“This is so good of you, Mr Cringle! you will take charge of my letter to my sister, I know you will?--I say, Anson,” to the quartermaster, “do lift me up a little till I try and finish it.--It will be a sore heart to poor Sarah; she has no mother now, nor father, and aunt is not over kind,”--and again he wept bitterly. “Confound this jumping hand, it won’t keep steady, all I can do.--I say, Doctor, I shan’t die this time, shall I?” “I hope not, my fine little fellow.” “I don’t think I shall; I shall live to be a man yet, in spite of that bloody buccaneer’s pike, I know I shall.” God help me, the death rattle was already in his throat, and the flame was flickering in the socket; even as he spoke, the muscles of his neck stiffened to such a degree that I thought he was choked, but the violence of the convulsion quickly subsided. “I am done for, Doctor!” he could no longer open his mouth, but spoke through his clenched teeth--“I feel it now!--God Almighty receive my soul, and protect my poor sister!” The arch-enemy was indeed advancing to the final struggle, for he now gave a sudden and sharp cry, and stretched out his legs and arms, which instantly became as rigid as marble, and in his agony he turned his face to the side I stood on, but he was no longer sensible. “Sister,” he said with difficulty--“Don’t let them throw me overboard; there are sharks here.” “Land on the lee bow,”--sung out the man at the masthead. The common life sound would not have moved any of us in the routine of duty, but bursting in, under such circumstances, it made us all start, as if it had been something unusual; the dying midshipman heard it, and said calmly--“Land,--I will never see it.--But how blue all your lips look.--It is cold, piercing cold, and dark, dark.” Something seemed to rise in his throat, his features sharpened still more, and he tried to gasp, but his clenched teeth prevented him--he was gone.