"Thank you, Tom," said Fyall; "I owe you a good turn for that, my boy."

"Fyall's story-Mr. Fyall's story!" resounded on all hands. Fyall, glad to escape the song and wet night-cap, instantly began.

All the decanters were covered with cotton bags, kept wet with saltpetre and water, so that the evaporation carried on powerfully by the stream of air that flowed across the room, through the open doors and windows, made the fluids quite as cool as was desirable to worthies sitting luxuriating with the thermometer at 80 or thereby; yet, from the free current, I was in no way made aware of this degree of heat by any oppressive sensation; and I found in the West Indies as well as in the East, although the wind in the latter is more dry and parching, that a current of heated air, if it be moderately dry, even with the thermometer at 95 in the shade, is really not so enervating or oppressive as I have found it in the stagnating atmosphere on the sunny side of Pall Mall, with the mercury barely at 75. A cargo of ice had a little before this arrived at Kingston, and at first all the inhabitants who could afford it, iced every thing, wine, water, cold meats, fruits, and the Lord knows what all; tea, I believe, among other things, (by the way, I have tried this, and it is a luxury of its kind;) but the regular old stagers, who knew what was what, and had a regard for their interiors, soon began to eschew the ice in every way, saving and excepting to cool the water they washed their thin faces and hands in; so we had no ice, nor did we miss it; but the Judge had a plateful of chips on the table before him, one of which he every now and then popped into his long thin bell-glass of claret, diluting it, I should have thought, in rather a heathenish manner; but n'importe, he worked away, sawing off pieces now and then from the large lump in the blanket, (to save the tear and wear attending a fracture,) which was handed him by his servant, so that by eleven o'clock at night, allowing for the water, he must have concealed his three bottles of pure claret, besides garnishing with a lot of white wines. In fine, we all carried on astonishingly, some good singing was given, a practical joke was tried on now and then, by Fyall, and we continued mighty happy. As to the singing part of it,-the landlord, with a bad voice, and worse ear, opened the rorytory, by volunteering a very extraordinary squeak; fortunately it was not very long, but it gave him a plea to screw a song out of his right-hand neighbor, who in turn acquired the same right of compelling the person next to him to make a fool of himself; at last, it came to Transom, who, by-the-by, sung exceedingly well, but he had more wine than usual, and essayed to coquet a bit.

"Bring the wet night-cap!" quoth our host.

'Oh, is it that you are at ?" said Transom, and he sung as required; but it was all pearls before swine, I fear.

At last, we stuck fast at Fyall. Music! there was not one particle in his whole composition; so the wet nightcap already impended over him, when I sung out, "Let him tell a story, Mr. Wagtail! Let him tell a story!"

by name, who carried on business in Curaçoa; you may have heard of him too. Ezekiel was often down here for the purpose of laying in provisions, and purchasing drygoods. You all know that?"

Certainly!" shouted both Captain Transom and myself in a breath, although we had never heard of him before.

"Hah, I knew it! Well then, Ezekiel was very rich; he came down in August last, in the Pickle schooner, and, as back luck would have it, he fell sick of the fever. 'Isaac,' quoth Ezekiel, 'I am wery sheek; I tink I shall tie!' 'Hope note, dear proder; you hab no vive nor shildir; pity you should tie, Ezekiel. Ave you make your vil, Ezekiel ?' 'Yesh; de vill is make. I leavish every ting to you, Isaac, on von condition, dat you send my pody to be pury in Curaçoa. I love dat place; twenty years since I left de Minories; all dat time I cheat dere, and tell lie dere, and lif dere happily. Oh, you most send my pody for its puryment to Curaçoa!' 'I will do dat, mine proder.' 'Den I depart in peace, dear Isaac ;' and the Israelite was as good as his word for once. He did die. Isaac, according to his promise, applied to the captains of several schooners; none of them would take the dead body. 'What shall I do?' thought Isaac, de monish mosh not be loss.' So he straightway had Ezekiel (for even a Jew won't keep long in that climate) cut up and packed with pickle into two barrels, marked, 'Prime Mess Pork, Leicester, M'Call and Co., Cork.' He then shipped the same in the Fan-Fan, taking bills of lading in accordance with the brand, deliverable to Mordecai Levi, of Curaçoa, to whom he sent the requisite instructions. The vessel sailed-off St. Domingo she carried away a mast-tried to fetch Carthagena under a jury-spar-fell to leeward, and finally brought up at Honduras.

"Three months after, Isaac encountered the master of the schooner in the streets of Kingston. "Ah, mine goot captain-how is you? you lookish tin-ave you been sheek?' 'No, Moses—I am well enough, thank you-poor a bit, but sound in health, thank God. You have heard of my having carried away the mainmast, and, after kicking about fifteen days on short allowance, having been obliged to bear up for Honduras?' 'I know noting of all dat,' said Isaac; 'sorry for it, captain-very sad, inteed.' Sad-you may say that, Moses. But I am honest although poor, and here is your bill of lading for your two barrels of provisions; "Prime mess," it says; d- -d tough, say I-Howsomdever,' pulling out his purse, 'the present value on Bogle, Jopp and Co.'s wharf, is £5 6s. 8d. the barrel; so there are two doubloons, Moses, and now discharge the account on the back of the bill of lading, will you?' 'Vy should I take payment, captain? if de (pork stuck in his throat like 'amen' in Macbeth's,) 'if de barrel ish lost, it can't be help-de act of God, you know.' 'I am an honest man, Isaac,' continued the captain, although a poor one, and I must tell the truth-we carried on with our own as long as it lasted, at length we had to break bulk, and

"Did they eat the head and hands, and "Hold your tongue, Tom Cringle, don't interrupt me, you did not eat them; I tell it as it was told to me. So Isaac Grimm," continued Fyall, "was fairly overcome; the kindly feelings of his nature were at length stirred up, and as he turned away, he wept blew his nose hard, like a Chaldean trumpet in the new moon; and while the large tears coursed each other down his care-worn cheeks, he exclaimed, wringing the captain's hand, in a voice tremulous and scarcely audible from extreme emotion, 'Oh, Isaac Grimm, Isaac Grimm, tid not your heart mishgive you, ven you vas commit te great blasphemy of invoish Ezekiel, flesh of your flesh, pone of your pone-as por-de onclean peast, I mean. If you had put invoish him as peef, surely te earthly tabernacle of him, as always sheet in de high places in te sinacogue, would never have peen allow to pass troo te powels of te pershicuting Nazareen. Ah, mine goot captain, mine very tear friend, vat, vat, vat av you done wid de cask, captain?" "

"Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion," sung out the judge, who by this time had become deusedly prosy; and all hands arose, as if by common consent, and agreed that we had got enough.

So off we started in groups. Fyall, Captain Transom, Whiffle, Aaron Bang, and myself, sallied forth in a bunch, pretty well inclined for a lark, you may guess. There are no lamps in the streets in Kingston, and as all the decent part of the community are in their cavies by half-past nine in the evening, and as it is now "the witching time o' night," there was not a soul in the streets that we saw, except when we passed a solitary townguard, lurking about some dark corner under the piazzas. These same streets, which were wide and comfortable enough in the daytime, had become unaccountably narrow and intricate since six o'clock in the evening, and,

although the object of the party was to convoy Captain Transom and myself to our boat at the Ordnance Wharf, it struck me that we were as frequently on a totally different tack.

"I say, Cringle, my boy," stuttered out my superior, lieutenant and captain being both drowned in and equalized by the claret-"why, Tom, Tom Cringle, you dog-don't you hear your superior officer speak, sir, eh?"

My superior officer, during this address, was standing with both arms round a pillar of the piazza.

"I am here, sir," said I.

"Ah, I see," said Transom; "let us heave ahead, Tom-now do ye hear?-stand you with your white trousers against the next pillar." The ranges supporting the piazza were at distances of about twenty feet from each other. "Ah, stand there now

see it." So he weighed from the one he had tackled to, and making a staggering bolt of it, he ran up to the pillar against which I stood, whose position was marked by my white vestments, where he again hooked on for a second or two, until I had taken up a new position.

"There, my boy, that's the way to lay out a warp -right in the wind's eye, Tom-we shall fairly beat those lubbers who are tacking in the stream; nothing like warping in the dead water near the shore

mark that down, Tom-never beat in a tide-way when you can warp up along shore in the dead water. D-n the judge's ice"-(hiccup)-" he has poisoned me with that piece he plopped in my last whitewash of madeira. He a judge! He may be a good crim-criminal judge, but no judge of wine. Why don't you laugh, Tom, eh?—and then his saw-the rasp of a saw I hate-wish it, and a whole nest more, had been in his legal stomachfull of old saws-Shakspere-he, he-why don't you laugh, Tom? Poisoned by the judge, by Jupiter. Now, here we are fairly abreast of them-Hillo! Fyall, what are you after?"

The next morning had been fixed for duck-shooting, and the overseer and I were creeping along among the mangrove bushes on the shore, to get a shot at some teal, when we saw our friend the pair of compasses crossing the small bay in his boat, towards his little pilot-boat-built schooner, which was moored in a small creek opposite, the bushwood concealing every thing but her masts. My companion, as wild an Irishman as I ever knew, hailed him,

"Hillo, Obadia-Buckskin-you Yankee rascal, heave-to. Come ashore here-come ashore.'

Obed, smoking his pipe, deliberately uncoiled himself I thought, as he rose, there was to be no end of him—and stood upright in the boat, like an ill-rigged jury-mast.

"I say, Master Tummas, you ben't no friend of mine, I guess, a'ter last night's work; you hears how I coughs?"-and he began to wheezle and crow in a most remarkable fashion.

"Never mind," rejoined the overseer; "if you go round that point, and put up the ducks-by the piper, but I'll fire at you!"

Obed neighed like a horse expecting his oats, which was meant as a laugh of derision. "Do you think your birding-piece can touch me here away, Master Tummas ?" And again he nichered more loudly than before.

"Don't provoke me to try, you yellow snake, you!" "Try, and be d- -d, and there's a mark for thee," unveiling a certain part of his body, not his face.

The overseer, or busha, to give him his Jamaica name, looked at me and smiled, then coolly lifted his long Spanish barrel, and fired. Down dropped the smuggler, and ashore came the boat.

"I am mortally wounded, Master Tummas," quoth Obed; and I was confoundly frightened at first, from the unusual proximity of the injured part to his head; but the overseer, as soon as he could get off the ground, where he had thrown himself in an uncontrollable fit of laughter, had the man stripped and laid across a log, where he set his servant to pick out the pellets with a penknife.

A SLIPPERY YOUTH.

"Old Gelid, Longtram, Steady, and myself had been eating ratoons, at the former's domicil, and it was about nine in the evening when I got home. We had taken next to no wine, a pint of Madeira a-piece, during dinner, and six bottles of claret between us afterwards, so I went to bed as cool as a cucumber, and slept soundly for several hours, until awakened by my old gander-now do be quiet, Cringle-by my old watchman of a gander, cackling like a hero. I struck my repeater-half past oneso I turned myself, and was once more falling over into the arms of Morpheus, when I thought I saw some dark object flit silently across the open window that looks into the piazza, between me and the deep blue as yet moonless sky. This somewhat startled me, but it might have been one of the servants. Still I got up and looked out, but I could see nothing. It did certainly strike me once or twice, that there was some dark object cowering in the deep gloom caused by the shade of the orange-tree at the end of the piazza, but I persuaded myself it was fancy, and once more slipped into my nest. However, the circumstance had put sleep to flight. Half an hour might have passed, and the deep dark purity of the eastern sky was rapidly quickening into a greenish azure, the forerunner

of the rising moon," ("Oh, confound your poetry," said Rubiochico,) "which was fast swamping the sparkling stars, like a bright river flowing over diamonds, when the old gander again set up his gabblement, and trumpeted more loudly than before. 'If you were not so tough, my noisy old cock-thought I-' next Michaelmas should be your last.' So I now resolutely shut my eyes, and tried to sleep perforce, in which usually fruitless attempt, I was actually beginning to succeed, do you know, when a strong odor of palm oil came through the window, and on opening my eyes, I saw by the increasing light a naked negro standing at it, with his head and shoulders in sharp relief against the pale broad disc of the moon, at that moment just peering over the dark summit of the Long Mountain.

"I rubbed my eyes, and looked again; the dark figure was still there, but as if aware that some one was on the watch, it gradually sank down, until nothing but the round bullet head appeared above the window sill. The stratagem succeeded; the figure, deceived by my feigned snoring and quietude, slowly rose, and once more stood erect. Presently, it slipped one foot into the room, and then another, but so noiselessly that when I saw the black figure standing before me on the floor, I had some misgivings as to its being really a being of this world. However, I had small space for speculation, when it slid past the foot of the bed towards my open bureau-I seized the opportunity-started up-turned the key of the door-and planted myself right between the thief and the open window. 'Now, you scoundrel, surrender, or I will murder you on the spot.' I had scarcely spoken the word, when with the speed of light, the fellow threw himself on me-we closed-I fell—when, clip, he slipped through my fingers like an eel-bolted through the window-cleared the balcony at a bound, and disappeared. The thief had stripped himself as naked as when he was born, and soaped his woolly skull, and smeared his whole corpus with palm oil, so that in the struggle I was charmingly lubricated."

Nicodemus here lay back on his chair, evidently desirous of our considering this the whole of the story, but he was not to be let off so easily, for presently Longtram, with a wicked twinkle of his eye, chimed in—

Ay, and what happened next, old Nic-did nothing follow, eh ?"

Nic's countenance assumed an irresolute expression; he saw he was jammed up in the wind, so at a venture he determined to sham deafness

"Take wine, Lucifer-a glass of Hermitage ?" "With great pleasure," said his satanic majesty. The propitiatory libation, however, did not work, for no sooner had his glass touched the mahogany again, than he returned to the charge.

"Now, Mr. Nicodemus, since you won't, I will tell the company the reason of so nice an old gentleman wearing Baltimore flour in his hair instead of perfumed Mareschal powder, and none of the freshest either, let me tell you; why, I have seen three weevils take flight from your august pate since we sat down to dinner."

Old Nic, seeing he was caught, met the attack with the greatest good humor

"Why, I will tell the whole truth, Lucifer, if you don't bother." ("The devil thank you," said Longtram.)-"So you must know," continued Nicode