gave his impressive shout in a suppressed and peculiar tone, which was heard distinctly from stem to stern,-"Let go all the braces and bowlines-slack off sheets and tacks-and square the yards quickly!" This was all done in the twinkling of an eye, and Seth shaped his course as though he would bring his ship under the lee-quarter of the privateer. After making this demonstration, which was intended to deceive the enemy, her direction was suddenly changed, and her head was brought to bear directly upon the hull of the Frenchman! The crew of the schooner now discovered, but too late, the design of the Grampus; and confusion and dire amazement agitated the people upon her crowded deck. In their haste to remedy their oversight, the Frenchman failed altogether to avert the threatened disaster. "If thou dost intend to run her down," said Jethro to Seth, hurriedly, projecting his head for a moment from the cabin gangway-" if-nay, hear me, Seth!--for the sake of humanity, if thou art determined to run her down, ease thy helm a little, and give them a chance for their lives!" "Stand by to lower the boats!" vociferated Seth, stamping furiously upon the deck. A suppressed groan of horror escaped the crew, as they now more plainly conceived the design of their captain. "The boldest held his breath for a time!" The little schooner still lay-to, in the trough of a deep sea, her people running backwards and forwards in frightened confusion, while the huge bulk of the Grampus mounted the last high wave that separated the two vessels. "Miséricorde !" exclaimed a hundred voices. A wild scream of despair, heard far above the noise of the element, and the dashing of the ship, burst from the poor doomed Frenchmen. Down came the Grampus, thundering upon the pri vateer, and striking her with her plunging bow directly amidships! The frail schooner was cut directly in two by the shock; and her heavy armament, together with the irresistible force of the severing blow, bore both parts of her hull, with all her ill-fated crew of a hundred souls, beneath the wave. "Down with the boats from the quarter-launch the longboat!" shouted Seth. But the command, though it could not have been uttered nor executed sooner with safety, came too late. The aim of Seth had been too fatally sure. The boats reached the spot, and narrowly escaped being sucked into the vortex where the schooner had gone down. The French crew were all sent to their long account; and the next wave left not a trace of the wreck, nor a solitary human being to be saved from a watery death. Thy ship and cargo were dearly ransomed, Jethro Coffin; and, Seth, thou didst sacrifice a hecatomb of human beings for thy preservation! CHAPTER IV. Go, make thyself like to a nymph o' the sea; Old Ocean, hail! beneath whose azure zone The play's the thing! The Shipwreck. Hamlet. It was once upon a time said within our hearing by a Cockney, in a boasting vein, that "Lunnun vent a-valkin out of town every day ;" and the saying was literally true. There are many old towns in England whose population remains numerically stationary, and whose buildings are never renovated. The end of the century finds all things about the same as when it had a beginning; and the people seem merely to come into life to vegetate, and to become extinct, or give place to successors, on the same spot where their ancestors from time immemorial had done the same things, pursued the same callings, and had, finally, given up the ghost in the same quiet manner. It is not so, however, with the great city of London, and its eternally shifting people; who increase and multiply in a ratio which could not have been contemplated even by Malthus himself. From half a million inhabitants (and that was not far from the number at the time we write of), it has gradually gone on in its daily journey of "walking out of town," until its population has been tripled in little more than half a century. And who can say that that vast hive of human beings shall not, in fifty years to come, be again tripled in its people? But let that pass. We must shortly enter into some of the scenes of the great city, and carry a portion of our dramatis personæ along with us. In good time the good ship Grampus found her way up the Thames. The fame of her recent exploit was soon talked of in high places and in low places, on the Rialto as well as in the pot-houses and beer-shops of the great metropolis; insomuch that she became an object of the greatest curiosity to everybody who had the least particle of that pardonable failing to be excited. The deck of the ship, which exhibited in its construction the novelty of being flush fore and aft, or without obstruction from stem to stern, was crowded with the gay and the beautiful, the wealthy and the powerful, the high and the low; not forgetting a goodly sprinkling of the real salt-water English sailor, with his tar-glazed pauling, black Barcelona, clean check shirt, secured at the bosom by the bight of a bright-bladed jack-knife, and sporting his white duck trousers, blue roundabout, with three rows of buttons on a side, and long-quartered pumps. It would not have been at all English, if, at any hour of the day, all this motley assortment of people of high and low degree could not be seen passing and repassing upon the deck of the Grampus, and, as occasion served, evincing a deep interest in all that occurred worthy of note in the nautical or commercial world. The English have always been "a nation of shopkeepers;"* and necessarily, from their geographical position, addicted to commerce. Any improvement in naval architecture was therefore likely to attract attention. The new, and since that time approved, model of the Grampus, together with the reputation she had obtained in sinking the French privateer, gained admiration on all hands; and the names of Captain Seth * Napoleon Bonaparte. Macy, and Jethro Coffin the owner, were in the mouths of everybody. Indeed, the metropolis being in want of a lion, or something new and strange for the town to talk about, the Grampus and her queer-looking owner and commander offered themselves in the nick of time, as candidates for the high honour of being the rage. The rival theatres, to wit, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, were then in the full blast of un-successful experiment, in the financial way, as they have always been before and since the days of Garrick; and, even in his time, his treasurer was caught with "pockets to let" occasionally. The recent exploit of the Grampus was too good, and too likely to "draw," to be passed without dramatizing. Old Drury first seized upon the bright idea; and forthwith the bills presented the following underlining in large letters, intended to forestall the theatrical market-to wit: "The new Nautico-Pantomimical Drama of The Devil and the Deep Sea, or The Nantucket Adventure, founded upon the wonderful escape of the colonial ship Grampus (now in the port of London) from a French privateer, is in active preparation, and will shortly be produced, with new scenery, machinery, dresses, and decorations. The part of the Sea-enchantress by Miss Nancy Dawson, who will sing a new song, written expressly for the occasion by Dr. Samuel Johnson-the music by Handel, -and will give an entire new exhibition, in character, called the Padlock Dance." All theatres have had their pet actresses in their time; that is to say, females who, for some reason or other which it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to ascertain, have become general favourites with the public, and who occasionally take the liberty to presume egregiously upon the good-nature and the good taste of that same community. Of this class was the celebrated and, we may add, notorious Nancy Dawson --a figurante of the first water upon the London boards. She was truly a beautiful creature to look at; and that |