“God did not always leave me the slave of my passions,” he said, in a low, deep, most musical voice. “The day has been when I would have shrunk as you do--but time presses. You have a mother?” said he--I assented--“and an only sister?” As it happened, he was right here too. “And--and”--here he hesitated, and his voice shook and trembled with the most intense and heart-crushing emotion--“y una mas cara que ambos?” Mary, you can tell whether in this he did not also speak truth. I acknowledged there was another being more dear to me than either. “Then,” said he, “take this chain from my neck, and the crucifix, and a small miniature from my bosom; but not yet--not till I leave the boat. You will find an address affixed to the string of the latter. Your course of service may lead you to St Jago if not, a brother officer may.” His voice became inaudible; his hot scalding tears dropped fast on my hand, and the ravisher, the murderer, the pirate, wept as an innocent and helpless infant. “You will deliver it. Promise a dying man--promise a great sinner.” But it was momentary--he quelled the passion with a fierce and savage energy, as he said sternly, “Promise! promise!” I did so, and I fulfilled it. The day broke. I took the jewels and miniature from his neck, as he led the way with the firm step of a hero, in ascending the long gibbet. The halters were adjusted, when he stepped towards the side I was on, as far as the rope would let him, “Dexa me verla--dexa me verla, una vez mas!” I held up the miniature. He looked--he glared intensely at it. “Adios, Maria, seas feliz mi querida, feliz--feliz Maria--adios--adios--Maria Mar”. The rope severed thy name from his lips, sweet girl; but not until it also severed his soul from his body, and sent him to his tremendous account--young in years, but old in wickedness--to answer at that tribunal, where we must all appear, to the God who made him, and whose gifts he had so fearfully abused, for thy broken heart and early death, amongst the other scarlet atrocities of his short but ill spent life. The signal had been given--the lumbering flap of the long drop was heard, and five-and-twenty human beings were wavering in the sea breeze in the agonies of death! The other eighteen suffered on the same spot the week following; and for long after, this fearful and bloody example struck terror into the Cuba fishermen. “Strange now, that the majority--ahem--of my beauties and favourites through life have been called Mary. There is my own Mary--un peu passee certainly--but deil mean her, for half a dozen lit”--“Now, Tom Cringle, don’t bother with your sentimentality, but get along, do.”--“Well, I will get along--but have patience, you Hottentot Venus--you Lord Nugent, you. So once more we make sail.”