Page:Demon ship, or, The pirate of the Mediterranean.pdf/4

4 for European letters—took up one day by aecidentaccident [sic] 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 contradicteontradict [sic] it, and declaringdeelaring [sic] 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, blaekblack [sic]-margined letter, with a sable seal as large as a saueersaucer [sic]. 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 appearanceappearanee [sic] of my name about five years afterwards, among the 'Marriages' in the CaleuttaCalcutta [sic] Gazette, was followed by successive announcements among the 'Births and Deaths,' in the same compendious record of life's changes. My wife perished of a malignant fever, and two infant ehildrenchildren [sic] speedily followed her. I set out to return over-land to my native eountrycountry [sic], a sober, steady, and partially grey-haired colonel of thirty-six. My military eareercareer [sic] had been as brilliant as my domestiedomestic [sic] 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 '.' 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 erewcrew [sic], whose rapaeityrapacity [sic] triumphed over all fear of danger, and whose crueltyeruelty [sic] 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 aecountingaccounting [sic] for them than by tracing them to supernatural, and, consequently, demoniaealdemoniacal [sic], ageneyagency [sic]. She had sailed through fleets undiseoveredundiscovered [sic]; she had escaped from the fastest pursuers; she had overtaken the swiftest fugitives; she had appeared where she was not expeetedexpected [sic], and disappeared when even her very latitude and longitude seemed caleulablecalculable [sic]. Her fearful title had been first given by those who dreaded to beeomebecome [sic] her vietimsvictims [sic]; 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 deelareddeclared [sic] that she had the power, through her evil agents, of raising suehsuch [sic] a strange,