t of so little which
there was on board. When I consider your present undertaking, without
a competent navigator, and in a leaky vessel, your situation seems most
perilous; therefore I hope God will prove kind to you, and preserve
you from the manifold dangers you may have to encounter on the stormy
ocean.' Mrs. Vickers also was pleased to say that I had behaved kindly
to her, that she wished me well, and that when she returned to
Hobart Town she would speak in my favour. They then cheered us on our
departure, wishing we might be prosperous on account of our humanity in
sharing the provisions with them.

"Having had breakfast, we commenced throwing overboard the light cargo
which was in the hold, which employed us until dinnertime. After dinner
we ran out a small kedge-anchor with about one hundred fathoms of line,
and having weighed anchor, and the tide being slack, we hauled on the
kedge-line, and succeeded in this manner by kedging along, and we
came to two islands, called the Cap and Bonnet. The whole of us then
commenced heaving the brig short, sending the whale-boat to take her
in tow, after we had tripped the anchor. By this means we got her safe
across the Bar. Scarcely was this done when a light breeze sprang up
from the south-west, and firing a musket to apprize the party we had
left of our safety, we made sail and put out to sea."

Having read thus far, Sylvia paused in an agony of recollection. She
remembered the firing of the musket, and that her mother had wept over
her. But beyond this all was uncertainty. Memories slipped across her
mind like shadows--she caught at them, and they were gone. Yet the
reading of this strange story made her nerves thrill. Despite the
hypocritical grandiloquence and affected piety of the narrative, it
was easy to see that, save some warping of facts to make for himself
a better case, and to extol the courage of the gaolers who had him at
their mercy, the narrator had not attempted to better his tale by the
invention of perils. The history of the desperate project that had
been planned and carried out five years before was related with grim
simplicity which (because it at once bears the stamp of truth, and
forces the imagination of the reader to supply the omitted details
of horror), is more effective to inspire sympathy than elaborate
description. The very barrenness of the narration was hideously
suggestive, and the girl felt her heart beat quicker as her poetic
intellect