terrific exclamations were shouted by a priest, who, pale as death, had caught Tellus Cophaget in the daring act of grappling a jewelled rosary, and plunging his huge fist, containing it, into his bosom.

"Shut the doors! Kill the thieves! Let them perish in their devil's-work!" cried a novice, full of ardour; who, prompt as his word, catching glimpse of the act of spoliation, had raised the metal crosier which happened to be in his hand, and struck the robber fairly on the side of the head with it. And down Tellus came. There was veritably a cross of blood on the side of his face, distinct and clear.

Instantly there was confusion. The sailors drew their long, sharp, Spanish blades, pointed their pistols, and attacked the priests, who, muffled in their robes and exposed to odds, could make but a feeble resistance, if any, to their lawless assailants. Some blood was spilt, and a most unequal combat was waged. On the side of the sailors, one man was badly hurt, being struck down by an image which was hurled from its place in a lofty top-arcade of the church, by a resolute, strong monk. The crew of villains did not abandon their sport, their ridicule and spoliation, until they had seized all the rich things that were readily portable. It was a grapple of glittering things.

"Come hither, my lark of the sea, who sang so well!" said the brutal captain, Barreiros, calling Tellus Cophaget to him, and fondling him, with a tigerlike sort of affection, much as he would a child; when Tellus's heavy foot was planted close on the altar steps from which Captain Joseph spoke. "Didst ever see thing like that? Ebony so rich, or silver so massy and so richly inwrought? By the book of St. Mark, or by my great deep-sea anchor (which is an oath more to the purpose), but it is a dainty rood!"

Tellus shaded his eyes, much as he would when staring at an object in the sun soliciting attention at sea; and which he suspected as a ship.

"Never did I see so fine a thing, captain. "Tis a crucifix, is't not ?" And the huge seaman involuntarily bowed before it till his monstrous hoops of earrings

met and jingled under his chin. Wonderful instinct of the movements of the SPIRIT in the heart.

"Note that SILVER MEDAL in the midst of the cross," said Captain De Barreiros, "with the ring of green, snake-glowing smaragds around it. The whole thing is worth a kingdom! But the silver piece, to which I have taken a violent and most uncontrollable liking, must content me just now. Make a spade, Cophaget my child, of thy sword, and dig me out this thing of metal. I will drill a hole in it with a red-hot wire, and verily I will hang it as a talisman about this neck of mine-this old sea-throat hoarse with ocean-bawling.”

Cophaget did as he was told. But perhaps his hurry to obey his captain, his state of half-intoxication, or, that which is more likely, the terror he secretly felt at the sacrilege he was committing-he being, in his way, a devout Catholic-all this caused Cophaget to strike and scoop with his sword so smartly, and at the same time so agitatedly, that the SILVER PIECE of MONEY or MEDAL flew out apparently before the time of natural abstraction. And it tumbled with an ominous hissing clink upon the marble pavement. As it fell, a

sharp split was heard-a rend as of torn stone. A slab disrupted; slit from end to end as if struck with a mighty invisible axe. And the two halves of the stone were thrown up in reverse, and tossed flat on their backs like the doors of a trap, or the boards of an open book.

"Santa Maria!" ejaculated Captain Joseph, with a grin on his face, but crossing himself, half in fright, although he knitted his brows instantly after as if in defiance, "but that is a strange sight. Methought a fiend, with a brand of hell-fire, was going to dart up and smite me out of that hole!"

However, the grim Captain stooped and picked up the ancient PIECE of MONEY and carried it away in his hairy bosom.

What came of this hideous violation of holy things, and what resulted from this unparalleled outrage upon the Church; also the fearful penalty which happed-to and befel not only Captain Pinhal de Barreiros but his godless crew-including his ship, devoted to evil, though

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bearing so sacred a name all this shall be told (for warning) in the chapter succeeding. Heaven preserve in us our reverence! And may good thoughts save us from evil influence and from the malific intelligences which walk the earth seeking out and making victim of those irreligiously audacious, and the inveterately profane! May we grow cautious in our oaths as in the way we walk! Swearing not at all, or only vowing for good; if we must swear anything.

Now, reader, attend awhile patiently, and you shall be made aware of the deserved judgments which fell on this abandoned captain and upon his desperate crew; whom even the silence of the seas could not tame, or impress into awe; or the blessed, beautiful clouds over the sea reduce into the reverential usual wonder. For these men, in their miscalled holy ship (perhaps sent forth with the benison of the Church when she was launched), had wandered over the wide ocean, and had seen no object save God's sea and sky out of the windows of the little craft, with its tiny white sails; as into which toy, in the comparison, the great white clouds over reduced it. Sea and sky spread-out to the horizon from around the lonely ship; from which ship you could almost mistake the sea for the sky, and vice versa; as you sought, in the sky, almost waves, looking up into it until your head nearly grew confused; and you seemed to make out also amid the wide stretches, and plains, and roads of water, clouds lesser or larger, crowded in multitude, or single, in the sea.

Thus below was above, and above was below.
Sky seeming sea;-sea seeming sky.

Anguigena-effloresca," or "Snake-Flower :"- produced in the Island.

IN

N a short time Captain Barreiros and his crew of sinners sailed. Anchors were tripped. And speedily the "Four Evangelists" with her glittering guns sped like a cloud into the blue of the far ocean going away into the distant seas upon her business.

For a time the wind blew very fair. Under a pyramid of sail the gilt, streamer-bedecked barque-that "Four Evangelists" whose unfit name as the ship of a

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crew of such hardened recusants (and for a captain so presumptuous and bold; nay, unimaginably ingenious in his wickedness), was the abiding witness against all evil -the stout ship, we say, grandly stemmed long and successfully the "purple wastes" of the Indian Ocean. She doubled Cape Comorin. She steered inside of the then almost unknown great island of Ceylon; and in latitude 10° when at about three-hundred leagues to

the eastward of this the ancient Taprobana the mariners swept round their sails and penetrated in the south-eastern direction; sailing to the Equator. The voyage was effected with song and dance-riotous song, half-drunken dance when the watches were safe set as they thought, and when the fierce captain abandoned his men to their nightly bad carousal. So passed the time for a certain period. But now—

"The storm-blast came, and he

Was tyrannous and strong."