ing for the first time for hours. Heavens! what means yon sight? Providence in its infinite mercy protect and save us.'

Robert Rankin looked in the direction towards which she pointed, and saw-the ship-no, not the ship, but its spectre looming above the ice-field and frost-rime. There were her shadowy outlines as distinct as ever, but the eye of mortal had not gazed on such a thing before.

Nothing was solid, and though the huge fabric moved or glided as it were over the surface of the sea, it was a thing unreal, the mere phantom of the thing that was, the shadow of the strong fabric of iron and wood.

'Foul assassin!' cried Mary, 'your deed is done. Forty brave souls have gone to their account; the gallant ship has sunk into the ghastly deep, where it will lie until the day of judgment with its awful secret. Murderer, be accursed!'

Mary clutched the mast with her two hands and gazed spellbound at the spectre ship, which was going about and evidently would bear straight down upon them.

'Pardon-forgiveness!' muttered the wretched man. 'May the Lord have mercy on my soul !'

And with distended eyeballs, blanched cheeks, and trembling limbs he stood behind her, gazing in fixed terror at the thing which was coming rapidly towards them.

'Avaunt!' he cried; such things cannot be 'tis a delusion of the brain-away!'

'He comes for vengeance!' shrieked Mary. See, where he stands, yonder on the prow! Robert Rankin, what say you now?'

The mate retreated mechanically. The ship had gone about, and a gigantic figure indeed stood in the bows as if conning the ship, guiding her through the difficult channel. Again he retreated, his hands waving the awful spectre away until he reached the edge of the raft, when there was heard a heavy splash, a wild despairing cry, and Mary was alone upon the raft.

The mate had fallen like a log into the water, and, whether struck by apoplexy or not, made no attempt to swim, and was seen no more. Overcome by excess of emotion, Mary fainted, nor wakened until aroused by kind words and loving kisses. She opened her eyes and found herself in her own cabin in her husband's arms.

The explanation was easy. The ship had been forced out of the bay by the united exertions of the crew, and had at once given chase, with very little hope of ever seeing the raft again. That morning, however, they had sighted the unwieldy craft, and had at once sailed for it, and coming up had found Mary alone.

'But the spectre ship?' cried Mary.

They looked at her with keen anxiety, as if they feared her brain was touched.

THIRD SERIES, VOL. VIII. F.S. VOL. XXVIII.

MM

But the young wife clearly and distinctly related what she had seen, and how the fearful thought of being chased by a spectre ship had so terrified Rankin as to be the cause of his falling overboard and being drowned.

I suppose he thought we were lost with all hands,' replied Harry, kissing his wife's pale forehead; why should he do so?' The auger-holes,' cried Mary, sitting up. 'He told me the ship was scuttled.'

Harry dashed out of the cabin, and followed by the two carpenters rushed into the hold. The villain had truly been at work, as numberless holes testified, but whether from awkwardness or the disposition of the cargo, had not succeeded in one instance in carrying out his nefarious design. The holes were all sounded, and leaving orders for them to be carefully plugged, Harry returned to the cabin to reassure his wife and friends.

He found the doctor explaining that the apparition which had so terrified Rankin was probably due to refraction, a common phenomenon in the Arctic regions. The brig, concealed from view by the frost-rime, had probably been reflected in the vapour, and the consequent shadowy outlines had appeared to the scared conscience of the guilty man the ghostly form of that vessel which he believed sunk beneath the cold and cruel waves of the Arctic Seas.

Safe and happy, Mary speedily recovered, the ship received its full load, and then all returned to England, where their life, some little episodes excepted, was peaceful and joyous; but in the solitude of her own heart she never forgot that terrible incident which connected her so strangely with the spectre ship.

PEEPS AT DOMESTIC LIFE IN INDIA

III. DIK POH, DIK POH; OR THE INDIAN JUggler,

TALK of the Wizard of the North, of Dr. Lynn, of Maskelyne and Cooke, and of all the prestidigitateurs and trompeurs of Europe, with their conjuring-tables, their cabinets, their screens, their boarded floors and trapdoors, and you speak of dexterous and skilful manipulation, aided by mechanical art and chemical science. But place beside them the semi-nude Indian without such aids, for he is ignorant of them; see him seated on the bare ground, on the hard stone floor of a verandah, and watch him, if you will, with the eye of a lynx, while he goes through his performances, and you will rise from your seat as wise as when you sat down, and no wiser. You may have a suspicion that you have, somehow, been deceived, blinded, gulled, but you find it difficult and very unflattering to your selfesteem to admit the humiliating fact. You are perhaps clever, but here you meet with a man who so completely puzzles your philosophy that you give up the attempt to divine his secret, and feel inclined, however reluctantly, to believe in sorcery; else how account for such startling results as are produced by insufficient and sometimes wholly unapparent causes ?

And where,' it will be asked, is this wonderful and wonderworking individual to be found?'

Waft we then the reader to that orient clime in which the necromancer exhibits his art in a high, if not the highest, state of perfection. Let him use his eyes with us, and he will see a large and stately Indiaman, early on a bright morning in May, running with flowing sheet along a low coast, on the sandy beach of which an interminable fringe of white foam denotes that a heavy surf is breaking. The proud ship approaches the roadstead of Madras; she shortens sail, the courses are clewed up, the topsail haulyards are let go, more and more slowly she glides into a convenient berth; there is a heavy plunge, a loud rattling noise as the massive chaincable rushes through the hawse-pipe, and the great ship, rolling gracefully from side to side in the long swell of the sea, feels the power that curbs her and passively submits.

Let our reader accompany us on board the good ship Thetis, half an hour after this event, and keep pace with us for the remainder of the day, in order that we may first catch our juggler and then exhibit him in his rôle, for our narrative is episodical.

The ship had touched at the port of Madras, to land passengers