PLEASANT is the social meeting in the far-off land, when the ties of honest friendship and the bonds of mutual kindness are more strongly cemented by distance from our native country. There is a fraternal feeling at such times, which only those who have been placed in similar situations have ever experienced, and the actuating principle is-HOME. Oh! there is a magic charm in that word "home"--it produces remembrances and associations inestimably dear and precious to the heart! Let the Englishman be in the East Indies or the West, and have passed the greater part of his life in either colony-still-still he looks to the place of his birth, and calls it " Home." Lord Eustace and his friends, whilst sitting in the cabin of the frigate, the pleasant breeze blowing through the port-holes, and tempering the heat of climate, enjoyed this national compact to perfection. There was different grades as respected rank at table, but only one bond of brotherhood. "And now, Captain Hawser," said the noble commander of the Spankaway," if you are ready, you will perhaps favour us with the narrative you promised relative to Lord C-ford. Pass the wine round, gentlemen, and pray do not wait for ceremony." "Most of you know," commenced Hawser, after moistening his throat with eloquent Madeira, "most of you know that Lord C-ford was about as mad-brained a genius as ever existed, and as recklessly daring as he was eccentric. The event of which Andy has been telling us occured some time previously to that sad affair of poor P, and his lordship had not long received his commission. I remember his detailing all the particulars to me some time after. wards, when we met in England, and I had got my first step up the rattlins. We were visiting together at the country residence of a relative of mine, and when in the course of conversation he ascertained that I had been in the old Clinkem, we were the best friends in the world. He mentioned the circumstance of the pirate schooner, and as I expressed an earnest desire to hear the particulars, he, without any farther urging, gave me an account of the whole, which I will now repeat as near as my recollection will serve in his own language. |