mysterious light of the subdued sunbeams, as they struggled through the screen of motionless leaves above; while the dead corse slept in the deep cold shadow below, that to the eye of one suddenly withdrawn from the glare of the tropical noontide, appeared to approach absolute darkness; still a soft green ray, or _pensil_, like moonlight piercing the thick woven foliage of a summer arbour, fell on and floated over the face and one of the naked arms, until the still features appeared to become radiant of themselves--as if they had been blanched by it into the self-luminous whiteness of fresh hewn alabaster. It was in truth a most piteous sight, and as the image of my aged parent rose up, in my extremity, before my mind's eye at the moment, I held up my feeble hands to heaven, and prayed fervently unto the Almighty to bless her declining years; and, if that my race were indeed run, and now in very truth my place was to know me no more, that my sins might, for Christ's sake, be forgiven me. "Alas, alas!" thought I, bowed down by intense suffering to the very dust, "may he too not have had a mother?" For a minute, as I slowly recovered from the stunning effects of the shot, I sat observing all this, and pressing the torn skin of my forehead to my temples with one hand, whilst with the other I kept clearing away the blood as it flowed into my eyes; but by the time I had perfectly recovered my recollection, my sympathy vanished, all my thoughts became absorbed, and my energies, small as they were at the time, excited in almost a supernatural degree by the actual approach of a hideous, and, in my helpless condition, probably the most appalling danger that a human being could be threatened with. For a second or two I had noticed that the branch across which the dead Spaniard lay, was slightly moved now and then, and that some object was advancing from beneath it, out of the thicket beyond. I was not long left in doubt, for one of the noble bloodhounds now dragged himself into the light, and wriggled from amongst the mangroves to within a fathom of me. At first when he struggled from beneath his master's body, he began to lick his face and hands, and then threw his head back with a loud whine, as if disappointed in his expectation of some acknowledgment. Alas! none came; and after another vain attempt, pain seemed to drive the creature furious, for he seized the arm next me, that he had been licking the minute before, by the wrist, making the dead bones crackle between his teeth in his agony. All at once he began to yell and bark, and at intervals turned his fierce eyes on me, then swung his head violently back, and again howled most piteously.