Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/160

156 thing to show you, which you alone deserve to see; I got it among the Moors, so come, and come alone.'

"I rose, and followed him, for my curiosity was unbounded; he conducted me below, and, opening a small wicket in the wall of his cabin with a key, ushered me in, and closing it suddenly upon me, locked it; and then I heard him bounding up the stair to the deck. I stood half imagining this to be a jest, or something, at least, of a light nature; but shriek after shriek of my wife, uttered in the piercing agony of anguish and despair, soon undeceived me. I called, I entreated, I used force, and, though I was armed by anger and despair with almost supernatural might, the door withstood all my efforts. But why should I dwell upon a scene of such unutterable misery? What I endured, and what the woman I loved and adored suffered, are fit only to be imagined—not, surely, to be spoken. Her wrongs were remembered, and her shrieks numbered, by a Power far more terrible than man; and a certain doom and deplorable death was pronounced against them, at the moment their joy was fullest.

"The evening passed away, and morning came; and, through a little wicket which looked upon the sea, the light showed me that my chamber was the treasure-room of the pirates, for such they were, as well as smugglers. At the same moment a hole opened above, and a piece of bread and an antique silver cup filled with wine were lowered down. Amid the misery of my situation it seemed but a light evil that I recognized the silver vessel to be part of the treasure I had left at home; and, in seeking for a weapon to force the wicket, I found that my whole riches, in gold as well as silver, had been seized and put on board. I could now measure the extent of my calamity, and prepared myself for a fate, which, among such miscreants, could not be deemed far distant. The morning was not much advanced when the sun dipped at once into a dark and tempestuous ocean of clouds, the wind began to whistle shriller and shriller among our sails, and the sea, upturned by sudden and heavy gusts of wind, showed, as far as the eye could reach, those dark and tremendous furrows so fatal to mariners. The wind was from the land, and I could both see and feel that the vessel was unable to gain the harbour, and had sought security from the approaching tempest by standing out to sea. I heard the wind wax louder, and saw