When he began to come to himself a little, he was still sitting on the ground, his back against the wall. His senses were yet confused. He thought he saw his wife near him, and a bloody knife by his side. After sitting a little longer his mind gradually grew clearer, and at last he felt for the first time that his hand held something. As his eye fell on it and he saw distinctly what it was, he leaped upright with a savage yell and dashed the knife from him as if it had been an asp stinging him. He stood with his bloodshot eyes fastened on it, his hands spread, and his body shrunk up with horror. "Forged in hell! and for me, for me!" he screamed, as he sprang forward and seized it with a convulsive grasp. "Damned pledge of the league that binds us!" he cried, holding it up and glaring wildly on it. "And yet a voice did warn me--of what, I know not. Which of ye put it in this hand? Speak--let me look on you? D'ye hear me, and will not answer? Nay, nay, what needs it? This tells me, though it speaks not. I know your promptings now," he said, folding his arms deliberately; "your work must be done; and I am doomed to it." RICHARD HENRY DANA, JUNIOR (1815-1882) [Illustration: R. H. DANA, JR.] The literary fame of Richard Henry Dana the younger rests on a single book, produced at the age of twenty-five. 'Two Years Before the Mast' stands unique in English literature: it reports a man's actual experiences at sea, yet touches the facts with a fine imagination. It is a bit of Dana's own life while on a vacation away from college. The manner in which he got his material was remarkable, but to the literature he came as by birthright, through his father, Richard Henry Dana the elder, then a well-known poet; novelist, and essayist. He was born in Cambridge in 1815, growing up in the intellectual atmosphere of that university town, and in due course of time entering Harvard College, where his father and grandfather before him had been trained in law and letters. An attack of the measles during his third year at college left him with weakened eyes, and an active outdoor life was prescribed as the only remedy. From boyhood up he had been passionately fond of the sea; small wonder, then, that he now determined to take a long sea voyage. Refusing a berth offered him on a vessel bound for the East Indies, he chose to go as common sailor before the mast, on a merchantman starting on a two-years' trading voyage around Cape Horn to California. At that time boys of good family from the New England coast towns often took such trips. Dana indeed found a companion in a former merchant's clerk of Boston. They left on August 14th, 1834, doubled Cape Horn, spent many months in the waters of the Pacific and on the coast of California, trading with the natives and taking in cargoes of hides, and returned to Boston in September, 1836. Young Dana, entirely cured of his weakness, re-entered college, graduated the next year, and then went to