The brig, was, indeed, rapidly losing her buoyancy.

“Stand by, to heave the guns overboard.”

Too late, too late!  Oh, God, that cry!  I was stunned and drowning, a chaos of wreck was beneath me and around me and above me, and blue, agonised, gasping faces and struggling arms, and colourless clutching hands, and despairing yells for help, where help was impossible; when I felt a sharp bite on the neck, and breathed again.  My Newfoundland dog, Sneezer, had snatched at me, and dragged me out of the eddy of the sinking vessel.

For life, dear life, nearly suffocated, amidst the hissing spray, we reached the cutter, the dog and his helpless master.

* * * * *

For three miserable days I had been exposed, half naked and bareheaded, in an open boat, without water, or food, or shade.  The third fierce West Indian noon was long passed, and once more the dry, burning sun sank in the west, like a red hot shield of iron.  I glared on the noble dog as he lay at the bottom of the boat, and would have torn at his throat with my teeth, not for food, but that I might drink his hot blood; but as he turned his dull, gray, glazing eye on me, the pulses of my heart stopped, and I fell senseless.

When my recollection returned, I was stretched on some fresh plantain leaves, in a low, smoky hut, with my faithful dog lying beside me, whining and licking my hands and face.  Underneath the joists, that bound the rafters of the roof together, lay a corpse, wrapped in a boatsail, on which was clumsily written with charcoal, “The body of John Deadeye, Esq., late commander of his Britannic Majesty’s sloop Torch.”

There was a fire on the floor, at which Lieutenant Splinter, in his shirt and trousers, drenched, unshorn, and death-like, was roasting a joint of meat, whilst a dwarfish Indian sat opposite to him fanning the flame with a palm-leaf.  I had been nourished during my delirium; for the fierceness of my sufferings were assuaged, and I was comparatively strong.  I anxiously inquired of the lieutenant the fate of our shipmates.

“All gone down in the old Torch; and had it not been for the launch and our four-footed friend there, I should not have been here to have told it.  All that the sharks have left of the captain and five seamen came ashore last night.  I have buried the poor fellows on the beach where they lay, as well as I could, with an oar-blade for a shovel, and the bronze ornament there,” pointing to the Indian, “for an assistant.”

II.—­Perils on Land

I was awakened by the low growling and short bark of the dog.  The night was far spent, and the amber rays of the yet unrisen sun were shooting up in the east.

“That’s a musket shot,” said the lieutenant.  The Indian crept to the door, and placed his open palms behind his ears.  The distant wail of a bugle was heard, then three or four dropping shots again, in rapid succession.  Mr. Splinter stooped to go forth, but the Indian caught him by the leg, uttering the single word “Espanoles” (Spaniards).