sailors.

The trial was a long one, but the evidence was most damning and
convincing, although the brothers passionately declared that Miret's
story was a pure invention. Sentence of death was passed, but was
afterwards commuted to imprisonment for life, and the Roriques are now
in chains in Cayenne.

The second case was of a very dreadful character, and has an additional
interest from the fact that out of all the participators--the pirates
and their victims--only one was left alive to tell the tale, and he was
found in a dying condition on one of the Galapagos Islands, and only
lived a few days. The story was told to me by the captain of the
brigantine _Isaac Revels_, of San Francisco, who put into the Galapagos
to repair his ship, which had started a butt-end and was leaking
seriously. He had just anchored between Narborough and Albemarle Islands
when he saw a man sitting on the shore, and waving his hands to the
ship. A boat was lowered, and the man brought on board. He was in a
ravenous state of hunger, and half-demented; but after he had been
carefully attended to he was able to give some account of himself.
He was a young Colombian Indian, could speak no English, and only a
mongrel, halting kind of Spanish. The Portuguese cook of the Isaac
Revels, however, understood him. This was his story:--

He was one of the peons of a wealthy Ecuadorian gentleman, who with
another equally rich friend sailed from Guayaquil for the Galapagos
Islands (which belong to Ecuador), and the largest of which,
Albemarle Island, they had leased from that Government for sheep and
cattle-breeding. They took with them a few thousand silver dollars,
which the peon saw placed in "an iron box" (safe).

One of the merchants had with him his two young daughters. The vessel
was a small brig, and the captain and crew mostly Chilenos. One night,
when the brig was half-way across to the Galapagos (600 miles from
Ecuador) the peon, who was on deck asleep, was suddenly seized, pitched
down into the fo'c'stle, and the scuttle closed. Here he was left alone
until dawn, and then ordered on deck, aft. The captain pointed a pistol
at his head, and threatened to shoot him dead if he ever spoke of what
had happened in the night. The man--although he knew nothing of what had
happened--promised to be secret, and was then given fifty dollars, and
put in the mate's watch. He saw numerous blood-stains on the after-deck,
and soon after was told by one of the h