"Nay, beauteous lady, I designed no evil from the first. I resolved your portion should be bliss-your prison my arms.

"Insolent slave! Dare you say this to the sister of Derah? Derah Ebn Al Azwar, the terror of the Christians? But hark! I hear his shout! Allah Akbar! we are ransomed. See! yonder cloud of dust encompasses his horsemen. Behold! emerging from the canopy, his gallant war-horse bears him on. Allah be praised!"

"Ye shall have safe conduct from our camp," said the Christian leader. "Draw off your forces, and I will not speak of ransom."

It was too late. The thundering charge of the Saracens found their opponents unprepared. Again did blades ring, and dying men groan around the polluted fountain. And in the midst of ringing steel, and trampling steeds, and whizzing javelins, Caulah stood unmoved, but pale, the spectatress of the fearful

combat.

The fierce Derah, bearing his sister's veil upon his lance, directed its point against the breast of the Christian leader. A leap of his horse, and a vigorous thrust of his arm, sent the weapon through the corslet and the heart of the soldier. He fell without a groan. The battle ceased. Caulah stood now, for the first time, trembling.

"Caulah!" said the fierce Derah, "thy face is uncovered. Even the dying dogs of Christians must not look longer upon the sun of thy charms." He threw the veil over her pale countenance; the silvery gauze was rent, and on it was a stain

of blood.

NOTES OF A READER.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. THERE is no love but love at first sight. This is the transcendent and surpassing offspring of sheer and unpolluted sympathy. All other is the illegitimate result of observation, of reflection, of compromise, of comparison, of

expediency. The passions that endure flash like the lightning; they scorch the soul, but it is warmed for ever. Miserable is the man whose love rises by degrees upon the frigid morning of his mind! Some hours, indeed, of warmth and lustre may perchance fall to his lot; some moments of meridian splendour, in which he basks in what he deems eternal sunshine. But then how often overcast by the clouds of care, how often dusked by the blight of misery and misfortune! And certain as the gradual rise of such affection, is its gradual decline and melancholy set.

Then in the chill dim twilight of his soul, he execrates custom; because he had madly expected that feelings could be habitual that were not homogeneous, and because he had been guided by the observation of sense, and not by the inspiration of sympathy.

POWER OF LOVE.

Life without love is worse than How vain and void, how flat death! and fruitless, appear all those splendid accidents of existence for which men struggle, without this essential and pervading charm! What a world without a sun! Yes! without this transcendent sympathy, riches and rank, and even power and fame, are at best but jewels set in a coronet of lead!

QUAKER WIT.

A QUAKER at Norwich, one of the Gurney family, having bought a horse which proved unsound, of a gentleman named Bacon, he wrote to inform him of it, but received no answer. Shortly after, meeting the seller at Norwich, he requested him to take back the horse, which the other positively refused to do. Finding his remonstrances of no avail, the Quaker calmly said, "Friend! thou hast doubtless heard of the devil entering the herd of swine, and I find that he still sticks fast in the Bacon. Good morning to thee, friend!"

SILENCE is the softest response for all the contradictions that arise from impertinence, vulgarity and envy.

LITTLE minds rejoice over the errors of men of genius, as the owl rejoices at an eclipse.

THE SPEEDY KEEL.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.-CHAP. I.

"SAIL ho!" was the cry which came from the mast-head of his Britannic Majesty's gallant frigate Thunderer, one afternoon about seven bells, and brought lieutenants, masters, middies, forward officers and all, tumbling up the hatchways to get a squint at the stranger.

"Where-away?" sung out old Splicetack, our first luff, who happened to be promenading the deck with the laudable purpose of nabbing the boys ruminating their cud.

"About two points on the lee bow, sir."

"Can you make her out?"

"No, sir," replied the ship's wag, who happened to have the look-out, and was well aware of his privileges; "because she is just in a haze."

"Step below, Mr. Jigger, and let Captain Bunt know. A strange sail, two points on the lee bow-can't make VOL. I. (20.)

her out.

P. 310.

Call all hands to make sail, Mr. Splinter, and we'll see what that craft can do against the Thunderer, with the wind two points abaft the beam. Give her the lower stu'n'-sail, sir, and the light kites, if you think she'll bear them." With that old Splicetack and his square-tailed coat disappeared down one hatchway, while simultaneously, Captain Bunt-(a very gentlemanly sort of man, too, by the way)-appeared up another.

"Where is the stranger, Mr.

east, at the rate of eight and a half knots, and with the exception of the officer of the deck, and the midshipman on watch, there was nothing to indicate that the Thunderer contained aught else of life. There is, however, one sound on board of a well regulated man-of-war which makes the lazy lively, and the sleepers awakeand so it was in this case. No sooner had the boatswain's call rung its echo through the ship, accompanied by the hoarse stentorian words of "All hands on deck, make sail!" than life leaped into every thing. Up tumbled the long-faced waister, the laughing fo'castle-man, the growling afterguard, and even the very inmates of the chicken-coops seemed to participate in the joy of relief from monotony. Cackle, cackle, qua-a-ck, qua-ack, quack, went the chickens and ducks, and squeal, squeal, squeal, went a solitary, slab-sided, half-starved, uneaten representative of the stye-who, unwilling that all should appear pleased, and he be singular, lent his dulcet tones to add to the harmony of the miscellaneous strain.

"Curse that pig," vociferated the officer of the deck, and inwardly chuckling at the thought of making the midshipmen kill their last fresh, and be compelled to solace themselves on old mahogany. "Curse that pig. Here Mr. Jigger, tell the caterer of your mess to have that pig killed immediately.

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Ay, ay, sir;" and away skipped the roguish mid, laughing in his sleeve, till stopped on the ladder by a messmate.

'Ha, ha, John; I say, there's old Splinter has got mad with the grunter that his mess has been saving for three weeks to give a blow-out to the captain, and they've invited him to-morrow to taste a little fresh; so the old fellow, dash his top-lights, thinking to do us a bad turn, has weathered himself; and thanks to him, we'll have a blow-out on ward-room pork to-morrow. Mind. Mum's the word. " "Mr. Jigger, have that pig killed immediately."

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"It is our last, sir." "Have it killed immediately, sir." "Ay, ay, sir."

"Mr. Splinter," said the captain, keep her away a point, and keep the

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Rig out and hoist away.

The frigate was now cracking along at a great rate. The newly spread canvas had imparted additional impetus to the moving mass, and she dashed through it as if disdaining the repelling force of water.

We had sailed from merry old England with light hearts and gay anticipations; and though, perhaps, some sighs were wafted shoreward on the lightfooted breeze, and some more substantial transfers of feeling were made in the shape of well-folded epistles, consigned to the rough mercies of the weather-beaten pilot, with careful injunctions not to sully the fair representative of speech, and not to spoil the volume-speaking seal; yet putting aside these soft places in humanity, which will even creep beneath the jackets of Neptune's rough sons, we were, perhaps, as gay and merry a crew as ever bid farewell to the cliffs of Dover. Our destination was the American coast, and our avowed design the capture or destruction of a celebrated lawless rover of the ocean. But it was well known that the little Speedy Keel, after having repeatedly baffled our best cruisers, was not to be taken without some small matter of skill and exertion. Still, in the buoyancy of never-failing hope there were many fancied trophies, which, after a long and wearisome cruise, were to be laid at the feet of beauty, and cause the bright eye to beam with an additional lustre, and the glowing cheek to mantle with a deeper tint. The only really wo-begone countenances on board the vessel, were those of certain scarce unpetticoated youngsters, flitting about the decks in despair, at the cruel separation from a flame of three weeks.

The pilot-boat was about shoving off, laden with the last tokens of fond remembrance, when one poor, heartbroken little fellow crawled up the lee side of a belaying pin, to impress it upon the pilot's memory, not to forget the three-pence worth of candy for his poor Mary, and then climbed down again from his soaring elevation,

as if "the last string were parted, and its music fled." With a few similar exceptions of the "pangs of cruel separation," everything went on well. To give us every possible advantage, the admiralty had selected one of the swiftest ships in our service, and a ship's company of picked men, and to take the rover was the heart-felt wish, of all. We had been out about five weeks, knocking about here and there -sometimes skimming along with everything clear alow and aloft, and sometimes boxing about on that confounded Yankee coast, with everything as clear as a bell overhead, while it piped three gales of wind at once, and kicked up a sea under-foot-oh, such a sea! I have beat about the Bay of Biscay, and across the Gulf of Lyons, and smelt a small puff or two in the shape of a Levanter, when every line was as taught as a harpstring, and the anchor-stocks were blown into kinks; but that was a small affair. Here it would roll a man's dinner out of him faster than he could roll it in, especially if he was at all green; and a close-reefed bit of a main-topsail stood no more chance than a leg of bacon before hungry men. There is an old yarn about a terrible gale of wind once, which obliged the captain of a vessel to employ three men to hold his hair on. My grandfather's second uncle's third cousin, who is a bit of an antiquary in his way, traced out this story, and had the satisfaction to learn that it actually occurred on this very same Yankee coast, just about where we met with such a tremendous tumbling about. But this was all past, and we had been suffering under the monotony of a series of fair weather watches and "no sail in sight," when the cry of "sail-ho!" roused all hands from below.

We had now risen the stranger's upper sails, and as the lower masts were gradually developed, they displayed no common symmetry of form. The lower rigging was neatly set up and rattled down, and the masts, with a beautifully roguish rake, gracefully bent to every motion of the hull, and tapered away through top-mast, topgallant-mast, royal, and sky-sail pole, till their slight but beautiful outlines

could scarcely be defined against the opposite horizon. Every line was hauled taught and belayed; no fag ends flying out here and there; no stu'n'sailgear stopped down on the yard-arms, but every thing in apple-pie order; and the delicate fabric was gracefully yielding to the undulating motion of the seas, with seemingly no apparent advancing way, so steadily and swiftly did the frigate overhaul her.

"Ha, ha, he, he!" chuckled old Splicetack, as we gradually rose her from rail to streak and streak to waterline:"knew she couldn't hold way with the Thunderer, wind two points abaft the beam. No, no; Thunderer's too clean, for'ard and aft. 'Twill take a wider clew of canvass than that fellow's got ;" and he looked up with a satisfactory leer at the delicate tracery of the swift frigate, when suddenly he raised his hand to his mouth and hailed, "On the main royal-yard there; what's that bit of an Irish pennant peeping over the jack-stay. Bring it down here, sir, and send me the captain of the top."

One of the main-royal rovins had parted, and the fag end was sticking out over the cleat.

"Where's the captain of the top ?"

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Here, sir," said a tall, longwaisted, shut-up jack-knife sort of a tar, who was quietly employed under the lee of a gun, surveying the bounties which nature had dispensed to him in the shape of a pair of huge red whiskers, and soft, languishing eyes, which disdained to look at the same object at once. "Here, sir." And having replaced his tarpaulin on one side of his nob, and adjusted his quid on the other, by way of trimming ship, he gradually uncoiled himself and walked aft.

"Well, sir, you're the captain of that top, are you?" "Yes, sir."

"And how long have you been to

sea?",

The poor fellow crawled down by the fife-rail and prepared to commence operations on the yarn, and old Splicetack walked aft.

"Harkee, Bill," said one of the men, "you must be mighty hungry and no grub in the chest."

"Confound your grub," muttered the disconsolate Bill.

"Never mind, never mind, 'twill be a savin' in the tobacco line, and keep you off old Gripepenny's books." "Here, Mr. Jigger, let the captain know that the stranger has come up three points. Luff there, luff. Man the braces."

The schooner had actually brought the wind for'ard of the beam, and seemed manoeuvring to cross our bow and go to windward; and though we had hauled up at the same time, she still continued her course, gracefully gliding over the water.

"Them's one of the crafts, I s'pose," drawled out an old Jack, "what the old 'oman talked about, that goes wing and wing, both booms on the same side, bound to South Carolina; south-east there, and the same course back again."

"She looks like a water-bruiser," grunted another.

"You call her a water-bruiser, Jack Stay? You're a thunderin' pretty fellow to talk about a vessel.

I say she's as pretty a bunch of timbers as ever was stuck together; and as to being a bruiser, you'll have to lay aloft, I guess, and loose that rag of a main-skysail of your'n, and the big jib on the old barkey, before she tips the go-by to that same bit of a schooner coaxing about yonder. I guess I know somethin' about them

'ere lean schooners, seein' as how I got my bring up among 'em. Why there in Baltimore they have to get all hands hold of the monkey-rail sometimes, when they're goin' alongside, to keep the darned crafts from running clear through the docks. You call her a water-bruiser, eh? I tell you she's just playing about with a slack sheet, and that's what she luffed for. Awater-bruiser, indeed! You'll see that she's got a straight keel, steers small, goes into it pretty, comes out cleaner, and 'll lay up within four and a half. Some on 'em 'll sail two points t'other side of the breeze, and think nothin' then of luffin' a leetle. Ha, ha! She's playin' with the Thunderer, Johnny, I know."

This long harangue came from the mouth of a Jonathan, who had been pressed into his majesty's service on the other side of the water. Having thus vented his spleen, and spit out his indignation, with the help of some of the old Virginia, the patriotic Yankee settled himself again to his occupation of rubbing down some hammock knittles.

The schooner now began to take in sail, and we were near enough to hear the creaking of her blocks.

"What under heaven," said Lovett, our fourth lieutenant-a very handsome fellow-"is that thing shortening sail for? I fancy that fellow is somewhat of a wit."

"Mr. Splicetack, hail that vessel," said the captain.

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Trumpet, there, boy. Schooner ahoy!" thundered out old Splicetack. "Halloo!"

"What schooner's that?"

The fellow had got no trumpet, but had by this time stuck a joint of an old stove pipe at us, through which he drawled, "The Foiyer-Floiy," and which we construed into the Fire-Fly. "Where are you from?" "Bostin."

"Where are you bound?"
"To Havanny."

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'Captain Bunt, the fellow says he's bound to Havanna, and is heading just the opposite course." "Tell him so, sir."

Ha

"You're out of your course. vanna lies just the other way." "Be I?- does it?" said the Yan