ed of by his captors, and nothing
anticipated by himself, but his ignominious execution, or at the least,
prolonged and squalid incarceration, nevertheless, these threats and
prospects evaporated, and by his facetious scorn for scorn, under the
extremest sufferings, he finally wrung repentant usage from his foes;
and in the end, being liberated from his irons, and walking the
quarter-deck where before he had been thrust into the hold, was carried
back to America, and in due time, at New York, honorably included in a
regular exchange of prisoners.

It was not without strange interest that Israel had been an eye-witness
of the scenes on the Castle Green. Neither was this interest abated by
the painful necessity of concealing, for the present, from his brave
countryman and fellow-mountaineer, the fact of a friend being nigh. When
at last the throng was dismissed, walking towards the town with the
rest, he heard that there were some forty or more Americans, privates,
confined on the cliff. Upon this, inventing a pretence, he turned back,
loitering around the walls for any chance glimpse of the captives.
Presently, while looking up at a grated embrasure in the tower, he
started at a voice from it familiarly hailing him:

"Potter, is that you? In God's name how came you here?"

At these words, a sentry below had his eye on our astonished
adventurer. Bringing his piece to bear, he bade him stand. Next moment
Israel was under arrest. Being brought into the presence of the forty
prisoners, where they lay in litters of mouldy straw, strewn with gnawed
bones, as in a kennel, he recognized among them one Singles, now
Sergeant Singles, the man who, upon our hero's return home from his last
Cape Horn voyage, he had found wedded to his mountain Jenny. Instantly a
rush of emotions filled him. Not as when Damon found Pythias. But far
stranger, because very different. For not only had this Singles been an
alien to Israel (so far as actual intercourse went), but impelled to it
by instinct, Israel had all but detested him, as a successful, and
perhaps insidious rival. Nor was it altogether unlikely that Singles had
reciprocated the feeling. But now, as if the Atlantic rolled, not
between two continents, but two worlds--this, and the next--these alien
souls, oblivious to hate, melted down into one.

At such a juncture, it was hard to maintain a disguise, especially when
it involved the seeming rejection of advances like the Sergeant's.