I shall never forget with what unwillingness Glumdalclitch consented; we were both much tired with our journey, and the poor girl was so ill as to be confined to her chamber.  The boy took me out in my box towards the seashore, when ordering him to set me down, I cast many a wistful glance toward the sea.

I found myself not very well, and hoping a nap would do me good soon fell asleep.  I conjecture as I slept the page went off to look for birds’ eggs, for I was awakened by finding myself raised high in the air and borne forward with prodigious speed.  I called out, I looked out, but could see nothing but clouds and sky.  I heard a great flapping of wings—­they increased very fast, and my box was tossed up and down, and I felt myself falling with incredible swiftness.  My fall was stopped by a terrible squash, I was quite in the dark for a minute, then I could see light from the tops of my windows.  I had fallen into the sea.  I did then, and do now, suppose that the eagle, that had flown away with me, was pursued by two or three others, and forced to let me drop.  I was for four hours, under these circumstances, expecting, and, indeed, hoping, every moment to be my last.

I heard a grating sound on the side of my box, and soon felt I was being towed along the sea, and called for help until I was hoarse.  In return I heard a great shout, giving me transports of joy, and somebody called in the English tongue that I was safe, for my box was fastened to their ship.  The carpenter came, in a few minutes, and sawed a hole, through which I was taken into the ship in a very weak condition.

The Captain, a worthy Shropshire man, was returning to England, and we came into the Downs on the 3rd of June, 1706, about nine months after my escape.

When I came to my own house my wife protested I should never go to sea any more.

* * * * *

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The Newcomes

William Makepeace Thackeray was born on July 18, 1811, at Calcutta, where his father was in the service of the East India Company.  He was educated at Charterhouse School, then situated in Smithfield, and spent two years at Trinity College, Cambridge.  After travelling on the continent as an artist, he returned to London, and wrote for the “Examiner” and “Fraser’s Magazine,” subsequently joining the staff of “Punch.”  “The Newcomes,” finished by Thackeray at Paris in 1855, was the fourth of his great novels.  Without being in any real sense a sequel to “Pendennis,” it reintroduces us to several characters of the earlier work, and is told in the first person by Arthur Pendennis himself.  The Gray Friars School is the Charterhouse where Thackeray was at school.  In 1859 Thackeray started the “Cornhill Magazine,” and on December 23, 1863, he died at Kensington.  Besides his five great novels, a large number of shorter stories and sketches came from Thackeray’s pen.

I.—­The “Cave of Harmony"