ing to save them."

The bold and determined tone in which O'Carroll spoke, aided by the
arrival of the rest of our friends, had such an effect on the seamen,
that those who were still able to move slunk away to a distance, while
the captain and his mate, when we let them go, sat down helplessly on
the sand, forgetting entirely their quarrel and its cause. There they
sat, laughing stupidly at each other, as if the affair had been a good
joke. While O'Carroll was emptying the rum cask, which it appeared had
been washed on shore and secreted by the captain, his men went to the
wounded man. He did not speak: he seemed scarcely to breathe. I took
his hand: it was already cold. All this time he had been bleeding to
death: an artery had been shot through. We did our best in the dark to
bind up the wound and stop the bleeding; the spirit which might have
kept his heart beating till nature, in her laboratory, had formed more
blood, was gone; indeed, probably in his then condition it would not
have had its due effect. The wretched man's breath came fainter and
fainter. There was no restorative that we could think of to be
procured. We lifted him up to carry him to the camp, but before we had
gone many paces, we found that we were bearing a corpse.

"That man has been murdered," exclaimed O'Carroll, turning to the
captain. "By whose hand the shot was fired which killed him I know not,
but I do know that his blood is on the head of the man who ought to have
set a good example to his inferiors, and prevented them from broaching
the cask they had found."

Whether this address had any good effect we could not tell, but hoping
that the men would remain quiet and sleep off the effect of their
debauch, we returned to our tent, leaving the body on the ground. The
next morning we returned to the beach. The captain and his drunken
companions still lay on the sand asleep. They were out of the reach of
the sea, but the hot rays of the rapidly rising sun, which were striking
down on their unprotected heads, would, I saw, soon give them brain
fever or kill them outright, if they were to be left long exposed to
their influence. I therefore proposed that we should rouse them up, and
advise them to go and lie down in the shade of some shrubs and rocks at
a little distance.

"Before we do so, we'll take away their weapons, and at all events make
it more difficult for them to do mischief to us or to themselves," said
O'Carroll. So