As if instinct with life, the beautiful vessel answered my apostrophe. The majestic thunder of her main-deck gun boomed awfully, and methought sorrowfully, over the waters, and then bounded among the echoes of the distant hills around and above me, slowly dying away in the distant mountains. It was the gun which, as commodore, was fired at sunset. "It is all over," I exclaimed. "I have made my election--leave me for a little while alone." CHAPTER FIFTY. RALPH FALLETH INTO THE USUAL DELUSION OF SUPPOSING HIMSELF HAPPY-- WISHETH IT MAY LAST ALL HIS LIFE, MAKING IT A REALITY--AS YET NO SYMPTOMS OF IT DISPELLING; BUT THE BRIGHTEST SUNSET MAY HAVE THE DARKEST NIGHT. She bounded from me in a transport of joy, shouting, "He stays, he stays!" and I heard the words repeated among the groups of negresses, who loved her; it seemed to be the burthen of a general song, the glad realisation of some prophecy; for, ere the night was an hour old, the old witch, who had had the tuition of Josephine, had already made a mongrel sort of hymn of the affair, whilst a circle of black chins were wagging to a chords of:-- "Goramity good, buchra body stays!" I saw no more of Josephine that night. The old gentleman, her father, joined me after I had been alone nearly two hours--two hours, I assure the reader, of misery. I contemplated a courtship of some decent duration, and a legal marriage at the altar. I tried to view my position on all sides, and thus to find out that which was the most favourable for my mind's eye to rest upon.--It was but a disconsolate survey. Sometimes a dark suspicion, that I repelled from me as if it were a demon whispering murder in my ear, would hint to me the possibility that I was entrapped. However, the lights that came in with Monsieur Manuel dissipated them and darkness together. He behaved extremely well--gave me an exact account of all his possessions, and of his ready money, the latter of which was greatly beyond my expectations, and the former very considerable. He immediately gave me an undertaking, that he would, if I remained with him, adopt me as his son, allow me during life a competency fit to support me and his daughter genteelly, and to make me his sole heir at his death. This undertaking bound him also to see the proper documents duly and legally drawn up by a notary, so as to render the conditions of our agreement binding on both parties. We then spoke, as father and son, of our future views. We were determined to leave the island, immediately we could get anything like its value for the plantation and the large gang of negroes upon it. But where go to then? England--my desertion. France?--yes, it was there that we were to spend our lives. And thus we speculated on future events, that the future never owned.