ded in constructing a
raft; and but a few seconds after they had pushed off from the sides of
the ship, a barrel of gunpowder ignited by the flames, completed the
catastrophe.

But what became of the _cargo_? Ah! that is indeed a tale of horror.

Up to the last moment those unfortunate beings had been kept under
hatches, under a grating that had been fastened down with battens. They
would have been left in that situation to be stifled in their
confinement by the suffocating smoke, or burnt alive amid the blazing
timbers, but for one merciful heart among those who were leaving the
ship. An axe uplifted by the arm of a brave youth--a mere boy--struck
off the confining cleats, and gave the sable sufferers access to the
open air.

Alas! it was scarce a respite to these wretched creatures,--only a
choice between two modes of death. They escaped from the red flames but
to sink into the dismal depths of the ocean,--hundreds meeting with a
fate still more horrible: for there were not less than that number, and
all became the prey of those hideous sea-monsters, the sharks.

Of all that band of involuntary emigrants, in ten minutes after the
blowing up of the bark, there was not one above the surface of the sea!
Those of them that could not swim had sunk to the bottom, while a worse
fate had befallen those that could,--to fill the maws of the ravenous
monsters that crowded the sea around them! At the period when our tale
commences, several days had succeeded this tragical event; and the
groups we have described, aligned upon a parallel of latitude, and
separated one from another by a distance of some ten or a dozen miles,
will be easily recognised.

The little boat lying farthest west was the gig of the _Pandora_,
containing her brutal captain, his equally brutal mate, the carpenter,
and three others of the crew, that had been admitted as partners in the
surreptitious abstraction. Under cover of the darkness they had made
their departure; but long before rowing out of gun-shot they had heard
the wild denunciations and threats hurled after them by their betrayed
associates.

The ruffian crew occupied the greater raft; but who were the two
individuals who had intrusted themselves to that frail embarkation,--
seemingly so slight that a single breath of wind would scatter it into
fragments, and send its occupants to the bottom of the sea? Such in
reality would have been their fate, had a storm sprung up at that
moment;