"I saw it there," said he, "but it is not hers! Infatuated, abandoned villain." he continued, with irrepressible energy, "it is not my sister's hand—no! it is the incarnate fiend's who tempted you, and who now waves you to perdition—begone together!"
He aimed a dreadful blow at the astonished Fisher, who instinctively avoided the stroke. Mutually wound up to the highest pitch of anger, they grappled each the other's throat, set their feet, and strained for the throw, which was inevitably to bury both in the wild waves beneath. A faint shriek was heard, and a gibbering, as of many voices, came fluttering around them.
"Chatter on!" said the Fisher, "he joins you now!"
"Together—it will be together!" said the stranger, as with a last desperate effort he bent his adversary backward from the betling cliff. The voice of the Fisher sounded hoarsely in execration, as they dashed into the sea together; but what he said was drowned in the hoarser murmur of the uplashing surge! The body of the stranger was found on the next morning, flung far up on the rocky shore—but that of the murderer was gone for ever!
The superstitious peasantry of the neighbourhood still consider the spot as haunted; and at midnight, when the waves dash fitfully against the perilous crags, and the bleak winds sweep with long and angry moan around them, they still hear the gibbering voices of the fiends, and the mortal execrations of the Warlock Fisher!—but, after that fearful night, no man ever saw THE PHANTOM HAND!—Literary Magnet.
ARCANA OF SCIENCE.
Elephants.
All the elephants which were exported from Point de Galle were caught in ancient, as well as in modern times, in that tract of country which extends from Matura to Tangcolle, in the south of Ceylon, and which, from its being famous for its elephants in his days, is described by Ptolemy in the map he made of Ceylon sixteen hundred years ago as the elephantum pascua. The trade in elephants from Ceylon, which used to be lucrative, is now completely annihilated, in consequence of all the petty Rajahs, Foligars, and other chiefs in the southern peninsula of India, who used formerly to purchase Ceylon elephants as a part of their state, having lost their sovereignties, and being therefore no longer required to keep up any state of this description. A gentleman who has a plantation at Candy, it is understood, recently introduced the use of elephants, in ploughing, with great advantage.—Trans. Asiatic Society.