island of Santa Marie and the main, and anchoring near the town or city
of Aranco, which was then in the hands of Benavidas, above mentioned.

This sanguinary freebooter was then, under the auspices and with the
assistance of the equally sanguinary royal governor of Chili, Sanchez,
carrying on a most horrid and cruel war of extermination against the
republican inhabitants of the southern part of Chili. Into the hands of
this murderous ruffian and his ragamuffin gang the Swan was delivered;
but the villany of her piratical crew was soon to receive its just
punishment. Benavidas, who suspected them of having kept back no
trifling part of the plunder, with very little privacy and no formality,
shot them all but Longford, whom, for some unaccountable reason or
other, he spared.

CHAPTER III.

_Orlando._ Good day and happiness, dear Rosalind.

_Jaques._ Nay then, God be wi' you an you talk in blank verse.

AS YOU LIKE IT.

Our scene must now change somewhat abruptly from the shores of the
Pacific to a very different part of this watery ball.

Great and manifold are the advantages that an author enjoys over his
readers; for, however anxious those readers may be to arrive at the end
of the story, they must either close the book with a "Pish!" or a
"Pshaw!" or condescend to follow him, and resignedly await his leisure.
He leads them where he pleases and at what pace he pleases; they must
follow him: they are like passengers on board a packet beating into port
with what sailors call "a good working breeze;" at one moment they seem
to have almost reached the anchorage, when suddenly the skipper shouts
"Helm's a-lee," the vessel heaves in stays and makes a long "stretch"
off, till the spires and roofs of the wished-for haven seem fading away
in the hazy distance.

The celebrated Hugh Peters, one of Cromwell's fanatical preachers,
explaining to his audience why God was forty years leading the children
of Israel through the wilderness, which was not more than forty days'
march across, made a circumflex with his finger upon his pulpit cushion,
and said, "he led them _crinkledum cum crankledum_," I do not intend
that my story shall make more "Virginia fence" than is absolutely
necessary; but that it shall proceed, like a law-suit, "with deliberate
speed."

In the vicinity of one of those beautiful villages that surround the
great commercial city of Bristol, and upon t