Fruitless were these wishes! that proud heart could now never be gratified by laying worldly honours at the feet of one chosen object. Once a frightful apprehension suddenly sprung out of these meditations; Kara Aziek might have perished doubting the reality of his rights, surely their strange rencontre on the ocean might authorize such a suspicion! Not even the pang inflicted by her death could equal that which now wrung Sebastian; he imagined himself to have been suspected an impostor; the thought was maddening to honour. It was many moments ere that impatient spirit could calm itself sufficiently to silence so preposterous a fear: gradually it was tranquilized by the recollections of Aziek’s ingenuous looks, where respect ever mixed itself with love.--But the vanquished alarm had left behind it some thoughts which roused the slumbering energies of Sebastian: he felt that Kara Aziek’s memory required that he should endeavour to restore the man she adored to the rank and the duties allotted him by Providence. Often when plunged in deep fits of gloom, during which his faculties seemed benumbed and his feelings callous, an inward voice would cry out to him, “Awake! arise Sebastian! days of glory yet await thee!” then the blood would pour in tides of fire through his veins, he would start from his desponding posture, and look round with an inflamed countenance, as if on the point of breaking the bonds which held him. Had they been real bonds how soon would his powerful arm have burst them asunder! but they were the bonds of gratitude and honour! The Hadgé confided in him implicitly, treated him like a son, ceased to exact his attendance; save where humanity demanded their united cares, evinced the liveliest interest in his salvation, in short, offered him every thing, granted him every thing except his freedom.--Could he then basely turn these benefits into engines of ingratitude? At liberty to go whithersoever he pleased, Sebastian was more a prisoner than when shut up within the cells of El Hader’s residence: the generosity of his present master was a wall of adamant in his eyes. Unable to use stratagem, he tried the effect of entreaties; he combatted his unsocial melancholy, and spoke unreservedly to Tefza of his desire to quit Barbary: Tefza’s questions forced him to confess that he had neither parents nor dear connexions to whom he wished to be re-united, that he was a solitary wretch going to cross the Atlantic in the forlorn hope of finding a lost friend.