HE THE FIRST MATE. [By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.] E used to walk the deck with his hands in his pockets, in seeming abstraction, but nothing escaped his eye. How he saw I could never make out, though I had a theory that it was with his elbows. After he had taken me (or my knife) into his confidence, he took care that I should see whatever he deemed of interest to a landsman. Without looking up, he would say, suddenly, that our social hierarchy on shipboard is precise, and the second mate, were he present, would only laugh half as much as the first. Mr. X. always combs his hair and works himself into a black frock-coat (on Sundays he adds a waistcoat) before he comes to meals, sacrificing himself nobly and painfully to the social proprieties. The second mate, on the other hand, who eats after us, enjoys privilege of shirt-sleeves, and is, I think, the happier man of the two. We do not have seats "There's a whale blowin' clear up to win'ard," or, "Them's porpises to leeward: that means change of wind." He is as impervious to cold as a polar bear, and paces the deck during the watch much as one of those yellow hummocks goes slumping up and down his cage. On the Atlantic, if the wind blew a gale from the north-east and it was cold as an English summer, he was sure to turn out in a calico shirt and trousers, his brown chest half bare, and slippers without stockings. But lest you might fancy this to have chanced by defect of wardrobe, he comes out in a monstrous pea-jacket here in the Mediterranean. "It's kind o' damp and unwholesome in these ere waters," he says, evidently regarding the Midland Sea as a vile standing pool in comparison with the bluff ocean. At meals he is superb, not only for his strengths, but for his weaknesses. He has somehow or other come to think me a wag, and if I ask him to pass the butter, detects an occult joke, and laughs as much as is proper for a mate. For you must know above and below the salt as in old time, but above and below the white sugar. Mr. X. always takes brown sugar, and it is delightful to see how he ignores the existence of certain delicacies which he considers above his grade, tipping his head on one side with an air of abstraction, so that he may seem not to deny himself, but to omit helping himself from inadvertence or absence of mind. At such times he wrinkles his forehead in a peculiar manner, inscrutable at first as a cuneiform inscription, but as easily read after you once get the key. The sense of it is something like this :-"I, X., know my place, a height of wisdom attained by few. Whatever you may think, I do not see that currant jelly, nor that preserved grape. Especially a kind Providence has made me blind to bowls of white sugar, and deaf to the pop of champagne corks. It is much that a merciful compensation gives me a sense of the dingier hue of Havana, and the muddier gurgle of beer. Are there potted meats? My physician has ordered me three pounds of minced salt-junk at every my alminiek,' says the cappen. meal." One evening when the clouds looked wild and whirling. I asked X. if it was coming on to blow. "No, I guess not," said he; "bumby the moon'll be up, and scoff away that ere loose stuff." His intonation set the phrase "scoff away" in quotation marks as plain as print. So I put a query in each eye, and he went on :-“ Ther' was a Dutch cappen onet, and his mate come to him in the cabin, where he sot takin' his schnapps, and says, Cappen, it's gittin' thick an' looks kin' o' squally heldn't we's good's shorten sail? Gimmy So he looks at it a spell, an' says he, "The moon's due in less half an hour, an' she'll scoff away ev'ythin' chre agin.' So the mate he goes, and bumby down he comes agin and says, 'Cappen, this 'ere's the a firedest, powerfullest moon ever you did sen She's scoffed away the maintopgallants'l, and she's to work on the foretops'l now. Guess youd better look in the alminick agin, an' fin' out when this moon sets.' So the cappen thought twis time to go on deck. Dreadful slow them Dutch cappens be." And X. walked away, rumbling inwardly like the roll of the sea heard afar. GRIZZLY. "From "The Golden Butterfly." By WALTER BESANT AND JAMES RICE.J HE travellers were low down on the western slope of the Sierra; they were in the midst of dales and glades—cañons and gulches, of perfect loveliness, shut in by mountains which rose over and behind them like friendly giants guarding a troop of sleeping maidens. Pelion was piled on Ossa, as peak after peak rose higher, all clad with pine and cedar, receding farther and farther, till peaks became points and ridges became sharp edges. It was autumn, and there were dry beds, which had in the spring been rivulets flowing full and clear from the snowy sides of the higher slopes; yet among them lingered the flowers of April upon the shrubs, and the colours of the fading leaves mingled with the hues of the autumn berries. A sudden turn in the winding road brought the foremost riders upon a change in the appearance of the country. Below them to the left stretched a broad open space, where the ground had been not only cleared of whatever jungle once grew upon it, but also turned over. They looked upon the site of one of the earliest surface-mining grounds. The shingle and gravel stood about in heaps; the gulleys and ditches formed by the miners ran up and down the face of the country like the wrinkles in the cheek of a baby monkey; old pits, not deep enough to kill, but warranted to maim and disable, lurked like man-traps in the open the old wooden aqueducts, run up by the miners in the year 52, were still standing where they were abandoned by the "pioneers:" here and there lay about old washing-pans, rusty and broken, old cradles, and bits of rusty metal which had once belonged to shovels. These relies and signs of bygone gatherings of men were sufficiently dreary in themselves, but at intervals there stood the ruins of a log-house or a heap which had once been a cottage built of mud. Palestine itself has no more striking picture of desolation and wreck than a deserted surface-mine. They drew rein and looked in silence. Presently they became aware of the presence of life. Right in the foreground, about two hundred yards before them, there advanced a procession of two. The leader of the show, so to speak, was a man. He was running. He was running so hard, that anybody could see his primary object was speed After him, with heavy stride, seeming to be in no kind of hurry, and yet covering the ground at a much greater rate than the man, there came s bear--a real old grizzly. A bear who was "shadowing" the man and meant claws. A bear who had an insult to avenge, and was resolved to go on with the affair until he had avenged it. A bear, too, who had his enemy in the open, where there was nothing to stop him, and no refuge for his victim but the planks of a ruined log-house, could he find one. Both men, without a word, got their rifles ready. The younger threw the reins of his horse to his companion and dismounted. Then he stood still and watched. The most exhilarating thing in the whole world is allowed to be a hunt. No greater pleasure in life than that of the Shekarry, especially if he be after big game. On this occasion the keenness of the sport was perhaps intensified to him who ran by the reflection that the customary position of things was reversed. No longer did he hunt the bear; the bear hunted him. No longer did he warily follow up the game; the game boldly followed him. No joyous sound of horns cheered on the hunter; no shout, such as those which inspirit the fox and put fresh vigour into the hare not even the short eager bark of the hounds, at the sound of which Reynard begins to think how many of his hundred turns are left. It was a silent chase. The bear, who represented in himself the whole field-men in scarlet, ladies, master, pack, and everything-set to work in a cold, unsympathetic way, infinitely more distressing to a nervous creature than the cheerful ringing of a whole field. To hunt in silence would be hard for any man; to be hunted in silence is intolerable. Grisly held his head down and wagged it from side to side, while his great silent paws rapidly cleared the ground and lessened the distance. "Tommy," whispered the young fellow, "I can cover him now." "Wait, Jack. Don't miss. Give Grisly two minutes more. Gad how the fellow scuds!" Tommy, you see, obeyed the instinct of nature. He loved the hunt: if not to hunt actively, to witness a hunt. It is the same feeling which crowds the benches at a bull-fight in Spain. It was the same feeling which lit up the faces in the Coliseum when Hermann, formerly of the Danube, prisoner, taken red-handed in revolt, and therefore moriturus, performed with vigour, sympathy, and spirit the rôle of Actæon, ending, as we all know, in a splendid chase by bloodhounds; after which the poor Teuton, maddened by his long flight and exhausted by his desperate resistance, was torn to pieces, fighting to the end with a rage past all acting. It is our modern pleasure to read of pain and suffering. Those were the really pleasant days to the Roman ladies when they actually witnessed living agony. "Give Grisly two minutes," said Captain Ladds. By this time the rest of the party had come up, and were watching the movements of man and bear. In the plain stood the framework of a ruined wooden house. Man made for log-house. Bear, without any apparent effort, but just to show that he saw the dodge, and meant that it should not succeed, put on a spurt, and the distance between them lessened every moment. Fifty yards; forty yards. Man looked round over his shoulder. The log-house was a good two hundred yards ahead. He hesitated; seemed to stop for a moment. Bear diminished the space by a good dozen yards-and then man doubled. "Getting pumped," said Ladds the critical. Then he too dismounted, and stood beside the younger man, giving the reins of both horses to one of the Mexicans. "Mustn't let Grisly claw the poor fellow," he murmured. "Let me bring him down, Tommy." "Bring him down, young un." The greasers looked on and laughed. It would have been to them a pleasant termination to the "play" had Bruin clawed the man. Neither hunter nor quarry saw the party clustered together on the rising ground on which the track ran. Man saw nothing but the ground over which he flew; bear saw nothing but man before him. The doubling manœuvre was, however, the one thing needed to bring Grisly within easy reach. Faster flew the man, but it was the last flight of despair; had the others been near enough they would have seen the cold drops of agony standing on his forehead; they would have caught his panting breath, they would have heard his muttered prayer. "Let him have it," growled Ladds. It was time. Grisly, swinging along with leisurely step, rolling his great head from side to side in time with the cadence of his footfall-one roll to every half-dozen strides, like a fat German over a trois-temps waltz-suddenly lifted his face and roared. Then the man shrieked; then the bear stopped, and raised himself for a moment, pawing in the air; then he dropped again, and rushed with quickened step upon his foe; then-but thenping! one shot. It has struck Grisly in the shoulder; he stops with a roar. "Good, young un!" said Ladds, bringing piece to shoulder. This time Grisly roars no more. He rolls over. He is shot to the heart, and is dead. The other participator in this chasse of two heard the crack of the rifles. His senses were growing dazed with fear; he did not stop, he ran on still, but with trembling knees and outstretched hands; and when he came to a heap of shingle and sand one of those left over from the old surface-mines he fell headlong on the pile with a cry, and could not rise. The two who shot the bear ran across the ground-he lay almost at their feet-to secure their prey. After them, at a leisurely pace, strode John, the servant. The greasers stayed behind and laughed. "Grisly's dead," said Tommy, pulling out his knife. "Steak?" "No; skin," cried the younger. "Let me take his skin. John, we will have the beast skinned. You can get some steaks cut. Where is the man?" They found him lying on his face, unable to move. "Now, old man," said the young fellow cheerfully, "might as well sit up, you know, if you can't stand. Bruin's gone to the happy huntinggrounds." The man sat up, as desired, and tried to take a comprehensive view of the position. Jack handed him a flask, from which he took a long pull. Then he got up, and somewhat ostentatiously began to smooth down the legs of his trousers. He was a thin man, about five and forty years of age; he wore an irregular and patchy kind of beard, which flourished exceedingly on certain |