted to hers with eloquent pleading. She
met his gaze with a wild, alarmed look—clasped
her hands on her forehead as if she would recall the
past, and steadfastly fixed her eyes upon him as if
tracing in his features a resemblance that startled
her.

“Kate.”

Soft were the tones of his deep, rich voice as
he spoke, and full of tenderness were his eyes as
he lifted them to hers.

“Robert of Lester!” she cried, starting back as
if memory had vividly returned at the sound of his
voice.

“I am he,” was the reply of the stranger, bending
his head lowly, as if deprecating her displeasure.

“Leave me, sir,” she said, haughtily, though returning
love was evidently struggling for the mastery
over her sense of right. As she spoke she
drew herself up commandingly, though her bosom
heaved with emotion, and her averted eyes contra-dicted
her words.

“Dearest Kate!”

“Robert of Lester, I bid you leave me. Your
presence is an intrusion, sir.”

“Lady,” he said, with tenderness, “do you not
remember when, five years since, you placed, with
your own fair hands, the arrow you now hold in
them, in my bonnet.”

“Nay, bring not up the past; 'tis buried—long
forgotten,” she cried, nervously, and in a voice

tremulous with feeling. “Would to God you had
not appeared to revive it.”

“Lady,” he continued, in a soft, subdued tone,
that touched her heart, “does not love's early
dream—”

“That dream is o'er. Oh, that you would cease
to recall what will only render me miserable!” she
added, with feeling, burying her face in her hands.

“Is there no room for pardon—none for forgiveness?
Hear me, Kate! dearest Kate! You who
were my playmate in childhood—who in youth
first awakened love in this bosom. Dash not the
cup of hope for ever to the ground! I have sought
thee, and now kneel to thee, to tell thee how fondly,
how madly I love—”

“Cease, sir. This is no language for me to
hear. Once—but, no matter—'tis past. If you
have aught to say touching matters foreign to this,
speak, and I can listen; then, prithee depart. Oh,
that thou hadst kept away from me for ever! The
sight of thee has torn my heart!”

“Then there is hope?”

“None.”

“Hast forgotten,” he said, with passionate tenderness,
“how often we have sailed together on
the little mere by Castle More; how together we
have pursued the stag through the forests of Castle
Cor; how oft we have rambled by the shores of its
bay by moonlight, entwined in each other's arms
as we walked; how we loved one another, and
did pledge in the sight of Heaven undying love—”

“Robert, Robert—” she cried, moved by the
touching images he had recalled.

“Have you forgotten,” he continued, in the same
tone, rising and advancing a step nearer to her,
while she leaned against the harp, nor thought to
retreat from him, “oh, have you quite forgotten

all this? Can you recall it and bid me leave
thee? Will you spurn him you have loved and
still love—”

“Hold, hold! I love thee not! no, no, I love
thee not. You presume too much, sir,” she added,
starting from her attitude, and with difficulty assuming
a haughty bearing. “A maiden may once
love, and, finding she has loved unworthily, hate!”

“Dearest Kate,” he said, in a tone that reminded
her of the days when they were lovers, gently taking
her hand.

“Nay, stand back, sir!” she cried, troubled and
with difficulty governing the tones of her voice,
which returning love fain would have fashioned in
its own sweet way.

“Nay, dearest Kate, you love me still! Wherefore
this shrinking form and averted eye—this
wild look of alarm—this struggle to reprove when
your heart gushes with returning love? Why do
you gaze on me with looks of horror! At one
moment terror is depicted on your face, at another
tenderness takes its place. It could not be thus
if you scorned me!”

“Robert, I cannot listen to you—'tis dangerous—
fatal. If—if I did love you still, thy crimes—”

“Ha! do you know me!”

“As `the Kyd.' ”

“Who told thee this?” he asked, fiercely.

“Elpsy.”

“When?”

“Yesterday!”

“The foul fiend!” he cried, pacing the floor.
He then muttered, “So—this plan is defeated. I
can no longer rewoo her as Lester! Ten minutes
since, this false witch told me that none save herself
knew that the bastard Lester and Kyd were
one! I would have made her believe I had returned

from five years of honourable exile, to which
her anger had banished me, and penitent, wooed her
as Lester, as I have promised the sorceress—for
I can do now what then I could not do: five years
of crime makes a wonderful difference in a man's
feelings! Yet I will deny all. She should believe
me before this witch.”

Such were the thoughts that run rapidly through
his mind as he walked the room. Turning round
to her, he said, in the tone of voice that innocence
would assume,

“Alas, dearest Kate! has this baleful sorceress,
with envenomed breath, instilled her poison in a
flower so fair. Alas, and were I `the Kyd,' would
you, with the taproom gossips of the babbling town,
believe me such as Rumour with her hundred
tongues would make me? Shall I to her refer this
altered air—this cold look—this hand that's neither
given nor withdrawn? Dost remember when first
we parted after our plighted vows beneath the linden
by the southern tower of Castle Cor ('twas the third
day before thy birthday, I remember it well); thy
heart against mine beat wildly—thy head lay upon
my breast—my arm encircled thy waist—my lips
were pressed to thine—and this 'kerchief, bearing
thy initials wrought by thine own fingers, and which
I have kept sacred as the pious monk a relic of the
cross, was saturate with tears—thy tears, Kate.
And thus, though five long years have separated us,
do we meet now!”

“'Fore Heaven, sir! hast thou not given cause?”
she exclaimed, recovering herself after a brief but
terrible struggle with her feelings, for she was fast
melting at his words. “Dost remember how thou
didst leave me, and to what end? Hast forgotten
thy crimes? I am mad to talk with thee. Thou
art no longer Lester. In thee alone I see the freebooter,

the bucanier, the terrible Kyd! Shame that
a noble, for a light word spoken by a spirited maiden
in anger, should thus have cast himself away!”

“I had other cause—thou dost yet believe me
to be Lester—but—”

“I will hear no palliation—thou hast thrown thyself
away—when, if thou hadst really loved me,
thou wouldst have come back and sought to heal
the breach.”

“I would have done it—but—”

“Thou didst not. Therefore are we no longer
aught to each other!”

“Thy words tell me what I have scarce dared
to hope—that thou wouldst have received and pardoned
me! But there was an impassable barrier—”

“Which was thy pride. Fatal, fatal has it been
to thee.”

“Nay, but a dark stain—”

“Enough, Robert of Lester! I will hear no
more in extenuation or plea. Let this interview
cease.”

She turned from him as she spoke, though it
evidently cost her an effort to do so, and made a
step towards the door communicating with the main
body of the mansion.

“Lady! Kate—dear Kate,” he cried, passionately,
approaching her and kneeling before her,
“you have said you would have received me had
I then returned. If thy love was true love, five
years should not kill it, but increase it rather.
Behold me returned; forget the long lapse of
time; see me only at thy feet to atone the deep
offence given on thy birthday, which has so long
separated us; receive me as if but a day, and not
years, had intervened; take me once more to the
throne of thy affections; let me again be the Lester

of thy early years—the Lester whom thou hast
loved—thy Lester—thy—”

“Nay, Robert,” she cried, with softness, yet
turning her head away as she spoke, as if fearing
to trust herself to meet his glance; “nay, it may
not be. I pity you; but love!—love?—no, no, it
lives no longer. Then art thou not guilty?” she
cried, with sudden energy, recoiling from him.
“Thou didst make me for the moment forget Kyd
in Lester. Go, thou art not the Lester I have
known. I no longer love thee, Robert; and if I
did, crime on thy part has placed between us a
wall high as heaven!”

“I am not so guilty as you believe, lady; but,
if I have sinned against thee, thus here at thy feet
I do atone my deep offence.”

“Rise, sir. I accuse you not; with Heaven
lies the knowledge of your guilt. But, if conscience
goad thee not to it, why thus a suppliant?”

“Conscience useth neither spur nor exhortation.
If I am proved innocent, yet is the homage of my
knee still due to thee as the divinity that my soul
for years has worshipped.”

“Enough, sir! I tremble to hear thee link my
name with such gross impiety. Detain me no
longer.”

“Dear Lady Kate!” he pleaded, entreatingly.

“Release my hand! and remember,” she added,
with a suddenness characteristic of this capricieuse
création, “when you fashion your speech, that you
address Lady Catharine of Bellamont!”

She drew back haughtily as she spoke, and the
guilty lover bent his head low before the reproof,
while resentment and grief were mingled in the expression
of his countenance.

“Lady,” he said, without looking up, and speaking
in a voice apparently modulated by injured feelings,

“do you believe the tales of crime men charge
me with?”

“How else,” she replied, pausing and turning
back, losing, in her just resentment, the lover in
the pirate, and speaking in tones of virtuous dignity,
“How else? 'Tis rife on every tongue. Thy
deeds are the undying theme of fireside wonder and
village gossip. Nay, mothers use the dreaded
name of Kyd to scare rude children to obedience!”

“By the cross!” he cried, starting up and speaking
with fierce vehemence, “'tis all a foul invention;
an idle tale and lying calumny; the escaped
bile of some long-festering sore, nourished and fattened
in the breast of scandal. Nay, dear Kate,”
he continued, changing his manner and voice, and
speaking as if he made light of it all, “'tis not worth
a passing thought! 'Tis an old-wives' tale only;
and for such inventions thou hast too much good
sense to crush the hopes of years; thou hast,” he
added, tenderly, “too deep remembrance of our
former love to tear a heart that, like the rootless
mistletoe which borrows life from that it clings
to, lives only by its hold on thine!”

“Robert,” she said, moved by the solemn and
impassioned tones of his voice, his pleading look,
his face upturned to hers, all eloquent with love
and bringing him, as in happier days, before her
memory, “Robert, I once loved you—how truly,
Heaven and my own heart were witnesses. Thou
wert virtuous then, and helmeted with truth, and
thy heart was girt about with honour, like plate of
proof. Thy look was noble, and thy port such as
became the nobleness within. I was proud of thee.
Absent, I treasured thee in my heart of hearts, and
lived only—was happy only, in thy presence!
When Rumour came trumpeting your misdeeds, I
was the last to believe them true.”

“Kate—dearest Kate—”

“Nay, speak not. Your tongue and eyes are
not yet drilled to play their parts together.”

“Kate—I entreat—”

“True love for a noble maiden should have been
to thee a shield and buckler, Robert, and kept thee
from this sad fall.”

“Lady, you do me wrong. My hand, but not
my heart, has erred—”

“I have not yet done. From one source, that
mingles not with the noisy torrent Rumour has let
loose throughout the world, I've gathered most certain
proof that you are guilty both in heart and
hand. Ay, men do not, for very fear, tell the half
of what thou hast done.”

“This source—the witch?”

“No. Long had I heard of Kyd the outlaw; long
had crime and guilt, in shapes most dreadful and appalling,
come to my shrinking ears coupled with his
name. Night and day, as we crossed the sea, was
double watch set, lest he should come upon us unawares.
Everywhere did I hear of him and his
deeds of blood, till I did believe him to be a demon
human only in shape, let on earth for its punishment.
'Twas from one who had been thy prisoner I heard
the sanguinary tale. 'Twas told me ere I knew thee
other than the world knew thee—for 'twas only
yesterday Elpsy told me, what before had crossed
my mind as the mere shadow of a suspicion, banished
as soon as it came, that thou wert Lester,
and that revenge against me had driven thee to piracy.
This I believe not; Heaven keep me from
answering for thy guilt—rather attribute it to thy
own evil passions, and, I fear, an innate love for
rapine; for how else wouldst thou have torn thy
noble mother's heart (I speak not of hers to whom
thy troth was plighted), and foregone thy rank and
title among men?”

“If thou didst know all, lady, thou wouldst not
judge me thus—”

“Thou canst say nothing I will believe. He
who told me is, as once thou wert, the soul of truth
and honour!”

“Who is this Daniel come to judgment?” asked
the bucanier, with irony.

“A naval officer, who was taken prisoner in the
Indian Seas by a rover, and afterward made his
escape by stratagem.”

“This rover?”

“Thyself.”

“There is but one of rank above a common sailor
who was my captive and escaped,” he muttered,
turning away as if recalling the past; “Fitzroy
I think was his name; it may be he; if so, I will
no longer urge my innocence, but woo her under
my proper colours. Pray,” he said, abruptly addressing
her in a voice in which awakened jealousy
was mingled with sarcasm, “hast thou ever
chanced to know a youthful officer called Fitzroy?”

“Fitzroy!” she repeated, with embarrassment,
while the blood mounted to her cheek in a way in
which it never does in a maiden's save when a
lover is suddenly named.

“Ay, I said Fitzroy. Is there aught in the name
to call up the rich blood to the face? Fitzroy's
the name--Rupert Fitzroy, I think!”

In her agitation her eyes involuntarily turned to
the spot where she had dropped the colours she
was working, and, to her increased confusion, the
letters she had just completed met her eye. His
glance followed hers, and instantly he exclaimed,
with an eye sparkling with jealousy and surprise,

“By the rood! lady, there are the very initials!
So this pretty bit of bunting can tell tales! Now,

by the cross, I see it all,” he said, walking the
room with anger and speaking in an under tone;
“behind this tale of my deeds she let slip so glibly,
and under cover of believing it, she fain would
conceal her transferred love. Woman,” he cried,
sternly addressing her, “know you this Rupert
Fitzroy well?”

“You hold no right to question me,” she firmly
replied, “and I refuse to answer.”

“So, I have a rival! 'Tis love for another, and
not hatred of the crimes you lay to my charge, that
leads you to scorn me thus. The arms of thy
house above his name! Ha! 'tis a well-ripened
love! I'll find it out; and if he who stands between
me and thee be on the sea or wide earth, I
will cross blades with him. A proper youth, that
thou art ashamed to own him—perhaps the young
fisher's lad has taken my place—I have heard he
took to the seas.”

“Even he, if honourable, were worthier than
thou, with the nobility which thou hast dishonoured.
But he no longer lives. Lest you give wrong motives
to my silence, I will confess to thee that I do
know a Captain Fitzroy—Rupert Fitzroy—once
your captive by most foul-handed treachery—now
as far removed above you as the eagle, that looks
unblenching on the sun, above the tortoise.”

“You love him?”

“I do.”

“Then, by the holy Heaven! thou shalt repent
thy love and he, crossing my path ere the sun, that
shall rise to-morrow, be a month older.”

As he spoke he turned from her and disappeared
through the window, leaving her overwhelmed with
surprise, wonder, and alarm. She heard him
strike the ground as he sprung from the low balcony,
and listened with trembling to his departing

footsteps as they rapidly crossed the lawn towards
the seaside. For a few moments she remained
standing as he had left her, as if endeavouring to
realize what had passed, her eyes strained, her
hands clasped across her forehead, her lips parted.

“Oh God, that this had been spared me!” she
cried, with the bitterness of a soul surcharged with
intense grief. “Have I seen him? Was it he?
His voice—his air—oh, it was Lester's self!—he
whom I have never ceased to love—whom—but
these are dangerous thoughts—I must think of him
no more. Oh crime, crime! what a deep and impassable
gulf hast thou placed between us! Yet
I have seen him, spoken with him! His hand
has pressed mine in gentleness as it was wont.
Oh how the past came back! time seemed obliterated,
and I could at one moment have given myself
up to him—but crime, crime! No, no, I must
think no more of him; yet I am not sorry I have
beheld him once more. Strange that, after so many
years, and years of crime, have elapsed, he should
still be dear to me! No, no, he is not dear to me
—not he as he is—it is Lester of my youth—it is
he that I love—he I alone think of, whose memory
I can never cease to cherish; but this guilty being
I know not! Yet he is Lester! My poor, poor
head—my poor heart—how they strive with one
another. Oh that my love could wash out his
crimes! But whither do my thoughts wander?
The sight of him has made me forget that I am no
longer a wild girl at Castle Cor. I must root out
this young love, and try no longer to identify myself
now with myself then. I am now the betrothed
of another—of another who has won me
by his sympathy and gentleness, by his nobleness
and his honour, by his manly virtues, and the deep
devotion of his pure and elevated love. Rupert, I

will not be false to thee; the trial is over. Henceforward
I will fill my heart with thee alone, though
I did tell thee, when thou didst woo me on the sea,
that I would not give it all up to thee; that in one
part was sacredly embalmed the sad memory of a
first, yet unworthy love!”

Such were the conflicting thoughts that were
passing through the mind of the troubled maiden,
when she was startled by a low tap at the door.
It was a second time repeated before she could
command her voice to bid the applicant enter. The
door slowly opened, and the family confessor of the
Earl of Bellamont entered the boudoir. He was a
man of commanding figure, with light flowing hair,
and a peaked, auburn beard reaching to his breast,
giving the appearance of the usual pictorial representations
of the Saviour. He was about fifty years of
age, and in the full prime and vigour of life. His
forehead was white and high, his features noble, and
his face eminently handsome, with a gay and youthful
expression, while a light smile played constantly
about his fine mouth. The under lip had a slight
voluptuous fulness, with which the soft expression
of his sparkling blue eyes harmonized, while both
gave intimation of a liberality in morals by no
means in strict conformity with the letter of his
order.

Though holding the station of confessor in Lord
Bellamont's family, Father Nanfan had not come
with him from England. Twenty years before,
a hermit had taken up his abode in a cave among
the cliffs of Hoboken; his country, name, or order
no one knew. He soon acquired great reputation
for sanctity, and his fame spread far and wide. At
length Governor Fletcher, hearing of him, visited
him, and, for some cause which has not transpired,
prevailed upon him to live with him as his

private secretary. Subsequently, Father Nanfan
won the confidence and esteem of the first
Robert Livingston and other leaders of the time,
and, through his talents, knowledge, and ambition,
exercised great influence in the government. He
moved the wires of the famous Leslierian rebellion,
and, though unacknowledged, was the real leader
of the faction. When Bellamont succeeded Fletcher,
he had sufficient influence with the party to induce
them to adhere to the new governor, who rewarded
him by appointing him his private secretary
and family confessor. He had been an inmate
of the White Hall but a few days, when, concealed
beneath his religious guise, Kate Bellamont
thought she detected a dangerous and bad man.
It might have been imagination, for she confessed
that neither by word nor look had he given
ground for such suspicion; yet, from the first, she
had felt a dislike towards him, and experienced a
fear in being alone in his presence, which she
could neither define, nor, on any reasonable grounds,
defend.

He paused an instant, with his hand upon the
half-closed door, as he saw the embarrassment of
her manner, and fixed upon her inquiringly his large
penetrating eyes, and then said, in a voice the words
of which alone conveyed a reproof, for the gentle
tone in which they were addressed to her were
calculated to alarm from their tenderness rather
than from their severity,

“Thou wert not present at vespers, maiden; and,
at the bidding of thy noble mother, I have sought
thee to learn why of late thy thoughts are more
given to earthly than to heavenly things. If thou
wilt kneel, I will now confess thee here.”

“Nay, father, I will meet thee at matins and
there confess. Beshrew me, sir, thou art full bold,

and art disposed to carry thy priestly privileges to
their full compass, that you intrude upon a lady in
her private chamber. Hast heard me, sir? I would
be alone; or, if thou wilt remain, thou art at liberty
to do so, if first thou wilt move from the door and
permit me to pass out.”

“Nay, daughter, thou art troubled; the quick
flush—the startled eye—the timid aspect—thou
dost need to disburden thy heart!”

“I bid thee leave me,” she cried, with mingled
alarm and aversion.

“Calm your spirits, lady,” he said, closing the
door, and taking her hand ere she could prevent
him, though she instantly withdrew it with a quick
impulsive action, and retreated towards the window.

“Lady, I see you know me; you have read
aright the admiring expression of my eyes when
first I met thee—the devoted deference of my manner—the
impassioned tones of my voice. Yes,
sweet Lady Catharine, thy charms have fired me
—thy image has taken the place of that of the
Virgin Mother in my heart; for one smile, one look
from thee, I am ready to sacrifice even my hopes
of Heaven!”

He kneeled at her feet as he spoke, and his noble
features, noble even through the guilt that shadowed
them, were animated with passionate ardour.

“Hoary blasphemer, silence! Thank Heaven
that gave me secret and instinctive warning of thy
black character! Leave me, sir, or I shall call on
my father!”

“He is not within hearing,” he said, rising and
taking both her hands; “and, if thou shouldst rouse
his vengeance against me, his life, not mine, would
be the sacrifice. So, if thou lovest him, beware!”

“Release me, then, sir. Coward—false priest
—unhand me.”

“One kiss from those voluptuous lips,” he said,
throwing his arm about her waist, “for full long
have I fasted from beauty's favours.”

“Ho, within there!” she shrieked.

Instantly he released her hand, but said, in a
hoarse whisper, while his eyes flashed with resentment,

“If thou alarm the house, or give the least shadow
of a hint of what has passed, and evil to me do
come of it, the lives of all dear to thee shall be the
sacrifice. If you will not love me, you shall fear
me. Beware!” The next moment, changing his
manner, he said, “Lady, it was but a momentary
passion; it is passed; thy matchless beauty maddened
me; fear me no longer. Forever keep
silence, and thou wilt hear no more of my ill-matched
love. Wilt thou forgive me, lady?”

“Seek it first of Heaven, dreadful man, if heavenward
thou hast the boldness to lift thine eyes.”

“Can I now hope to confess thee, maiden?”

“Thou, hypocrite! If it be that thou canst thus
deceive thyself, and mingle holiness with sin, I
am not to be part with thee in thy sacrilege! No,
sir; rather would I ask absolution at the hands of
the arch fiend than at thine. I know thee!”

“And of thy knowledge shalt thou one day reap
the bitter fruit,” he said, in a voice and with a
changed manner that intimated a threat.

“I do not fear thee, trusting in a power stronger
than thou!”

“Thou wouldst have made a sublime priestess!
Indignation but adds dignity to thy beauty, and
excitement gives richness to thy cheek, brilliancy
to thine eyes, and the haughty curl of thy lip is but
the more tempting with its ripe fulness unrolled.
By Heaven, I will not be thwarted; I am no mewly
boy, to be frightened at a woman's frown. I will

clasp thee in my arms, and ravish a kiss from that
mouth, which even scorn cannot make less lovely,
in punishment for thy pride!”

As he spoke he approached, and was about to
clasp her in his embrace, when he received a blow
from a mace which felled him to the floor, and the
next instant the sorceress was standing above him,
with one foot upon his chest.

“Ha, ha, ha! we are well met, Father Nanfan.
'Tis thus thou dost assoilzie the souls of maidens,
by first teaching them to sin! Oh, thou hypocrite.
But there will be a time! Nay, thou canst not get
up,” she added, pressing the end of her mace hard
upon his forehead as he struggled to rise. “Maiden,
I have saved thy lips from pollution! and thou,
monster, do I not know thee? Oh, ho! Get thee
up and go!”

As she spoke she stepped aside from his body,
and he rose to his feet, his countenance black with
mingled fury and shame.

“Foul witch, I will have thy life—and thou,
haughty lady, shalt not escape me!”

He was passing swiftly, with gestures of vengeance,
from the room, when the sorceress laid her
hand upon him.

“Beware, I bid thee! Me thou canst not injure!
her thou shalt not!”

“Who shall hinder me, woman? I will have
thee, ere to-morrow's sun, burned at the stake!”

“And I will have thee hung higher than ever
Haman was, if thou move a step towards it. I
know thee, and thy life is in my hands!”

“Ha! you speak mysteriously!”

“Do I? But there is no mystery about thee
that Elpsy cannot unravel.”

“Speak, woman!”

“Thou darest not harm me, nor do injury to any

one I would protect; for I have the key to thy
secret, and, therefore, to thy life.”

“Thou! Who am I, then? What secret?” he
hoarsely demanded.

She approached him, and whispered low in his
ear.

He started back as if he had been struck with
a dagger, and, staring upon her with wild surprise,
in which intense alarm was mingled, cried,

“Who art thou, in Heaven's name?”

“Elpsy the sorceress!”

“But beside?”

“No matter.”

“Wonderful woman! Thy unholy arts could
alone have given thee this secret. Thou art indeed
to be feared.”

“Obey me, then, and secret it shall ever be.”

“Speak; what would you?”

“Swear never to harbour revenge against this
maiden, or any one of the house of Bellamont;
of myself I speak not, for I do not fear thee! Dost
thou swear?”

“By the sacred cross, I do.”

“Thou art safe, then, so long as thou shalt keep
thine oath. Go!”

The priest slowly left the chamber, and, as he
closed the door behind him, the sorceress darted
from the window upon the balcony, and disappeared
in the darkness as suddenly as she had appeared,
leaving the maiden overwhelmed with shame, anger,
and wonder at the scenes and events in which she
had borne so singular a part.

3. CHAPTER III.

C. Donald M'Leod.

When Robert Lester, now Kyd the pirate, left
the presence of Kate Bellamont, without seeking
the stone steps that descended to the lawn, he leaped
from the low balcony to the ground, and strode,
at a pace made quick and firm by the strength of
his feelings, towards a gate that opened into the
lane in which the inn of Jost Stoll was situated.
Avoiding the narrow street, though it was silent
and deserted, he turned his footsteps aside towards
the beach, and, winding round a ledge of rocks
wildly piled together, with a few shrubs and a
dwarf cedar or two clinging in the clefts, he came
to the mouth of the canal, where his boat lay half
hidden in the shadow of a huge overhanging rock.

“Who comes,” challenged one of several men
that were standing around.

He was too much wrapped in his own dark
thoughts to hear or give reply, and was only roused
to a consciousness of his position by the cocking
of pistols and the repetition of the challenge in a
sharper tone.

“The Silver Arrow!” he answered, briefly.

“The captain! Advance!” was the reply.

“Ho, Lawrence, you are alert. Yet it should
be so, for we are surrounded by enemies. You

must learn, nevertheless, to challenge lower under
the guns of a fort. By the moving of lights and
show of bustle on the ramparts, we have already
drawn the attention of the honest Dutch warriors
whom our English governors have seen fit to retain
to man their works.”

“It's to save linstocks, by making them touch
off the pieces with their pipes,” said Lawrence;
“their powder always smells more of tobacco than
sulphur.”

“A truce to this. Man your oars and put off,”
said Kyd, in a stern tone.

The men knew by the change in his voice that
their chief was in a humour that was not to be disregarded;
and scarcely had the orders passed from
his lips, before every man was in his seat, with his
oars elevated in the air. The coxswain, Lawrence,
at the same time took his place at the helm, and in
a low tone said,

“All's ready.”

“Shove off and let fall,” cried Kyd, in the same
suppressed tone, springing into the stern-sheets.

“What course, captain?”

“Hell Gate,” was the deep response, as he seated
himself in the stern and wrapped his cloak about
him.

“Give way, lads,” followed this information,
from the coxswain, and swiftly the barge shot out
from the mouth of the canal; doubling the south
point of the town, it moved rapidly up the narrow
sound between Long and Manhattan Islands,
now called East River, and was soon lost in the
gloom.

When Kyd parted from Elpsy before the inn, she
had remained standing in the place in which he had
left her until his form was lost beneath the trees surrounding
the White Hall; then, turning towards the

street that led by a devious route in the direction
of the north gate of the city, she walked a few moments
rapidly along in the deep shade cast by the
far-projecting roofs of the low Dutch mansions.
Suddenly she stopped.

“He may have a faint heart,” she muttered, as
if her thoughts run upon the interview between the
pirate and noble maiden. “She will not now accept
him as Lester after I have told her who Lester
has become. Oh, I did it to make him use
force in his wooing. I would not have him, after
all that has passed in the last five years, win her
with honour to herself. I would have her humbled.
I would have her become Lady Lester against her
own will. And if he has remaining in his memory
a tithe of her former scorn of him, he will love to
repay her thus. Yet I doubt. I will go back and
see that I am not thwarted. Never shall I rest, in
grave or out, till he is Lord of Lester, and Kate
Bellamont his wedded wife.”

She turned as she spoke, and, retracing her steps
towards the inn, continued on past it towards the
wicket that opened into the park, and, gliding beneath
the trees, stole towards the window of the
maiden's chamber, directed by the light that shone
through the foliage that climbed about it. Aided
by her white staff, she was cautiously ascending a
flight of steps that connected the extremity of the
balcony with the lawn, when she heard Kyd's angry
words at parting, saw him rush forth, leap to
the ground, and take his swift way towards his
boat. Her first impulse was to call him back; but,
suppressing it, she softly approached the window
for the purpose of using her own fearful power
over the minds of all with whom she came in contact,
in giving a turn more favourable to her design
to the alarmed maiden's mind. She was arrested

by the entrance of the priest as she was in
the act of entering the chamber, and drew instantly
back into the shadow. But she gradually moved
forward into the light of the lamp, and, as her eyes
rested on his features, they grew bloodshotten with
the intensity of her gaze. Her face was thrust
forward almost into the room, her long scragged
neck was stretched to its full length, and her whole
person advanced with the utmost eagerness. It
could not have been the words of the priest or his
manner that caused an excitement so sudden and
extraordinary. She evidently discovered in him a
resemblance that surprised her, while it filled her
soul with a savage and vengeful joy.

“It is he!” she gasped. “Ever before have I
met him cowled! He, he alone! I would know
him in hell! Ha, I have lived for something! Oh,
this knowledge is worth to me mines of gold! I
would have sold my soul for it! The same brow,
still almost as fair; the same mouth, the same rich
light in the eyes, and, save his beard, almost as
young as when last we met. Ha! 'tis he. We
have met to some purpose now. Ho, ho! am I not
getting work to do? This is a new matter on my
hands. I will plot upon it. Ha, dares he? The
hoary lecher! Nay, she has flung him back!
'Tis a proper maiden!” she added, as she saw the
priest foiled in his attempt to sully the purity of the
noble girl's lips.

Thus run the current of the weird woman's
thoughts. With fierce resentment, she listened to
the interview between the confessor and his penitent;
and when a second time she saw him approach
her with unhallowed lip, she sprung upon
him: but whether to save the honour of the maiden's
cheek, or prompted by some feminine feeling

known only to herself, will, if it is not already so,
doubtless by-and-by be apparent.

After she had quitted the chamber she swiftly
crossed the lawn towards the inn, turned up the
narrow path that bordered the sluggish canal, and,
following it to its termination near the wall, turned
short round some low stone warehouses to the left,
and ascended a narrow, steep street that run along
close to the wall, and therefore had obtained the distinctive
appellation of Wall-street. Getting close
within its deep shadow, she glided along stealthily
till she came to a double gate, over which hung a
small lamp. Beneath the light, leaning against a
guardhouse constructed on one side of the gate, she
discovered a man with a firelock to his shoulder
and a long pipe in his mouth. A few paces from
him walked to and fro a second guard, who from
time to time paused in his walk, and, in a listening
attitude, looked down the broad, open street that
led from the gate to the Rondeel, as if expecting
the approach of some one.

“Sacrement Donner vetter! 'Tish aight ov de
klock, Hanse,” he said, stopping and addressing
his comrade as Elpsy approached; “te relief shall
'ave peen here py dish time, heh?”

“It vill pe te Schietam at frau Stoll's vat keeps
dem,” replied the other, with a grunt of assent.

“Hark, Hanse! dere ish von footshteps along te
vall—no heh?”

“Tish te pigs and te cattlesh. An' if it vas de
peoplesh, vat matter so dey pe inside ov te valls? It
ish against te rogue from te outside ov te vall vot
ve keep te guart here for.”

“Goot, Hanse. Ve lets nopoty in, to pe shure—
nor lets nopoty out neider, heh? Pots gevitter!
Vot vas te passvoord, Hanse? I vas licht mein
bipe mid te paper te captain left mid us.”

“Yorck.”

“Yorck. Petween ourshelves, Hanse, Ich don't
like dis new name ov our old city ov Nieuve Amstertam.
Dese Anclish names pe hart to shpeak.
'Twas a wrong ding, Hanse, to put away te olt
name, heh?”

“It vash, mein comrate, no vera koot.”

“Pfui Teufel! Ich am klad I vas shmoke it in
mein bipe. It vas batriotic, heh, Hanse? Let ush
av te olt name pack again, Hanse.”

“Vera koot, mein comrate, Ich vill.”

“Ich too. Now if the peoplesh shay Yorck, tey
shall pe put in de guarthouse for traitor. If tey shay
Nieuve Amstertam, den tey pe Kristian peoplesh
and honest men.”

“If she pe a voman, comrate?”

“Den she shall pe von honest voman, to pe
shure.”

At this juncture of the embryo conspiracy,
hatching in his very stronghold and among his
tried warriors, against the Earl of Bellamont's government,
striking at its very roots, and teeming with
seeds of a civil war, a low, dark figure appeared
from behind the guardhouse and suddenly confronted
them.

“Himmel tausand! Te vitch—te tyfil!” they
both exclaimed in one breath as she stood before
them, plainly visible by the light of the lamp that
illuminated her wild features, and threw into strong
contrasts of light and shadow the prominent angles
of her hideous person.

“Let me forth,” she said, in a commanding tone,
laying her hand with a determined gesture on the
heavy bar that was placed against the gates.

The men drew back in alarm, and uttered exorcisms
expressive of superstitious fear.

“Will ye not unbar? Brave men are ye to keep
watch and guard over a city's gates. Unbolt!”

“Vat, Hanse, heh?” asked one of the men of
his comrade, whose arm he had grasped; “sall ve
lets her go?”

“It vill pe pest to hav' her on te outside, comrate.”

“So it vill pe, Hanse. Ve had petter let her
out. I vill see if she knows te voord. Vitch vomans,
vat ish te password, heh?”

“I give neither password nor countersign. I go
and come as I list, and no man can hinder me.
Stand aside.”

As she spoke she placed her hands on the heavy
bar, lifted it from its bed, and threw it at their feet.
Then, turning the massive key that remained in
the lock, the wide leaves flew open.

“Ve must not let it pe, Hanse, mitout te voord.”

“Nor mitout leave, neider, comrate,” cried one
after the other, both being inspired with sudden energy.

“Ve shall pe shot.”

“Ant hung too.”

With one impulse they rushed forward to secure
the gate, when she closed it fast in their faces, and
they heard the key turn in the lock on the outside
with a scornful laugh.

“Himmel! It ish lockt insite ve pe, Hanse, heh?”

“Ant she tid not shay Yorck, comrate.”

“Nor Nieuve Amstertam neider. If she vas say
only Nieuve Amstertam now.”

“Tere ish no more need to keep guart, comrate.
Nopody can get in.”

“Tunder! no more dey can, Hanse, heh?
'Tish after aight o'klock, and te relief ish not been
come. Dere ish no more use to keep guart,
Hanse, heh?”

“Tyfil, no. Ve vill go ant get some Schietams.”

“So ve vill, Hanse, ant a fresh bipe too.”

Thus determining, the stalwort guard of the city
gates of ancient Amsterdam shouldered their fire-locks,
and, confident in the security of the city, descended
the street together in the direction of the
alehouse of frau Jost Stoll, while Elpsy kept on
her course through the suburbs. Directly after
leaving the gate she turned from the road which,
bordered by forests, small farms, and here and
there a lonely dwelling, run from the gates in a
northerly direction. The path she took was a green
lane, famous for lover's rambles, that led towards
the East River. She traversed it at a swift running
pace, now winding round some vast tree that
grew in its centre, now ascending, now descending,
as the path accommodated itself to the irregularities
of the ground. In a few minutes she came to a
romantic spring, open to the sky for many yards
around, with greenest verdure covering the earth.
She recognised it as a favourite resort for the industrious
maidens of the town, who there were accustomed
to bleach the linen they wove—and skilful
weavers too were the rosy and merry Dutch maidens
of that homely day! At evening they would
go out to gather their bleaching; and, ere they left
the spring on their return, the youths of the town
would make their appearance, and, each singling
out his sweetheart, take her burden under one arm,
while, with the blushing girl hanging on the other,
slowly they walked through the shady lane towards
the town. Happy times! Gentle customs! Unsophisticated
age! Oh, Maiden-lane, busy, shopping
Maiden-lane! thy days of romance are passed!
Who can identify thee with this green lane!
But this is no place to eulogize thee; yet who may

travel over the olden-time scenes of New Amsterdam,
and not pause to pay them the tribute of a
thought!

After leaving the spring, her way faintly lighted
by the stars, the sorceress struck into a path that
led northeasterly; and, after a rapid walk of nearly
a mile, came to the shore of East River at a point
that could not have been reached by water without
going over nearly twice the distance she had come
by the forest. Descending the steep shore, she
stopped at the head of a small creek that made a
few yards into the land, and drew from beneath
the shelter of a thickly-netted grapevine a light Indian
birch canoe of the frailest structure. Stepping
lightly into it, giving her weight accurately to
the centre, she seated herself on the crossbar that
constituted both the seat and strengthening brace
of the bark: striking the water lightly with a
slender paddle, she shot rapidly out of the creek.
The moon had just risen, and flecked a trembling
path of silvery light along the water. Plying the
magic instrument, first on one side and then on the
other alternately, she darted along the surface of
the water with inconceivable velocity. Her course
was northwardly in a line with the shore, close
to which she kept. Every few minutes she would
cease her toil and bend her ear close to the water,
listening for sounds; and then, with a smile of gratification,
renew her swift course. At length, as she
rounded an elevated point, the distant fall of oars
reached her ears in the direction of the town.

“He comes! He has gained on me! I must
be there to prepare for him! Hey, my little bark,
let us fly now!”

She stood up in the skiff as she spoke, the moonlight
streaming on her dark face, flung her cloak
from her shoulders, and, tossing back her long red

hair, seized the paddle with a firmer grasp, and
away like a mad thing flew witch and boat. Soon
she turned a headland, and the waves began to be
violently agitated, tossing and bubbling round her,
while a roar of breaking surges was heard in the
direction towards which she was driving. Far and
wide the solemn moan of agitated waters filled the
air. She shouted with the dash of the waves, and
hissed as they bubbled and foamed in her track.
Momently the commotion grew wilder and more
appalling. The waters seethed like a boiling caldron.
Whirlpools turned her skiff round and round
like a feather, and yawning gulfs threatened each
moment to ingulf her. Yet on she flew, standing
upright in the boat, her hair streaming in the wind,
her garments flying, and sending the boat irresistibly
through the terrible commotion. The passage
now became narrow, and on every side frowned
black rocks, threatening destruction to the bark that
should be dashed against their sides. Suddenly,
when it appeared the boat could not survive an instant
longer, by a dexterous application of her paddle
she forced it from the boiling seas into a placid pool,
sheltered by a low ledge, that formed the southern
spur of a small islet a few rods square that stood
at the mouth of “Hell Gate” on the north side.

“Ha, is it not a proper place for a witch, amid
the mad waves and gloomy rocks! Oh, 'tis a home
I love! The noise of the water is merry music!
when it is lashed by a storm, the birds go sweeping
and shrieking by like mad, and then it is music
sweeter than the harp to Elpsy. So, I have well
done my errand, and found him as he landed, and
he is now on his way to me. And who besides
Robert have I seen? Ah—have I not made a
good night's work of it! Well, it shall go ill with
me if I reap not the fruit of what I have learned.
Ho, Cusha, slave!”

As she called thus in a harsh, stern tone, she drove
her skiff into a crevice in the rocks, where it became
firmly fixed, and, stepping from it, she bounded
lightly up the precipitous shore to the summit.
The top of the rock, which was but a few feet
from the water, so far as could be seen by the light
of the moon, was a grassy surface, dotted with a
few stunted trees and one large oak, that with its
broad arms nearly shadowed the entire islet. Between
the columns of the trees all around the sky
and water were visible. But in one place it was
broken by the outline of a large rock and the roof
of a low hut placed against it, directly beneath the
oak. It was a rude, rough structure, wild and
desolate in its appearance. On one side it overhung
the foaming waters, that leaped so high beneath
it as to fling the spray upon its roof. In
every part of it were crevices, from which, as the
sorceress looked towards it on arriving on a level
with it, streamed rays of light as if from a bright
flame within; while a volume of thick, dark smoke,
of an exceedingly fetid and sulphurous smell, curled
upward against the sides of the rock, and rolled
heavily away among the foliage of the oak.

“The slave is prepared,” she said, approaching
the hut.

She had taken but a single step towards it when
the deep voice of a bloodhound from within broke
the silence that reigned.

“The hound is alert! Ho, Sceva!”

At the sound of her voice the alarm bark of
the dog was changed into a cry of delight; and,
springing against the door, he would have burst it
through had she not spoken, and, at the same time,
opened it. Instantly the animal sprung upon her
and licked her face with his huge tongue, and
growled a savage sound of welcome. He was a

brute of vast size, and with long, coarse gray hair,
stiff, uncouth ears, and immense head; around
which, and along his spine to his fore shoulders,
the hair grew long and bristly like a boar's mane.
His eyes were red and fierce in their expression;
and huge tusks, protruding glaringly over either
side of his hanging chops, gave him an aspect still
more repulsive and savage.

“Down, Sceva, down!” she said, sternly, as he
caught his huge paws in the tangled masses of her
hair in his rough caresses; “down, I say!” The
animal slunk from her and crouched upon a pile
of fern in a corner of the hut.

The abode of the sorceress was rude and wild in
the extreme. It was a slight frame of branchless firs,
constructed against a bare rock, which constituted
the east side, or wall of it. The interstices between
the upright stakes were filled in with loose limbs of
trees, and planks from wrecked fisher's boats; the
roof in many places was open to the sky, and in its
centre was a large aperture that served for an outlet
to the smoke that rose from a fire smouldering
beneath a caldron placed underneath. By the fitful
glare it sent round, the interior of the hut, with its
furniture, was distinctly visible. Entwined about
an upright pole that sustained the roof were dead
serpents of enormous size, and of brilliant colours,
their glittering fangs hideously shining in the firelight.
Festoons of toads, lizards, and other revolting
reptiles hung from the ceiling, while round the
wall were placed human bones arranged in fantastic
figures, and ghastly sculls glared on the sight on
every side, while all that could affect the imagination
was conspicuous to the eyes of the observer.
In the caldron in the centre of the hut was
seething a dark liquid that emitted a fetid odour,
and threw up volumes of smoke, which, unable to

escape freely through the roof, hung heavily to
within a few feet of the ground floor. Over the
caldron bent the figure of an African, who was
stirring the liquid with a human thigh bone, and
occasionally, with a child's scull, dipping a portion
from it and pouring it on the fire beneath, which
instantly flamed up fiercely, casting a blue, baleful
light throughout the hut. The firelight shone bright
upon his person, bringing into relief every feature
of his hideous countenance. His head was of
huge proportions, and deformed, being perfectly
flat on the top, and obtruding in front into a round
forehead like an infant's newly born. It was, save
a thick fringe of hair that hung shaggy and grisly
above his eyes, wholly bald. His eyes were large,
and projected red and wild from their beds, while
his nose and lips were of enormous dimensions,
which, with the total absence of anything like a
chin, gave the lower part of his face a brutelike
look. Yet there was an extraordinary human intelligence
in the expression of his eye, in which
dwelt the light of no common intellect.

He rose as the witch entered, and displayed a
skeleton-like figure of great height, the low roof
compelling him to bend half his length. His neck
was long and scraggy; his shoulders bony; his
arms and legs lank and attenuated; while his fingers,
with the hard skin that clave to them and
their long oval nails, resembled, as he himself did
altogether, save his huge fleshy head, a dried
anatomical preparation. A kilt reaching half way
to his knees, and a sort of cape covering his shoulders
made of the feathers of owls intermingled
with the brilliant dies of snakes' skins, were his
only clothing. He wore about his neck as ornaments
a string of newts' eyes and serpents' fangs,
and on his wrists and ankles were massive bracelets
of silver.

“Thy slave welcomes thee,” he said, in a voice
that corresponded with the hideousness of his appearance.

He lifted his hands to his forehead as he spoke,
and made an oriental obeisance nearly to the
earth.

“Thou hast obeyed me, Cusha! 'Tis well!
See that all be ready for the rites. He comes a
second time to secure our aid against the rock and
the shoal, the waves and the wind, the hand of man
and the bolt of Heaven!”

“Comes he in the right spirit?”

“He fears and obeys.”

“'Tis enough.”

“Let nothing be wanting to retain our power
over the minds of mortals; let our art lose no tithe
of its honour. I will now make ready to receive
him. He leaves me not till he has done my bidding,
and through him my ends are answered.
Now let us prepare the rites!”

In the mean while the superstitious victim of the
unholy rites in preparation was on his way towards
the “Witch's Isle.” For nearly an hour the
crew had pulled steadily along, and, save now and
then a cheering cry from the coxswain, urging them
to renewed exertion, not a word was spoken. Silent
and thoughtful, revenge and disappointed love mingled
with shame the while agitating his breast, he
sat by himself in the stern of his boat, and took a
retrospect of his past life.

His sense of honour was now blunted, and the
experience of a reckless life had made him weigh
less nicely his acts, and pay less deference to
the opinions of men. He now laughed at and
cursed what he called his folly in sacrificing, for a
mere boyish notion of honour, his earldom. From
the time he had thrown himself on board the Dane

at the tower of Hurtel of the Red Hand, up to the
moment that found him on his way to the abode of
the sorceress, he had been scouring the seas, a bold,
reckless, and sanguinary bucanier. Under the
name of `the Kyd,' or al Kyd, the sea-king—which
had been given him by the Algerine corsairs, among
whom he spread terror whenever he cruised up the
Mediterranean—he had filled the world with tales
of bloodshed and predatory conflict unparalleled in
the annals of piracy. He seemed, from the first
moment he placed his feet on the deck of the Dane,
to have made a shipwreck of principle; to have
buried, as he had said on taking leave of Lady Lester,
all human feeling with the filial kiss he placed on
her unconscious forehead. Yet it has been seen, in
his fight with the yacht which contained the Earl of
Bellamont and Grace Fitzgerald, that he had not
wholly lost sight of every social tie that bound him
to those with whom he had once associated. But
this was the last instance of his sympathy with others.
Henceforward he seemed to war with mankind
as if he would avenge on his species the wrongs of
his birth. The instance here given may be thought
an exaggerated estimate of the rapid growth of vice.
But the daily annals of crime show that it is but a
step from virtue to vice, from innocence to crime.
And, let the cause be strong enough, there is never
an intermediate step.

Had Lester altogether forgotten Kate Bellamont
while running this career? No. His thoughts reverted
to her daily. Sometimes with the gentle
character of his former young love, but oftener
taking colour from his present altered character, and
then they were resentful. Twice he had resolved to
visit Castle Cor, and obtain an interview with her,
and, if not by fair, by foul means, make her his bride.
But he had been pursued and driven from the coast

by cruisers, and his intentions had been foiled.
That he loved her still was evident; and if he could
have been rewarded with her hand by doing so, he
would have deserted his present career for her sake.
But these hopes were dissipated from the fear that
she might have discovered that Kyd and he were
one. This suspicion did at times alone prevent his
seeking her out more resolutely and casting himself
at her feet.

At length, a few months previous to the arrival of
Lord Bellamont to assume the government of New-York,
he, with large treasures, came into Long Island
Sound; and, after burying them on Gardiner's
Island, beneath a certain triangular rock which, it
is said, seventy of his men rolled upon the spot, he
came through Hell Gate into East River, where he
anchored. As he sailed past her rock the witch
recognised him, though she had not seen him since
they separated at Hurtel's Tower, and at midnight
paid him a visit in her skiff. She recovered her
former influence over him, crime, as it ever does,
having made him superstitious. From her he
learned that the Earl of Bellamont was to succeed
Governor Fletcher, and that his daughter would
probably accompany him to America. Probing his
feelings in relation to her, she discovered that he
was still attached to her; and to her joy she found,
on feeling his moral pulse, that she had less to fear
than on a former occasion. From the moment Lester
had cast away his title and fled the country, she
had given her whole mind to one single object, if
she should ever again meet him: viz., to bring about
his restoration to his title and estates. She rightly
calculated that time and the lawless school in
which he had placed himself would lead to a revolution
in his feelings. She now found him ripe for
her purpose. Learning from him that he was bound
on a cruise to intercept a fleet from Barbadoes, and

was to sail the following day, by his return she expected,
as it turned out, that the Earl of Bellamont
would have reached his new government. Therefore,
before she left his cabin, she drew from him a
promise that he would visit her at her hut the ensuing
night; and there, amid the solemnities of her
art, take the oath to lay claim to the title of Lester,
and woo for the hand of the heiress of Bellamont:
in fine, resume the position, notwithstanding all
that had passed in the long interim, that he had
held before the fatal field of archery at Castle Cor.
Ere the next night, however, two frigates from
Newport, learning his presence in the waters of
Long Island, appeared in sight sailing up the Sound,
when, weighing anchor, he sailed down the East
River, passed boldly between Brooklyn and the
town, exchanged shots with the Rondeel, and, steering
down the bay, put to sea. His second appearance,
and the events that followed it up to the time
when he is approaching the Witch's Island, have
already been narrated.

“Give way, men—pull for your lives!” shouted
the coxswain, as at length they entered the boiling
waters of Hell Gate.

With great exertion and skill, the tide now setting
strongly through the gut, they avoided the dangers
that beset them on every side, and at length
reached the island. Giving orders for his men
to remain in the boat and preserve silence, Kyd
stepped on shore in a secluded cove at the western
extremity of the island most remote from
the abode of the sorceress. He passed through
a dark ravine, that led with many a rugged step
to the top, and, looking round as he reached it, at
length discovered the hut he sought. It was calculated,
combined with the roar of the sea and the
lateness of the hour, and a knowledge of the fearful

character of the occupant and of his own evil
purposes in seeking it, to affect his mind with
gloom and superstitious fears. He cautiously,
and not without superstitious awe, approached the
door and struck it with the hilt of his sword.

He was answered by the deep growl of the
bloodhound, and the moment afterward the sorceress
chanted, in a wild, supernatural strain, an Irish
weird hymn, the only part of which he could comprehend
were the last two lines:

With his drawn sword held firmly in his grasp,
he opened the door. Instantly the place was filled
with a blue flame, by the light of which the various
supernatural paraphernalia of the sorceress's
abode were made visible with the most appalling
distinctness, while sounds infernal and terrific assailed
his ears. He stood a moment filled with
alarm, and overpowered by what he saw and heard.
The sorceress, clothed in a garment apparently of
flame, covered with strange and unearthly figures,
her features wrought up to a supernatural degree
of excitement and wild enthusiasm, stood before the
caldron in a commanding attitude, her hair dishevelled,
her long white wand held towards the intruder,
and every sinew of her arms and neck distinctly
brought into light. A serpent was bound about
her temples, and one was entwined around each of
her naked arms, while a fourth encircled her waist.
Beside her stood a spindle, with a crimson thread
upon it. She fixed her eyes on his with an unearthly
expression as she extended her wand towards
him, and, in a voice that became a priestess of
rites so unholy as she performed, addressed him:

“Welcome, mortal! I have waited for thee.
Kneel.”

“Wherefore?” he asked, as if addressing a supernatural
being, his imagination affected by the
circumstances and situation in which he was placed,
and scarcely recognising, in the fearful appearance
and aspect of the sorceress, her whom he had seen
and conversed with but a few hours before.
“Wherefore should I kneel?”

“To swear.”

“The oath?”

“To assume the title of Lester and wed the
heiress of Bellamont.”

“I have sworn it without thy aid. I have seen
her.”

“And she has scorned thee.”

“She has. Foul witch, thou didst betray me to
her!”

“Ha, ha! Thou hast learned this of her.” She
laughed maliciously. “I told her who thou wert,
that she might scorn thee.”

“Fiends! Dost thou not wish me to marry her?”

“Yes; but only against her will.”

“Otherwise she will never. And, by the cross!
I will not bear the haughty scorn with which she
has received me. Witch, I am ready to take the
oath; but, if I take it, thou shalt give me thy aid in
avenging myself.

“On her!”

“Yes, but through her lover.”

“Has she a lover?” asked the sorceress, with
surprise.

“Did not thy art teach thee this?”

“Who?” she demanded, without replying to his
question.

“A certain Captain Fitzroy.”

“He who commanded the ship that brought
them hither. Where were my wits I did not suspect
as much?” she added to herself.

“Dost know him?”

“I have seen him on his deck as I passed in
my skiff. He sailed instantly in pursuit of you, or
I should have discovered something of this new
love. She confessed it?”

“Without hesitation. I have sworn to seek him
and cross blades with him.”

“First repeat the oath thou hast come hither to
take.”

“If thou wilt exert all thy skill and art to give
me success in my revenge, I will take it.”

“Swear.”

“Nay. I am told thou hast, as do all of thy unholy
craft, an amulet which, worn on the bosom,
will give him who for the time wears it a charmed
life, and cause him to prosper in all that he undertakes.
This amulet I ask of thee.”

“First lay thy right hand upon the head of the
serpent that binds my waist, and thy left hand upon
thy heart, and, kneeling, swear to obey me in resuming
thy earldom and thy wooing of Catharine of
Bellamont, and it shall be thine.”

He knelt, and with solemnity took the oath, repeating
each word after her in an audible tone.

“This you promise to do or your soul forfeit.”

“This I promise to do or my soul forfeit.”

“Or thy soul forfeit!” repeated, from some unknown
quarter, a sepulchral voice, that made
him start to his feet with mingled surprise and
alarm.

“Woman, what hast thou caused me to do?” he
asked, with superstitious dread.

“No evil, so thou break not thy oath.”

“So thou break not thy oath!” repeated the same
voice, close to his ears.

“Sorceress, I will not break my oath,” he said,
after the surprise at this second interruption had

subsided; “but until I have first crossed weapons
with this rival lover, I approach her no more. He
has gone to seek me, therefore should I meet him.
But that he should dare to love where Robert
Lester has loved, is ample reason why we should
meet. Till I find him, be he above the sea, I neither
assume the name of Lester nor see the haughty
heiress of Bellamont. So give me success in
this, and, after, thy wishes shall be fulfilled to the
letter.”

“Darest thou delay?” she said, striding up to
him and taking him by the breast, while her eyes
flashed vindictive fire.

“Thou hast not the whole control over my will,
Elpsy. I fear and respect thy power, but I obey
it and thee only so far as it chimes with my own
ends. I have yielded to thee: now yield to me!
Thy wishes, whatever may have prompted them,
shall soon enough be realized. If thou wilt give
me the amulet, and put thy arts to work and send
me prosperous winds, I will, ere the month end,
hold this Fitzroy my prisoner; and then, by the
cross! in my very cabin shall he be spectator of my
bridal. If in a month I do not meet him, I will
then do thy pleasure.”

The sorceress gradually released her grasp as
he continued, and, when he had ended, said,

“'Tis well. Go.”

“The amulet?”

“Nay. Thou shalt not have it,” she said, firmly.

“By the rood! if thou give it not to me, I will
wring thy shrivelled neck for thee,” he cried, with
sudden impetuosity.

“Lay but the tip o' your least finger upon me,
Robert Kyd, that moment shall thy arm be palsied
to its shoulder, and thy strength leave thy body,
till the infant an hour old shall master thee!”

She stepped back as she spoke, and extended
her wand towards him with a menacing gesture.

“Nay, nay, fearful woman,” he cried, betraying
some alarm at her words and threatening attitude,
“I meant not to anger thee. Wilt give the amulet?
I cannot go forth on this mission of revenge
without it. I know its mysterious and wonderful
power, and must avail myself of it on this occasion.
Thou shalt have it after.”

The sorceress looked troubled at his eager anxiety
to possess the mystic seal, and at length said,
in a solemn tone of voice, and with a manner calculated
to have its effect on an imagination the
least tinged with superstition,

“Mortal, thou knowest not what thou seekest!
If he who wears this on his breast fail in his last
trial of its mystic power, he shall become the slayer
of the mother who bore him!”

“What is this to me? I have no mother, sorceress.”

“Ha! well, no, no! thou hast not!” she said,
with a singular expression. “Yet such is the
doom of him in whose hands it fails. Thou shalt
not wear it!”

“I will. If I tear it from thee by violence!”

“'Twill then do thee no good. It must be
placed around thy neck with solemn rites. Thou
shalt have it,” she said, suddenly, after a moment's
thought, “for thy success is my success. The
risk shall be run by me! Hast thou the nerve to
go through the initiating rites?”

“I will stop at nothing. Give it me, with every
hellish charm thou canst invent. Once my revenge
accomplished, take it back.”

“But He'll not give thee back the price thou
payest for it.”

“Ha! Well, be it so! I will not ask it. My

soul is as well in the devil's keeping as in my own.
The world beyond has for me neither hopes nor
fears. My present aims accomplished, I care not
for the bugbear future! In the name of the master
whom thou servest, give me the amulet!”

“I obey,” she said, with wild solemnity. “Slave,
appear!”

She cast, as she spoke, a powder upon the flame,
which shot up to the roof and filled the place with
so dazzling a brilliancy that for an instant he was
deprived of sight. The light sunk as suddenly as
it had risen, and he saw before him a tall, skeleton-like
figure, over whose face played an unearthly
glare from the smouldering flame beneath the caldron.
It was the slave Cusha. The pirate chief
gazed on the hideous being with horror; his sword
dropped from his grasp, and an exclamation in the
shape of an exorcism escaped his lips. The sorceress
witnessed his alarm with a triumphant smile;
she then touched and turned her spindle, while
the slave, obedient to her nod, kneeled and began
to kindle the flame and stir the seething caldron.

The bucanier witnessed these preparations with
curiosity not unmingled with dread, yet nevertheless
determined to abide by the issue. All at once
she began to chant: now in a low, deep voice, now
in a high, shrill key, as her words required, the
slave at intervals chiming in in a tone so deep and
sepulchral that the startled bucanier could not believe
that it was human, especially when his eyes
rested on the hideous being from whom it proceeded,
who grovelled on the earth at his feet,

As the sorceress chanted this she broke from
the thread what she had wound off, and, approaching
him, chanted,

He kneeled before her with the obedient submission
of a child. She then entwined her fingers
in a long lock that grew above the left temple,
and, drawing from her bosom a dagger, held it above
his head and chanted,

“I do.”

“I do.”

She severed the lock of hair from his temples as
she ceased, and commenced dividing it into four
equal parts. When she had done so she stepped
backward, and, standing in the attitude of a priestess
about to perform an idolatrous sacrifice, cast
a lock into the air, chanting in the same wild manner,

As she ceased a gust of wind swept over the
islet, as if, so it appeared to the imagination of the
excited victim of the rites, acknowledging the sacrifice.
She then cast a lock upon the ground and
chanted,

Instantly the ground on which he stood seemed
to tremble; he heard a deep rumbling as if in caverns
beneath; and the little island appeared to shake
as if an earthquake had answered the appeal.

She cast a third lock into the caldron as she repeated
the line: the water boiled and hissed with
a great noise, and the waves from the sea at the
same time seemed to dash with a louder roar against
the rocks below, and flung their spray with a heavy
dash upon the roof. A fourth lock she cast into
the flames, chanting,

Instantly the place was illuminated as if with
the most brilliant flashes of lightning, while the
loudest thunder seemed to explode at his feet.

He started upright at this, for hitherto he had continued
to kneel, overcome by what he was both a
witness of and a trembling participator in, and with
every sign of mortal wonder and dread, cried,

“Sorceress! avaunt! I will no more of this!”

As she chanted this reproof, she turned to the
slave and continued in the same strain,

“'Tis here,” he said, prostrating himself, and giving
to her, with divers mysterious ceremonies, a
leaden bullet.

“I did,” answered the monster, prostrating himself.

She commenced walking around the caldron,
drawing mystic figures on the ground and in the
air. At the end of the first circuit she chanted,
with slow and solemn gestures and growing energy,

at the end of the second, with more spirit, she sung,

The third time she chanted, in a still more exci
ted manner, while she danced about the caldron,

As she ended her third sibylline circuit around
the fire, she turned to the slave and said,

“It is,” he responded, crossing his clasped hands
across his forehead, and prostrating himself to the
ground.

“'Tis well.

She now poured the water from the caldron, and,
casting the lead into it, continued to dance round
it, her gestures gradually increasing in wildness
and energy, while in a low, monotonous tone she
chanted unintelligibly certain mystic words, derived
from the ancient Irish incantations. With
folded arms the bucanier watched her aloof. At
length she poured the melted lead into a shallow
vessel containing water, when with a hissing noise
it spread itself out into a shape resembling a human
heart. Instantly the hut was darkened; loud
unearthly noises filled the place; blue flames shot
upward from the head of the sorceress and wizard
slave, and, to the astonished bucanier, the apartment
seemed to be filled with demoniac forms, flitting
and gibbering about him.

Aghast and horror-struck, he cried aloud,

“Merciful Heaven, protect me!”

No sooner had the words gone from his mouth
than the whole hellish confusion and uproar ceased,
while, with an expression of fierce wrath, she cried,

“By that word thou hast taken from the charm
one half its power. It will protect thee from ball,
but not from steel; from earth and fire, but not
from water and air; else, with this amulet against
thy heart, thou wouldst bear a charmed life.”

“'Tis nothing lost,” he answered, recklessly.

“If ball can harm me not, a strong arm, quick eye,
and faithful cutlass shall protect me against steel.
Thou hast ensured me victory in love and revenge?”

“I have.”

“More I ask not. Water can scarce drown one
whose home is on the sea. Air I fear not!”

“Take heed, lest one day thou die not in it!”

“Ha! what mean you?”

“Nothing. Kneel while I hang this amulet
about thy neck.”

Attaching to it a strand of her own long hair, she
suspended it about his neck as he kneeled before
her, chanting,

Instantly thunder seemed to shake the hut, which
was filled with a sulphurous flame, while a repetition
of the sounds he had before heard filled him
with consternation; and, ere he could rise to his
feet, he was struck to the earth by an unseen hand.

When he recovered himself the hut was deserted,
and, save a ray of moonlight streaming through
the roof, buried in total darkness. Confused, his
senses overpowered, and his imagination excited
by the scenes he had been so prominent and passive
an actor in, he left the hut, the door of which
was wide open, sought his boat, and roused his
men, who, save Lawrence, had fallen asleep.

Giving his orders briefly, he put out from the
Witch's Isle, and at midnight stood on the deck of
his vessel. Shortly afterward he got under weigh,

sailed down the Narrows and put out to sea. When
the morning broke, great was the surprise and delight
of the worthy people of New Amsterdam to
find that the stranger had departed as silently and
mysteriously as he had come; and many were the
sage conjectures ventured the following evening by
the worthies that gathered, as usual, about the stoop
of the “Boat and Anchor,” as to his character; and,
sooth to say, they hit not far from the truth.

4. CHAPTER IV.

An hour after sunrise the pirate vessel had gained
an offing, and, under all her light canvass, wafted
by a fresh wind from the northwest, was running
the coast down, leaving the Highlands of Neversink
on her starboard quarter. On her deck stood
Kyd, with his glass in his hands, with which every
few minutes he would sweep the horizon, and
then turn and walk the deck. It was a bright,
sunny morning; the crested waves leaped merrily
about the prow and glanced in the sun as if tipped
with gold.

The vessel was a low-built brigantine, with a
flush deck, on either side of which was ranged
a battery of six carronades—in all twelve guns.
Eighty men, half of whom were blacks, that composed
her crew, were variously occupied forward

and in the waist, though many of them were lying
listlessly between the guns. They were a desperate
band, with hard looks, and the aspects of men accustomed
to crime and inured to danger. Every man
was armed with pistols and cutlass, while racks of
these weapons, with the addition of boarding pikes
and harquebusses, were ranged about the masts and
bulwarks. Order and discipline prevailed throughout
the wild company, and, save the bucanier-like
character and build of the vessel, it differed not materially
in its internal arrangements from a king's
ship. The bold spirit that kept these inferior and
scarcely less fierce beings in subjection walked
the deck with a determined tread, now bending his
eyes in thought, now lifting them, flashing with
excitement, towards the sea, and rapidly scanning
its wide circle. He was dressed in the same picturesque
costume that he wore when he first appeared
in the presence of Kate Bellamont at the
White Hall, though his sword lay upon the companion-way
instead of being sheathed at his belt.
After taking a longer survey than usual of the horizon,
and turning away with an exclamation of
disappointment, he was addressed by a short,
square-built, swarthy man, with large mustaches
and long, matted hair that hung low over his eyes
and descended to his broad shoulders, who had
hitherto been silently pacing the leeward side of the
deck.

“What's in the wind, captain? You seem to
steer as if in chase! You gave your orders so
briefly to get under weigh, and have loved your
own thoughts since so well as to forget to speak.
I have not even asked our course.”

“We are full three leagues from our anchorage,
and, if you have no objections, suppose we open
our sailing orders.”

“You are right, Loff,” said Kyd, smiling at the
blunt address of his first mate. “Listen,” he said,
walking aft, followed by the mate, where they could
speak without being overheard by the helmsman.

“Now learn my plans!”

“I have half guessed them.”

“What?”

“Some Indiaman, ballasted with guilders, you
have heard of in shore.”

“Far better than a Spanish argosy. I pursue a
rival. Thou art no stranger to an amour pursued
by me some years ago with a fair and noble maid
of Erin. Before I took the seas I was her only
and accepted lover. She is now in the port we left
this morning.”

“And so you are running away from her.”

“No. As some fiend would have it, rumours
of my deeds, blown far and wide, at last reached
her ears. She lends them to the tale. And when
last eve I hastened to her arms, she meets me cold
as an icicle; but soon gets warm, charges me with
my misdeeds, and at length, taking fire with her
own heat, breaks out in full blaze, dips her tongue
inch deep in gall, and paints me blacker than the
devil.”

“Just like these sort o' craft,” remarked Loff,
dryly.

“This is not all. I found she had plugged the
hole in her broken heart with another lover sound
and hale.”

“And who was this interloper?”

“No less a cavalier than that Fitzroy of the
British navy whom we took by stratagem in the
Mediterranean, slaying his crew; and who afterward
escaped us by swimming a league to the shore.”

“I remember him. A proper youth for a woman's
eye.”

“It shall ne'er look on him again,” said Kyd, with

fierceness. “He told the story of his escape, confirmed
that which before was rumour—”

“And so she put you out her heart and took him
in.”

“Even so.”

“That's what I couldn't stand, captain.”

“I'll have revenge. Besides, I think I have an
old quarrel to settle with him, if he be the same
Fitzroy who escaped from us. Did I not tell thee
then he reminded me of one whom I had known
under peculiar circumstances in my boyish days?”

“You did,” said the mate, after a moment's
thought; “and that you said you would, in the morning,
see if your suspicions were true.”

“And in the morning the bird had flown. It is
this suspicion that, from the first mention of his
name last night, added to a new object I have in
view (which, if he be the one I suspect he is, cannot
be accomplished without his death), that sends
me in pursuit of him. 'Tis rumoured that he whom
I mean was lost at sea; but, if he escaped us by
swimming a league, he may have escaped also at
that time.”

“Where does he hail from now?”

“He is master of the brig of war that brought
the new governor to the province; and, hearing of
us, with laudable ambition set sail, directly after his
arrival, in pursuit of us. He is now on his return,
as his leave of absence has expired. I learn by a
skipper of a Carolina schooner I hailed in the harbour
as I passed him in my boat, that a vessel
answering his description was seen three days ago
becalmed off the Capes of Delaware.”

“Shiver my mizzen! we will soon fall in with
him if he is steering back to port.”

“If the `Silver Arrow' hang not like a sleuthhound
on his track, there is no virtue in wind or
canvass.”

“What is the name of the chase?” demanded
Loff, taking a deliberate survey of the horizon with
a weather-beaten spyglass he held in his hand.

“The `Ger-Falcon,' I am told; and this name, for
certain reasons, increases my suspicions that this
Fitzroy is he I suspect. If so, I have an old score
to balance with him. It is this that adds point to
my revenge, and which has led me to seek aid of
earth and hell to accomplish my desires.”

The “Silver Arrow,” bound on its mission of vengeance
and crime, continued for the remainder of
the day steadily to sail on its southerly course,
keeping sufficiently far from land to command a
scope of vision on either side nearly forty miles in
breadth, so that any vessel following the shore
northwardly, if within ten or twelve leagues of the
land, could not escape observation.

Two hours before sunset of the same day, in
the entrance of one of the numerous inlets that,
like a chain of marine lakes, line the eastern shore
of Jersey, lay a brig of war at anchor, her upper
sails clewed down and her topsails furled. She
was lying so close to the wooded shore, that the
branches of the trees that grew on the verge of its
high banks hung over and mingled with the rigging,
while from the main yard it was easy to step on the
rocks that towered above the water. On her decks
lay several deer recently killed, while sailors were
engaged in bringing on board, across a staging that
extended from the ship to the shore, a noble stag,
with antlers like a young tree. On the summit of
a rock that overlooked the scene stood two young
men habited as hunters, one leaning on a rifle, the
other with a hunting-spear in his hand. Two noble
stag-hounds lay panting at their feet. The scene
that lay outspread around them was picturesque as
it was boundless.

On the east, rolling its waves towards a silvery
beach of sand that stretched north and south many
leagues, spread the ocean, without a sail to relieve
its majestic bosom, which, save here and there a
gull with snowy wing skimming its breast, was as
lonely and silent as on the day it was created.
North, extended a vast forest of foliage, the surface
of which, as the winds swept over it wave after
wave, was not less restless than the sea. West,
lay interminable woods; and nearer slept the lagoon,
running northwardly and southwardly in a line with
the coast on the outside, broken into many little
lakes by green islands, on the sides of which
browsed numerous deer. Immediately at their feet
was the vessel of war, which, with its busy decks,
gave life and variety to the scene.

The two who were enjoying the prospect strikingly
contrasted in appearance. One of them was
dark and strikingly handsome, with black, penetrating
eyes, and a fine mouth characterized by much
energy of expression. His hair was jetty black;
and, parted on his forehead, fell in natural ringlets
about his neck, descending even to his shapely
shoulders. His figure was noble and commanding,
and his air strikingly dignified. His age could
not have been above twenty-three. There was a
hue on his cheek, and a certain negligent ease in
his air and manner, that showed that his profession
was that of the sea. Yet his costume was by no
means nautical. He leaned on a short rifle, with
a black velvet hunter's bonnet in his hand, shaded
by a sable plume. He wore a green embroidered
frock, with buff leggins of dressed deerskin richly
worked by some Indian maid, and on his feet were
buskins of dressed doeskin. Around his waist was
a black leathern belt containing a hunting-knife,
with a drop or two of fresh blood still upon its

blade, and a hunting-horn curiously carved and
richly mounted.

His companion was less in height and of lighter
make. His face was less browned, nay, scarcely
tinged by the suns that had left their shadows upon
the other's cheek. His forehead, though partly
concealed beneath a hunting-cap of green cloth
from which drooped a snow-white feather, was so
fair and beautiful, that through the transparent skin
of the temples were seen the azure veins tinting the
surface with the most delicate lights of blue. The
eyes were of a dark hazel, with a merry light dancing
in them, which gave promise both of ready wit
and good nature, and his cheeks had a bright, glowing
colour, doubtless caused by the recent exercise
of the chase. His mouth was extremely beautiful,
with a winning smile playing about it like sunlight
of the heart. The chin beneath was exquisitely
rounded, neither too full nor too square, but of that
faultless symmetry of which a sculptor would have
made a model. About his neck and shoulders
flowed glossy waves of auburn hair, while his upper
lip was graced by a luxuriant mustache of the
same, or, perhaps, of a little darker hue. He wore
no cravat, and the collar of his green hunting-coat
was turned back, displaying a throat and neck
of dazzling whiteness and beauty. Through the
bosom of the frock, which was folded back,
appeared linen of the finest cambric, richly tamboured,
as if done by the fair fingers of some
tasteful maiden. The wristbands over his finely
shaped and gloved hands were tamboured in the
same beautiful manner, and fringed with lace of
the most costly texture. Around his waist was
bound a crimson sash for a hunting-belt, in which
was stuck a couteau du chasse, with a hilt sparkling
with jewels. Oriental trousers, ample in width

and of snowy whiteness, fringed at the bottom with
tassels depending from a hem of network, descended
just below the calf of the leg, between which and
the ankle appeared flesh-coloured silken hose of the
finest texture and material. Boots of dressed doeskin,
soft and smooth as a glove, nicely fitted the
feet and ankles, and, divided at the top in two parts,
were turned over like the buskins of his companion,
but, unlike his, fringed with gold and ornamented
with tassels. In his hand he carried a light
hunting-spear, which he held with a spirited air,
braced against the rock, his attitude being at the
same time graceful and gallant. His age appeared
to be less than seventeen. The two had gazed
upon the noble and extended prospect spread out
before them for some time in silence, when the elder,
turning to his companion with a condescending
yet courteous air, spoke.

“A fair scene, Edwin! I scarcely know which
impresses me most, the majesty of the ocean or that
of these boundless forests of the New World. Both
are alike illimitable. Perhaps the sea has more of
the sublime, for it is associated with the tempest in
its terrible power, and its ever-heaving bosom seems
to me the pulse of the earth.”

“You give language to the thoughts which were
passing in my own mind. The world seems to me
a vast being ever—its flowing rivers like veins and
arteries in the human system—its subterranean
fires like the passions slumbering in our hearts—
its ocean heaving like a bosom lifted by a heart beneath
it. See! the stag has leaped the bulwarks
into the water!”

His companion turned and beheld the noble monarch
of the wood, who had broke away from his
captors at a bound, parting the flood with his broad
breast, and swimming across the lagoon towards

the opposite shore, tossing his branching antlers
in the air as if in defiance, and rejoicing at obtaining
his wild freedom. A dozen pistols and handguns
were instantly levelled at him, when the taller of
the two cried out from the cliff,

“Hold! Fire not, on your lives! He has nobly
won his freedom!”

Every weapon was lowered obedient to his voice,
and proudly the enfranchised animal breasted his
way towards a wooded isle a few hundred yards
off.

“We have venison enough, and the princely
creature shall escape,” he added, turning to the
other. “By the bow of Diana! we have well
done for a four hours' hunt with but a brace of
dogs—though ye are noble brutes, both Chasseur
and Di!” The dogs seemed to comprehend instinctively
his words of praise, and, with a glad
whine sliding along to his feet, at a sign of encouragement
bounded upon him with joyful barks.
“Hist! be still! Ye are over rude because I give
ye a word and a nod.”

“They must come in for a portion of our thanks
from the earl when he gets his game.”

“And a feast they shall have, for they have
shown their true Irish blood.”

“You speak of Ireland often, sir. You must
love it.”

“I do.” He then said quickly, “You alone must
he thank, Edwin, that he gets even a haunch instead
of nearly a score of fat bucks such as strew our
decks yonder. It was well thought of, as this
bucanier had escaped us on this cruise, to put in
at this famous deer island, and, by supplying the
governor's table for the month to come, make him
forget our failure. I would the stag had not escaped,
nevertheless, for I would gladly have made

a present of it to his fair daughter. You sigh,
Edwin!”

“Did I?”

“By the bow of Dan Cupid, did you! You are
full young to think of maiden's love.”

“Am I?” said the youth, absently, and with an
abstracted air.

“Truly thou must be in love, Edwin,” said the
other, with a kindly laugh, that became his manly
and open features. “I marvel who it may be.
You shake your head! Well,” he added, laughing,
“so long as it is not my noble Kate, I care not
who it be. I knew a maiden once whom I would
have loved—so gentle, fair, and good, besides noble-born
and generous was she—if I had not loved anoth—”

“Who—who this maiden?” he said, abruptly
interrupting him, and laying his hand upon the arm
of the speaker with surprising energy.

“Thou art over quick in thy speech,” said the
other, turning and speaking coldly.

“Nay, pardon me, sir, I did forget my station,”
said the other, bending his head and crossing his
hands upon his bosom.

“Nay, Edwin, you go too far! I do not like
this manner, and this, I know not what to call it,
way you have of assuming an attitude, when reproved,
becoming a bashful girl rather than the
manhood thy mustache, if not thy years, challenges
thee to assert. I will answer thy question. It was
a fair and gentle creature, whom in my boyhood I
knew only as the humble sailor knows the stars
that burn nightly above him. I gazed on her afar
off, and dared not approach her nearer, for she was
noble, and, as thou knowest, I was lowly born.
She was gentle, kind, and good; gratitude fills my
heart when I speak of her, for I owe her much;

she first awakened ambition in me, and pointed me
the way to make myself noble. Her eloquence I
shall never forget. Its effect upon me is indelible.
I will some day tell thee how first I met her, and
the interest she took in me.”

“Did you see her often?”

“No. But once we spoke together! But that
once produced the seeds of the fruit of happiness
I since have gathered.”

“Strange that seeing her but once should have
had such an effect upon thee.”

“It was like sunlight first let in upon the man's
vision who is born blind.”

“If such the influence she held over you—if thus
you speak of her now, why did not her image take
a deeper hold in your heart—nay, why did you not
love her, sir?”

“Because I loved another.”

The youth sighed, and then said, “What motive
induced her to take this interest in you?”

“Save that it was prompted by her own gentle
and good spirit, I know not,” he said with frankness.

“May it not have been love?” said the other, with
hesitation.

The elder started, and turned and gazed on the
speaker an instant with surprise before he replied:

“Love! How could she love a lowborn boy like
me? 'Twas pity, rather.”

“Nay, 'twas love.”

“Nay, I will not have the vanity to think so, nor
will I do her motives so much wrong.”

“Said you she was fair?”

“As maiden ever was.”

“Gentle?”

“As a seraph, if it should come to earth to habit
in woman's form.”

“Good?”

“As an angel.”

“Fair, gentle, and good?”

“All three.”

“And yet you loved her not?”

“I loved another! therefore, if she had been indeed
an angel, I could not have loved, though I
might have worshipped her.”

The young man bent his head low till the snowy
plume hid his face, and a deep sigh escaped his
bosom. “Her thou wouldst have me love, then?”
he asked, after a moment's silence, during which
the eyes of the other were habitually scanning the
horizon.

“I would.”

“Wherefore?'

“Because I love thee!”

“Love me!” he cried, starting.

“As a brother do I. In truth this chase has fevered
you, and you are not yourself, Edwin. Let
us aboard!”

They were about to descend to the ship, when
the elder, glancing once more around the horizon,
suddenly fixed his eyes in a northwardly direction,
and, after a moment's steady look, exclaimed,

“A sail!”

The younger arrested his descending footstep,
and also turned his eyes in the same direction, and
discerned a white dot on the extreme verge of
water and sky, the stationary appearance of which,
though neither form nor outline was distinguishable
at the distance it was from them, indicated it
to be a vessel.

“It may be a merchantman!” he said.

“It may be the bucanier! Craft of any sort are
so scarce in these colonial seas at this season, that
the chances are full three to one for the pirate.
We must on board and make sail.”

As he spoke they descended, followed by their
dogs, the precipitous rock, and the next moment
stood on the vessel's deck. A few brief orders
were given by the elder of the two, who, it was
apparent, was the commander of the brig; the anchor
was weighed, the topsails loosened and set,
and, catching a light breeze that blew through the
mouth of the lagoon seaward, she soon left the
wooded shores, and rode gallantly over the billows
of the open sea in the direction of the sail they had
seen from the cliff. What had first appeared a
white speck on the rim of the sea now grew into
shape and form, and, with the glass, the upper sails
of a brigantine could be seen down to her courses,
her hull still being beneath the horizon.

Swiftly the brig of war cut the blue waves, all
her light and drawing sails set. Her armed deck,
on each side of which bristled seven eighteen
pounders, with their armament, presented an appearance
of that order and propriety which, even
on the eve of battle, characterizes the interior of a
British ship of war. The weather-beaten tars, who
had all been called to quarters, leaned over the forward
bulwarks, and watched with interest the distant
sail, but made their remarks in a subdued tone
to each other. All was ready for action in case
the stranger should prove to be an enemy. The
helmsman, with his eyes now dropped on the compass,
now directed ahead towards the sail, stood
cool and collected at his post; the officer of the
deck paced with a thoughtful brow fore and aft in
the waist, every few seconds stopping to survey the
chase, while the junior officers, each at his station, silently
regarded the object, their eyes sparkling with
excitement as each moment brought them nearer
to it. In a magnificent upper cabin or poop, constructed
on the quarter-deck, and gorgeous with

curtains of crimson, sofas, ottomans, and rich Turkish
rugs laid over the floor with latticed windows
opening on every side to the water, were the two
hunters. They had now changed their costume
for one more appropriate to the sea and the quarter-deck
of an armed vessel. The youthful captain
wore the undress uniform of his rank and profession,
his hunting-knife replaced by a small sword,
and his bugle by a brace of pistols. He was standing
by the window with his eyes upon the vessel
ahead. The other had substituted a plain suit of
black velvet for his former rich costume, and an
elegant rapier hung at one side and a silver inkhorn
at the other. He was seated at an ebony escritoir
writing, and, from his pursuit and apparel, evidently
held the rank of private secretary.

“He is standing south by east, Edwin,” said the
youthful captain, turning from the lattice and addressing
the youth with animation; “we shall intercept
him by sunset if this wind holds. But methinks,”
he added with interest, fixing his eyes
upon him as, with his rich hair drooping about his
cheeks, he leaned, forgetful of his occupation, over
the sheet, “that of late you are getting sad and absent.
This station does not suit your ambition,
perhaps. You would be an officer instead of a
clerk.”

“Nay, sir, I would be as I am; I am not discontent
so that I can be near—” here he checked
himself, bent his head to his writing, and did not
look up until he felt a hand gently laid upon his
shoulder. He started, while the colour came and
went in his cheek with confusion, and he shrunk
instinctively away.

“Beshrew me, fair youth! I know not what to
make of thee,” said the young captain, taking a
seat beside him, and resting one arm familiarly

upon his shoulder. “Thou hast some deep, untold
grief at thy heart. If it be a love secret—a tale of
love unrequited—of cruel maids and broken promises,”
he said, gayly, “why, then, out with it; make
me your confidant; I will tell you how to make
her heart ache, and to wish thee back again. Come,
Edwin, unburden thy thoughts. Unspoken, they
will feed upon the cheek and eye, and the grave
have thee ere thou hast attained manhood.”

The youthful secretary was silent a few moments,
and then said, with an attempt to smile,

“I have a tale of love, but not of mine.”

“I will hear it, and then tell thee if I think it
thine or no.”

“There was once a noble maiden, the heiress of
an earldom, who loved a peasant youth, handsome
and brave, and the nobility he gat not by birth nature
endowed him with. The maiden was proud
and independent of spirit, and loved him for himself—for
title, wealth, and rank she thought not!”

“A generous creature. And this humble youth
loved her in return?”

“No.”

“No! then, by Heaven, he was ignoble indeed,
and her love was ill placed, poor lady!”

“Nay—he loved another!”

“Ha, was it so?” he said, with a peculiar smile;
“then I must pardon him! But did she tell him
of her love?”

“Never!”

“Who was this village maiden that supplanted
her?”

“She was no lowly maid! but noble as herself.”

“He was full ambitious! Did she love him in
return?”

“Nay, not then,” said he, hesitatingly.

“Edwin, you are giving my very history! You

hang your head! What, is it I of whom you
speak?” he exclaimed, with animated interest.

“I gave no name.”

“Nay,” he said, blushing, “I will not think,
though the tale tallies in some parts so well with
my own, that a noble maiden e'er could have regarded
me with sentiments beneath her station.
Go on.”

“Time went on, and her love grew. Unseen,
unknown, she exerted her influence, and had him
(for he took to the seas) elevated from rank to rank,
though his own prowess won for him each grade
ere he rose to it; at length he became a captain.
Many years had elapsed in the interval, and she
had not seen him; but, every few months, rumour
trumpeted to her his gallant deeds, and in her secret
heart she rejoiced with all the pride of love.”

“And still she loved him?”

“Better and better. Absence only increased the
intensity of her passion. At length she resolved
to see him, and, unknown to him, see if she could
not win his love; for she believed, silly girl,
that time had caused him to forget his first passion
for the noble maid who had disdained him for his
low birth. At length an opportunity presented itself
that held out to her the prospect of accomplishing
her wish. A nobleman related to her was appointed
governor of a distant province, and this
youth was appointed to the command of the vessel
that should convey him to his government
The noble was the father of the highborn maiden
he loved. Love roused her fears. She resolved
to go in the same ship, and be a check upon the
renewal of his love.”

“Your story interests me. Do not pause. Go
on!”

“So she disguised herself as a page, and, under
the pretence of going to Ireland, to spend a few

weeks with a maiden aunt, came on board his vessel,
and offered herself as his secretary!”

“Edwin, this is a wondrous tale!” he exclaimed,
starting to his feet with surprise. “Yet no, it cannot
be,” he said, half aloud, after steadily looking
at him a moment. “Proceed!”

“She was received and sailed with him. Love
excuses much. Yet her friends were on board with
her, and it was not as if she had thrown herself on
this rash adventure alone. The maiden that he had
loved in youth he wooed and won. She knew him
not as the humble youth. He had taken another
name with his better fortunes. In the noble-looking
officer that commanded the ship, and whose
gallant name had filled the world, she did not recognise
the humble lad whom she had known in
earlier years. The disguised girl witnessed the
progress of their love with a breaking heart.”

“Poor maiden! She should have made known
her love, and it might have met return.”

“No, no, she could not. Yet she could not leave
him, even when she knew he cared not for her—
knew not of her existence, or that he was loved by
her with such enduring attachment.”

“Had it been my case, I would have loved her,
had she made herself known, for her very devotion.
Love begets love, and so does gratitude. I could
not but have loved her.”

“Nay—if you loved another?”

“Not while I loved that other. But if that love
had met no return, or afterward were crushed and
blighted by adverse circumstances, then my heart
would have turned to this gentle, devoted, heroic
maiden, whose love had been so strong as to lead
her to idolize me, and follow me in disguise even
over the sea.”

“Wouldst thou have done this?”

“By my troth! would I. I half love the maiden
now, of whose devotedness you speak so eloquently.
If it were my case, Kate would have a dangerous
rival. I never could resist so much womanly
devotion. Not I, Edwin.”

“Would you not rather despise her?”

“No. True love is sacred and honourable ever.”

“When it o'ersteps the bounds of maidenly propriety?”

“Yes, Edwin, in a case like this of which you
speak.”

At this instant the officer of the deck reported
that the strange sail had suddenly changed her
course from the southeast, and was standing towards
them.

The captain seized his glass, and, examining her,
said with animation,

“Her hull has lifted, and she shows a tier of ports.
A red riband running around her bends! polacca
rigged, and courses up, with a bow as sharp as a canoe!
It is `the Kyd,”' he cried, with joyful surprise.

Instantly all was animation and intense excitement
on board. The guns were double-shotted,
the hammock nettings were stowed closer and
firmer than usual, hand-grenades lined the decks,
and every missile and weapon of offence or defence
that could be pressed into service on so desperate
an encounter as that anticipated, was brought forth
and placed ready for use. All that skill and determination
to conquer could devise was done; and,
under a steady but light wind on her larboard quarter,
she fast neared the stranger, who also was observed
to shorten sail and make other demonstrations
of a hostile character. They continued to approach
each other until less space than a mile
separated them, when the youthful captain, who,
with his trumpet in his hand, had taken his place
in the main rigging, shouted,

“Hoist the ensign, and pitch a shot from the
weather-bow gun across his fore-foot.”

The broad flag of England instantly ascended to
the peak, and unfolded its united crosses displayed
on its blood-red field. At the same time a column
of flame shot from her sides, and the vessel shook
with the loud report of the gun.

“It has dashed the spray into their faces,” said
the captain, who had followed the path of the ball
with the glass at his eye. “Ha! by Heaven, there
goes the black flag, with its silver arrow emblazoned
on it. It is Kyd. He has fired!”

A puff of smoke at the instant curled up from
the side of the pirate vessel, as it now proved to
be beyond question, and the next moment a twelve
pound shot, with a roaring noise, buried itself deep
in the mainmast, twenty feet above the deck. The
spar trembled from the shock, and even the vessel
reeled to one side from the force of the iron projectile.

“This is an unlucky hit. It has weakened our
best spar! We must have the weather-gauge of
him, and run down and lay him by the board if he
is so good a marksman at a long shot,” said the
captain.

No more shots were fired, and the vessels were
now within hailing distance, when, cheering his
crew by animated words as well as by his example,
and irresistibly communicating to them a portion
of his own spirit, the young captain stood by the
helmsman, and directed him to steer so as to strike
the advancing pirate with the larboard bow just
forward of the fore-chains. He ordered the hand-grenades
to be in readiness to be thrown on board
as soon as they should come near enough, and the
grappling-irons to be kept clear and cast at an instant's
notice, while in two dense parties, commanded

by the chief officers, the boarders were drawn
up, prepared to leap on board cutlass in hand.

Swiftly and with appalling stillness the two hostile
barks approached each other, both close hauled
on the wind, and moving at nearly equal speed. It
was within half an hour of sunset, and the level
rays of the sun suffused the sea with a flush of
gold and crimson. The wooded shores, which
were two miles distant, were touched with a brighter
green, and the western sky was as bright and
varied with gorgeous colours as if a rainbow had
been dissipated over it. The hostile companies in
the two vessels saw none of its beauties and thought
only of the sun that gave glory to the scene, as a
light that was to lend its aid to the approaching
conflict. Nearer and nearer they came together, yet
unable, from their direct advance upon each other,
to bring their guns to bear. To fire their bow guns
would have checked their speed: both, therefore,
advanced in silence until each could see the features
of his foe. Conspicuous on their decks stood the
commanders of each brig, directing their several
courses, and giving commands that were distinctly
heard from one vessel to the other: Kyd, with his
light flowing locks, his fair, noble brow and commanding
figure, on the quarter-deck near the helmsman
with a stern and hostile expression in his eyes
and the attitude of one impatient to mingle in the
conflict, which he seemed to anticipate with vengeful
triumph: the young captain, calm, cool, and commanding,
his features glowing with the excitement
of the occasion, and animated, as it seemed, with
an honest ambition to punish a lawless bucanier
who had so long filled sea and land with the terror
of his name.

“Stand by, hand-grenades!” he shouted, as the
vessels were within a few feet of each other.

“All ready!”

“Cast!” he cried, with a voice of thunder.

Instantly a score of these missiles were flying
through the air in the direction of the crowded
decks of the pirate. But, ere they had left the hand,
quicker than thought the pirate's helm had been put
hard up, and every sheet and brace being at the
same time let go, she fell off suddenly from the
wind, and presented her broadside to the bows of
the brig; all but one or two of the grenades fell
short and plunged into the water, and those that
struck her were thrown overboard ere they could do
injury. At the same instant the bows of the brig
struck her starboard side nearly midships, and such
was the tremendous force of the shock that her
slight timbers were stove in, four out of six of the
guns that composed the battery dismounted, while,
vibrating with the shock beyond its tensity, the
foremast, with its chain of connected yards, snapped
off even with the deck, and fell with a terrible
crash and dire confusion and ruin into the sea.
Loud was the shout of success that rose from the
crew of the brig, and, rushing forward, they prepared
to leap upon the deck of the bucanier.

“Back, men! she is filling!” cried the young
captain, who had gained the bowsprit of his vessel,
where he stood sword in hand, and, like his crew,
in the act of springing on board.

“We are going down!” was the universal cry
that rose from the pirate's decks, and the rush of
the waters into her hold was distinctly heard
above the noise and confusion of the scene.

“Let her sink!” shouted Kyd, bounding amidships
among his men. “Here is a- king's ship
worth three of it!”

His appeal was answered by a demoniac yell
from his pirate crew; and, inspired by their imminent

peril as well as their natural ferocity, they
sprung, as one man, upon the bows of the brig,
and, by mere force of numbers and desperation,
in an instant took possession of the forecastle,
and drove its defenders aft. The last man had
scarcely gained a footing upon it, when, with a
plunge like the dying struggle of a wounded animal,
the “Silver Arrow,” so long the besom of the
ocean, shot down into its unfathomable depths,
finding a grave in the element upon which it had so
long rode in triumph. The brig pitched and rolled
from side to side fearfully as she was received into
the vortex the sinking vessel had left, while she so
far sunk down that the waves rolled a foot deep
over her bows, and flowed in an irresistible torrent
aft to the quarter-deck.

For a few seconds after the disappearance of
the brigantine there was a deep hush over the
human throng. Every soul was touched with
the sublimity of the spectacle, and an impression,
not unlike that with which a child looks on death,
rested for an instant on all. But it was only for
an instant: the situation in which the two parties
were so suddenly and so singularly placed, in such
relative positions to each other, flashed upon their
minds, and every eye lighted up with the fire of
conflict.

“Farewell to the brave galley!” said Kyd, as he
saw the flag at her peak trail on the water as she
went down. “Now, my boys, we have no vessel
save this! Five minutes will show whether it belongs
to his majesty or `the Kyd.' Let us sweep
yonder honest folk from her, boys,” he cried,
pointing aft, where the brig's crew were resolutely
drawn up before the quarter-deck under their captain,
by whose side stood, with a resolute eye and
fearless attitude, his youthful secretary. “But, on
your lives, spare the captain! Also harm not that

fair youth beside him. I like his face for its resemblance
to one I once knew. Now at them,
and fight like devils, for either you or they must be
driven overboard!”

“Receive them steadily and with firm front, my
men,” cried the captain of the brig; “remember,
your lives depend on retaining your ship. Do not
forget you are British seamen, fighting for your
king and country, your wives and sweethearts! and
that your foes are a set of bloodthirsty bucaniers,
who fight from desperation, and show neither mercy
nor favour. Edwin, my young friend, your station
is not here.”

“I will not leave your side,” he said, firmly.

“Nay, then, here they come like mad devils.
God and our country! Meet them half way! St.
George and at them!”

He was the first to set the example, and met the
desperate charge almost single handed. The number
of pirates was more than seventy, while the
crew and officers of the brig did not exceed sixty.
Nearly the whole of these were now engaged;
those at a distance, who were unable to mingle in
the mêlée and use their swords, briskly discharging
their firearms, while those of either party on the
skirts of the fight cheered their comrades on with
loud cries. For a few moments the brig's crew
had the advantage, and pressed their assailants back
on every hand, while from side to side flowed the
heady current of battle, and the human masses
swayed this way and that like an agitated sea; and,
with a roar still more terrible than the ocean in its
wildest fury ever sent up, shouts of onset, cries of
rage or pain, yells, and execrations filled the air,
mingled with the reports of pistols, the clash of
steel, and the strange thunder of a hundred feet
upon the hollow decks. At length the seamen gave
way before their desperate antagonists, whom the

cheering voice of their leader inspired with tenfold
courage and ferocity.

“At them. Leave not a man alive! One good
blow and the brig is ours. Bear them down! Give
no quarter! Ha, Fitzroy! Ha! do we meet again!
I have sought thee to enjoy this moment. Back,
hounds,” he shouted to his men; “will ye press
me? there is meaner game for you! I alone deal
with him.”

“The same moment, then, crowns my wish and
thine,” said Fitzroy, crossing his weapon.

They had exchanged a few fierce passes without
effect, when they were separated by the tide of the
conflict, and borne to opposite sides of the deck.
At this moment Edwin the secretary, who had been
animating the crew by his cheering cries, said
quickly in the ear of Fitzroy,

“Make a sudden charge with all your force, save
six men to man the two after guns; drive them back
to the forecastle, if possible, and then retreat, and I
will, at the same moment, turn upon them the pieces
which I have already had loaded with grape.”
This was spoken with rapidity and clearness.

“It shall be done,” was the stern reply. “Ho,
my brave tars! one blow for merry England! one
good blow for the king. Charge them all at once.
Follow me. Hurrah for the king!”

“Hurrah for King Billy, hurrah!” shouted the
seamen, with one voice, catching the spirit of their
young captain.

So sudden and well directed was the charge, that
the pirates gave back in a body till they reached
the windlass, when, in a voice like a trumpet, Fitzroy
shouted,

“Every Englishman throw himself upon his
face! Fire!”

“Down!” re-echoed Kyd, instinctively, at the
same moment.

Disciplined to obey the lightest order, every sailor
cast himself upon the deck; but most of the
pirates heard too late the warning command of their
chief, and the same instant, from both of the quarter-deck
guns, a shower of grape whistled like a
whirlwind over the heads of the crew, while with
the roar of cannon mingled the groans and shrieks
of half a score of bucaniers.

“Vengeance! vengeance! Will ye be slaughtered
like dogs! Upon them! Cut them down!
Leave not one alive! Vengeance!”

Loud and terrific was the cry of vengeance,
followed by a rush of the pirates aft that was irresistible.
The crew were cut down scarcely ere
they had risen to their feet, and sabred with hellish
ferocity wherever they could be grappled with.
In a moment's space two thirds of the seamen, who
had been seized with a sudden panic at the demoniac
rush of the pirates, whom they expected to
have seen discomfited by the wholesale slaughter
of their comrades, fell a prey to their savage ferocity,
and the decks were deluged with their blood.
Many leaped overboard, and others sprang into the
rigging to fall dead into the sea.

“On, on! the brig is ours!” shouted the pirate
chief, waving his reeking sabre. “Charge the
quarter-deck!”

Thither Fitzroy, with Edwin, had retreated with
the remnant of his crew, which were scarcely
twenty in number.

“Surrender!” demanded Kyd.

“With our lives only!” was the firm reply.

“Dash at them, ye devils! But see ye touch
not the two I have marked as my own game! Let
your blades drink deep; we shall soon be masters
here. Now on!”

They were received by a discharge of pistols,

which only increased the ferocity of those who escaped
the fire, and, cutlass in hand, the quarter-deck
was carried after a desperate resistance.
Fitzroy was taken prisoner with much difficulty,
and at the cost of several lives of his assailants,
while Kyd himself disarmed the secretary. To a
man the brave crew were slain, either in fair fight
while defending their station, or massacred in cold
blood at the termination of the sanguinary conflict.
The pirates were now masters of the brig, though
its conquest had cost them full half of their number.

“Clear the decks of both dead and wounded!”
said the victor, leaning on his bloody sabre and
gazing over the decks, which wore the aspect of a
slaughter-house.

“Of our own men?” said he who has before been
named as Lawrence.

“Ay! every man that cannot rise on his feet
and walk. We want no hospital of the brig!”

At this order one or two of the wounded pirates
attempted to get to their legs; but finding, after several
ineffectual struggles, that it was out of their
power, fell back powerless, with execrations on
their lips, which had hardly ceased before their
living bodies parted the crimson flood alike with
the dead. The sun still shone upon the scene of
carnage, and, ere he set, the brig was cleared of the
bodies of both pirate and seaman; the decks were
washed; sail was made; the new crew were posted
at their different stations as they had been, though
in fewer numbers, on board their former vessel;
and, half an hour after the conflict, as the disk of
the sun sunk behind the Highlands of Monmouth,
scarcely a vestige of the terrific contest was apparent
in the orderly exterior and accurate nautical
appointments of the captured vessel.

The moon rose like a shield of pearl, and flung
her pale, snowy light along the dark waves, and
silvered the sails of the brig as she went bowling
along over the sparkling surges. On the quarter-deck
sat Captain Fitzroy and his youthful secretary.
They were unarmed, and the elder manacled
with heavy irons; but the younger was unbound.
Not far from them, at times stopping to survey
them, walked moodily their captor, his brow knit
with thought, and his lips compressed with fierce
resolution. At length he stopped, and said to an
inferior officer who stood in the waste leaning over
the bulwarks and watching the swift and steady
progress of the vessel through the water,

“Griffin, prepare the plank!”

“You do not mean—”

“It matters not to you what I mean. Obey me!
You are given of late to question my orders too
boldly. Bring the brig to and get out the plank,”
he reiterated, in a firm manner.

“There has been blood enough shed,” said the
man, with dogged determination, folding his arms
and looking his commander in the face. “I will
do no more of it.”

“Ha! by the living spirit! Mutiny?”

“I will be a butcher no longer, be it mutiny or
not. I am sick of it.”

“Will you to your duty, sir?”

“To work the ship, but not to take more life,”
said the officer, steadily.

“You are mad, Griffin! My authority must not
be questioned, even by you. I would not take
your life,” he added, placing his hand on the butt of
a pistol and half drawing it from his belt. “You
cannot be alone in this mutiny—you wear too bold
a front.”

“Nor am I. Ho! lads—a Griffin! a Griffin!”

The loud cry of the mutineer was responded to
by the shout of eight or ten pirates, who instantly
placed themselves, with drawn cutlasses, around
him.

“By the cross! it is well matured!” muttered
Kyd, with terrible calmness. “Back, fellows! To
your posts! You, Griffin—for the last time—to
your station, sir, and bring the brig to!”

“Never, sir! Draw and charge. Now is our
time!” he cried to his party.

A cry between a yell and the sound made by the
gnashing of teeth escaped the infuriated bucanier
chief. Like a tiger, he sprung upon them singlehanded,
and struck back half a score of blades with
a single broad sweep of his cutlass, while those
who wielded them stood appalled.

“Back, dogs! Do ye fear me singly? Oh, ho,
cowards! Stand where ye are! and you, traitor,”
he cried, breaking the cutlass of their leader short
to its hilt, “go to your duty! I spare your life!”

“Never!”

“Then go to the devil with my compliments.”

With the words he placed a pistol at his breast
and fired: the man leaped high into the air and fell
backward dead.

“Now, fellows, return to your stations,” he said,
returning his smoking pistol to his belt. “The first
who hesitates or falters lies beside this carcass,” he
added, touching, with a contemptuous gesture, the
body with his foot.

The mutineers dropped their weapons and returned
to their posts without hesitation or a murmur.
“Lawrence, you are no longer coxswain,”
said Kyd. “Take this mutineer's rank. See that
my orders are obeyed! Lay the main topsail to
the mast!”

“Ay, ay, sir!” replied the new lieutenant, with
alacrity.

The helm was put hard down, the vessel came
up into the wind, the heavy sail was reversed
against the topmast, and the vessel became stationary.
A plank was then run out over the gangway
bulwarks with the largest end inboard.

“Now, Rupert Fitzroy, prepare to die!” said
the bucanier, approaching his prisoner, who stood
with folded arms and calm brow gazing upon the
moon walking in her brightness, and looking as if
he anticipated the speedy flight of his spirit through
the starry world. He evidently expected death,
and was prepared to meet it. His companion stood
by him leaning upon his shoulder; his hands were
clasped together, and he was pale and deadly in
aspect, but not less resigned: nevertheless, he involuntarily
shuddered as the footsteps of the pirate
approached them, and addressed the former.

“I will give you a free leap into the other world,
as your blood is gentle, sir, and will set aside the
cravat of hemp; though in a swing at the yard-arm
many a better man has gone to his account than
Mark Meredith.”

“Ha! do you know me?” demanded the other,
starting from his revery, and fixing his gaze upon
him with surprise and curiosity.

“Thou hast heard whether I do or not, and what
was but suspicion is now proved by thy manner.”

“Who, then, art thou?”

“It matters not. You must die. The last link
that binds you to life is broken. You will soon
learn if the proverb be true that saith there is but
a step between this world and the next, for you
will speedily measure it. The step is rather a wet
one, but there is a fire priests prate about that will
soon dry you.” This irony and sarcasm was spoken
with the most unfeeling manner, while hatred
and malice seemed to dictate each word.

“Surely you cannot, you will not be so inhuman
as to do such foul murder!” cried the youthful
secretary, placing himself between Kyd and Fitzroy,
and stretching forth his hands deprecatingly.

“Who is the blacker murderer, sir—this man
who robs of me my good name, or I, who merely
take his life?” inquired Kyd, haughtily.

“I robbed you not of it,” said Fitzroy. “'Tis
true, I have talked to many of thy deeds. But your
good name! 'twas already gone—thrown away by
your lawless acts of piracy.”

“'Tis false! I had never pirated when I took thee
prisoner. Smuggling a few silks and laces, or
costly wines; defending my ship against officious
gentlemen under king's colours, who fain would
board me, seeking contraband wares—this have
I done, and will do again on like occasion; but pirated
I had not then.”

“A distinction without a difference; a mere quibble
upon words, to cheat thy rankling conscience
into security.”

“Have it thy own way,” said the pirate, with
haughty carelessness. “I will not quarrel with a
man who has but five brief minutes to use his
tongue in. Is all ready there at the gangway?
We're losing time here idly. Ho! lead him to his
death!”

“Impossible,” exclaimed Fitzroy, indignantly;
“you will not carry out a suggestion so infernal.”

“Nay, sir, you will not do such cold-blooded
murder,” cried the secretary, catching the hand of
Kyd, and kneeling at his feet. “Spare! oh, spare
his life, and I will be thy slave!”

“Silence, boy! and you, sir, if you would use
your speech, husband it in words of prayer. Thy
time has come as surely as the moon now shines
in the east.”

“All ready, sir!” said Lawrence, coming aft a
step or two and addressing his captain.

“Will you walk to the gangway, sir, or shall
my men conduct you?”

“Farewell, my faithful Edwin,” he said, with
manly dignity, tenderly embracing the youth. “We
shall in a few minutes meet beyond the skies!”

The youth cast himself into his arms, and the
next moment Fitzroy unclasped his hold and laid
him upon the deck insensible.

“I am ready!” he said, calmly.

“Perhaps you have a last request to make,” said
the pirate chief, sarcastically; “doubtless some
wish is lurking in your breast, which, unexpressed,
will add bitterness to death! If so, intrust it to
me. I'll be its executor. Perhaps,” he continued,
in the same tone, “you have a ring, a lock of hair,
some tender love-token to be returned to the giver.
Perchance some maiden will ask how Fitzroy died.
I'll bear to her a message! Ere to-morrow night
I shall see the peerless Kate of Bellamont; she'll
love me for bringing it, and perhaps yield the pressure
of her haughty lips. I've had love favours on
my own account of the willing maid ere now.”

“Villain! thou liest!” cried the young man,
goaded to phrensy by his words, and only restrained
from springing upon him by the weight of the
irons which shackled him.

“Ask her when you meet hereafter in the other
world, for you meet no more in this!”

“Monster! the cup of death hath its own bitterness,
and needs not thy impious words to drug it.”

“Thou hast nothing, then, to ask?” said the bucanier,
in the same tone of irony he had hitherto
used. “I fain would do thee a kindness.”

“I have one request!”

“Name it.”

“Take off my irons, and let me freely spring into
the grave you have designed for me!”

“Knock off his chains! The devil'll have him
bound in double irons ere the waves that gape to
take him in flow smooth again above his head.”

The manacles were unlocked and removed,
when Kyd, turning to him, asked with bitter malice,

“What else?”

“This broadsword!”

Quicker than thought, he snatched a cutlass from
one of the pirates, and attacked Kyd with a sudden
vigour and skill that was irresistible. The bucanier
retreated on the defensive several paces before
he could rally or return a single blow for the shower
that rained fiercely and unceasingly upon him.
At length he caught the blade of his prisoner on the
guard of his own, and arrested it. An instant they
stood with their crossed weapons in the air, eying
each other, and then simultaneously stepped back
and resumed the fight. The pirates closed round
and would have struck Fitzroy in the back, but the
voice of Kyd restrained them.

“Not a blow, men! He is mine! I will tame
him down ere long!”

For a few seconds longer they battled with terrible
fury, neither having the advantage; now on
one side of the deck, now on the other; now striding
the body of the insensible Edwin, now fighting
together in the waste, retreating and advancing
alternately. At length the bucanier began to gain
an advantage over his less athletic antagonist; he
pushed him hard, and, step by step, compelled him
to retreat towards the stern. Finally, by a strong
and sudden stroke, he shivered his sword to his
hand and left him defenceless. The blow with
which he was about to follow up his advantage

was arrested in its descent, and, turning away with
a gesture of triumph, he said, as the other, with
his arms folded, stood passive to receive the blow,

“'Tis enough for me that I have worsted thee!
I have struck my game, so now let the pack worry
him! Set upon him, men, and cut him down; he
is yours!” he cried, with savage ferocity, pointing
to the young officer.

The pirates, with a yell of joy, rushed aft like a
pack of wolves and leaped upon him. With the
strength and skill of desperation, he wrested the
cutlass from the first who reached him, and, springing
backward upon the taffrail, defended himself
a few seconds against the fearful odds. But at
length, yielding to superior numbers, he cast his
sword into the air, and, leaping over the stern, amid
the yells of the pirates and the firing of pistols,
sunk from their sight.

Kyd cast a glance into the dark wave, and, after
a few seconds' survey, said half aloud,

“He is no more! Henceforward I am sole Lord
of Lester!”

These last words gave the clew to his strange
and vindictive thirst for the death of his victim,
and was a key to his otherwise unaccountable
bloodthirstiness. Ho! there, villains! why do
you gaze upon the water? Make sail on the brig!
Man the braces all! Helm hard up! There she
yields! Now she falls off. Steady! belay all!”

The after sails swung back to their original position
as the vessel obeyed her helm; and at first with
scarcely perceptible motion, but gathering momentum
as she moved, she parted the moonlit waves
before her, and went careering over the sparkling
seas in the direction of New-York.

5. CHAPTER V.

H. F. Gould.

Towards the approach of evening on the day
following the events related in the last chapter, Kate
Bellamont was walking beneath the noble oaks
that shaded the lawn lying between the front of
White Hall and the water. She had been for some
time watching the slow progress of a brig into the
harbour, which, on first discerning it from the balcony,
her spyglass told her was the “Ger-Falcon.”
Her impatience had drawn her to the water side,
where the thin waves uncurled upon a silvery beach
at her feet.

Slowly it advanced up towards the town, and
the shouts of the citizens, and gun after gun from
the Rondeel, welcomed her return. It was nearly
night when, coming between Governor's Island and
the city, she fired a gun without coming to; the
British ensign was lowered at the same instant, and
up in its place went the black flag of the bucanier.
A loud wail seemed to fill the town.

“The Kyd! the Kyd!” rung through the streets
and everywhere spread consternation. The battery
on the Rondeel opened a heavy fire, which was
returned by two broadsides from the brig, which
then stood across towards Brooklyn, and anchored
east of the town out of the range of the guns of the
fort.

Kate had witnessed all this, at first, with surprise,

which grew to terrible anxiety and alarm; and
when the return of the fire confirmed the hostile
character of the vessel, now too plainly captured by
the corsair, a faintness came over her and she leaned
against an oak for support. “Where was Fitzroy?
A prisoner or slain?” were questions that
she dared not ask herself. Overcome by her feelings,
she was ready to sink at the foot of the tree
in almost a state of insensibility, when she saw a
skiff containing two men, which had been making its
way from the direction of “The Kills,” land not far
from the “Rondeel.” The twilight was sufficiently
strong to enable her to see a fisherman step from
it and approach her by the winding of the shore.
She struggled against her feelings, for his manner
seemed to betoken news; and with a quick step she
advanced several paces to meet him.

“Do you bring news of Captain Fitzroy, or come
you to confirm my suspicions?” she cried, as he
came near her.

“Sweet lady,” he said, wrapping his ample jacket
closer about his person, “I am but a poor shipwrecked
mariner. Yet I do bear sad news for
thee.”

“Of whom?” she asked, quickly, vainly endeavouring,
in the dusk of evening, to read in his shaded
features all he had not revealed.

“Captain Fitzroy!”

“Ha! speak! Words! words! why are you
silent? I will hear thee.”

“He has been captured by a pirate.”

“I knew it.”

“And is now prisoner to his captor in yonder
brig.”

“His own courage should have kept it.”

“Nay, lady, he did all he could to save his vessel.”

“What fate met he? What became of him,

seaman? There is life and death in your answer!
Lives he?”

“We were captured by Kyd, who now holds our
vessel, and all were condemned to walk the plank.”

“Ha! and he?”

“Nay, lady, he lives! He, besides myself, alone
escaped the death designed for us.”

“Lives, lives! 'Tis happiness to know it!
How escaped you?”

“I took the leap into the sea. By floating and
swimming I was half an hour afterward picked up
by a fisherman, who brought me hither.”

“And Edwin, his secretary?”

“Alas, I know not.”

“Direful, dreadful news! Fitzroy, Fitzroy! oh
that I had died ere this sad news of thy dishonour,
perhaps thy death, had reached me! Merciful
God! sustain me in this hour!”

She buried her face in her hands, and seemed
overcome by grief.

“Nay, Kate, dearest Kate, I am here! Fitzroy
is before you; it is your Rupert who clasps you to
his heart. Speak! I am by you, and fold you in my
arms!”

He cast off his fisherman's coat and bonnet as
he spoke, and she looked up revived at his voice,
and beheld, indeed, the face of him whom she had
mourned as dead or lost to her for ever.

“Fitzroy!”

“Fitzroy, and none else, dearest Kate!”

“How could you put me to such a trial?” she
cried, almost weeping on his shoulder.

“Nay, forgive me! I planned it not beforehand;
but seeing, as I approached you, that you knew me
not, the fisher's coat and cap I borrowed of him who
fished me from the water having disguised me even
to your keen-eyed love, I was tempted to try your
affections.”

“Nay, Rupert, did you doubt it?”

“I have no cause,” he said, embracing her.

“And did you escape as you just now said?”

“Yes. My brig was taken by a strange fatality
after I had sunk the pirate vessel. All my
men were slain—none, save Edwin and myself, left
alive. I, from some strange thirst for blood that
possesses Kyd—for I can divine no other motive—
was condemned by him to walk the plank. I succeeded
in snatching a cutlass, for the purpose of
selling my life dearly as might be, but at length
was driven overboard. I had, before sunset, seen
a fisher's skiff a mile off at anchor; and, rising far
from the vessel towards her bows, struck out, when
she had passed me, towards it. It so chanced that
he had seen the brig lying to, and pulled towards
her to find a market for his fish, when I hailed him
and was taken on board. Knowing that the pirate
would steer directly to this port, I bribed the man
to bring me hither through the Staten Island Sound:
and here I am once more in your loved presence.”

She mused while he spoke, and then, as if unconscious
of his presence, said,

“Robert, poor Robert, to what height of crime
has passion led thee—to what abyss will it plunge
thee! Thou wert my first, my only love! As
some wild vine clings around a stately trunk, curling
its tendrils about its topmost limbs, as if in one
embrace 'twould clasp it all, so did I entwine my
heart around thee, taking thy shape! But, at last,
the tempest came and swept my stately oak away.
Lonely and lost, I stretched my wounded tendrils
on every side, seeking some branch to cling to;
then fell down, and lay in ruins along the ground.—
Ha, Fitzroy! Why is thy eye with such fierce
scrutiny fixed upon me?”

The lover started, and then a moment or two

hurriedly paced the sward ere, with hesitation and
embarrassment, he said,

“It has reached my ears—how, it matters not—
that, since my departure, you and this freebooter
Kyd have met in private. From his own lips there
fell dark words of favours given or received! The
thoughts (forgetful of my presence) you now gave
tongue to put to this, together, the one strenghtened
by the other, give—”

“Fitzroy, cease! why will you seek to cast a
cloud over the heaven your presence makes so
bright?”

“Forgive me, but some demon tortures me with
suspicion, spite of my confidence in thy love!”

“Ha, dost thou know this Kyd?”

“Only as a pirate! There is meaning in your
question,” he said, earnestly. “Who is he other
than he seems?”

“To keep the secret from thee would be doing
injustice to my pride of spirit. I have pledged my
father to marry thee; I look upon thee as my
husband; I will keep nothing from thee.”

“Do you not love me, Kate?”

“If I had never loved till now, I should love thee,
Rupert, next to my life. I have told thee the secret
of my former love, and thou didst say thou wouldst
take the half of my heart if thou couldst get no
more!”

“I did, dearest Kate! The intensity of my love
is alone my apology for intruding upon the sacredness
of an earlier passion! Yet I thought thou
hadst forgotten this—”

“I had—I but speak of it now. It is forgotten.”

She now seemed to struggle with some powerful
emotion, and then said quickly,

“The Kyd—is—is Lester!”

“By Heaven! your words have solved a strange

feeling that governed me when I was in his presence
to call him by a familiar name! But—”

“He is Lester—and Lester is `the Kyd.”'

“He fled to sea I have learned, strangely leaving
his title, wealth, and home. A pirate?”

“A pirate.”

“How learned you this?”

“Through the sorceress Elpsy, and, more recently,
through himself.”

“You have met him, then?”

“I have, Rupert.”

“He pressed upon thee his former passion?”

“He did.”

“And you—”

“Fitzroy, enough; I will not be interrogated.
If you doubt me, I am unworthy your love; you
to suspect my truth, unworthy mine.”

“Forgive me, Lady Catharine! Yet you met?”

“For a moment. I told him I was betrothed to
thee, and he left me, as I believe, to pursue thee.”

“This accounts for his vindictiveness. Pardon
me if I have wronged thee. You do not hear.”

“I was thinking of Lester,” she said, with unsuspecting
frankness.

He gazed upon her absent countenance a few
seconds, struck his temples with vehemence, and
groaned with anguish. Suddenly he turned towards
her and said, with the sternness of grief mingled
with reluctant jealousy,

“Lady Catharine of Bellamont, answer me in
pity, by the love I bear you, by the troth you have
plighted me! With all his insatiate avarice and
thirst for blood, his moral baseness and his numerous
crimes, does there not linger in the embers of
your earlier passion one single spark a proper wind
may kindle into flame?”

“There is deeper meaning beneath your words

than floats upon the surface,” she replied, with dignity;
“my woman's pride should rise in my defence,
and meet with scorn the foul suspicion that
lurks beneath them! But I will excuse you. I
will think you soured by the recent loss of your
brig, and so forgive you.”

“This is no answer, lady! This Lester or Kyd, I
well know, loves you! Thinking me dead, he soon
will press his suit. By soft words, vows, and deep
protestations of innocence and promises of reform,
will he seek to reinstate himself in your affections
—if perchance they are forfeited! He is rich, noble,
and smooth-tongued. I am, as now you see
me, a shipwrecked mariner, with only my commission
and my sword! Nay, you have even cast the
loss of my vessel in my teeth!”

The handsome young man, with clouded brow,
grieved and goaded spirit, turned away as he spoke,
and, folding his arms, gazed moodily on the waves
as they unrolled at his feet, tossing liquid diamonds
upon the sand. Each word he uttered only served
as weapons against him. Suspicion and jealousy
will never turn back the current of woman's love if
it has once flowed a contrary way. Gentleness will
govern it and guide it; but violence opposed to it
will, like a dam, convert it into an ungovernable cataract.
The attachment between Kate Bellamont
and Fitzroy was properly, so far as impassioned
love was concerned, only on one side. Fitzroy, or
Mark Meredith, had held her from youth in his eye
as the star both of his ambition and his love; and
when, by a fortuitous circumstance, five years after
his departure as an humble lad from the fisherman's
hut at Castle Cor, he found himself commander
of the vessel destined to convey her to the
New World, he, unrecognised by her, and under
the name he had assumed, wooed her with diffidence,

yet with the perseverance of a love that had
strengthened with his strength and grown with his
growth. She, in the mean while, was pleased by
his attentions, flattered by his devotion, and not insensible
to his love. She knew him only as Captain
Fitzroy, who had been knighted for his gallantry
on the sea, and whose youth only prevented
him from attaining the highest rank in the navy.
The earl (for the lovely Countess of Bellamont
had deceased the year before) seconded the young
hero's addresses, anticipating for the youthful knight
the highest name and rank.

At length, on the day they arrived in New-York
Bay she gave him the promise of her hand, though
her heart went not with it. It was her father's wish
that she should marry, and she herself believed Lester
no longer lived. Fitzroy was therefore accepted;
and though she did not regard him with the devotion
of love, she esteemed him as a friend; while
the gratitude she felt for his attachment he mistook
for love. Although such second attachments are
not altogether consistent with the character of a
true heroine, yet they are not inconsistent with the
character of a true woman!

The betrothed lady looked upon her lover with
surprise as he concluded, and said mildly,

“This is strange! You are not wont to yield to
moods of jealousy, Fitzroy!”

“Jaundiced and jealous I confess I am, until you
answer me!” he said, with nervous impatience.

“Thou art ill, I fear,” she said, laying her hand
upon his shoulder tenderly; “and what at other
times I might take deep offence at, having given no
cause, I'll now regard as the workings of disease
tinging your speech, which else were fair and worthy
of you.”

“I am not sick unless at heart,” he said, burying

his face in his hands. “She loves me not,” he uttered
to himself; “she loves me not! I have been
blinded by my own deep passion! She loves me
not! The hopes, the dreams of years are dissipated!
She loves me not!”

All at once he turned to her and said,

“Once more forgive me, dearest lady! I was
not myself just now; I knew not—I knew not what
I said! 'Tis over now; forget it!”

“I knew thou wert not thyself, and felt not thy
words,” she said, with sweet dignity. “Nay,
shrink not from my embrace, Rupert.”

“I am unworthy!”

“Nay, Rupert, I know your thoughts! You do
yourself injustice. So far as my love can be bestowed
on any one, it is bestowed on thee. That I
think of Lester as he once was with tenderness, I
do not deny; that I now pity and fear him, you
need not be told. Still I do confess to you, that,
were he Lester now, and worthy of his name, my
love would be his did he claim it. But we can never
be aught to each other more. Be jealous no
longer! 'Tis unworthy thee; and I will henceforth
give thee no cause.”

“Nay, lady,” he said, with seriousness, kneeling
and taking her hand, “though I love thee truly and
tenderly; though I have loved thee since my heart
was first awakened to passion; and although this
hand has been the goal of my ambition, and is at
length surrendered to me, and is thus clasped in
mine, yet I resign it, and here tender back to thee
thy reluctantly given troth, and leave thee free!”

“Thou wilt not, then,” she said, playfully, after
hesitating in what vein to reply, “deign to accept
my heart, while one little corner is reserved for the
memory of a youthful passion?”

“Nay, if that little corner alone were wholly

mine, and the rest were sacred to that youthful love,
I should feel myself most happy—most blessed.
But not that I may be free, but that thou mayest be,
do I make this sacrifice.”

“Then it need not be made, Rupert. For it
would be also a sacrifice to me.”

“Do you say that truly?” he asked, with warmth.

“Truly.”

“I am then happy.”

“You will not be jealous again?”

“No. But it was my love.”

“I confess you had cause. But it exists no
longer. Let us return to the Hall.”

“I will escort thee there, and then, as I should
have done ere this, aid the earl in preparing to defend
the town, for it doubtless will be attacked
ere morning by Kyd. Lester—Lester, said you?
How strange, how very strange! An earldom
thrown away; the haughty, highborn noble! Nay,
I can scarce believe it. Yet, now I call him to
mind, I do recognise the noble in `the Kyd.' At
another time, fair Catharine, you must explain this
mystery to me!”

They advanced towards the Hall as he was
speaking, and were soon lost in the shadows that
were cast by the trees, that stretched their gnarled
limbs on every side, covering the lofty roof of the
White Hall with a canopy of the densest foliage.

They found in the library the Earl of Bellamont,
attended by the captain of the Rondeel and two or
three of his council, who were also the principal
citizens of the town, in some excitement on account
of the reappearance of the Ger-Falcon under
the pirate flag. In a few words Fitzroy informed
them of the particulars of his meeting with
the pirate, the loss of his vessel, and his own escape.

“To the Rondeel, Captain Van Hooven!” said
the earl to the commander of the fort, with animation,
as he ended. “We shall doubtless be attacked.
Let nothing be wanting to defend your
position and protect the town. Attended by these
gentlemen and Captain Fitzroy, I will visit the
other forts and stir the citizens to arms. Watch
any movement from the brig, and fire at whatever
moves on the water.”

They instantly separated: the captain hastening
to his fort, the governor and his party to visit the
town and the two other forts, situated the one at the
Countess's slip, and the other at the foot of the
Wall-street, and Kate was left alone. When their
departing footsteps had died away, she felt an undefinable
curiosity to watch the motions of the
vessel, the appearance of which created such a sensation
in town and hall. She therefore hastened
to her boudoir and took her station upon the balcony.
The night had already set in, and the brig lay
dark, still, and indistinct where she had at first anchored.
All was silent in that direction, and her
nicest sense of hearing could not detect a ripple on
the water. Did she listen for one? Did she expect
one? Did she hope, yet fear; doubt, yet
believe, that the outcast Lester would seek her
presence once more? There is a difficulty in saying
what emotions passed through the maiden's
mind. It is puzzling to tell which way the beam
of a lady's thoughts will turn when a lover is in
each scale! Yet it by no means requires a skilful
analyzer of the female heart to tell which of two
lovers—a first one unforgotten, though discarded; a
second unloved, though endured—will be most in
her thoughts. It has ever been a noble, yet weak
trait in woman, to love unworthiness, and rarely has
there been found a man, however black with crime,

however despised by his fellow-men, who has not
been, in his lowest estate of guilt and degradation,
the object of some woman's devoted and undying
love. Such love for such beings seems to be allied
to the tender pity with which angels regard
the whole erring race of mortals! It is not intended
by these reflections to say anything of Kate's
feelings that can be construed into disloyalty towards
Fitzroy: they are only intended to show
that women are good, kind, forgiving, charitable, and
somewhat capricious creatures, and that, in loving,
they obey the heart rather than the head.

Kate, after watching the still waters of the bay
for some time, and catching no sign of movement,
hostile or otherwise, on board the vessel, descended
the steps of the balcony to the lawn, and, advancing
across it, approached the gate that led towards
the inn of Jost Stoll, in the direction of which
she heard the voices of many citizens congregated
there and discussing the crisis of affairs. As she
came near it it was opened, and a person hastily
entered and closed it after him. She started at the
intrusion, and was about to turn towards the Hall,
when the stranger called her by name in a low tone.

She stopped and surveyed him an instant as he
slowly approached.

“Edwin Gerald, is it you? You are then safe!
I congratulate you with all my heart!”

“I am, lady,” said the youth, sadly. “But—”
and he hesitated.

“You bring me news of Fitzroy's death.”

“You speak full lightly of it,” he said, with surprise,
“did you believe such my message. I know
not whether he lives or not. Our vessel was taken
by Kyd, who now holds it. Captain Fitzroy and
myself alone were spared. He for a dreadful death,
I for the more dreadful fate of surviving him.”

“You were attached to him?”

“I was. Now that he is no more, I have no
longer reason for this disguise, and here—”

“Nay; do nothing rashly, fair sir; if you were
about to tell me he loved me, I can tell you he has
told me so himself within the half hour.”

“How? Explain!”

“He is alive and well.”

“Alive. Heaven, thou art kind! most kind!
How was it?”

“He was driven overboard, as you believe, but
was saved in a fisherman's boat. He will be rejoiced
to learn of your escape. How was it, fair
sir?”

“Kyd retained me prisoner to bear a courteous
message to his lady love. I swore, to purchase
my life, to be its bearer when he came to port.
For this purpose I was landed above the town on
the western side, and guided by him to this gate.
He now awaits an answer to this billet. This done,
I am released from my solemn oath to him. Fitzroy
lives, said you, lady?”

She heeded not his words, but snatching the
note from his hands, said hurriedly,

“Wait my return.”

She flew to the balcony and shut herself in her
boudoir, and, drawing the curtains close, half opened
the letter, when she hesitated.

“Nay, it must not be! 'Tis wrong. I will return
it.—But perhaps it contains something I should
know! I should like to hear what the lost Lester
can say. He comes, too, in such gentle guise! I
will read it!”

The next moment it was open in her hand, and
she read with a fluttering pulse,

She looked at the lines till they seemed composed
of words of fire. Her brain reeled, her heart
swelled, and she seemed torn by emotions of terrible
power.

“Heaven guide me in this strait!” she cried,
falling impulsively on her knees and clasping the
letter in her folded hands. “Sudden and strange
events crowd thick upon me, with tales of murder
foul, and this newborn jealousy of Rupert—whom
I know not if I love or no, yet whom I should love
had he not risen from the grave, as 'twere, to step
between me and my newly-plighted troth! My
brain is crazed!”

She rose to her feet and walked the room thoughtfully,
with the letter in her hand, now looking at it
with tenderness, now crumpling it with disdain.
Suddenly she stopped and said with energy,

“The struggle is over! I will meet him.”

She stepped to the balcony, beneath which the
young secretary stood, and said calmly,

“Return, and say I'll come.”

She withdrew herself hastily into the boudoir as
she spoke, and the youth left her to bear the message
back to the bucanier, and thereby redeem his
oath and regain his liberty.

The moon was just rising above the Heights of
Brooklyn, when, wrapped in a mantle, her face
concealed by its folds, thrown over her head in the
shape of a hood, Kate Bellamont left her boudoir
by the door that communicated with the main body

of the house. With light and hasty footsteps she
traversed a long passage that led to the library.
She cautiously opened the door, and, evidently to
her surprise and pleasure, found no one within.
She crossed it to an opposite door, which she opened
with the same caution, and found herself in the
family chapel, dimly lighted by two wax tapers
placed upon a small stand before a crucifix. She
gathered the folds of her mantle closer about her
form, and, looking round the obscure apartment to
see if she was observed, kneeled a moment in silent
prayer before the altar, looking heavenward as
she prayed, as if she sought guidance and protection.
She then rose to her feet, and hastily
walked towards a door partly concealed by tapestry,
and passed through it into a conservatory verdant
and fragrant with rare plants. A little wicket
inserted in the Venetian blinds which surrounded
this floral gallery she pushed open, and issued into
the open air and upon a lawn that extended close
up to the foot of the glacis that environed the Rondeel.
She paused an instant ere she crossed the
green, as if hesitating. The delay was but for an
instant; for she directly afterward moved forward
with a rapid pace towards a lofty tree, the topmost
branches of which towered above the walls of the
fort. Its foot was buried in deep shadow, the rising
moon having only touched, as yet, the upper
wall. Beneath it walked a man with a hasty and
impatient tread, who at every third step stopped
and looked towards the Hall with anxious scrutiny.

“'Tis past the hour; the moon is mounting high
in the heavens, and yet she comes not!” he said, as
he paused and surveyed the darkly-shaded lawn that
stretched between him and the mansion. “Cursed
oversight in making this boy my messenger! He
has doubtless told the tale of Fitzroy's fate, and

she'll not meet his murderer. Ha! a form! Hers
in a thousand! She comes! Now aid me, all
good angels!”

He advanced to meet her as she came near the
tree, and said in a low tone, lest he should be over-heard
by the sentry on the parapet above,

“Most kind, dear Kate! Forgive the rude and
angry haste with which I last left you! You are
indeed kind! My strong love told me my appeal
would not be made in vain.”

He kneeled at her feet as he spoke and attempted
to take her hand. She drew back with dignity,
and said with firmness,

“Let this distance be between us. You have
desired to see me!”

“I have. Is there no hope for me, Kate?”

“How mean you?”

“Do you believe me so far steeped in guilt that
heartfelt penitence for what is past will not replace
me in the seat of your affections, which I do
confess most justly I have forfeited? Is there no
hope of pardon for the penitent?”

“The thief found mercy on the cross. Heaven
still forgives the penitent.”

“And will you be less indulgent? I speak not
now of heaven. The seat I have lost is in your
heart! It is there, sweet Kate, I would be replaced!”

“Cease, sir. I came not hither, Robert, to hold
converse on this theme. Your epistle, which
brought me here against my will and better judgment,
discoursed other language; atonement to
Heaven, not to me. If other than your soul's weal
be your aim, then is our conference ended.”

She turned to leave him as she spoke, but he
caught her hand.

“Stay! be not so hasty! I do confess there is

some ground for Rumour's widespread tales, but I
am not so guilty as she'd make me. Is there no
pathway to your forgiveness?”

“Yes, when you have atoned to Heaven!”

“None to your love?”

“None!”

“Nothing's proved!” he cried, with animation;
“I bear the king's commission against piracy.”

“The more guilty then, that, under cover of it,
you commit piracies. This king's commission!
Do not all men know 'twas given thee because you
knew the haunts of a dangerous horde of pirates in
the Indian seas, having been one of them, though
now their foe and rival; and, by giving thee employment,
to keep thee out of mischief?”

“'Tis false!”

“I've heard enough. More I could tell thee of
recent occurrence.”

“Ha, dost thou know—has the boy told—”

“Nothing. I know enough. Your guilt is written
out upon the sky! He that runs may read it!
Go on; slay and pillage. You have a love of human
blood, and, like the wolf, who, once tasting it,
will touch no other, glut thyself till satiate.”

“Kate!”

“Away, sir! Speak not, come not near me!
Thy touch, thy very glance is pollution.”

She turned to fly towards the Hall as she spoke,
but, darting forward, he caught her by the arm.

“By the cross! if you will act the queen, then
will I play the king. I have been an angler, and
have learned from it a lesson in love. My letter to
thee was but a hook cunningly baited with a gilded
fly I knew you would snap at! I have given
thee line enough, and now will draw thee in captive!”

He threw his arm about her as he spoke, and

was bearing her around the bastion of the fort towards
his boat, which, by making a circuit from his
vessel round the bay and approaching the town on
the North River side, he had succeeded in running
into a little cove west of the Rondeel unperceived.
The surprise of the maiden was at first so great
as to deprive her of the power of speech. But, as
she was borne round the fort by his strong arm,
she said, in a tone of perfect self-command,

“Unhand me, Lester! Release me. I forgive
you.”

“You are mine, proud beauty!” he replied,
through his clinched teeth. “I have been the plaything
of thy pride full long.”

“Unhand me, sir.”

“Pardon me if I am somewhat rough,” he said,
ironically; “on shipboard I will atone for it.”

“Heaven, then, has given me this in my hour of
need,” she cried, snatching a pistol from his belt,
and by a sudden effort disengaging herself and
springing away from him several feet. As she
spoke she levelled it against his person.

“Ha, ha! my pretty one, you do the heroine
excellently. Give me that pretty toy, sweet Kate,”
he said, advancing towards her; “it becomes not
a lady's fingers.”

“Back, sir,” she replied with resolution, presenting
it full at his breast.

“Nay, nay, then.”

He sprung upon her at the same instant to secure
the weapon, when she cried,

“God forgive me, then!” and fired.

Instantly he released her wrist, which he had
seized, with a cry of pain mingled with an exclamation
of rage and disappointment.

The report of the pistol was answered by the
roll of a drum on the Rondeel, and was followed

by the noise of alarm and confusion in the town.
Kate fled like a deer towards the Hall, while Kyd,
wrapping his cloak about his left arm, which was
bleeding freely, glided beneath the locust-trees that
surrounded the Bowling Green, and gained his boat.

“Shall we pull back by the way we came?”
asked the coxswain.

“No. Give me the helm.”

The man obeyed his stern voice, and, after the
boat had cleared the rocks, he steered her directly
across the line of fire from the Rondeel towards
his vessel.

Without hesitating, the men pulled steadily and
in silence in the face of the fort, and, as the moon
was now up, they could not remain long undiscovered.
In a few seconds they were challenged from
the battery. There was no reply. A second time
they were hailed, but still the boat kept on her
course straight for the brig.

“Fire!” cried a voice. “'Tis `the Kyd.”'

Instantly, one after another, the heavy guns opened
upon them from the parapet, but the balls went
roaring through the air high above their heads.
Still steadily and silently the boat kept on her
course. A discharge of firearms followed with
more effect. Three of the eight oarsmen were
shot dead as they sat, and scarcely one escaped
unhurt. The desperate helmsman sat stern and
silent, and only with an impatient wave of his hand
bid them row on. A second volley reached them,
and but three oarsmen remained seated and labouring
faintly at their oars. Kyd left the helm and
caught the fourth oar as the dead man dropped it,
and, cheering them on, soon reached his brig, amid
a third volley that rattled around him like hail.

“Ship your oars,” he cried, as they came alongside,
rising to his feet.

Not a man moved.

“Spring to the bows and fend off!” he shouted.

There was no reply; the men sat upright, and
swayed their bodies to and fro, and still pulled at
their sweeps!

The boat, at the same instant, came against the
brig's counter with a shock, and the three men
were thrown from their seats backward to the bottom
of the boat. They were dead! He had been
pulling an oar the last few seconds with corpses.
He shuddered and sprung up the side.

Instantly the brig got under weigh, and, sailing up
East River to Hell Gate, passed through the dangerous
pass, and came to, not far from the Witch's
Isle. A boat was lowered, and Kyd descended
into it and landed there. As he entered the hut
the witch was seated on the ground over a fire, rocking
her body to and fro, and chanting a wild song.

“Welcome, Robert Kyd,” she said, without
turning round. “Umph! I smell blood!” she cried
the instant after. “Thou hast been at thy old trade.
Hast thou had revenge?”

“I have. His vessel is mine. Him I have
slain.”

“Did I not promise thee this?” she said, rising
and speaking with triumph. “Now thou art come
to do my will and to fulfil thy oath.”

“I have seen her within the hour,” he said, with
settled hate.

“And she has scorned thee?”

“Yes. I tried love at first, but it would not do,
and—”

“You then tried force?”

“I did,” he said, ferociously.

“And she is now in thy state-cabin?”

“No. I bore her part way to my boat, when she
drew a pistol from my belt and shot me here.”

“And she—”

“The garrison was instantly in arms; the town
rose clamorous; she fled like a deer, and mocked
pursuit. I barely escaped to my boat, and reached
my brig with the loss of every man. By Heaven!
I believe a score of balls struck my person, yet
they seemed to fall from my cloak harmlessly like
hailstones.”

“It was the amulet!”

“True, woman! Yet I was wounded by a pistol
in this girl's hand. Your charm here failed.”

“No. Did I not tell thee—if not, be it known
to thee, Robert Kyd—that ne'er devil wrought a
charm a woman may not undo. Ball from men
can harm thee not, but if a woman use the weapon
the charm is naught. What wilt thou now do?”

“Return to Ireland and lay claim to the earldom.
Perhaps, when I leave my present course of
life, she will listen to me. By the cross! I am
ashamed to woo a noble maiden whom I have
loved, and still love, so roughly.”

“I will woo her for thee.”

“Nay.”

“I will not heed thy nay! She must be thine.
Yet I like this determination to assume your earldom.
Go bury your treasures that are here, in
some safe place, and sail for Ireland. After thou
art become Lord of Lester, they can then be removed,
and enable thee to support thy rank with
princely state.”

“I will take them with me, Elpsy.”

“Thou wilt lose them, then, if pursued by a cruiser
and forced to desert your vessel. Bury them
here, and, when thou art an earl, thou canst come
for them thyself, and bear them home without suspicion.”

“Perhaps you are right; none will see in the

Earl of Lester the outlaw Kyd. Save thyself and
Kate of Bellamont, the secret is locked from all
human knowledge.”

“Her pride will keep her from revealing it, and
my projects for thy aggrandizement seal my own
lips,” said the sorceress. “Here are the treasures
which for three years thou hast accumulated,” she
added, removing a stone from a crevice in the rock
against which her hut was built, and exposing, by
a torchlight, a cavity therein filled with vast piles
of gold and silver coins, countless rings for the ears
and fingers, cups of chased gold set with precious
stones, bracelets, ducal coronets sparkling with
diamonds, and innumerable jewels of every description.
He surveyed the valuable deposite, and then,
shaking his head, slowly said,

“They have cost much blood, Elpsy.”

“Therefore should they be well kept. Take
them with thee, and hide them in some secret place,
easy of access from the sea, till thou hast need of
them.”

“I know a spot where three tides meet, which
will be a safe repository for them.”

“Call thy men and bear them to thy vessel.”

“Wilt thou go with me to perform the rites?”

“I have other things to do in town. I have
made a discovery there that has filled my soul with
joy! Ho, I will tell it you when you return, for
it concerns you, boy. Cusha shall go with thee.
Slave, appear!”

From an obscure corner of the hut the hideous
African made his appearance, his malicious and
cunning features glowing with the hateful look they
habitually wore.

“Slave, take with thee thy charms and follow
thy master here! See that the gold is buried with
all the rites of our mystic art.”

He prostrated himself to the floor, and left her to
obey her commands.

In a short time the pirate's crew had conveyed
the treasure from the hut to their boat, and thence
on board the brig, and before daybreak the vessel
was many leagues up the Sound, steering an easterly
course. The succeeding morning she doubled
the easternmost cape of Long Island, and, altering
her course to the southwest, stood towards Sandy
Hook under a stiff breeze from the southeast. By
night she entered the Sound between Sandy Hook
and the south side of Staten Island, and, steering
directly across the mouth of the Raritan, anchored
close to an elevated peninsula that formed the
northern shore of the river.

The report of the pistol fired by Kate Bellamont
not only alarmed the garrison and the town, but
brought out the earl from the library, whither he
had just retired with his friends, after having taken
the rounds of the threatened town.

“What means this, dearest Kate?” he cried,
meeting her flying across the lawn.

“Nothing, nothing, father!” she gasped, flinging
herself into his arms.

“My child is not injured? What is this firing and
sudden alarm? Why are you here, and flying as if
for life?” he asked, with anxious solicitude.

“The Kyd—the pirate!” she exclaimed, with
indignation.

“Ha!” he cried, bounding forward towards the
Rondeel, and thence instinctively to the nearest
shore where he anticipated he should meet him.
A boat was just putting off. Without delay he
hastened back to the Rondeel, and, taking the commander
by the arm, led him to the rampart, and said,

“There is the pirate's cutter. Bring your guns
to bear upon her.”

The result of the fire is already known. When
he saw that the boat reached the brig, and that she
immediately got under weigh, he left the fort and
returned to the Hall to seek his daughter. On his
way he met Fitzroy, who had just arrived at the
Hall, after having, through the governor, chartered
a Bristol ship that was lying in the East Dock
ready for sea, with the intention of putting on board
of her the guns of the Rondeel, and attacking Kyd
as he was at anchor in the harbour.

“She can be got ready for sea in twenty-four
hours, my lord,” he said with animation, as he met
the earl. “But what is this confusion and heavy
firing?”

“You are well met, Fitzroy! Go to my daughter,
while I return to the fort! The bucanier has
landed, so far as I can learn, and like to have carried
Kate off, I believe. But I have had no time
to inquire.”

“I will see her at once,” said Fitzroy, leaving
him hastily.

“You will find her in her boudoir. I will remain
and see that our defences are kept up! Ha!
the pirate is under sail, and is moving up the Sound.”

“He is going to sea again, doubtless; but, as
our guns command both the channels out, he has
taken the way by Long Island Sound.”

“Heaven grant it be so!” said the earl, as he entered
the Rondeel.

Kate Bellamont was walking her room with a
rapid pace, a flushed cheek, and a flashing eye as
Fitzroy entered.

“Ha, Fitzroy, you have come,” she said, with
the tone and bearing of Elizabeth of England
when insult had touched her pride. “I am glad
to see you! I have been insulted.”

“Then you shall be avenged!” he said, taking
her hand.

“Do you promise it?”

“By the love I bear you, I swear it!”

“Avenge me—wipe out the stain my woman's
pride has suffered, and I will be thy slave!”

“Nay, dearest Kate, I would rather thou wouldst
be my bride,” he said, smiling and kissing her
cheek.

“Rupert Fitzroy, touch me not! Think not
of love! When thou hast captured this freebooter
—when I behold him bound at my feet so low that
I can place my foot upon his neck, I will then be
thy bride. Ay, to the music of his clanking chains
shall be performed the marriage rites.”

“If not my own honour, thine at least demands
his capture and death. Catharine of Bellamont,”
he said, kneeling before her and solemnly elevating
his hands, “I swear by the cross that is the emblem
of our holy faith that thou shalt be avenged!”

She looked on his animated features a moment
steadily with her full black eyes, and then said,

“'Tis enough! By thy urgency in this matter
thou wilt show thy love for me, and by my determination
to press it to its issue thou mayest construe
mine for thee. I am now calm. Here is
the flag I have worked for thee. It bears thy initials,
with the arms of my house, conjoined. Take
it, and beneath it win thy bride.”

“Lady, it shall be done, or I will never see thy
face more!”

“Ay, it should be for the world's weal that it
should be done,” she said, with eloquent fervour,
“when every breeze comes tainted with the smell
of blood; when wondering crowds, each with a
tale that outweighs that his fellow bears, in nimble
speech deal out to one another hourly marvels!
When in bolts, bars, and locks before unknown in
this peaceful land, each household, for leagues

along the coast, seeks ill security against midnight
dangers! When the fisherman fears to launch his
boat, and towns count their strength and weigh the
odds (as if a foe were thundering at their gates)
against sudden surprise. When he who spreads
such terror is captured, I will then be thine!”

“For this very enterprise am I now preparing.
Within this last half hour I have got a ship that
sails like the wind, which, with arms and ammunition
on board, will place me on a better deck than
that I have lost.”

“Why did you delay to tell this, and lead me to
blame you in my thoughts for supineness?”

“I would have kept it secret from thee till I had
sailed.”

“Wherefore?”

“Having,” he said, with hesitation, “some regard
for your former love—friendship, I should
say.”

“Love it once was, therefore speak out and call
it love!”

“I feared this might lead you to dissuade me
from it. But this sudden attitude you have assumed
fills me with surprise and admiration.”

“Rupert Fitzroy, have you not been told from
what peril I was but now saved? Have you forgotten
how, in a jealous fit, you have unawares let
drop that Robert Kyd, with his false lips, had said
—no matter what—but, being false, can never be
forgiven? Until this man is captive and lying at her
feet in chains, Catharine of Bellamont's hand shall
not be given in marriage. You have heard me,
Fitzroy?” she added, retiring to the farther part of
her room, as if she would be left alone.

“I have, and you shall be obeyed,” he replied,
leaving the boudoir.

The next morning but one a merchant-ship was

hauled from the dock in which she had been several
weeks lying, undergoing repairs; and two guns
from the Rondeel, and several from the other forts,
were placed on board of her, making eight in all.
With a bold and willing crew, most of whom had
volunteered on the service, at sundown she got under
weigh, under the command of Fitzroy, accompanied
by Edwin his secretary, and put to sea in
search of the bucanier. She sailed through the Narrows
instead of Hell Gate, a fisherman having informed
him, as they were getting under weigh, that
he had seen a vessel answering the description of
the pirate sailing towards the mouth of the Raritan;
and as sufficient time had elapsed to have enabled
him to sail up through the Sound and double
Montauk Point, Fitzroy determined to go in pursuit
of the vessel mentioned by the fisherman.

The promontory off which Kyd had anchored at
the mouth of the Raritan, now called Perth Amboy,
descended on the south side to the river above
named, with a gentle inclination. On the east it
was washed by the waters of Staten Island Sound,
and the island which gives name to it stretched
east of it, with its high wooded bank far towards
the north, till it terminated in New-York Bay. On
the summit of the promontory was a small rustic
church, with a slender spire towering high above
the surrounding trees and humble hamlets. Around
the church was a primitive graveyard, with here and
there the unpretending tombstone which designated
the last resting-place of some English Protestant
or French Huguenot. From this rural cemetery
was a wide view of island, main, and ocean.

It was twilight when the bucanier's vessel anchored
beneath this promontory. At midnight
the little churchyard presented a singular scene.
In a deep shadow cast by the moon on the west

side of the lonely church, were gathered a group
of men—the pale light shining broadly upon their
rude costume and savage features, mingled with
the red flame of dark lanterns, giving them a singularly
wild appearance. They were standing with
superstitious awe round an open grave, from which
the fresh body had just been dishumed and was
now lying white and glaring in its shroud upon the
ground not far off. Over the grave stood the wizard
Cusha, and beside it glittered heaps of treasure.
Apart walked Kyd in thought, occasionally turning
to the grave, and then walking with quicker pace
and uttering his thoughts half aloud:

“Though reason tells me there is nothing in it,
and laughs at charms, spells, and incantations
curling her lip with incredulity, I cannot get the
mastery o'er this superstition, but live its very
slave, using the instruments of her dark craft as if
my destiny and they were linked, yet scorning
while I use them.”

“All's ready, sir, black wizard and all,” said
the mate, approaching him and interrupting his
meditations.

“You treat too lightly these ceremonies, mate!
There may be deeper meaning in them than you
dream of.”

“If the infernal pit is at the bottom of them,
they are deep enough! This negro wizard looks
ugly enough to be the devil's grandfather.”

“No more, Loff. Is all prepared?”

“All.”

“Then give orders to the men.”

“Ay, ay, sir. All hands to bury money!”

The pirates gathered round the grave, part of
their number thrown into the shadow cast by the
tower of the church, the remainder exposed to
the full light of the moon. And moon scarcely

ever shown on stranger or wilder scene. The
negro was seated sullenly, with his head on his
knees, upon the pile of grave-dirt, nor had he spoken
until Kyd now approached and addressed him.

“If, as thou dost profess, dark slave, power to
thee is delegated, by her whom thou hast served,
to deal with beings of another world, by this amulet
I wear I command thy service and obedience!”

As he spoke he held the amulet up to his view.

The wizard crossed his hands on his breast, and
bowed himself to the ground.

“Cusha is thy slave. Speak.”

“There lies heaped beside thee countless treasure—jewels,
stones of price, gold and silver coin
untold—each ounce of which has been purchased
by its weight of human blood. What is so dearly
bought should be safely stored and guarded. Perhaps
some future day, awearied of the ocean, we
may give up our roving life and settle down honest
country gentlemen. We shall then need it to buy
men's tongues and memories! Now perform the
mystic orgies prescribed for such occasions.”

The wizard slowly rose to his feet, and walked
deliberately three times around the grave, the pirates
giving back as he walked in superstitious
alarm. The third time he began to chant, in a low
key, unintelligibly; but, gradually rising in wildness
and distinctness, he, with strange gestures
and contortions of form and face, broke forth into
the following chant:

He elevated his arms as he sung this in an attitude
of wild devotion.

He stretched his arms towards the sea as he
chanted, and a sudden dash and roar of its waves
upon the beach rose to the ears of the listeners
with an appalling sound.

He struck the earth with his foot as he repeated
the words, and then, prostrating himself, kissed the
ground.

The wind seemed to sigh through the trees and
to howl about the church tower as he recited the
mystic verse. Then, with a singular union of all
the gestures and ceremonies he had hitherto used,
he chanted, in a tone that echoed like a chorus of
demons through the surrounding forests,

“It's an accursed lie!” suddenly cried Loff, the
mate, who, with the pirate crew, had been an appalled
listener and spectator of the scene.

“Hist!” exclaimed Kyd, in a suppressed voice,
forcibly grasping his arm; “a word of incredulity
will destroy the spell.”

“I have too much respect for my soul, captain,
to let this black son of darkness sell it to the devil
so glibly.”

“Silence! Observe him!”

The wizard again began to chant, acknowledging
the presence of each element by some appropriate
gesture as he named it:

He then seized a torch held by one of the men,
and waved it to and fro above his head.

From a cruise that he had placed beside him, he
took up water in his palm and cast it into the air.

He waved his arms upward, and a sound like
the rushing of wind passed over them, and every
torch flickered with the sudden agitation of the atmosphere.

He cast into the air a handful of the grave-dirt,
which fell back to the ground with a hollow noise
like the rumbling sound of an earthquake.

Every man stood appalled. Suddenly he ceased,
and took, with much form and ceremony, a black
cat from a pouch slung at his waist. He elevated
her in one hand, while in the other he held a drawn
knife above her, and chanted, turning the animal
slowly round,

He waved his knife at the repetition of the second
couplet thrice above the grave, and at the close
of the last line severed the head of the animal,
which, with the body, he dropped into it. Instantly
there issued flames and dense smoke from
it, which first lighted up the scene wildly for a
moment, and then left it in murky darkness.
When the black volumes of vapour rolled away,
the wizard was standing astride the grave in the

attitude of a sacrificer, his blood-dripping knife in
his outstretched arm: he then began to chant,

Then turning to Kyd, he cried,

“Think he means the Holy Bible, Captain Kyd?”
demanded Loff, with religious horror.

“Silence!” cried the pirate chief.

He took from the folds of his cloak as he spoke
a thick book, and gave it to the wizard, who received
it with three several prostrations. He then
tore it in pieces and cast the leaves into the grave.
Instantly blue flame rose from it to a great height,
thunder rolled in startling peals, while the most
vivid lightning hissed and glared around them; at
the same instant the bell in the church tower tolled
without human aid with a sound so deep and solemn,
so wild and unearthly, that every man was
filled with consternation and horror. The wizard
alone stood unmoved; and standing with one foot
upon the treasure, chanted,

“Thus much is over,” said Kyd, advancing.
“Pour the coin and jewels into the grave.”

“Shiver my timbers! if I understand this!” exclaimed
Loff. “There is more of Old Hoofs to
do in the matter than I expected, or you wouldn't
have caught me here. Umph! this black wizard
smells of brimstone!”

After all the treasure was poured into the grave,
the wizard, looking, as the moon shone upon his
form and features, more like a demon than human,
stood across it, and looked around malevolently
upon the pirates as they leaned upon their spades
prepared to refill it. After a moment's silence he
began, in the same wild, monotonous chant:

“If I had my doubts before about his being
leagued with Beelzebub, not one have I left now,”
said Loff, with indignation. “I can see a fellow
walk a plank or seized up to the yardarm, but I
am too tender-hearted to see such a thing done as
he hints at in his infernal rhymes.”

The whole pirate crew seemed to be animated by
the same feelings. At first general consternation
prevailed; but, gathering confidence, they whispered
together, casting the while revengeful looks towards
the wizard. Suddenly, by one impulse, they laid
their hands, without speaking, upon him, and cast
him headlong into the grave; and then, acting as
one man, filled it up with its living occupant in a
moment of time. The first action of Kyd was to
spring forward and rescue him; but the determined
attitude of his men, whose minds were too highly
wrought up to be held under control, checked
the impulse. He stood by till the grave was
smoothed over, so that not a vestige of it remained,
and was then about to command them to return
to the brig, which was seen through the trees
lying at her anchor near the land: but ere he could

give the order, the flame of a gun fired from her
flashed upon his eyes, followed by a loud report, that
echoed in many a deep, rumbling note along the
wooded shore.

“A signal of alarm!” he cried; “to your boats
all!”

He hastened forward to the verge of the promontory
where the prospect was unobstructed, and, casting
his eyes down the narrow strait that opens seaward
between Staten Island and Sandy Hook, beheld
not a mile off, coming round the headland, a large
ship, her tall sails glancing like snow in the moonlight.
Loud and clear rung his voice hastening his
men to the brig, while gun after gun flashed and
thundered from her, calling them on board to her defence.
In less than five minutes three boats loaded
with the pirates put off from the shore and pulled
swiftly in the direction of the brig. Kyd stood up
steering the foremost one. But the wind blew
steadily and strong in from sea, and the strange ship
came on so fast that she was soon no farther off
from their vessel than they themselves. It was
plain she knew what she was about.

“Strain every nerve, men!” he cried, in an even,
determined voice that reached every ear, while its
coolness was more effectual in inspiring confidence
than loud shouts would have been. “Pull together
and steadily! She must not reach the brig before
us. Now, all together! Lively, lively! A
few strokes and we shall reach her.”

But they were yet several hundred yards from
her, and the stranger came ploughing his way down
without taking in a sail or altering his course, save
just enough to enable him to cut off the boats, the
approach of which, as well as the relative position
of the brig with the shore, he was able to discern by
the aid of the moon, which filled the atmosphere

with brilliant light. In the mean while the brig cut
her anchor, and, swinging round, with her diminished
force directed a feeble and irregular fire towards
her. But she kept on her course in majestic silence,
without returning it and without apparent injury;
and, ere the boats could reach their vessel, she sailed
in between it and them, and poured a broadside
into each. The brig felt the fire in every spar; but
the boats, being so low in the water, escaped without
injury, the shot flying high above the heads of
the pirates, and crashing among the forests on the
shore. The brig was now evidently in the power of
the ship; and Kyd, finding that it would be impossible
to reach her, shouted through the smoke, that
settled thickly over the water, to his mate Lawrence
whom he had left on board with but a dozen men,

“Let them not take her! Blow her up, and to
your boat!”

His voice was distinctly heard by every man
both in the brig and ship.

“Hard up! hard, hard!” was instantly heard in
the clear voice of Fitzroy; and the ship, which was
steering so as to lay the brig aboard, fell off and
stood in towards shore. The moment afterward
a small boat was seen to put off from the brig,
which a few seconds afterward blew up with a
terrible explosion, suddenly turning night, for many
miles around, into broad day, and shaking the earth
with the tremendous concussion. For an instant
the air was filled with a shower of missiles, and
trains of fire lighting up sea, forest, and boats with
a momentary and wild glare; then all sunk into
darkness, and the pale moon once more struggled
to assert her right to the empire of her own gentle
light, which had been so suddenly invaded.

“Now, my men, we are left to our own resources,”
said Kyd. “There is not water enough

for this ship to pass up this narrow sound. Let
us pull through it. Who our pursuer is I have no
idea: a small corvette, sent expressly by the king
in pursuit, doubtless. But let us do our best to get
off. We shall find some trader in the harbour, and
will cast ourselves on board of her. There is no
other chance!”

His address was received with a shout, and the
four boats, Lawrence having now joined them, began
to pull northward through the Staten Island
Sound. The ship, in the mean while, after recovering
the ground she had lost in avoiding the explosion,
stood steadily on after the boats, which were
not a quarter of a mile ahead, occasionally firing a
bowchaser at the little fleet. The chase continued
for half an hour, the pirates keeping the lead gallantly,
and, being enabled to cross shoals by their
lighter draught, occasionally they got far ahead,
while the ship was slowly following the circuitous
channel.

“She has a pilot who knows the ground,” said
Kyd, as he beheld the ship navigate safely an intricate
reach of the narrow passage. “If he clears
the Red Bank we have just come across, he will
do what ship has never done before—go through into
York Bay! Now she comes to it!” he cried, with
animation, rising in his boat and watching the advance
of the ship across the shoal. Suddenly he
exclaimed, while a shout went up from the men,
who were so interested at this crisis of the pursuit
that they forgot to pull at the oar,

“She has struck, and heavily too! There goes
her fore-topgallant-mast like a pipestem!”

“She will off with the flood,” said Lawrence.

“It is full flood now. She will stick there as
long as two timbers hold together, unless they
pitch their guns overboard,” said Loff.

“Ho, my lads, all!” suddenly cried Kyd, addressing
them; “she is now ours. Back water!
Let us carry her as she lies!”

He was answered by a loud hurrah, and the
boats' heads were instantly turned towards the ship,
which was about half a mile off. The boats shot
forward with velocity, pushing before them vast
surges which their ploughing bows turned up from
the surface. They had got within half their distance
of her, when boats were lowered from every
part of her, and, as if by magic, filled with men.

“They are on the alert! He who commands
her knows his business!” said Kyd, who, as his
boats approached, had stood up in the stern of his
own, with his drawn cutlass extended towards the
vessel, inspiring his men and panting for the conflict.
But, at this indication of their readiness to
receive him, he suddenly cried, turning and waving
his hand to the boats in the rear,

“Hold on!”

He then surveyed the enemy, and said in a calm,
deep tone, every accent of which was expressive
of his determined purpose,

“There are six boats, with at least twenty men
in each; we number fifty or sixty only. Nevertheless,
we must fight them!”

This proposition, notwithstanding the previous
ardour of the crew, was received with a universal
murmur of dissent.

“We are willing to pull towards New-York
Bay, Captain Kyd,” said Loff, “and take possession
of some of the craft there; but there are too
many odds against us to risk fighting yonder
barges. Besides, on the bows of the largest boat
I can see a gun relieved against the wake of the
moon.”

“It is too true. We shall be likely to have the

worst of it,” said Kyd, suppressing his rage, which
was ready to burst forth at the refusal of his men,
and satisfied on a second glance that it would be
useless to attempt, with his ill-armed crew, to capture
a flotilla of boats so well prepared both for
attack and defence. “Put away, and let us get
through this narrow sound at our best speed! If
they pursue us we will lead them a long chase.”

He was answered by a cheer from his men and
a simultaneous dash of the numerous oars into the
water, under the force of which the boats moved
up the strait with direct and rapid motion. At
the same instant a gun of heavy metal was discharged
from the bows of the headmost boat of
their pursuers, loaded with grape; but the leaden
shower fell far short of them; while, at the same
instant, with loud cheers, all the barges left the side
of the ship and commenced hot pursuit of the pirate
boats.

“A twelve-pounder, by its report,” said Kyd,
“and it would have done mischief if it had been elevated
half an inch higher. Pull, men! they will
shoot better the next time!” he shouted, waving his
sword with animation and cheering them on.

Away they flew, pursuing and pursued! At one
moment the ship's boats would be almost upon them,
when the pirates would shoot from the main channel
into some creek or bayou intersecting the marshy
shores, and re-enter the Sound far above them. At
intervals the twelve-pounder broke with a loud roar
upon the night, echoing among the woods of Staten
Island and the Jersey shore in multiplied reverberations;
and, like a hurricane, its cloud of bullets
would rush along the air, or plough and skip along
the surface of the water, but with little effect. On
they went, pursuing and pursued, neither yielding
or showing signs of fatigue. At length the moon

hung low over the western horizon, and shone with
a cold, watery look; in the east flakes of light
spotted the sky, and the darkness began to break
before the dawn. Gradually the ashy hue of the
sky became clearer, and changed to a delicate pink;
and then, waxing brighter, grew to vermillion, till
the whole eastern sky blushed with the incipient
dawn. The clouds that hung about the path of
the coming sun began to turn out edges of gold,
and the sky to the zenith to radiate with beams of
glorious dies. The whole heaven, even down to
the low west, had changed its livery of blue for the
rose, while the jealous moon, disdaining to look on
a rival whose coming was so gorgeously heralded,
threw a snowy veil over her brow, and sunk, scarce
visible on the brow of morning, beneath the horizon!
Suddenly up rose the sun and filled the
world with light!

As the day approached the hostile parties became
plainly visible to one another, and were able to count
each other's force. At sunrise the pirate's boats
entered the bay of New-York, leaving Staten Island
on the right, and closely followed within a
third of a mile by their pursuers, pulled directly towards
the town, which, with its wall and Rondeel,
was seen rising from the water a league distant.
Not far from the shore, between the Governor's
Island and the town, lay three or four small Dutch
yachts at anchor, waiting for the change of tide
to take them up to Albany. It was evident, from
the course he took, that it was the intention of Kyd
to throw himself on board one of these vessels,
and effect the escape of himself and crew. This
seemed to be the idea suggested to the mind of the
leader of the pursuing boats, and he urged his men
forward in the most animated and eager manner.
At the stern of his launch, which took the lead,

and in the bows of which was mounted a twelve-pound
carronade, floated a silken flag, on which
were conspicuous the initials of his name and the
crest of the house of Bellamont.

“By the cross!” exclaimed Kyd, as the sunlight
struck on this flag, and a passing breeze unfolded
it to his eye as he turned to watch the chase, “'tis
the same flag!”

“What flag?” inquired Loff, taking a pocket
spyglass from his jacket.

“Ha! you have a glass! Give it me!” he cried,
hastily. “By Heaven!” he cried, after a moment's
surveying, “'tis the same! The very initials.
Now the wind opens it. 'Tis the same with the
earl's crest! What can it mean? This youth Edwin
may have become her champion since I so
foolishly gave him his liberty! He, and none else,
commands the barges! But there is too much skill
displayed in directing the pursuit to emanate from
a boy like him! Yet why this flag? Among the
dense mass of heads beneath I cannot distinguish
the leader's features!”

“Shall we board the nearest yacht?” asked Loff.
“We shall soon be close upon them.”

Kyd turned and found that he was within a mile
of three sloops that lay under the guns of the Rondeel.
He looked back and saw that the barges
were coming with increased speed, and would be
up with him by the time he could reach the vessels.
He cheered on his men with every gesture
and word of encouragement; but, with all their exertions,
he perceived that at every dip of their
sweeps his pursuers gained on him.

At length the carronade from the leading boat
opened upon them for the first time since sunrise
and with terrible effect upon the nearest boat, commanded
by Lawrence. Nearly every bullet told in

the plank or flesh; and the ill-fated boat, which
seemed to have received the whole charge from
the piece, instantly went down, leaving (so effectually
had it been converted into their coffin) only
Lawrence and one of his comrades floating wounded
upon the surface.

“For the yacht—never stop to pick him up! for
the yacht! Your lives depend on your reaching
it!” shouted Kyd, with desperation. “Pull, ye
dogs! Strong! together all! Bend to your
sweeps like devils! In five minutes we'll be on
board.”

But the crew of the sloop, consisting of three or
four men only, were already aware of their danger;
and, cutting their cable, hoisted their jib and mainsail
with what haste the occasion demanded, and,
aided by the wind and tide, moved swiftly down
the harbour beyond their reach. The other vessels
followed this example as rapidly as possible;
and, ere the pirates could get alongside, they were
sailing away at a rate that defied pursuit.

“We are foiled by the devil's own aid!” said
Kyd. He paused a moment. His pursuers were
close upon him, and, save the shore, there was no
avenue of escape. To delay and fight with his reduced
number, even if his jaded and dispirited men
would consent to it, would have been certain capture
and death. For an instant he paused, and
then said, in the calm, deliberate tone he was accustomed
to use in times of most imminent peril,

“We must pull in shore and fight our way
across the town to the East River, where we can
cut out one of the vessels in the dock. There is
no alternative! The town's people will scarce resist
us! Will you land and let me lead you,
men?”

“Ay, to the shore!” was the general cry; and

swiftly the boats cut their way towards the foot of
the Rondeel, which they approached on the western
side, out of the range of its few remaining guns.
Close in hot pursuit came the barges, pouring in
upon them a constant and fatal discharge of fire-arms.
The carronade was no longer fired, as its
rebound so materially checked the speed of the boat
that it soon fell behind all the others.

“Leave your oars and draw your cutlasses!”
cried Kyd, as the boats struck the beach near the
spot where he had landed when he attempted to
convey Kate Bellamont to it. It was not far from
the Rondeel, on the west of the governor's house.

With a shout the pirates bounded on shore, about
forty in number, and, hastily forming in a body,
headed by Kyd, with drawn sabres and pistols,
were rapidly led by him around the base of the fort
and across the lawn in the direction of Jost Stoll's
tavern and the West Dock. The garrison in the
Rondeel was so taken by surprise at the boldness
of the bucaniers, that, before they could prepare to
dispute their landing, they were moving at a rapid
and steady pace across the grounds in front of the
White Hall towards the wicket that led into the
town. But here they were met with unexpected
resistance. At the head of full eighty burghers,
whom he had hastily armed and assembled to oppose
this strange invasion from the sea, the Earl of
Bellamont advanced upon them through the gate.

“Be men!” cried the earl to his command. “Remember,
though unused to arms, you now fight for
your homes, your wives, your children, your own
lives, and all ye hold dear. Charge them ere they
can form their body!”

The governor himself rushed forward, sword in
hand, as he spoke, the sturdy burghers with a shout
pressed on, and the two parties were immediately

engaged in a sanguinary conflict. The pirates
fought with demoniac fury, while the townsmen,
excited by the smell of powder and the clash of steel,
dealt blows that told wherever they fell. Nevertheless,
the bucaniers, by long habit, discipline, and
indifference to danger, got the better of them, though
scarcely numbering half their force, and drove them,
in spite of the cries and commands of the earl, towards
the gate. Everywhere Kyd was present,
and high above the sounds of conflict was heard
his voice cheering and encouraging. But, though
victors for the moment, they were soon confronted
with a fresh and better disciplined foe. The barges
had by this time landed their crews, and they now
advanced upon them with loud cries and in overpowering
numbers.

“Face them! Fight each man for his own life!”
shouted Kyd, as, on turning from the discomfiture
of the burghers, he beheld the advance of his pursuers.

The combat was now waged with terrific fury.
Now the victor, now the vanquished, Kyd attacked
and defended with a degree of skill and courage
that, employed in a better cause, should have had
a better result. At length his men, being broken
into small parties, were overpowered, and either
slain or disarmed. He alone defended himself
against a numerous division that had pressed him
towards an oak, the branches of which grew near
the window of Kate Bellamont's boudoir. They
would have cut him down by mere force of numbers
if they had not suddenly been restrained by
the commanding voice of Fitzroy, who hitherto had
been engaged in another part of the field.

“Hold, men! Back, and leave him to me!” he
cried, advancing towards Kyd through the lane
opened to him by his men.

“Ha! does the sea give back its dead?” cried
Kyd, with horror, dropping his red cutlass and
gazing upon him with mortal fear. “Can it be!
Speak, I conjure thee, if thou art flesh and blood!”

“Monster, this day shall terminate thy career
of crime!” replied Fitzroy, preparing to cut him
down.

“By the mass! flesh or blood, I'll have a bout
with thee!” cried Kyd, reassured by his voice,
seizing a sabre from one of the men he had slain.
“Ho! for Kate Bellamont!”

“Ha, villain! For thyself, then!”

A fierce broadsword combat ensued between
them, and continued for a few seconds with equal
skill and energy. At length the sword of Fitzroy
caught in the strand of hair about Kyd's neck and
severed it. Instantly the amulet it sustained dropped
to the ground. Kyd's confidence and courage
seemed to fail him at once, and, striking at random,
he was soon disarmed by his cooler adversary, and
his life placed at his mercy.

“Strike!” said the bucanier, despondingly.

The victor was about to obey, when his uplifted
arm was arrested by a shriek from the balcony, and
the voice of Kate Bellamont crying,

“Spare him! save him, Fitzroy!”

The point of his weapon sunk at his feet, and he
bent low to her in acquiescence; then turning to
his men, he said,

“Bind him. My lord, what shall be done with
him? He is at your disposal.”

“Bear him to the prison of the Rondeel, there
to await his trial!”

Silent and desponding, yet still holding himself
with a dignified and lofty bearing, the captive pirate
chief was borne, with his few surviving followers,
to a dungeon in the Rondeel, while the earl, Fitzroy,

and Edwin (who had not participated in the
contest) together entered the Hall, leaving their victorious
party to clear the ensanguined field of the
melancholy traces of the morning's fight.

6. CHAPTER VI.

M`Leod.

Three weeks after the events just recorded, in a
cell built within the massive wall of the Rondeel,
sat the terrible pirate chief whose name had so long
spread terror throughout the world. It was nearly
midnight. He stood by a grated window, that looked
towards the moonlit bay, in deep meditation, occasionally
starting, with clanking chains, as some
burning thought set his brain on fire. All at once
he fancied he heard a noise, as if some one was
carefully turning the lock in the door of his cell,
wherein was set a grated wicket, through which
the jailer could communicate with him. He started
and fixed his eyes in the direction whence it
proceeded, when he saw it slowly open and a muffled
figure enter. The intruder then closed it carefully
and threw off the mantle. It was Kate Bellamont.
She was pale, and her noble features wore
a sad and anxious look.

“Thou hast sent for me, Lester? so thy jailer told
me.”

“I have,” he said, in the subdued tones of a chastened
spirit. “I would kneel at thy feet and ask
forgiveness for all the wrongs I have done thee!”

“Thou hast wronged thyself, not me, Lester! I
forgive thee.”

“Thanks—a thousand thanks, kind lady!” he
said, overpowered by his feelings. “I dared not
hope you would come to see me. Oh, lady, let me
not presume too much. To-morrow morning I am
to be led forth to receive my sentence. It will be
death.”

“Oh, speak not of it. I know it. Oh God, that
I could stay the hand of justice!”

“Do you feel so much for me?”

“Feel? my heart bleeds for you,” she cried, with
eloquent pathos. “Oh, Lester, Lester, why have
you brought this on yourself?”

“Will you forgive me?”

“May Heaven forgive as freely.”

“Lady—Kate—dearest Kate! I am about to
die. The approach of death fills my soul with
wondrous thoughts, while penitence, like gentle
dew, has strangely softened my heart. The
thoughts of youth come over me like a last-night's
pleasant dream, and I feel as I did when we were
children together! Can you have forgotten our
childhood?”

“Lester, no! Robert, Robert, you will drive me
distracted.”

“Nay, but did you not love me then?” he said,
tenderly taking her hand and drawing her unresistingly
to his heart.

“Oh, sustain me, my good angel!” she cried,
burying her face in her hands; “my heart, my
poor heart!”

“Kate, this world and I have parted, and we
soon must part. I will therefore address you
frankly. I love you even as I first loved you! You
have for years been the spirit of my dreams, the
sun of my waking thoughts. Tell me at this solemn
hour—see, the dawn of the last morning I shall
ever know on earth is streaking the east—speak,
and let the thought of it bless my dying hour—do
you love me still?”

“Oh, Robert, ask me not. I am betrothed—I—”

“Nay, I ask not for the confession of thy love
for me; I look not upon you with human love; but
with the feelings of a dying man, who longs for
some cheering word to sweeten the draught of
death. Tell me, sweet Kate, that you love me
still!”

She could not resist the solemn earnestness of
his appeal:

“Yes, yes!” she cried, bending her head upon
his shoulder and bursting into tears.

He gazed on her fair cheek fondly, but his penitent
lip sought not to profane it. His thoughts too
plainly were subdued by contemplation of his approaching
fate. He felt as he spoke. But a ray
of grateful pleasure at her words illumined his haggard
features, and, speaking softly to her, he said,

“I know not how to thank you for this, dearest
lady!”

“Oh, Lester, must you die?” she cried, without
heeding his words. “Your immortal spirit! Oh,
I tremble for its fate!”

“I have thought much of it of late! It seems
now, as I look back, as if the last five years of my
life had been passed under a spell. I am penitent,
it is true, but feel there is no hope for me!”

“There is, there is!”

“I know the boundless arms of your holy faith

will reach even to the gates of perdition; but I am
beyond their reach. Yet I die composedly, since
you have told me you love me still!”

“Talk not so, Robert; I will pray with you!”
she said, earnestly.

And he knelt beside her as, with impassioned
fervour, she addressed to the Virgin a simple and
eloquent prayer for the soul of him who was so
soon to become a habitant of the world of spirits.
Both remained silent a few moments after she had
ceased. Their souls seemed to have blended in
one by flowing upward together on the holy tide of
prayer. Suddenly, prompted by the gentle feelings
that filled his heart, he turned to her and said,

“Dearest Kate, one thing I would ask of you;
'tis bold, but there is no earthly feeling or human
emotion united with it. Consent to unite yourself
to me here—not by words of marriage—not as an
earthly bride—but that our souls may be one hereafter!”

“Robert, tempt me not; the current of my young
love has rushed back upon me in an irresistible
flood; therefore, if you love me, tempt me not!”

“Nay, Kate, dearest, 'tis but a word, and the last
request you can have the power to grant me. Let
me take your hand; 'twill be a spiritual union only.”

He gently took her passive hand in his as he
spoke, and said in a voice of love, that vibrated
along every chord of her heart,

“Will you be mine?”

“Yes, yes!” she replied, with great agitation.

He kissed her cheek as she answered, and at
the same instant a deep voice said,

“I pronounce you man and wife! Those whom
God hath joined together let no man put asunder!”

The maiden shrieked and would have fallen to the
floor but for the support of her husband's arm, who,

turning in the utmost surprise, beheld Father Nanfan
standing without and looking upon them through
the grated window of the cell.

CONCLUSION.

The morning sun shone brightly into the court-chamber
in the White Hall where the Earl of Bellamont
was wont to administer justice. It com
municated with his library, and occupied the whole
of the western wing. Its windows opened to the
ground on two sides, while on the other two doors
communicated both with the library and chapel.
Surrounded by the chief citizens and dignitaries of
the law sat the governor at a table, on which lay
the papers relating to the piracies of Kyd. Before
him stood the pirate chief in chains, silent, composed,
and dignified, if not somewhat haughty in
his bearing before his foes. He was there to receive
his sentence. The lawn was crowded with
curious spectators, and the windows filled with
those most anxious to be close to the scene. In
the back part of the room, whither she had silently
stolen through the window, stood Elpsy, gazing
on the proceedings with folded arms and lowering
brows. Through the half open door that led to
the chapel was a tall dark lady of majestic person,
dressed in widow's weeds, her countenance marked
with the deep lines of long-continued sorrow. It
was “the Dark Lady of the Rock.” Not far removed
from her, within the hall and near where
the earl was seated, stood Fitzroy, and by his side
Edwin his secretary. At a small desk covered with
black velvet, on the right of the earl, sat the priest
Nanfan.

At length everything was prepared, and the prisoner

was commanded to stand forth and receive his
sentence. The noble judge addressed him briefly,
recapitulating the numerous crimes that had made
his name a by-word of terror throughout the world,
and which had been proved upon him, and then
proceeded to execute the death-warrant. By accident,
there was no pen within his reach. The
bonnet of the bucanier lay on the desk before him,
and caught his eye as he turned for one.

“Ha,” said he, “I will pluck one from this sable
feather, which has been the terrible pennon under
which his dark crimes have been perpetrated.
'Tis a fit instrument to seal his doom.”

He drew from the bonnet a falcon's plume, and
with a few rapid strokes of the knife prepared it
for use. He was about to sign the paper, when a
solemnly prophetic voice, whence no one could tell,
said,

“Beware of the black plume!”

The earl arrested his hand, and every eye turned
in the supposed direction of the voice; but, discovering
no one, they turned again towards the earl.
A second time he bent his head to sign the paper;
but, ere he had touched the sheet, a wild scream
curdled the blood in every man's veins, and Kate
Bellamont rushed from the library into the hall,
and cast herself upon the shoulder of the prisoner.

“Father, hold!” she cried, lifting her face and
fixing her wild eyes upon him with a terrible gaze,
“hold! you shall not murder him! He is my husband!”

“Thy husband!” repeated Fitzroy, springing
forward to release her from the affectionate embrace
of Kyd.

“Her husband, earl!” said the priest, rising and
speaking with triumphant malice.

“Woman,” said Fitzroy, with forced calmness,
“art thou his wife?”

“Who speaks?” she cried, wildly, putting her
hair back from her face and staring at him as if she
recognised him not. “Ha, Fitzroy, is it thou? Oh,
I thought I loved thee! Yet I would have been
thy bride if Heaven had not made me his! Yes,
Robert, I am thine—thine!” she added, with wild
passion.

“My child wedded to a pirate—”

“Who calls him a pirate? He is Lester's earl!”
cried the poor maiden.

“Lester's earl!” cried the countess, rushing forward.
“'Tis my son, then—my son!”

“Nay—back. Listen, all of ye!” said the sorceress,
striding into the midst. “I can tell ye a
mystery and solve it, my lord! This pirate was
the Earl of Lester; but, being convinced that he was
a bastard and the son of a fisherman, fled from home
and became what you see him!”

“This young Robert of Lester?” exclaimed the
earl; “now do I recognise his features!”

“Interrupt me not!” she said, harshly. “The
true Lord of Lester was a lad called Mark Mere
dith, and there he stands, a third time risen from
the sea to thwart my schemes! Countess of Lester,
in him behold your son!”

The lady looked a moment and scanned his features
with increasing amazement.

“My lord—himself! The mother's heart owns
her son!”

And Fitzroy, to his surprise, found himself clasped
for the first time in a mother's embrace.

In a few brief words the sorceress explained
everything that has already been unfolded in the
preceding pages in reference to the characters, save
her own relation to two that were present.

“And who art thou, woman?” asked the wondering
earl.

“The fisher's daughter, and the leman of Hurtel

of the Red-Hand, and the mother of Robert
Kyd!”

“My mother?” repeated the pirate.

“The fisher's daughter?” exclaimed the priest,
rising with astonishment.

“Ay, Hurtel of the Red-Hand! I was thy leman!
This pirate is the fruit of my illicit love and
of your guilt. Ha, ha! do you not know me?
Earl of Lester, behold before you, in Father Nanfan,
Hurtel of the Red-Hand! Ho, ho! when I
told thee yesterday that Kyd was thy son, and that
thou must join me to make him wed the noble heiress
of Bellamont (as the devil has given thee an
opportunity of doing), I did not tell thee that I was
the mother of him. So, so, thou wilt swing for it!”

“And thou shalt die for it!” he cried, snatching
the sword from its sheath at Fitzroy's side and rushing
upon her. Ere his hand could be arrested the
point entered her bosom.

“If I hang I am well avenged on thee for it!” he
cried, drawing forth the reeking blade as she fell,
with a curse upon her lips, and expired.

A few words will bring the story to a close. Kyd
was sent to England and executed; but Kate Bellamont
died of a broken heart ere the vessel that
bore him had half crossed the Atlantic.

Fitzroy was not long in discovering in Edwin
his secretary no less a personage than Grace Fitzgerald;
and, his affection for Kate Bellamont being
chilled by her singular marriage with Kyd, he the
following year, as Earl of Lester, made her his
bride. Thus her true love was rewarded; and it
cannot be denied that, although she loved him very
much as lowborn, yet she was by no means sorry
that he had proved noble.