ang
convulsively to my feet. So sensitive was my brain, partly no doubt from
recent sickness as well as fright, that I had mistaken the sudden shout of
the boats' crews, for the dreaded catastrophe. The bowsprit, from the end
of which a rope was dangling, was empty! and both pilots, made aware
doubtless of the danger, were pulling with the eagerness of fear from the
ship. The cheering among us was renewed again and again, during which I
continued to gaze with arrested breath and fascinated stare at the flaming
vessel and fleeing pilot-boats. Suddenly a pyramid of flame shot up from
the hold of the ship, followed by a deafening roar. I fell, or was knocked
down, I know not which; the boat rocked as if caught in a fierce eddy;
next came the hiss and splash of numerous heavy bodies falling from a
great height into the water; and then the blinding glare and stunning
uproar were succeeded by a soundless silence and a thick darkness, in
which no man could discern his neighbor. The stillness was broken by a
loud, cheerful hail from one of the pilot-boats: we recognized the voice,
and the simultaneous and ringing shout which burst from us assured the
gallant seaman of our own safety, and how exultingly we all rejoiced in
his. Half an hour afterward we were safely landed; and as the ship and
cargo had been specially insured, the only ultimate evil result of this
fearful passage in the lives of the passengers and crew of the _Neptune_
was a heavy loss to the underwriters.

A piece of plate, at the suggestion of Mr. Desmond and his friends, was
subscribed for and presented to Captain Starkey at a public dinner given
at Kingston in his honor--a circumstance that many there will remember. In
his speech on returning thanks for the compliment paid him, he explained
his motive for resolutely declining to fight a duel with M. Dupont,
half-a-dozen versions of which had got into the newspapers. "I was very
early left an orphan," he said, "and was very tenderly reared by a
maternal aunt, Mrs. ----." (He mentioned a name with which hundreds of
newspaper readers in England must be still familiar). "Her husband--as many
here may be aware--fell in a duel in the second month of wedlock. My aunt
continued to live dejectedly on till I had passed my nineteenth year; and
so vivid an impression did the patient sorrow of her life make on me--so
thoroughly did I learn to loathe and detest the barbarous practice that
consigned her to a premature grave,