"And now, as I said, for the women," said Phosphor, recovering his business manner. "You have four, I see. That's right. Petticoats lighten the stage very materially. Always get them on when you can. Lady St. Rollox-an old woman, I suppose? "On the contrary, the young wife of an old man.”

"Ah! of course-I run away with her-we must consider, for, as her best scene is with me, I must have somebody who will feed me a little: Anna Ford?"

"She is very pretty, but so affected."

"No, no-she is not very pretty, but she is not at all affected. It's manner, nothing else; all assumed."

"An assumed manner is affectation, is it not?" said Bernard laughing; "and Miss Ford seems to me to have a large development of the attribute. But she will do, I suppose, that is, if she will take a hint when I give her one."

"She will take anything you like to give her, sir, from a hint to a bracelet, but either will be thrown away. Her head has no room for intellect, nor her heart for gratitude-but she draws the halfprice by lowlier gifts, especially when those gifts are made manifest in flesh-coloured silk."

A gentle knock was heard, and a servant crept noiselessly to his master's side, and whispered.

"When I ring," said Mr. Phosphor, mysteriously, waving his hand as if to clear the room of the intruder.

"The next lady is Mrs.

What's she?

what is it? Mrs. Boomerang?

"An elderly she-Marplot. Her spécialité, as her name half implies, is her always coming back again when she isn't wanted." "Old mother Boddle will do for her. Then there's Miss Honora M'Cateran-Scotch or Irish?"

"Both, and a romp."

"Miss Flabbington, then-both her Irish brogue and her Scotch accent are very bad, but she is deuced impudent, and the house likes her. And now," said the manager, pressing the knob at his feet, "that is all."

"But Aurora," said Carlyon. "Where is our Aurora ?”

"There," said the manager, pressing the knob at his feet, and pointing at the door, which at that moment admitted Angela Livingstone.

Yes, Paul's own Angela. Mr. Phosphor had requested her attendance at his theatre that day, and it was not in his nature to resist a little bit of theatrical situation. Carlyon did not know her, but as a dramatist wanting a heroine, he was pleased to see a pretty looking girl who entered the room like a lady, and did not seem much discomposed at being thus instantly pointed out as an object for observation. The manager had been looking out for some time for a young lady who could make herself useful, and in the course of his rounds he had visited the suburban house where Angela's talents were nightly exhibited to some three thousand applauding plebeians. He had been fortunate in selecting the time of his visit, for the terrible French melodrama in which equally terrible English was dealt out to the audience contained

one of Miss Livingstone's very best parts. He had seen her in the first scene, sparkling with tiny tin patty-pans (which, reflecting the light better than real diamonds, are therefore fitter for stage jewels) as she glided about at a fête given by his friend d'Orleans, and next had beheld her half undressed and with dishevelled hair, and a gag in her mouth, dragged through one of the sewers under the palace; such being the private entrance to a dreadful house, the scene of the orgies of the Regent and of Dubois and other notabilities of the Court, who were also brigands and murderers. He had also seen her retiring to bed, after devout prayers to the soul of her deceased mother, and had seen the Regent, masked, steal into her chamber through that very mother's picture, which happened to be a secret door. He had seen the indignant maiden tear away the mask, and recognising d'Orleans, fall at his feet in her night-dress, and address him in a most eloquent and beautiful appeal, which produced no effect except a blasphemous scoff. He heard her screams rend the air as she was carried away, and iron doors clashed behind her and her ruffian lover, and they were quite out of hearing when Dubois rushed in after his master, to announce that he had just discovered that the Regent was her own father. Phosphor had watched Angela under these somewhat trying circumstances, and also amid the festivities of the Court, and in interviews with her own husband, (whom it was of course impossible she could love, having married him when she was only eighteen), and with her lover in the Mousquetaires, to whom she was attached with a sincerity which (as they both affectingly declared just after he had stabbed a poor watchman to save her reputation, the man having seen him get in at her window) was too devout not to obtain the succour of Heaven. The manager had been quite pleased, and as soon as the curtain fell upon her body (the poor thing having been poisoned three times, by her husband out of conjugal revenge, by the Regent to conceal his crime, and by her lover to save her from everybody else, as he was going to be broken on the wheel for strangling the Marquess); he went round with a pencilled note, requesting her to come to him next day.

Angela made her appearance as desired, but when Mr. Phosphor, wishing to perform one of his rapid acts of managership, proposed to Miss Livingstone that she should join his company the very next day, "throwing over those extraparochials," as he phrased it, she decidedly demurred. She was not going to spoil the run of her old manager's piece, and she was not going to act rudely where she had been well treated. Mr. Phosphor opened his eyes with great haughtiness, but the demonstration produced no effect, nor would Angela be moved by his representation that any compact between her and her employer was void, she being under age, or by his offer to guarantee her against any proceedings the extraparochials might take. But Phosphor meant to have her, and it was settled that she should give her old friends notice, and should make her debut, under the Phosphor régime, in Mr. Carlyon's play.

THE FRIGATE, THE PRIVATEER, AND THE
RUNNING SHIP.

EDITED BY ANGUS B. REACH.

[The following curious sea-tale was, in all its principal features, taken from the narrative of an eye-witness, the lieutenant of a West Indian regiment, who is represented as telling the story, and who is now a colonel en retraite, after an honourable service of fifty years. The old gentleman, however, was not very clear about the names of either the frigate or the privateer, so, for the sake of facility of narrative, I have named the first the Hero, the second the Jean Bart. It is a fact, that there was a privateer belonging to Dunkirk, called the Jean Bart, which was captured by an English frigate, and I have taken the liberty of applying the name to the privateer captured in the presence of the then lieutenant, which might have been the Jean Bart or not-the matter signifies little-the facts are the important points, and they are undoubted. I have of course thrown the original oral matter with which I was familiar into a more literary and connected form, and this premised, we enter upon the narrative.-A. B. R.]

“Gentlemen”-The little open cabin sky-light of the good armed schooner Mary Anne, was darkened-by the weatherbeaten face, as brown-as brown as brown paint-and the shock of fiery red hair-with whiskers to match,-of our worthy captain, Macleod to name, and related to the chief of that ilk. He had been at sea in every sort of craft, and in every part of thd world; and, as you may think, the old Islesman was as stout ane thorough a sailor as ever faced wind and weather, and cannon and musket shot too. Well, "Gentlemen," says he, "there were three of us. Mr. Dargle, a great planter in Demerara and Berbice, who had nine hundred slaves, of whom he used to say that he had never flogged but three, and never sold but one at his own desire. He was a mild, quiet man, and every house in the coast colonies was delighted when his Kettarin appeared, with its high stepping bay. The second man of the party was Mr. Mosca, Mr. Dargle's agent, who, as his father was a Cuban Spaniard, and his mother a French Quadroon, was rather of a peppery disposition, which required all the mild persuasiveness of Mr. Dargle to keep down. However he was, to my knowledge, a most energetic and excellent agent; and as he and his employer were generally seen together, they usually went by the name of brandy and water.' As for myself, I was a poor subaltern in a West Indian regiment, going home invalided, after a tight brush with yellow Jack. And now you know the company which Captain Macleod addressed.

"What are you drinking, boys?' he said.

"Madeira Sangara, Captain Macleod,' said Mr. Dargle, at the same time knocking a white worm with a black head out of a biscuit.

"Well, I've just been taking a meridian-you needn't snigger,

VOL. XXXV.

C

Mr. Mosca,'-and the skipper produced a huge old-fashioned quadrant, I think that if the wind blows as steady as it's doing now, to-morrow night I'll show you the Lizard Lights.'

"There was a simultaneous clattering of glasses on the table. "And without as much as seeing the shadow of one of them damned Privateers-to say nothing of these'-expletive again – 'French Frigates. Curse them and their dandy hoist in the nape of their topsails.'

"Well then, captain, I suppose we have made the run,' says Mosca.

666

Why, don't whoop till ye're out o' the wood,' rejoined our skipper. There's often a swarm of these craft, as quick as flying fish and as fierce as sharks, lurking about the chops of the Channel-the infernal villains-to pick up all they can get. However,-Sambo, a couple of bottles of that champagne I got from the governor.'

"Sail ho,' echoed through our canvas, and the brown face disappeared as if by magic, and there was a moment's trampling of feet. All the watch below were tumbling up, as they call it; and, as you may think, we tumbled up too.

"Where away?' said the skipper, addressing the top-gallant

mast cross-trees.

"Broad on the lee-beam,' was the answer, standing on the same way with us."

"Glad she's to lee'ard, at all events,' said the captain.

"She's going through the water very fast, sir,' said the first mate, touching his straw hat.

"What do you make her out, Mr. Mathews?'

"Why sir, she's a smallish vessel to carry three square rigged masts.'

"Captain Macleod looked grave, and without a word, took his old pet telescope from the brackets, and leisurely mounted the fore-rigging. It must have required long practice to use a glass from a yard which was continually on the swing, and that sometimes twelve or fifteen feet at a lurch. However the captain took a long survey, and then descending, went below, and returned on deck with an old account book, with letters down the edges of the leaves, which were closely scribbled over, and an immense lot of loose memorandums, written on all sorts of scraps of paper, backs of letters and torn bills of lading, and turned up B. After a long scrutiny, during which we all stood anxiously around him, waiting for the old hard-a-weather's opinion, he brought his clenched fist down upon the old book, and exclaimed,

"By Heavens it's her, and no other;' and he read

"The Jean Bart, of Dieppe, consort to the Belle Poule, was a barque-built sharp for the slave trade-altered to frigate rig for privateering. Low in the water, and very fast, particularly on a wind-lofty rig-high in the topsails-always strongly manned and heavily armed-mizen mast rakes well aft.'

"She's rising us fast, sir,' sung the look-out aloft.

"Pack on-pack on every stitch she can carry. Look alive, Mr.

Mathews! Be smart, Mr. Jenkins! We've got an ugly customer hanging to us, and if we can we must show him a clean pair of heels! Get the fore-royal on the ship, set the main-topsail-stun'sail, rig out the flying gibboom, and set the sail, drop the forecourse, and get up the broadest-headed gaff topsail: we'll drive the ship under rather than be taken.'

"No sooner said than done, and the Mary Anne was under a press of canvas, her upper masts bending, and the weather-stays like fiddle-strings, the lee scupper holes buzzing in the foaming water and the schooner making gallant way.

"For more than an hour there was silence in the ship. Captain Macleod and Mr. Mathews stood on each side of the wheel, keeping the craft, which was really behaving very well, as near the wind as was consistent with the absence of the slightest shiver in the windward tack of the fore-topsail. During this pause we had time to consider our situation. Of all the privateers sent out by France, La Belle Poule, ultimately captured by the Black Joke, and the Jean Bart, were the most famed for their successes, and the most notorious for plundering to the skin their unfortunate prisoners.

"However, there was one comfort, I had nothing to lose but a few dollars-colonial currency, my uniform, and some light West Indian clothing; and a thought struck me to put on the uniform, as I had heard that even French privateers respected the red coat of an English officer. Putting the idea into practice, to the great astonishment of all on board, I appeared on deck in the full uniform of a full lieutenant of his Majesty's 2nd West India Regiment.

"Looking round I saw that the privateer was rapidly overhauling us, and that the captain was preparing for action. He had eight thumping carronades on board, and a long eighteen on a swivel fixed into the heel of the bowsprit, and which was the apple of the skipper's eye.

"The crew-thirty stout fellows-for the Mary Anne was double manned-stripped to the waist and barefooted, were getting out the guns on the starboard side: the larboard carronades were obliged to be made fast to ring-bolts to prevent their diving overboard, while the starboard or windward carronades had their noses cocked up to the zenith. Two men at every gun were equipped with big ship-pistols and cutlasses, while boarding tomahawks and pikes were placed handy. Long Tom had a special crew, and every gun was loaded with a double charge of grape. "For,' says the skipper, 'I stand no nonsense: the French like long shots, but I like muzzle to muzzle. That's my way?'

"The privateer was now within about five miles to leeward. She was certainly a beautiful craft; long, low, and sneaking, with the characteristic hoist in her topsails, and the masts-particularly the mizen, raking tremendously. She carried only topsail and topgallant sails, mizen sail, and forestay sail, as if in scorn of our packed canvas; and rose and fell on the long sea with a grace which was all her own. Our poor Mary Anne-good ship in her way as she was, half buried herself every time she plunged at