was owing to the grief into which Alice had been plunged.  He had made an attempt to comfort her one night on the voyage to the Isle of Palms, when she and Poopy and he were left alone together; but he failed.  After one or two efforts he ended by bursting into tears, and then, choking himself violently with his own hands, said that he was ashamed of himself, that he wasn’t crying for himself but for her (Alice), and that he hoped she wouldn’t think the worse of him for being so like a baby.  Here he turned to Poopy, and in a most unreasonable manner began to scold her for being at the bottom of the whole mischief, in the middle of which he broke off, said that he believed himself to be mad, and vowed he would blow out his own brains first, and those of all the pirates afterwards.  Whereupon he choked, sobbed again, and rushed out of the cabin as if he really meant to execute his last awful threat.

But poor Corrie only rushed away to hide from Alice the irrepressible emotions that nearly burst his heart.  Yes, Corrie was thoroughly subdued by grief.  But the spring was not broken; it was only crushed flat by the weight of sorrow that lay like a millstone on his youthful bosom.

The first thing that set his active brain agoing once more—­thereby overturning the weight of sorrow and causing the spring of his peculiar spirit to rebound—­was the sight of the two pirates hauling up the boat and carrying off the oars.

“Ha! that’s your game, is it?” muttered the boy, between his teeth, and grasping the pole with both hands as if he wished to squeeze his fingers into the wood.  “You don’t want to give us a chance of escaping, don’t you, eh! is that it?  You think that because we’re a small party, and the half of us females, that we’re cowed, and wont think of trying any other way of escaping, do you?  Oh yes, that’s what you think; you know it, you do, but you’re mistaken” (he became terribly sarcastic and bitter at this point); “you’ll find that you’ve got men to deal with, that you’ve not only caught a tartar, but two tartars—­one o’ them being ten times tartarer than the other.  Oh, if—­”

“What’s all that you’re saying, Corrie?” said Montague, stepping out of the tent at that moment.

“O Captain!” said the boy, vehemently, “I wish I were a giant!”

“Why so, lad?”

“Because then I would wade out to that wreck, clap my shoulder to her bow, shove her into deep water, carry you, and Alice, and Poopy aboard, haul out the main-mast by the roots, make an oar of it, and scull out to sea, havin’ previously fired off the biggest gun aboard of her to let the pirates know what I was doing.”

Corrie’s spirit was in a tumultuous and very rebellious state.  He was half inclined to indulge in hysterical weeping, and more than half disposed to give way to a burst of savage glee.  He spoke with the mantling blood blazing in his fat cheeks, and his two eyes glittering like those of a basilisk.  Montague could not repress a smile and a look of admiration as he said to our little hero: