“Fire!” and instantly flashed a volley, reverberating a wild and unearthly death knell among the crags that looked down upon that awful scene.  In the clear morning air, the smoke of the guns curled up lazily and hung like a funeral pall over the mangled, bleeding form.  Four bullets had pierced his body.  He fell on his face and lay motionless for a few seconds.  Then he began to slowly raise his head.  Fernando came near and stood in front of him.  Ten thousand years could not efface that scene from his mind.  He continued to raise his head and body without a struggle.  He looked the captain in the eye, and his mouth was in motion as though he were trying to speak,—­to utter some dying accusation.  Never did human eye behold a scene so pitiful as this dying man gazing on his destroyer, gasping to implore or to denounce him.  In an instant a dimness came over his eyes, and he fell dead.

“Oh, Heaven!” groaned Fernando, and he hurried away to the ship.  For weeks, he saw that awful face every time he closed his eyes to sleep.

Two years on board the British frigate had made Fernando, Sukey and Terrence tolerably fair sailors.  Their hearts were never in the work, and they often dreamed of escape from this life of slavery.  Fernando, by judicious attention to business, had never yet won the positive displeasure of the officers.  One day the boatswain’s mates repeated the commands at the hatchways: 

“All hands tack ship, ahoy!”

It was just eight bells, noon, and, springing from his jacket, which he had spread between the guns for a bed on the main deck, Fernando ran up the ladders, and, as usual, seized hold of the main-brace which fifty hands were streaming along forward.  When “maintopsail haul!” was given through the trumpet, he pulled at this brace with such heartiness and good will, that he flattered himself he would gain the approval of the grim captain himself; but something happened to be in the way aloft, when the yards swung round, and a little confusion ensued.  With anger on his brow.  Captain Snipes came forward to see what occasioned it.  No one to let go the weather-lift of the main-yard.  The rope was cast off, however, by a hand, and, the yards, unobstructed, came round.  When the last rope was coiled away, the captain asked the first lieutenant who it might be that was stationed at the weather (then the starboard) main-lift.  With a vexed expression of countenance, the first lieutenant sent a midshipman for the station bill, when, upon glancing it over, the name of Fernando Stevens was found set down at the post in question.  At the time, Fernando was on the gundeck below, and did not know of these proceedings; but a moment after, he heard the boatswain’s-mates bawling his name at all the hatchways and along all three decks.  It was the first time he had ever heard it sent through the furthest recesses of the ship, and, well knowing what this generally betokened to other seamen, his heart jumped to his throat, and he hurriedly asked Brown, the boatswain’s-mate at the fore-hatchway, what was wanted of him.