as! I well knew the secret of his cruel mercies.

He meant to reserve us for the sacrifice.

VIII. SAVED!

Why should I linger over the sufferings of the miserable week that
followed our capture? Hauled back to my former home, I was again made
the object of the mocking reverence of my captors. Ah, how often, in my
reckless youth, have my serious aunts warned me that I "would be a goat
at the last"! Too true, too true; now I was to be a scapegoat, to be
driven forth, as these ignorant and strangely perverted people believed,
with the sins of the community on my head, those sins which would,
according to their _miserable superstition_, be expiated by the death,
and consumed away by the burning, of myself and William Bludger!

The week went by, as all weeks must, and at length came the solemn day
which they call Thargeelyah, the day more sacred than any other to their
idol, Apollon. Long before sunrise the natives were astir; indeed, I do
not think they went to bed at all, but spent the night in hideous orgies.
I know that, tossing sleepless through the weary hours, I heard the
voices of young men and women singing on the hillsides, and among the
myrtle groves which are holy to the most disreputable of their deities, a
female, named Aphrodighty. Harps were twanging too, and I heard the
refrain of one of the native songs, "To-night they love who never loved
before; to-night let him who loves love all the more." The words have
unconsciously arranged themselves, even in English, as poetry; those who
know Thomas Gowles best, best know how unlikely it is that he would
willingly dabble in the worldly art of verse-fashioning. Think of my
reflections with a painful, shameful, and, above all, _undeserved_ death
before me, while all the fragrant air was ringing with lascivious
merriment. My impression is that, as all the sins of the year were, in
their opinion, to be got rid of next day, and tossed into the sea with
the ashes of Bludger and myself, the natives had made up their minds--an
eligible opportunity now presenting itself--to be _as wicked as they knew
how_. Alas! though I have not dwelt on this painful aspect of their
character, they "knew how" only too well.

The sun rose at last, and flooded the island, when I perceived that, from
every side, crowds of revellers were pressing together to the place where
I lay in fetters. They had a wild, dissipated air, flowers were wreathed
and twisted in their wet