overboard, and although wounded, miraculously escaped by swimming. Having hung the body of the master at the yard arm, they first sacked and then scuttled the vessel, supposing she would sink; but they were too confident and careless, she drifted ashore and told her own tale—a few days after this the party landed, and soon excited suspicion by their lavish prodigality; they were arrested and sent to Jamaica for trial, and sufficient evidence being procured against them, were condemned and executed. So quickly does the hand of God sometimes take vengeance for blood.
As the night came on we stretched ourselves upon the deck to sleep, leaving one to watch, but the excitement of these stories, together with the novelty of the situation, banished it from most of our eyes. About midnight, the lightning which had been for some time playing about the hills, became exceedingly vivid, and as its flashes glanced upon the sleepers, reclined on different parts of the deck, each one with a loaded musket and cutlass by his side, they seemed to exhibit a scene rather of romance than of reality.
At day-break we rose, and the current being still unfavourable, some of the party went into the woods to shoot, and succeeded in killing three small birds not unlike the common partridge. Every report of the musket seemed to awaken all
