fainting attack of his cough, brought on, no
doubt, by his mental distress. His servant sustained him, and drawing a
cordial from his pocket placed it to his lips. He a little revived. But
unwilling to leave him unsupported while yet imperfectly restored, the
black with one arm still encircled his master, at the same time keeping
his eye fixed on his face, as if to watch for the first sign of complete
restoration, or relapse, as the event might prove.

The Spaniard proceeded, but brokenly and obscurely, as one in a dream.

--"Oh, my God! rather than pass through what I have, with joy I would
have hailed the most terrible gales; but--"

His cough returned and with increased violence; this subsiding; with
reddened lips and closed eyes he fell heavily against his supporter.

"His mind wanders. He was thinking of the plague that followed the
gales," plaintively sighed the servant; "my poor, poor master!" wringing
one hand, and with the other wiping the mouth. "But be patient, Senor,"
again turning to Captain Delano, "these fits do not last long; master
will soon be himself."

Don Benito reviving, went on; but as this portion of the story was very
brokenly delivered, the substance only will here be set down.

It appeared that after the ship had been many days tossed in storms off
the Cape, the scurvy broke out, carrying off numbers of the whites and
blacks. When at last they had worked round into the Pacific, their spars
and sails were so damaged, and so inadequately handled by the surviving
mariners, most of whom were become invalids, that, unable to lay her
northerly course by the wind, which was powerful, the unmanageable ship,
for successive days and nights, was blown northwestward, where the
breeze suddenly deserted her, in unknown waters, to sultry calms. The
absence of the water-pipes now proved as fatal to life as before their
presence had menaced it. Induced, or at least aggravated, by the more
than scanty allowance of water, a malignant fever followed the scurvy;
with the excessive heat of the lengthened calm, making such short work
of it as to sweep away, as by billows, whole families of the Africans,
and a yet larger number, proportionably, of the Spaniards, including, by
a luckless fatality, every remaining officer on board. Consequently, in
the smart west winds eventually following the calm, the already rent
sails, having to be simply dropped, not furled, at need, had been
gradually reduced to the beggars'