worthy mortals to worship them than our young friends, the handsome Brace, the energetic Winslow, the humorous Crosby?  When we look back upon our concerts and plays, our minstrel entertainments, with the incomparable performances of our friend Crosby as Brother Bones; our recitations, to which the genius of Mrs. M’Corkle, of Peoria, Illinois, has lent her charm and her manuscript” (a burlesque start of terror from Crosby), “I am forcibly impelled to quote the impassioned words from that gifted woman,—­

     ’When idly Life’s barque on the billows of Time,
       Drifts hither and yon by eternity’s sea;
     On the swift feet of verse and the pinions of rhyme
       My thoughts, Ulricardo, fly ever to thee!’”

“Who’s Ulricardo?” interrupted Crosby, with assumed eagerness, followed by a “hush!” from the ladies.

“Perhaps I should have anticipated our friend’s humorous question,” said Senor Perkins, with unassailable good-humor.  “Ulricardo, though not my own name, is a poetical substitute for it, and a mere figure of apostrophe.  The poem is personal to myself,” he continued, with a slight increase of color in his smooth cheek which did not escape the attention of the ladies,—­“purely as an exigency of verse, and that the inspired authoress might more easily express herself to a friend.  My acquaintance with Mrs. M’Corkle has been only epistolary.  Pardon this digression, my friends, but an allusion to the muse of poetry did not seem to me to be inconsistent with our gathering here.  Let me briefly conclude by saying that the occasion is a happy and memorable one; I think I echo the sentiment of all present when I add that it is one which will not be easily forgotten by either the grateful guests, whose feelings I have tried to express, or the chivalrous hosts, whose kindness I have already so feebly translated.”

In the applause that followed, and the clicking of glasses, Senor Perkins slipped away.  He mingled a moment with some of the other guests who had already withdrawn to the corridor, lit a cigar, and then passed through a narrow doorway on to the ramparts.  Here he strolled to some distance, as if in deep thought, until he reached a spot where the crumbling wall and its fallen debris afforded an easy descent into the ditch.  Following the ditch, he turned an angle, and came upon the beach, and the low sound of oars in the invisible offing.  A whistle brought the boat to his feet, and without a word he stepped into the stern sheets.  A few strokes of the oars showed him that the fog had lifted slightly from the water, and a green light hanging from the side of the Excelsior could be plainly seen.  Ten minutes’ more steady pulling placed him on her deck, where the second officer stood with a number of the sailors listlessly grouped around him.

“The landing has been completed?” said Senor Perkins interrogatively.

“All except one boat-load more, which waits to take your final instructions,” said the mate.  “The men have growled a little about it,” he added, in a lower tone.  “They don’t want to lose anything, it seems,” he continued, with a half sarcastic laugh.