"Yes, sir."

"Do you see anything?"

"Nothing, sir, but those two albatrosses in our wake."

"Foretop!" again cried he.

"Ay, ay, sir."

“Can you make out anything ?”

66

Nothing on the water, sir, but there's something on our lee-bow that

looks very like the land."

"Come down, Mr. A

; come down out of the tops, men, and stand by to put her about again." The master's voice trembled as he asked me, "What do you think of that, Mr. D– ? Strange things occur in these seas.

66

Why, I am puzzled enough," said I; "the poor fellow would seem to have sunk just after his last hail."

"No poor fellow in the case, I fear," said he, with a look of much mystery. "This is not the first of this sort of airy tongues I've had to do with. Just let us get her well round on the other tack, and I'll come below and give you the yarn."

This was said as I was about to descend the companion, for the aspect of the evening was not such as to keep long on deck a man who had no business there; but ere I had got down two steps of the ladder all was dark again; the bright moon had withdrawn herself behind a thick cloud. Shortly after, the master, along with the mate, Mr. A- (for it was the second mate's watch,) came into the cabin, and, helping themselves to a glass of grog and a cheroot a-piece (for as there were no lady passengers, none of us objected to the odor, and the master did not care about smoking below,) sat down with faces of much seriousness.

"As I was telling you, Mr. D—," continued the master, "this is not my first experience of these sorts of noises. I remember many years ago, when I was a boy on board the frigate "Athalie," in the river Plate, we had a quartermaster on board of the name of O'Hanlan, an Irishman. He was a very good man so long as he was sober, only rather apt, when he had his beer to become obstreperous, insisting that by right of birth he was legitimate King of Galway, or some other extensive district in Ireland. He was an odd sort of fellow, you may believe, and used in these fits to ask us to kiss his hand-a request to which you may guess our reply-and to swear that his family had been princes ages before the Saxon and Norman barbarians overran his country, and stuck upon the surface of the soil the roots of their mushroom nobility; moreover, that a spirit attended his family, a malignant banshee, that rejoiced in the occurrence to them of any calamity. But when sober he was a first-rate sailor, and the officers knew it, and rather looked over his foibles. Well, there we were with a light wind one night, groping our way up the mighty river, the leads being kept going regularly in the chains, and look-outs upon the bowsprit and at the fore-yard arms. It was a beautiful evening, the water quite smooth, and the moon shining without a cloud as brightly as she did for those two or three minutes a little while ago.

"Well, this Irish quartermaster was one of those in the chains, and, just as he was swinging the lead forward, the lashing round his waist

gave away, and overboard he went, with the lead-line in his hand, with a dead plunge, not unlike that of the lead itself, and without a cry or any other indication of the accident. But the master, who, with his foot on a gun-carriage, had been looking over at him, saw him disappear, and, rushing frantically aft, cried to the captain and first lieutenant, ‘A man overboard-O'Hanlan's overboard!'

Let go the life-buoy cried the captain in much excitement, and, the sentry forthwith pulling the trigger, it plunged into the water and fell away astern, with its reddish-blue light flickering and flaring upon the smooth surface of the water. 'Heave-to immediately,' he added, addressing the first-lieutenant, and lower the boats.'

"But O'Hanlan was never more seen by us; after that first plunge he never rose to the surface; and though every eye that could was scanning the glassy water, still no one saw the least dark object to break the uniformly bright level. The cutter and jolly boat were lowered and manned, but where to bid them pull was a question. Just at that moment we heard a loud cry, similar in every respect to that we heard to-night, away on our lee-quarter.

"There is his voice,' cried the captain,' right on the lee-quarter, right in the moon's wake; that's why you can't see him. Give way, men, for God's sake-stretch your limbs-'tis for life!' and away shot both boats, each with the officer standing up in the bows looking anxiously out. But when they had pulled about a hundred yards froin the ship without seeing any object, the mournful cry came again upon our ears, but from the weather quarter this time.

"Gracious Heaven, Mr. Grey!' said the captain, 'have we been mistaken, and sent the boats in the wrong direction?'

6

"No, sir,' said the first-lieutenant; the sound most assuredly came from the lee-quarter, I heard it most distinctly:' and. turning to the surgeon and master, who were hard by, they both corroborated his assertion from the most decided evidence of their senses.

"But, for all that,' said the captain, 'it would appear there has been a mistake-recall the boats.'

"Here again the wild wailing cry came again from the same direction as it had done the second time: and though, when the first-lieutenant hailed the tops and asked if they could see anything, they answered they could not, yet the boats were recalled, and, as they passed under the stern, were sent in the other direction.

"Did you see anything of him?' asked Mr. Grey. Both the midshipmen in the boats replied they had not.

"But when they had gone about as far to windward as they had previously done to leeward, the cry broke upon our ears once more, but faint and far away astern, while the life-buoy itself had hardly had time to drift more than a hundred yards from the ship.

"The captain appeared much struck. He looked at the other officers; then, without a word, went and walked by himself; while the others, with faces paler than they would like to hear me say, gathered in whispering groups.

"Shortly the boats returned. They had pulled about for some time,

but could see nothing. The jolly-boat was sent to pick up the life-buoy. All this while every soul of the men had been as silent as a mouse; and you could hear the flap of the sails, the cheeping of the tiller-ropes, and the ripple of the current against the ship's bows, unnaturally loud and distinct.

"As soon as the life-buoy and boats were secured, 'Fill and stand on, Mr. Grey,' said the captain; and, without another word, he moved towards the companion, to go down to his cabin. Just, however, as he was about to descend, his eye was attracted to a bright pale flame that kept fluttering and flickering about the weather foretopmast studding-sail boom end, and then, gradually withdrawing, but seeming to hold on by the spar by a long, slender, bright limb, as if loth to leave the ship, finally let go, rose into the air, and was lost, flashing and wavering high up in the heavens. When it disappeared he turned round to look at the officers, who were all with pallid faces and silent lips gazing aloft into the sky. Then, without addressing any of them, he bade the messenger-boy call his steward from the deck, and went into the cabin.

"In a minute all was bustle again, as the ship was brought to her course. Now, what do you think of that, Mr. D

?"

Dark Vaspar, the Informer.

THERE is a certain district of England which is at once a coal and an iron field. To the eye of the passing traveller it presents now, as it did many years ago, at the period of our tale, all the dreary and repulsive features such a portion of country usually exhibits. The air has a dingy and clouded smokiness, the grass and trees are of a dirty green, the fences are uncropped and broken down, and every now and then you come to fields laid partially or altogether under water. This is caused by the sinking of the earth, from the decay of the props supporting the roofs of the old wrought-out mines beneath.

There is nothing of the fresh, breezy, sunny joyousness of rural scenery -everything is bleak, cold, and sooty, and the mind of one wandering over such ground, in place of experiencing the exhilaration of the country, is oppressed with feelings of vague despondency and hopelessness. He cannot help knowing that, instead of a ruddy cheeked and light hearted peasantry, those long straggling lines of dirty, tile-roofed cottages, that stretch up from the highway, have for their inhabitants an ignorant, stunted, half-savage race, miserable, misanthropic, and inhospitable, among whom it is dangerous for the merely curiosity-led stranger to

venture.

The view of the many magnificent, wood-embosomed mansion-houses of the coal and iron masters alleviates nothing of these feelings, for the sight at the same time takes in numberless hills of coal-dust, and shapeless mounds of brown iron-stone; while the road you travel on is formed of crumbling black slag, the refuse of the smelting-furnaces, whose ugliness deforms the landscape as much by day as their volcanic glare upon the lowering clouds makes night hideous. And while you gaze, the impression irresistibly comes upon you, that the monstrous wealth of a few is the result of the monstrous suffering and degradation of the many, and that the gorgeous equipages that whirl along the furred and jewelled young ladies of the proprietors are but in another form the labour-the life sweat of the miners' daughters, who, in ignorance, wretchedness, filth, and disease, drag on all-fours, like bruits, the trucks of coal or ironstone, along the stifling passages and dripping poisonous caverns of the pits, a hundred fathoms beneath the very road their proud sisters of clay are riding over.

At the date of our story there was no branch of manufacture or commerce, no mode of employing capital or labour, more productive of profit than the mining of coal and iron ore: probably there is none even now -but that was the era of the old combination laws, when it was felony for any number of workmen to murmur against the price the purchasers of their toil chose to give for it, or combine their energies to obtain the highest remuneration for their labour. From this and other causes, one of which was the facility and perfect legality of combination among the masters to keep up prices and keep down wages, the greatest fortunes were made with the most incredible rapidity, and the descendants of many that made them now hold high places among our privileged ranks.

One of the wealthiest and most influential masters in the district alluded to was Anthony Hasteleigh, Esq., of Welden Edge. His annual income was much more than ten thousand pounds-how much we are afraid to say, lest we should throw discredit on our story, in the thoughts of those of our readers who may be unaware of the treasures which trade, manufacture and mining pour into the laps of our commercial aristocracy, or who may be displeased that such enormous wealth, and all the luxuries and enjoyments it can procure, should be in the power of men of no more noble or ancient origin than Adam. He was considered rather a hard master, and was a man of much talent and considerable acquirement; indeed his great fortune, having been almost all accumulated by himself, may tend to show this. He was a widower, and had one daughter, a young lady of no little beauty, though the energetic and determined expression that shone through her features gave them somewhat of a hard and masculine turn. She, with the two persons next to be introduced, will enact the principle scenes of the following narrative tragedy.

Mark and Edmund Vasper were the sons of one John Vaspar, a working coal-miner, of average ignorance and wretchedness, who was one day killed by an explosion of fire-damp. His wife had died about a year before, and now his two sons were left to look out for themselves in the best way they could. Now, reader, you will scarcely credit it that upon the heads of these two miserable children had descended the inspiring

spirit of genius. It is nevertheless true, however unaccountable it may seem to those who believe that rank and talent always are born together, that these young beggars received from on high as much intellect as would have made a nobleman's second son premier and his third, lord chancellor; but as they were born of the despised caste of those that make the gold-what it made them this tale is written to show forth.

At the time of his father's death, Mark Vaspar, a boy about fourteen years of age, was employed in the mines, partly as a truck-drawer, partly as a sort of apprentice to the mining itself. But it happened, that a new shaft of much promise having been sunk which required a Newcomen engine of great magnitude, he managed, with some intriguing, to get employment as a sort of assistant to, or attendart on the engine keeper. Up to this time he could not read, nor, though he regarded with much curiosity the forms of the letters painted on the waggons, &c., and wondered how they could represent sounds-moreover, though he frequently expressed this curiosity, yet he never could find any one able to satisfy itall around were as ignorant as himself. But when he got this situation about the engine, he found the keeper--a quiet, well-informed Scotchman -both able to give him instruction, and also disposed to feel amusement in the task; and while the engine, requiring them to give merely a glance at it now and then, labored away at the pumps, they were employed in the business of teaching and being taught a piece of chalk and one of the iron plates of the engine-frame serving as the materials.

Mark had been from his earliest years a boy of very great penetration, in addition to his talent. He had seen, almost from the day he came above-ground, that, whether there ought to be or not, there are, have been always, and will continue to be, two distinct classes of men—the high and the low-between which lies a great gulf, almost altogether impassable, and whose conditions are widely different in respect of enjoyment; the portion of one being poverty, hard labor, ungratified appetites, humiliation, early death; that of the other, wealth, idleness, gratification of every desire, honor, and life prolonged to the utmost by care and nursing; and this too arising from no moral merit or demerit in the individuals of either class. He perceived it, and also that he himself was of that class doomed from birth to toil and disease, to every privation and all disrespect, whose sole comfort was said by the humane of the higher class to lie in contentment with its miseries, and an attempt to form a kind of negative happiness, by teaching the mind not to pine after the positive and real, which these humane had set apart for themselves.

He never thought there was the least political or moral injustice in this state of things; but, knowing himself to be born of the low or miserable class, and feeling his mind capable of appreciating the enjoyments of the high or happy one, his whole thought was to discover a means of quitting the one and finding his way to the other-a course which he knew that a few had successfully followed out. And, first, on considering the careers of these latter, he became aware that no man ever raised himself in the world by ignorance, idleness or drunkenness, but that the steps whereby to ascend were intelligence, activity, sobriety, prudence, perseverance.