Up again to the crag, and down to the shelly margin of the shore; and a long look the man gave at the ruin of shed and den, as he gently placed the child on a sand-bag in the stern-sheets of the ark. 177 Then he cast off the rope which held the vessel to the hated strand, hoisted the sail, and, as she bubbled along the inlet with the first sigh of the land wind, he stood at the helm with his bare head lighted up by the beams of the rising sun, and his lips moved in prayer.

On, noiselessly through the Tiger’s Trap sailed the little pinnace till she bowed her rugged cutwater in the yielding waves, and with her square lug-sail swelling gently to the freshening breeze, she held her course to sea. I question much if the stanch brigantine, named the “Centipede,” which had preceded her through this tiger’s gorge, with all the ruffianly crew that manned her, and their villainous captain on her quarter-deck, stood half the chance of a prosperous voyage as the tiny ark, called the “Rosalie,” which followed, with her noble, brave commander, and his weak and boyish mate. Who can tell?

END OF PART I.

PART II.

CHAPTER XXIX.
LAYING UP THE STRANDS.

“Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main,
Till in sheltered coves and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.”

It was in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two, and in the broad and commodious harbor of Kingston, a great mercantile haven, crowded with shipping from all parts of the commercial globe; landlocked by reef and ridge, with the rocks and heights crowned by frowning batteries of heavy cannon; while beyond were spread the lower and upper town, in masses of low two-story buildings, with piazzas, bright green jalousies, stately palm, tamarind, and cocoa-nut-trees waving above them. At the mouth of the harbor strait, where stands Fort Augusta, lay a magnificent double-banked American frigate, with a broad blue swallow-tailed pennant at her main, standing out stiff, like a dog-vane, from the lofty mast, as the ship rode to the strong sea-breeze.

The stays and rigging came down from trucks, cross-trees, and tops in straight black lines, from the great length of lower masts and enormously square yards fore and aft; and from side to side, till they met the long majestic hull and taper head-booms; while below were two rows of ports, with the guns run out and the brass tompions gleaming in their muzzles. The awnings were spread in one flat extended sheet of white cotton canvas from bowsprit to taffrail, and from the wide-spread lower booms at the fore-chains boats were riding by their painters. Within a cable’s length of the frigate’s black quarter lay a low rakish schooner, like a minnow alongside a whale, with a thin little coach-whip streaming from her main-mast head, a long brass gun amidships, and looking as trig and tidy as a French maid beside her portly mistress.