were watching him; but undoubtedly suffered extreme mental agony.  At one minute he would drop his chin on his bosom, and stand motionless; at another would press his brow to the wall of his cell, or wave his body from side to side, as if wrung with unutterable anguish.  Suddenly, he would throw himself upon his knees on the mattress, and prostrate himself as if in prayer; then throwing his prayers from him, he would clutch his rug in his fingers, and like a child try to double it up, or pick it to pieces.  After snatching up his rug and throwing it away again and again, he would suddenly resume his prayers and erect posture, and stand mute, gazing through the aperture that admitted the light of day for upwards of a minute.  This scene of imbecility and indecision, of horrible prostration of mind, ceasing in some degree when the Catholic clergyman re-entered his cell.

At 10 o’clock, the prisoner was removed from the prison, and during his progress to the scaffold, though the hue of death was on his face, and he trembled in every joint with fear, he chaunted with a powerful voice an appropriate service from the Catholic ritual.  Several times he turned round to survey the heavens which at that moment were clear and bright above him and when he ascended the scaffold after concluding his prayer, he took one long and steadfast look at the sun, and waited in silence his fate.  His powers, mental and physical had been suddenly crushed with the appalling reality that surrounded him; his whole soul was absorbed with one master feeling, the dread of a speedy and violent death.  He quailed in the presence of the dreadful paraphernalia of his punishment, as much as if he had been a stranger to deeds of blood, and never dealt death to his fellow man as he ploughed the deep, under the black flag of piracy, with the motto of “Rob, Kill, and Burn.”  After adjusting the rope, a signal was given.  The body dropped heavily, and the harsh abrupt shock must have instantly deprived him of sensation, as there was no voluntary action of the hands afterwards.  Thus terminated his career of crime in a foreign land without one friend to recognize or cheer him, or a single being to regret his death.

The Spanish Consul having requested that the bodies might not be given to the faculty, they were interred at night under the direction of the Marshal, in the Catholic burial-ground at Charlestown.  There being no murder committed with the piracy, the laws of the United States do not authorize the court to order the bodies for dissection.

[Illustration:  Ruiz leaving the Panda.]

THE LIFE OF BENITO DE SOTO THE PIRATE OF THE MORNING STAR.