wenty-four hours when the crew
perceived a boat apparently with no one in her, about a mile ahead of
them. The water was then smooth, and the vessel had but little way. As
soon as they came up with the boat, they lowered down their skiff to
examine her.

The men sent in the skiff soon returned, towing the boat alongside.
Lying at the bottom of the boat were found several men almost dead, and
reduced to skeletons; and in the stern-sheets a negro woman, with a
child at her breast, and a white female in the last state of exhaustion.

Osborne was then a gay and unprincipled man, but not a hardened villain
and murderer, as he afterwards became; he had compassion and feeling--
they were all taken on board the schooner: some recovered, others were
too much exhausted. Among those restored was Cecilia Templemore and the
infant, who at first had been considered quite dead; but the negro
woman, exhausted by the demands of her nursling and her privations,
expired as she was being removed from the boat. A goat, that
fortunately was on board, proved a substitute for the negress; and
before Osborne had arrived off the coast, the child had recovered its
health and vigour, and the mother her extreme beauty.

We must now pass over a considerable portion of the narrative. Osborne
was impetuous in his passions, and Cecilia Templemore became his victim.
He had, indeed, afterwards quieted her qualms of conscience by a
pretended marriage, when he arrived at the Brazils with his cargo of
human flesh. But that was little alleviation of her sufferings; she who
had been indulged in every luxury, who had been educated with the
greatest care, was now lost for ever, an outcast from the society to
which she could never hope to return, and associating with those she
both dreaded and despised. She passed her days and her nights in tears;
and had soon more cause for sorrow from the brutal treatment she
received from Osborne, who had been her destroyer. Her child was her
only solace; but for him, and the fear of leaving him to the
demoralising influence of those about him, she would have laid down and
died: but she lived for him--for him attempted to recall Osborne from
his career of increasing guilt--bore meekly with reproaches and with
blows. At last Osborne changed his nefarious life for one of deeper
guilt: he became a pirate, and still carried with him Cecilia and her
child.

This was the climax of her misery: she now wasted from day to