"How can I write these words, how linger on these hideous details? Alas! they are for ever before me; no day, no hour passes but the whole scene is acted over again with startling vividness--and my soul shrinks and shudders from the present image of death. Even now that the dawn of Greece is breaking among the hills--that the balmy summer air fans my cheek--that the distant mountain-tops are gilded by the morning beams, and the rich, tranquil beauty of a southern clime is around--yet even now the roar of that distant ocean is in my ear, the desolate coast stretches out far away, and Alithea lies pale, drenched, and lifeless at my feet. "I saw it all; and how often and for ever do I go over in my thoughts what had passed during the interval of my absence! She had awoke refreshed--she collected her scattered senses--she remembered the hideous vision of her carrying off. She knew not of my relenting--she feared my violence--she resolved to escape; she was familiar with that shore; its rivers and the laws which governed their tides were known to her. She believed that she could pass the water in safety, for often, when the bed of the estuary was apparently full, she knew that she had forded the stream on horseback, and the waters scarce covered the animal's fetlock. Intent on escaping the man of violence, of reaching her beloved home, she had entered the stream without calculating the difference of a calm neap tide, and the mass of irresistible waves borne up by the strong western wind; they perhaps seemed less terrible than I; to fly from me, she encountered, delivered herself up to them! and there she lay, destroyed, dead, lost for ever! "No more of this! What then I did may, I now conceive, appear more shocking to my countrymen than all that went before. But I knew little of English customs. I had gone out an inexperienced stripling to India, and my modes of action were formed there. I now know that when one dies in England, they keep the lifeless corpse, weeping and watching beside it, for many days, and then, with lingering ceremonies and the attendance of relations and friends, lay it solemnly in the dismal tomb. But I had seen whole armies mown down by the sword and disease; I was accustomed to the soldier's hastily-dug grave in a climate where corruption follows fast upon death. To hide the dead with speed from every eye was the Indian custom. "And then, should I take the corpse of Alithea, wet with the ocean tide, ghastly from the throes of recent death, and bear her to her home, and say, here she is--she enjoyed life and happiness yester-evening; I bore her away, behold my work! Should I present myself to her husband, answer his questions, detail the various stages of my crime, and tamely await his vengeance or his pardon! Never!