gig,--in which six men are seated. There has been no attempt to
hoist a sail; there is none in the gig. There are oars, but no one is
using them. They have been dropped in despair; and the boat lies
becalmed just as the two rafts. Like them, it appears to be adrift upon
the ocean.

Could the albatross exert a reasoning faculty it would know that these
various objects indicated a wreck. Some vessel has either foundered and
gone to the bottom, or has caught fire and perished in the flames.

Ten miles to the eastward of the lesser raft might be discovered truer
traces of the lost ship. There might be seen the _debris_ of charred
timbers, telling that she has succumbed, not to the storm, but to fire;
and the fragments, scattered over the circumference of a mile, disclose
further that the fire ended abruptly in some terrible explosion.

Upon the stern of the gig still afloat may be read the name _Pandora_.
The same word may be seen painted on the water-casks buoying up the big
raft; and on the two planks forming the transverse pieces of the lesser
one appears _Pandora_ in still larger letters: for these were the boards
that exhibited the name of the ship on each side of her bowsprit, and
which had been torn off to construct the little raft by those who now
occupy it.

Beyond doubt the lost ship was the _Pandora_.

CHAPTER TWO.

SHIP ON FIRE.

The story of the _Pandora_ has been told in all its terrible details. A
slave-ship, fitted out in England, and sailing from an English port,--
alas! not the only one by scores,--manned by a crew of ruffians, scarce
two of them owning to the same nationality. Such was the bark
_Pandora_.

Her latest and last voyage was to the slave coast, in the Gulf of
Guinea. There, having shipped five hundred wretched beings with black
skins,--"bales" as they are facetiously termed by the trader in human
flesh,--she had started to carry her cargo to that infamous market,--
ever open in those days to such a commodity,--the barracoons of Brazil.

In mid-ocean she had caught fire,--a fire that could not be
extinguished. In the hurry and confusion of launching the boats the
pinnace proved to be useless; and the longboat, stove in by the falling
of a cask, sank to the bottom of the sea. Only the gig was found
available; and this, seized upon by the captain, the mate, and four
others, was rowed off clandestinely in the darkness.

The rest of the crew, over thirty in number, succee