h canoe. We were thus carried
along side the piratical schooner, when all their fire arms were
passed on board of her; the arm chest, which was in the stern
sheets and covered with a tarpaulin, opened, several long knives
and machetes taken out, their keen edges examined with the
greatest scrutiny and passed on board the canoes for the
expressed purpose of murdering us all.

The seven Pirates and four fishermen, as before, now proceeded
with us toward the beach until the water was about three feet
deep, when they all got out; the two fishermen to each canoe,
hauling us along, and the Pirates walking by the side of us, one
to each of our crew, torturing us all the way by drawing their
knives across our throats, grasping the same, and pushing us back
under the water which had been taken in by rocking the canoes.
While some of us were in the most humiliating manner beseeching
of them to spare our lives, and others with uplifted eyes were
again supplicating that Divine mercy which had preserved them
from the fury of the elements, _they_ were singing and laughing,
and occasionally telling us in broken English, that "Americans
were very good beef for their knives." Thus they proceeded with
us nearly a mile from the vessel, which we were now losing sight
of by doubling a point at the entrance of the COVE before
described; and when within a few rods of its head, _where we had
before seen the human bones_, the canoes were hauled abreast of
each other, from twelve to twenty feet apart, preparatory to our
execution.

The stillness of death was now around us--for the very
flood-gates of feeling had been burst asunder and exhausted grief
at its fountain. It was a beautiful morning--not a cloud to
obscure the rays of the sun--and the clear blue sky presented a
scene too pure for deeds of darkness. But the lonely sheet of
water, on which, side by side, we lay, presented that hopeless
prospect which is more ably described by another.

"------. No friend, no refuge near;
All, all is false and treacherous around;
All that they touch, or taste, or breathe, is Death."

We had scarcely passed the last parting look at each other, when
the work of death commenced.

They seized Captain Hilton by the hair--bent his head and
shoulders over the gun-wale, and I could distinctly hear them
chopping the bone of the neck. They then wrung his neck,
separated the head from the body by a slight draw of the sword,
and let it drop int