musket at his side, with the butt of it on the deck. Stooping down, but carefully avoiding every attitude resembling his own, I took hold of the gun, and we held it together-he with his right hand, and I with mine. Then I signed to him to give it up to me, The "wa" and the " yay," I had used before, were the only Burmese words I could remember. I knew not the word for ** give,” but I did know the gesture for "I will take;" so shaking the musket violently, and angrily threatening him with my voice, and with "faces," I made him understand that much, and he surrendered his gun. I laid it down on the deck and put my foot upon it. Then repeating the same pantomime, I next pulled the red cord by which his dhar was suspended over his head, and held that also.

All that may pass for courage, but it was nothing of the kind. A glimmer of the truth had but to creep across the minds of these men-they had but to guess my artifice-they had but to suspect that I might, after all, be no madman, but an enemy-and quick death would be delightful to the fate that I must suffer. Intellectual mastery of the occasion was all that could serve my turn -cunning, and nothing but cunning. I had no friend nor weapon-I had even thrown away my stick-when that man gave up his dhar to me. Then standing erect before him, in the attitude of a master, I told him to twah, and he twahed. And I actually had a musket and a sword! I cannot tell you with what exulting joy I looked on them, and wondered if all God's beautiful earth was enough to buy them from me.

Now I am naturally not a brave man; I am too excitable. I have not coolness, "nerve;" I have only the passion of courage. But in that moment I had the heart of the wounded warrior, who only asks for a wall to set his back to, and a weapon. I had been hunted, baited, it seemed to me, the whole day long ; when these dogs were not present in person, their phantoms were there, ten times more devilish than they. All the hatred in my heart was uppermost, and with that sword in my hand, I felt capable of hacking the whole pack in pieces. This will explain to you the appearance of courage; I believe the arrantest coward that ever trembled would have felt just as defiant, on that spot, and in that predicament, as I

did. Not only do I believe that no undeveloped courage of mine had anything to do with it, but I am sure that the insanity of fear was the whole secret of my apparent heroism. I mean that imagination, inspired by fear, had exalted me for the time-made me superior to the occasion; I saw more in the weapon than was really in it.

Now I went through the same pantomime with the two others, only they approached me, crouching lower and lower from the first, until, when they reached me, they were already quite down on their haunches. Perhaps because, being too suddenly reassured, I was off my guard for a moment, I squatted down beside them in order to get closer to their faces. It was a dangerous mistake. Unmeaning, even absurd as it may appear to you, that posture is everything to a Burman; for him it has grave significance in religion and social intercourse. But I did so stoop, and one of them-I remember their faces perfectly; one was a stupidlooking fellow, with rather a good-natured expression, if he had any at all; the other was a dark, scarred, scowling devil, who looked altogether dacoit-like -a practiced ruffian, and a born cutthroat. Now, mind you, this is the impression they left upon my memory, or my imagination; I don't mean to insist that they did really look so, for, likely enough, if I could see them now, I should be ashamed of the injustice I have done them both. I caught their colors from my fancy and my fears. You have only the facts that they were two dangerous men, and that they were there. The picture they impressed upon my mind, is, no doubt, à daguerreotype of my mental condition then; just as I believed I heard the boy in the water, and spoke to him, although he was far off.

But there were the two men, squatting side by side. I seized the dhar of the foolish-looking fellow, and tried to pull the cord, which held it, over his head. Both had laid down their lances; their dhars were sheathed, and their hands pressed together. When I made the attempt on my foolish friend's sword, he smiled-I remember how-a silly, childish, Indian smile, like that of a slave, whose master condescends to jest with him. But his ugly comrade did not smile-far otherwise. He laid his hand upon the other's

dhar as I was in the act of removing it, and, holding it fast, shook his head in a threatening way, as if, less superstitious and more cunning than the rest, he had already half detected

me.

"He's trying you"-the thought came to me with such suddenness and force as to produce the impression of a warning, actually whispered in my ear. He was trying me. He knew that if I were really mad, this attempt to thwart me would be of no avail; whereas, if I were merely dissembling, I should probably be frightened, or, at least, confused. Whether all that did really pass through his mind, God only knows; but, certainly, I made my sagacity his. I was careful to betray no astonishment, no alarm; but without agitation, stooping down, I took up the musket which the first man had left, very coolly and deliberately cocked it, very coolly and deliberately placed the muzzle to his chin-and pointed to the dhar. He instantly and eagerly jerked off his own dhar, and laid it at my feet. Then, leaving their lances, both twahed, when I told them, and went back to their party.

They had hardly left, when a remote noise of many feet and voices grew into a regular rush and an Irish yell. A party of wild bog-trotters of the 80th came down upon these Burmese, fired volleys right and left, and then charged them. That moment was to me the most dangerous in the whole affair, because these fellows would not recognize me-would not believe in me. They would not discover in time that I was one of their comrades who had got into such an infernal plight. At first I thought of hallooing to them; but in another moment I was hiding myself under the cover of the boat. I felt that if I but showed just one hair of my head, there would be fifty bullets through me in a flash. They would fire, of course, at any head emerging from that boat.

Good God! how long it was! the poor woman, paralyzed with fear, crouching opposite me, and I shutting out the light from my eyes, and awaiting a horrible death at the hands of my own friends - death after all! But there was an end of it byand-by. Whether they heard the recall, or had been ordered to return immediately, I do not know; but they went back over the bank, and I could hear the glorious brogue, as they hur

rahed and shouted to each other. As the last man disappeared I ran after him, dragged myself up the bank, and cried "Help, help, boys!" as loud as I could; some of them returned, thinking, perhaps, that one of the party was hurt. When the sergeant, who was behind the rest, saw me, he presented his bayonet close to my head. I was down then, and quite helpless. He asked me "who the hell" I was, and where I came from. They at first took me for a renegade, and all came crowding around me. But one recognized my navy-blue trowsers, and said: "Why, don't you see he is one of the ship's men;" and another, who, the day before, as we were steaming up the river, had come to me for some tobacco, said: "I know him-that's the doctor, that's the doctor of the ship. Good God! where did he come from?" Then they put me in a dhoolee, which had been brought with the party, and carried me some little distance, where I found myself among officers and personal friends. One circumstance will serve to show the state of my mind at this time: As I lay in the dhoolee, a Burman passed by, and, although he was a friend, the sight of him excited me so, that I struggled to take a musket from a soldier who was walking by the side of the dhoolee, to shoot the fellow with. My rage was still upon me. It was singular how it drove off even gratitude-the brought-to-bay feeling would not leave me yet.

I lay then on the porch of a bamboo house with my friends around me, and, after awhile, was sufficiently composed, under the influence of a powerful draught given me by one of the surgeons, to sleep a little. Towards dusk, the place being fairly taken, the Burmese routed, and the Peguans mingling with us joyfully, Captain Neblitt, of the steamer, determined to return to the ship and take me with him. We started down with the tide in two boats-I with the boatswain and eight men in one, and the captain, also with eight men, in the other.

I have an affectionate remembrance of that boatswain; his name was Haswell, or Haslett, or something beginning with H, and sounding so, and he was one of our best men-cool, very brave, and a first-rate gunner. That night, and in a strange scene, he told me that he was an American from Fall River, Mass.

My countrymen in the Company's service were under the impression, that if their nativity became known, they would not get their fair share of prize-money. And so when the men were gathered in knots on the forecastle-deck and around the forward gun, talking of Yankees, these would often chime in against themselves. That the boatswain was a good man is shown by his having been intrusted with the command of this boat, to take her through an enemy's country at night. When we started, night was falling rapidly, and waiting for orders from the captain, who was detained, we lost the best part of the tide. All the men were armed except me; I was still without hat, or shoes, or shirt; or arms. We pulled along with perfect confidence until it was quite dark. There was no moon that night. We knew that the Burmese were scattered, and were not likely to attack us; but as the darkness deepened, there came over us the gloom of mystery, and an indefinite apprehension. The men fell into profound silence, but pulled steadily and "with a will,” so as to make the most of the tide.

At last the ebb began to slack, and before we had accomplished one-third of the distance to the ship, it had turned and set flood so hard that we could make no head against it, and were compelled to anchor. Then the boatswain told his men to lie on their arms and sleep while he kept watch. He lent me his boat-cloak and bade me sleep also; but I could not. As often as I fell into a doze I lived the whole horror over again. For a time Haswell sat upright and silent, occasionally laying his hand on me warningly, as if to say, "I hear something." After awhile he relaxed his vigilance in a degree, and leaned over to talk with me in a whisper. It was then that he first told me he was an American, and spoke of Shields, our comrade, who was killed. I could feel that tears were in his eyes. He said, that the three of them (including another who was on the sick list and had been left behind) had always kept an eye on me; for I was then a somewhat reckless person. He told me, with a certain rough delicacy, that Shields had often watched me to see that I did not fall into trouble."

But Haswell was still the weathereared sailor, and as he whispered he listened all the, while. Presently we heard again that same low baying;

he touched me quickly. The other men still slept. The sound grew louder and nearer. He whispered to me, "Burmese boat-don't move !" Then cautiously approaching each man, and putting his hand over his mouth, he roused him, and bade him take up his arms.

The Burmese war crews have not oars like ours, but short paddles, with which they make two sharp, perpendicular strokes, followed by an interval of pause. They utter, in concert, a kind of yelp, to keep stroke together. Their war-boats are immensely long, sometimes holding two hundred men, who sit in close single files along the sides of the alligator-like craft. Although the motion of their paddles is very quick, they all strike the water at the same instant by help of this dismal monotone. So do the Hindoo palkheebearers keep step to a similar song.

Our men recognized the sound, and gathered their arms together as noiselessly as possible. Some drew their cutlasses and laid them on the seats beside them; some took off their jackets, loosened their straps, and examined their pistols. The question with us then was, would the Burmese come down on our side of the stream, or on the other. In other words, were they about to run into us, or to pass on the other side, in the dark, without perceiving us? There were only eight of us, and, probably, not less than eighty of them but then we were waiting for them, while they would not see us till they felt us. We were well armed and active, and they would surely believe they had fallen into a swarm. The tide was against them; but Burmese boats do not stay for that; they are constructed with an expert eye to those racing rivers. Being so long and sharp, and the paddles dipping perpendicularly, they can be run close under the bank, in slack water, or a counter current. So the tide, which compelled us to anchor, presented no material obstacle to our enemies. Thus, we lay in the darkness-every man with both hands on his weapons, ready to use them the next moment. There were no more than the proper complement of arms, but the boatswain drew one of his own pistols from his belt, and laid it on my knee.

The war-boat passed by on the other side (the stream was very narrow there), without their discovering us. I won't

enlarge upon the scene. Here was our little party, hidden under the jungly bank, waiting for an accident-heads or tails, right or left to decide whether or not we should suddenly come into deadly conflict with ten times our number of savages, in pitchy darkness; and there were the invisible devils, perfectly unconscious of our proximity, iterating their monotonous war-noteso near, that we could almost have touched them with our oars. When the tide turned again, the captain overtook us; they had passed him in the

same way.

The little English boy was found, by Tarleton or Neblitt, on the bank, very near where I had landed, wandering about stark naked, and entirely crazy, with little lance wounds, mere scratches, in the fleshy parts of his arms and legs. When I plunged into the stream, he paused to observe what would happen. When he saw how they fired at me, he was afraid to follow, and went down into the hold of the boat, where he hid himself among some hospital traps. On taking possession of the boat, the Burmese rummaged it thoroughly, in search of booty, and found the boy. They dragged him out from among the dhoolies, and took him on deck, where they played with him, and tumbled him about, felt of his limbs, wondered at his skin, laughed over his little clothes, and made game of him generally. With their dhars, they cut off locks of his hair. Then they stood him up against a beam, to try his courage, and threw darts at him-slender, armed reeds, between arrows and lances; with these they grazed

the skin of his arms and legs. At last, the boy became quite maddened with fear, and, suddenly breaking through the very centre of the party, jumped into the river. Swimming down the stream with the tide, he finally landed where the captain found him. He was taken down to the frigate, where he eventually recovered.

Poor Shields! A ball had struck the top of his left shoulder, just inside the collar-bone, and severed a main artery. Although, when we fled, we left his body in the boat, which the Burmese took possession of immediately-and although so high a price was set on British heads, his was spared, nor had the slightest insult, apparently, been offered to his corpse. In the search for plunder, hurried in momentary fear of our return, or of a surprise from some other quarter, they had forgotten their human prize, or feared to seize it. Indeed, their hot haste was evident in the fact that they had even left the flags at the sterns of the boats, although they had made away with the camp-boxes of the officers-among the rest, with one, containing three hundred rupees,brought up by a young ensign, no less verdant than amorous, who had heard of the charms of the maidens of Pegu.

Poor Shields! he sleeps in his loneliness under the shadow of the ShwayMadoo, and the young Yankee sailor's grave was watered by tears as true as ever eyes let fall. In Boston I have sought in vain for his mother. His share of prize-money awaits her order, in the office of the Superintendent of Marine, at Calcutta.