THE DEMON SHIP, OR THE PIRATE OF THE MEDITERRANEAN.

EDINBURGH: PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY J. BRYDONE, SOUTH HANOVER STREET.

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THE DEMON SHIP, &c.

I was the only son of a widowed mother, who, though far from affluent, was not pennyless;—you will naturally suppose, therefore, I was a most troublesome, disagreeable, spoiled child. Such I might have been, but for the continual drawback on all my early gratifications, which my maternal home presented, in the shape of an old dowager countess, a forty-ninth cousin of my mother’s. Whatever I was doing, wherever I was going, there was she reproving, rebuking, exhorting, and all to save me from idling, or drowning, or quarrelling, or straying, or a hundred etceteras. I grew up, went to school, to college—finally, into the army, and with it to Ireland; and had the satisfaction, at five-and-twenty, to hear the dowager say I was good for nothing. She was of a somewhat malicious disposition, and perhaps I did not well to make her my enemy. At this time I had the offer of a good military appointment to India, and yet I hesitated to accept it. There was in my native village a retired Scotch officer, for whom I had conceived a strong attachment. His daughter I had

known and loved from childhood, and when this gave place to womanhood, my affection changed in kind while it strengthened in degree. Margaret Cameron was at this period seventeen, and, consequently, eight years my junior. She was young, beautiful, and spoiled by a doating parent—yet I saw in her a fine natural disposition, and the seeds of many noble qualities. To both father and daughter I openly unfolded my affection. Captain Cameron, naturally, pleaded the youth of his daughter. Margaret laughed at the idea of my even entertaining a thought of her, and declared she would as soon think of marrying an elder brother as myself. I listened to her assertions with profound silence, scorned to whine and plead my cause, bowed with an air of haughty resignation, and left her.

When next I saw Margaret I was in a travelling dress at her father’s residence. I found her alone in the garden, occupied in watering her flowers. ‘I am come, Margaret,’ I said, ‘to bid you farewell.’—‘Why, where are you going?’—‘To London, to sea, to India.’—‘Nonsense!’—‘You always think there is nonsense in truth; every thing that is serious to others is a jest to you.’—‘Complementary this morning.’—‘Adieu, Margaret; may you retain through life the same heartlessness of disposition. It will preserve you from many a pang that might reach a more sensitive bosom.’—‘You do my strength of mind infinite honour. Every girl [Pg 3]of seventeen can be sentimental, but there are few stoics in their teens. I love to be coldly great. You charm me.’—‘If heartlessness and mental superiority are with you synonymes,’ I said, with gravity, ‘count yourself, Miss Cameron, at the very acmé of intellectual greatness, since you can take leave of one of your earliest friends with such easy indifference.’—‘Pooh!

pooh! I know you are not really going. This voyage to India is one of your favourite threats in your dignified moments. I think this is about the twentieth time it has been made. And for early friends, and so forth, you have contrived to live within a few hundred feet of them without coming in their sight for the last month; so they cannot be so very dear.’—‘Listen to me, Margaret,’ said I, with a grave, and, as I think, manly dignity of bearing; ‘I offered you the honest and ardent, though worthless gift of a heart, whose best affections you entirely possessed. I am not coxcomb enough to suppose that I can at pleasure storm the affections of any woman; but I am man enough to expect that they should be denied me with some reference to the delicate respect due to mine. But you are, of course, at full liberty to choose your own mode of rejecting your suitors; only, as one who still views you as a friend, I would that that manner shewed more of good womanly feeling, and less of conscious female power. I am aware, Margaret, that this is not the

general language of lovers; perhaps if it were, woman might hold her power more gracefully, and even Margaret Cameron’s heart would have more of greatness and generosity than it now possesses.’ While I spoke, Margaret turned away her lovely face, and I saw that her very neck was suffused. I took her hand, assured her that the journey I had announced was no lover’s ruse, and that I was really on the point of quitting my native land.—‘And now, Margaret,’ I said, ‘farewell—you will scarce find in life a more devoted friend—a more ardent desirer of your happiness, than him you have driven from your side.’ I stretched out my hand to Margaret for a friendly farewell clasp. But she held not out her’s in return; she spoke not a word of adieu. I turned an indignant countenance towards her, and, to my unutterable surprise, beheld my beautiful young friend in a swoon. And was this the being I had accused of want of feeling! We left the garden solemnly plighted to each other. But I pass briefly over this portion of my history. I was condemned by

the will of Captain Cameron, and by the necessity of obtaining some professional promotion, to spend a few years in India before I could receive the hand of Margaret.

I reached my Asiatic destination—long and anxiously looked[Pg 4] for European letters—took up one day by accident an English paper, and there read—‘Died, at the house of Captain Cameron, in the village of A——, Miss Margaret Cameron, aged eighteen.’ I will not here dwell on my feelings. I wrote a letter of despair to Captain Cameron, informing him of the paragraph I had read, imploring him, for the love of mercy, if possible, to contradict it, and declaring that my future path in life now lay stretched before me like one wild waste. The Countess of Falcondale answered my epistle by a deep, black-margined letter, with a sable seal as large as a saucer. My sole parent was no more;—for Captain Cameron—he had been seized by a paralytic affection in consequence of the shock his feelings had sustained.

The appearance of my name about five years afterwards, among the ‘Marriages’ in the Calcutta Gazette, was followed by successive announcements among the ‘Births and Deaths,’ in the same compendious record of life’s changes. My wife perished of malignant fever, and two infant children speedily followed her. I set out to return over-land to my native country, a sober, steady, and partially grey-haired colonel of thirty-six. My military career had been as brilliant as my domestic path had been clouded. I arrived at a port of the Levant, and thence took ship for Malta, where I landed in safety.

At this period, the Mediterranean traders were kept in a state of perpetual alarm by the celebrated ‘Demon Ship.’ Though distinguished by the same attractive title, she in nowise resembled the phantom terror of the African Cape. She was described as a powerful vessel, manned by a desperate flesh-and-blood crew, whose rapacity triumphed over all fear of danger, and whose cruelty forbade all hope of mercy. Yet, though she was neither ‘built’ of air, nor ‘manned’ by demons, her feats had been so wonderful, that there was at length no other rational mode of accounting for them than by tracing them to supernatural, and, consequently, demoniacal, agency. She had sailed through fleets undiscovered; she had escaped from the fastest pursuers; she had overtaken the swiftest fugitives; she had appeared where she was not expected, and disappeared when even her very latitude and longitude seemed calculable. Her fearful title had been first given by those who dreaded to become her victims; but she seemed not ill pleased by the appalling epithet, and shortly

shewed the word DEMON in flaming letters on her stern. Some mariners went so far as to say that a smell of brimstone, and a track of phosphoric light, marked for miles the pathway of her keel in the waves. Others declared that she had the power, through her evil agents, of raising such a strange, [Pg 5]dense, and portentous mist in the atmosphere, as prevented her victims from descrying her approach until they fell, as it were, into her very jaws. Innumerable were the vessels that had left different ports in the Mediterranean to disappear for ever. It seemed the cruel practice of the Demon to sink her victims in their own vessels.

The Demon Ship was talked of from the ports of the Levant to Gibraltar; and no vessel held herself in secure waters until she had passed the Straits. Of course, such a pest to these seas was not to be quietly suffered; so several governments began to think of preparing to put her down. To the surprise, however, of all, she seemed suddenly to disappear from the Mediterranean. Some said that her crew, having sold themselves to the father of all evil for a certain length of time, and the period having probably expired, the desperadoes were now gone to their own place, and the seas would consequently be clear again. Others deemed that the Demon Ship had only retired for some deep purpose, and would shortly reappear with more fearful power.

Most of the trading vessels then about to quit the port of Valetta, had obtained convoy from a British frigate and sloop of war, bound to Gibraltar, and thence to England. So eager were all passengers to sail under such protection, that I had some difficulty in obtaining a berth in any of the holes and corners of the various fine fast-sailing copper-bottomed brigs, whose cards offered such ‘excellent accommodations for passengers.’ At length, I went on board the ‘Elizabeth Downs,’ a large three-masted British vessel, whose size made the surrounding brigs dwindle into insignificance, and whose fresh-painted sides seemed to foreshew the cleanliness and comfort that would be found within. One little hen-pen of a cabin on deck alone remained at the captain’s disposal. However, I was fond of a cabin on deck, and paid half my passage-money to the civil little captain, who testified much regret that he could not offer me the ‘freedom of the quarter-deck,’ as the whole stern end of the vessel had been taken by an English

lady of quality, who wished for privacy. He added that she was a dowager countess. ‘I hate dowager countesses,’ said I, irreverently; ‘what is the name of your passenger?’—‘Passenger!’—‘Well—countess—what is the title of your countess?’—‘The Countess of Falcondale.’—‘What!’ thought I; ‘cannot I even come as near to my former home as Malta, without again finding myself under her influence? My dear fellow, give me back my passage-money, or accept it as a present at my hands, for I sail not with you,’ said I. But a man at thirty-six will hardly sacrifice his personal convenience[Pg 6] to the whimsies of twenty-five; so I stood to my bargain, determined to keep myself as much as possible from the knowledge of my old tormentor. Conscious of my altered personal appearance, I resolved to travel charmingly incog., and assumed the name and title of Captain Lyon, which had been familiar to me in my childhood, as belonging to a friend of Captain Cameron.

It was the month of June, and the weather was oppressively hot. There was so little wind stirring after we set sail, that for several days we made scarcely any way under all the sail we could carry. The first night I stretched my limbs on a long seat which joined the steps of the quarter-deck. I was now then really on my way to my native shores, and should not step from the vessel in which I sailed until I trode the land of my fathers! Naturally enough, my thoughts turned to former days and old faces. From time to time, these thoughts half sunk into dreams, from which I repeatedly awoke, and as often dozed off again. At length, my memory, and consequently my dreams, took the shape of Margaret Cameron. The joyous laugh of youth seemed to ring in my ears; and when I closed my eyes, her lovely bright countenance instantly rose before them. Yet I had the inconsistent conviction of a dreamer that she was dead, and as my slumber deepened, I seemed busied in a pilgrimage to her early grave. I saw the church-yard of A——, with the yellow sunlight

streaming on many a green hillock; and there was one solitary grass grave, that, as if by a strange spell, drew my steps, and on an humble head-stone I read the name of ‘Margaret Cameron, aged 18.’ To my unspeakable emotion I heard, beneath the sods, a sound of sweet and soothing, but melancholy music. While I listened with an attention that apparently deprived my senses of their power, the church-yard and grave disappeared, and I seemed, by one of those transitions to which the dreamer is so subject, to be sailing on a lone and dismal sea, whose leaden and melancholy waves reflected no sail save that of the vessel which bore me. The heat became stifling, and my bosom oppressed, yet the music still sounded, low, sweet, and foreboding in my ear. A soft and whitish mist seemed to brood over the stern of the ship. According to the apparently established laws of spiritual matter, the mist condensed, then gradually assumed form, and I gazed, with outstretched arms, on the figure of Margaret Cameron. She seemed in my vision as one who, in quitting earth, had left

not only its passions but its affections behind her; and there was something forbidding in the wan indifference of that eye. Yet was her voice passing sweet, as still its sad cadences fell [Pg 7]on my ear, in the words of a ballad I had once loved to sing with her—

I awoke,—yet for a moment appeared still dreaming; for there, hovering over the foot of my couch, I seemed still to behold the form of Margaret Cameron. She was leaning on the rail of the quarter-deck, and overlooking my couch. I sat up, and gazed on the objects around me, in order to recover my apparently deluded senses. The full moon was in her zenith. The heat was intense, the calm profound. There lay the different vessels of our little squadron, nought seen save their white sails in the moonlight, and nought heard save their powerless flapping, and the restless plashing of the becalmed waves, only agitated by the effort of our vessel to cleave them. Still the moonlight fell on the white form and pale countenance of Margaret. I started up. ‘This is some delusion,’ said I, ‘or because one of the countess’s women resembles my early idol, must I turn believer in ghost-stories, and adopt at thirty-six what I scouted at sixteen?’ The suddenness of my rising seemed to scare my fair phantom; and, in the hastiness of her retreat, she gave ample proof of

mortal fallibility by stumbling over some coils of cable that happened to lie in her way. The shock brought her to her knees. I was up the steps in one instant; seized an arm and then a hand, soft, delicate, and indubitably of flesh and blood, and restored the lady to her feet. She thanked me in gentle tones that sent a thrill through all my veins, and made me again half deem that ‘the voice of the dead was on mine ear.’ I now expressed my fears that my sudden gestures had been the cause of this little accident. ‘I fear,’ she replied, ‘my reckless song disturbed your slumbers.’ After a few more words had passed between us, I ventured to ask in a tone as indifferent as I could assume, whether she claimed kindred with Captain Hugh Cameron, of A——? The striking likeness which she bore to his amiable and deceased daughter must, I observed, plead my apology. She looked at me for a moment with unutterable surprise; then added, with dignity and perfect self-possession, ‘I have then, probably, the pleasure of addressing some old acquaintance of

Captain Cameron? How the mistake arose which induced any one to suppose that his child was no more, I confess myself at a loss to imagine. I am the daughter of Captain [Pg 8]Cameron; and, after this self-introduction, may, perhaps, claim the name of my father’s former acquaintance.’ You may be sure I was in no mood to give it. I rushed to the side of the vessel, and, hanging over it, gasped with an emotion which almost stopped respiration. It is inexpressible what a revulsion this strange discovery made in my feelings. I felt that there had been treachery. I became keenly sensible that I must have appeared a traitor to Margaret, and hurriedly resolved not to declare my name to her until I had in some way cleared my character.

I was still sufficiently a man of the world to have my feelings in some mastery, and returned to the side of Margaret with an apology for indisposition, which in truth was no subterfuge. I verily believe, as the vessel had given a sudden lurch at the moment she had discovered herself, and my pendant posture over the ship’s side might be an attitude of rather dubious construction, she passed on me the forgiveness of a sea-sick man. Margaret added, that she presumed she had the pleasure of addressing her fellow-passenger, Captain Lyon? She had often, she observed, heard her father mention his name, though not aware until this moment of his identity with her brother-voyager. I was not displeased by this illusion, though I thus found myself identified with a man twenty years my senior. I remarked, with an effort at ease, that I had certainly once the advantage of Captain Cameron’s acquaintance, but that a lapse of many years had separated me from him and his family. ‘There was, however,’ I remarked, ‘a Captain, since made Colonel, Francillon,

in India, who had been informed, or rather, happily for her friends, misinformed, of the death of Miss Cameron.’ Margaret smiled incredulously; but with a dignified indifference, which created a strange feeling within me, seemed willing to let the subject pass. Margaret’s spirits seemed to have lost their buoyancy, and her cheek the bloom of youth. But there was an elegance, a sort of melancholy dignity in her manner, and a touching expression on her countenance, to which both before had been strangers. Observing her smile, and perceiving that, with another graceful acknowledgment of my assistance, she was about to withdraw, I grew desperate, and ventured, with some abruptness, to demand if she had herself known Colonel Francillon? She answered, with a self-possession which chilled me, that she had certainly in her youth been acquainted with a Lieutenant Francillon, who had since been promoted in India, and probably was the officer of whom I spoke. ‘Perhaps,’ observed I, ‘there is not a man alive for whom I feel a greater interest than for

[Pg 9]Colonel Francillon.’—‘He is fortunate in possessing so warm a friend,’ said Margaret, with careless politeness; but I thought I perceived, through this nonchalance, a slight tone of pique, which was less mortifying than her indifference. ‘I know not,’ said I, ‘any thing which causes such a sudden and enchantment-like reversion of the mind to past scenes and feelings, as an unexpected rencontre with those who were associated with us in the earliest and freshest days of our being.’—‘Nothing certainly,’ answered Margaret, ‘reminds us so forcibly of the change that has taken place in our being and our feelings.’—‘True,’ replied I; ‘yet for the moment the change itself seems annihilated; our hearts beat with the same pulse that before animated them, and time seems to have warred on their feelings in vain.’—‘Perhaps to have taught a lesson in vain,’ said my companion. I added, rather diffidently, ‘and what lesson should time teach us?’—‘It should teach us,’ she answered, ‘that our