the like hue!

But two buttons now remained,--two men only whose fate was undecided.
One of them was Le Gros himself,--the other, an Irish sailor, who was,
perhaps, the least wicked among that wicked crew. One or other of them
must become food for their cannibal comrades!

It would scarce be true to say that the interest increased as the dread
lottery progressed towards its ending. Its peculiar conditions had
secured an interest from the first as intense as it was possible for it
to be. It only became changed in character,--less selfish, if we may
use the phrase,--as each individual escaped from the dangerous
contingency involved in the operation. As the drawing approached its
termination, the anxiety about the result, though less painful to the
majority of the men, was far more so to the few whose fate still hung
suspended in the scale; and this feeling became more intensified in the
breasts of the still smaller number, who saw their chances of safety
becoming constantly diminished. When, at length, only two buttons
remained in the bag, and only two men to draw them out, the interest,
though changed in character, was nevertheless sufficiently exciting to
fix the attention of every individual on the raft.

There were circumstances, apart from the mere drawing, that influenced
this attention. Fate itself seemed to be taking a part in the dread
drama; or, if not, a very singular contingency had occurred.

Between the two men, thus left to decide its decree, there existed a
rivalry,--or, rather, might it be called a positive antipathy,--deadly
as any _vendetta_ ever enacted on Corsican soil.

It had not sprung up on the raft. It was of older date--old as the
earliest days of the _Pandora's_ voyage, on whose decks it had
originated.

Its first seeds had been sown in that quarrel between Le Gros and Ben
Brace,--in which the Frenchman had been so ignominiously defeated. The
Irish sailor,--partly from some slight feeling of co-nationality, and
partly from a natural instinct of fair-play,--had taken sides with the
British tar; and, as a consequence, had invoked the hostility of the
Frenchman. This feeling he had reciprocated to its full extent; and
from that time forward Larry O'Gorman--such was the Irishman's name--
became the true _bete noir_ of Le Gros, to be insulted by the latter on
every occasion that might offer. Even Ben Brace was no longer regarded
with as much dislike. For him the Frenchman had been t