"I shall never forget the weary moments of that exciting night. I have somewhere read that ’it is one of the strange instincts of half slumber to be often more alive to the influence of subdued and stealthy sounds than of louder noises. The slightest whisperings, the low murmurings of a human voice, the creaking of a chair, the cautious drawing back of a curtain, will jar upon and rouse the faculties that have been insensible to the rushing flow of a cataract, or the dull booming of the sea.’ "I must have been asleep, however, when a sound startled me, and I could hear footsteps treading softly over the crisp and frozen snow. Rousing myself, I started to the aperture which passed for a doorway, and which, as I have stated, we had partially blocked up by snow; and through it, about fifty paces distant, I saw the tall dark form of Urbain towering between me and the ghastly white waste beyond. He loomed like a giant in the bright but waning moon, that was sinking behind the hills that are as yet unnamed, while a blood-red streak to the westward showed where the morning was about to break. "My heart beat fast, every pulse was quickened, and every fibre tingled, as I raised the musket to my shoulder, took a deliberate aim, and, when he was within twenty paces of me, fired, and shot him dead! "The bullet entered his mouth, and passed out of the base of the skull behind, injuring the brain in its passage, and destroying him instantly. "So Captain Benson told me, for I never looked on his face again, though I have often seen it since in my dreams. "About two hours after this summary act of justice we were found and relieved by a travelling party of Indians, Micmacs, who come from the continent of America at times, and domicile themselves chiefly along the western shore of the island, to hunt the beaver by the banks of the Serpentine Lake. "They conveyed us through the fur country of the Buenoventura people to the miserable little settlement of that name, where we remained till the ice broke up, when we were taken to St. John’s in a seal-fisher. "There our perils and suffering ended. We had shipped on board different crafts for different countries, and the next year saw me appointed captain of this clipper-ship, the _Pride of the Ocean_."[*] [*] A character not unlike Urbain Gautier figures in the account of the first or second expedition of Sir John Franklin. *CHAPTER XXVIII.* Pass we the long, unvarying course, the track Oft trod, that never leaves a trace behind; Pass we the calm, the gale, the change, the tack, And each well-known caprice of wave and wind, Cooped in their winged sea-girt citadel; The foul, the fair, the contrary, the kind, As breezes rise and fall, and billows swell, Till on some jocund morn—lo, land! and all is well. BYRON. Pleasantly we traversed the almost tideless waters of the Mediterranean, the great inland sea of Europe.