Noon wasted into crimson evening. It was the 25th of November, 1812. The Sea-Gull was bowling down a dozen leagues off the Brazils, in latitude 10° south. The sun set at last with a frown behind the fleecy edge of a bank of clouds. The look-out thought he saw the glimmer of a sail as the last glow went out in the west, but he could make nothing of it. Captain Parole glanced around for a moment, musingly paced the deck, and went below, desiring the officer of the watch to call him at any change of weather. An hour passed, and it was fast growing into a dismal night. The moaning easterly wind still hung on; the far clouds in ambush to the northwest, peeped wearily over the verge of the sea, and then came rolling on in sullen gloom like the funeral pageant of some spirit of darkness. One by one the twinkling stars were wrathfully put out, till a small clear space no bigger than a mainsail was left uncovered, away down to the south and east. The sea was black, muttering, and hideous; an oppressive silence reigned through the brig. The usual song and laugh were hushed. Sometimes a large dark wave would rear up alongside, and sprawl away in a shower of sparks, and one might fancy he saw a skeleton ghost of the shipwrecked, rising in a shroud of fire. The fitful wind was now hurried like the swelling wail of an Eolian harp, then it fell with a rustle as of passing wings; and the footfall of the watch, the creaking of the wheel, or a sharp flap aloft, as if some winged messenger of gloom had ran afoul, alone kept silence awake.

It was near midnight, when the binnacle light faintly told its whereabout, that a forecastle coterie were listening mutely to a yarn of bloody interest. At the tragic dénouement the superstitious Peter leaped from the circle, unable to stand any more, and leaned upon the weather waist. Something between a groan and a laugh escaped him, and he started aghast, for it was mysteriously answered. He listened for a dubious moment, when a stealthy "Hard alee!" was whispered in his larboad ear, and he heard an abrupt dashing of waves and the heavy boom of filling canvas.

"Sail to windward!" he lustily sung, at the same moment that a tall spectral mass of spars and rigging loomed out of the darkness jam abeam. There was a cry and bustle on the Sea-Gull's deck, but it was drowned in a tremendous crash, as the cut-water of the strange sail stove in the quarter waist, and her flying-jib-boom became entangled in the fore-shrouds.

Quick as lightning, a band of armed men were jumping aboard, when at the instant a wave leaped up between the vessels, dashing them apart like the arms of a strong man, and leaving the wreck of the jib-boom dangling overboard. A plunge or two, and a gurgling shriek, told that some had sprung too late, and fallen short. The boarders quailed at that appalling cry-victory was yet in their grasp;-to have locked the hatches and mastered the watch would have been the work of a moment, but that precious moment was lost in hesitation. There they stood-few and awed on that narrow deck-their own vessel gone ahead, and the drowning yell of their comrades ringing in their It was only for an instant. The astonished crew of the Sea-Gull threw themselves on deck at the fierce commands of their leader, to be attacked by an enemy scarcely twenty in number. That bloody fray was over in a moment. Scorning the call to surrender, the foiled and maddened boarders were cut down to a man, hardly knowing whether by friends or enemies.

ears.

"Short and sweet"-tauntingly laughed the dark captain-" they are British hounds, I see-but where did they come from?"

"From the Tiger," exultingly answered De Berrian, from the deck, as he unlocked the deathclasp of a fallen foe, and stood upon his feet.

"Ha!" shouted Parole, "how do you know?"

"Here is my friend, Juan De Alva," replied De Berrian, lifting the huge limber corpse by the open bosom of the shirt, and showing the savage moustached face of the Spaniard-" a prosperous cruise to Port Brimstone," he added; and the dead was plunged heavily overboard.

A shout now arose there was no answer; and the darkness was so intense that the mysterious assailant could no where be seen.

"Beat to quarters," ordered the captain-"run out the cannonades there-clear away the long gun!" Hardly had he spoken, when a broadside from the lurking enemy came crashing through the rigging. The blaze of her guns lighted for a lurid moment the tall fleet-looking Tiger, covered with British colors. She was luffing on the starboard bow. The Sea-Gull fell to leeward, returning a raking fire. Again the Tiger opened, and the cannonade was instantly rapid and furious on both sides. Firing by the momentary flash of their guns, but little damage was sustained. Captain Parole's blood was up; he gave the order to haul to windward, and lay alongside. The Sea-Gull answered not her helm, for it was suddenly and awfully calm. The buoyant brig rocked helplessly on the dead-swells, and the airless sails flapped without life on the creaking spars.

The warning of that calm was not to be mistaken. By mutual consent, the enemies left their guns. Captain Parole looked around the sky for a moment, ordered every sail to be taken in, and even the top-masts and lighter spars to be housed. Many young sailors started at these orders, for they foretold a struggle with a fiercer enemy than man.

"Bear a hand, my lads,"-commanded the cool and inflexible captain-"we have plenty of sea room, and the Sea-Gull is at home in a hurricane. When it is over she will feed on the carcass of the Tiger."

"Well, eh!" ejaculated Peter, as he reached the yard-arm; "can't see nothin-Tiger don't shine him eyes dis night. Hab saw many dark night fore dis, but dis do take de shine off'em all!"

"Avast there oakum hide," roared a seaman" the old port admiral of the Styx has piped a court martial to overhaul you for that desertion. D'ye see that hell of a cloud yonder?-why that's the constable and his gang coming after you. Halloo, there goes a blue-light."

It was a glimmer of lightning that dimly traced the rigging around them; a far lurid flash like damp powder straggled away on the grim ocean's edge-then another, nearer and brighter, flared up through an embattled array of ponderous clouds. The signal was instantly answered from the whole line of the horizon, till the sky was sheeted far and near like the burning of a city under a pall of funeral smoke. The dread army was in motion on its path of death-the thunder came rumbling with a distant tramp like the cumbersome rattle of artillery. Every thing aloft was snug. Captain Parole took the wheel, and ordered the standing jib to be half hoisted, and the men to stand by with the down-haul. It was done, and then the enemies were reeling and dipping their yard-arms within musket shot of each other: their crowded decks, grim cannon, painted masts, and copper bottoms glancing in the vivid lightning. A mass of ragged skirmishing clouds flew overhead, and next came the vast opaque body, shooting up in tremendous pillars, and whirling grandly along. The stunning howl of the storm was terribly distinct. All was blaze and deafening bursts the sea was levelled into a foaming plain, for the tornado's path was but a quarter of a mile distant. "Down jib!" thundered the American captain, when the first mad puff twirled the brig safely before the gale. More territic than the earthquake's age-pent fury was the burst that followed.

The Sea-Gull trembled from topmast to keel, and bounded away like the fawn starting from the ravine's brink. The wind screamed its shrillest note, and the zigzag glare of the lightning ran down the reeking shrouds, and hissed upon the spray. Immense sheets of spray whirled above in a race with sweeping clouds, and fell conquered on the buried vessel. Torrents of rain brawled upon the decks, and towering foam-cliffs sprung unseen astern and broke impetuously over her-but the SeaGull rose again and shook her dripping pinions unharmed.

With a hand of iron, her captain bore upon the helm; his cap was blown away, and his heavy hair parted over the forehead and streamed flat upon his cheeks. His eye was lit with that strange excitement that finds companionship in the terrible. Fearless and exulting, the commander pointed over the quarter, and there, at a cable length, the Tiger was bursting from a shroud of foam like the dead of the ocean at the last day. Her large white topsail was rent in ribbands from the yards, and playing with the lightning's blaze. She bore herself gallantly through, and strode away in defiance. Faster than the fleetest wave the enemies scudded side-by-side. It was a terrific moment; yet strange to say, fierce passions were then at work. At one of the frightful pauses of the hurricane, the privateers exchanged broadsides. The deluging rain had ceased as suddenly as it came, and for an hour they fired at every chance, the lightning showing the mark. The furious wind at length somewhat abated, and the thirsting enemies bore up a point to close, and end the combat by the bloody method of boarding. The waves were short and tremendous, and the guns could not be worked. It seemed a reckless attempt to lay alongside; but the only fear of either was that the other might escape.

Captain Parole called his ready men around him. He stood by the wheel, dressed in a shining boarding cap, light pumps, close fitting shirt, and trowsers girded very low in the waist with a sabre belt, in which were thrust two pair of long, glittering pistols. He drew a large and splendidly mounted sabre, which he stuck quivering in the deck beside him; his right hand fell upon the hilt, and his full chest swelled as he cast a flashing glance on that dark array. 46 Men," he spoke in a voice of deepest volume," there are graves in the sand for some of us; our foes are as eager as we I lead the boarders-I want fifteen or twenty men for a post of honor."

With a thrilling cheer the number was instantly made up, and the second lieutenant, a youth of fire, stood at their head.

"Away to the fore-top," proudly continued the captain, "and spring into their rigging when we grapple. When I shout Ironsides,' drop to the deck, and receive the arms of the prisoners, or bury me in the ocean."

The men bounded away to their perilous duty. The heavy armed boarders stood close and eager, and the hostile vessels were rapidly closing. It was a scene of sublime and fearful interest. "Ready there, gunners," was the cry as their yard-arms cracked together, and each shot forth a last and deadly broadside. On the next wave, the Sea-Gull and the Tiger grappled fore and aft.

With a bound and shout, Captain Parole touched the Tiger's deck amidships, followed by about forty of his crew. They stood for a moment on the open main deck between two dark bodies of men, who were about to board the Sea-Gull fore and aft at once. A rank of musquetry forward wheeled and fired with their gleaming barrels thrust into the faces of the boarders; the murderous discharge flung many to the deck, and the flash revealed a strong body of men behind, wedged together, and grim with steel. Captain Parole loudly cheered and fired a shot, when the Americans saw the mass of men behind bursting through the opened ranks of the now useless musquetry, sabre in hand. They were led by a whiskered giant in a captain's uniform. At the same fierce whoop and bound the foes met like whirlwinds; as each American crossed steel with his man he thrust a pistol to his throat and fired—they were clashing with the second rank.

“Away there, boarders!" shouted the British leader to the corps on the quarter-deck—“ board ! board! and the game is up!-leave us to do the honors to these rogues."

But the manœuvre was anticipated. The yelling Tigers were crouching for a spring, when the Sea-Gulls pounced upon them dozen after dozen, till there was hardly 100m to whirl a sabre on the slippery deck. In a moment the crowded schooner was an arena of the most desperate fighting—a hundred and fifty men were moving to and fro in that butchering work. When the ghastly lightning flared again, the thick blood was jetting and bubbling from the scuppers.

"Ironsides!" now thundered Parole, more hoarsely than the bellow of the storm. "Ironsides! We are coming! Hurrah!" echoed the young and enthusiastic De Berrian from the quarter deck, as, with Peter forever by his side, he fought with a nervous and powerful arm. The stirring watchword rang again from around and aloft, answered terribly by the defying yell of the enemy. The battle swept on, darker, bloodier, yet the party in the rigging came not. They had been intercepted by a nest of Tigers on the same errand. Curses and the ringing of sabres-scattering shots, and often a dead body falling with a whirl in the struggle below, or plunging singly overboard, gave evidence of a savage fight aloft. Long, long, was that battle undecided. The screams of rage and pain sounding above the brawl of the tempest-the infernal gloom, and ever and anon the blueish glare of lightning, or the white flash of fire-arms, disclosing hideously uplifted sabres, faces begrimmed and fierce, and bloody men locked, falling, stiffening in death, displayed a revel of fiends rather than a human fight.

Struggling abaft the forward hatch, and vainly contending with superior numbers, was the American leader and his band. The unheeded slain were cumbering the deck, yet no shout of victory rang over the din. Parole was in his element, and at every stroke of his terrible sabre he yelled the dark oath of his blighted youth.

"The wedge-the wedge-give them the wedge!" he shouted, leaping before his men as they ranged away in a triangular body behind him. "Well done my boys-drive on!" and, almost alone, he cleared a horrid path through the astonished ranks. Few men could follow him in that reckless feat. The mad captain turned when no enemy stood before him, and at once he saw the fatal error of his success. Part of his men were surrounded away amid the foe, and those that gathered beside him were panting and few. For the first time that strange man felt fear; yet when his tremendous voice shouted again, "Keep together my biave boys, and mow down to the gang way," there was not a quiver in its tone. The work was impossible to all but him.

The British were furious and unshaken; in another moment all would be lost. In that agonizing thought the American captain was fast losing self-command. The dying cries of his beloved men bereft him of reason; he was maddened, and the time for the prodigy of his valor had arrived. At ▸nce, as if the resistless lightning dwelt in his single arm, he bounded away, and fought with the headlong fury of a maniac.

"Clear the deck, or sink with the dogs in their kennel," he thundered, cleaving down a heavy Briton who sought to grasp with him. The taunt went alike to friend and foe; for, at once, from Doth sides, a sickening shout of "No quarter," rent the air. The tall British commander, in the hellish struggle that ensued, singled out the American, and the fire whizzed from their sabres. Dogs are we," muttered the Briton through his clenched teeth," then thus we throttle midnight thieves."

"Dogs ye are!" roared the infuriated Parole, hurling a discharged pistol in the other's face, and, ere he could recover, the American swept his skull skimming overboard, and stamped on the prostrate body. Like a tortured fiend unbound, Parole now burst among the contending mass. Fighting in his frenzied might, an invisible power seemed to guard him. Pistols blazed in his face, and reeking sabres shivered over his head, yet he coursed without a scal.

It was a last and critical moment when a straggling body of Tigers came running forward, and a stirring hurrah of victory rang from the quarter deck. In the wild chorus, mingled the deep toned voice of De Berrian, cheering to the rescue of their captain and his followers. They were not a moment too soon, for Parole was singly engaged with a host, and the rest were surrounded, beaten, and falling at every blow. The impetuous victors hurled themselves upon the British rear, and then came the last dread struggle of war. It was the crisis-it was past; the vanquished and bleeding Britons threw down their sabres at the offer of quarter, only when they could not raise an unwounded arm.

And again that wild, screeching, unearthly yell of victory echoed over the dismal ocean. A fainter answer went up from the shrouds, and seven mutilated Americans staggered to the deck, and fell into the arms of their comrades. They were all that lived of the intrepid corps that were posted in the foretop. They came alone, which told the story of their bloody victory-their young lieutenant came not with them.

[To be continued.]

For the words of Persuasion fell soft from his And praises shall mix with the tears that must

THE INFERNAL BOX.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

THE story which follows is true in every particular, and can be supported, if necessary, by testimony of the most respectable character. The individual who therein plays the principal part has been variously distinguished. Men of fashion study his elegance of manner, and philosophers esteem his profound erudition. He is the nephew of that illustrious man and great orator, M. Royer Collard; but he is something more than the nephew of a great man he is himself eminent for genius and acquirements, in a word, it is M. Hypolite Royer Collard, one of the most distinguished professors of the medical faculty of Paris, and at the same time, and by an anomaly purely Parisian, the most exquisite dandy that ever trod the Boulevard of Ghent.

My story, then, is matter of history, and having thus premised, I enter upon the subject. At the same time, let it be understood that I intend no attack upon the reputation or honor of M. Royer Collard. The mystification on which this narrative is founded, and of which he was the victim, was not aimed at the Professor, but at the Roué. My aim shall be the same.

THE INFERNAL BOX.

If Paris be the wonder of the world, the opera is the wonder of Paris. The opera is the essence of that society, which is in itself the extract of all other society.

One of the front boxes of the Parisian Eldorado has received a singular surname—that of the Infernal Box. Not because it is haunted by those tempting demons with angelic features, whose seductions have gained so many souls to Lucifer. No woman has ever entered the Infernal Box. The demons of this hell are good devils enough, who, in point of virtue, have hardly triumphed over any virtue but that of an opera nymph. These demons are by no means malicious. The Infernal Box is thus termed because in it they make un bruit d'enfer-literally, " a hell of a noise." For a considerable length of time it has been the rendezvous of a set of roystering blades, generally of high rank, who thus endeavor to continue in our own age the traditions of the Regency. The Don Juans of the Café Anglais, free livers of some renown, meet there of evenings, and assemble to display their chivalric graces and their folly.

The life of these men, and their manners, cause no little astonishment to a stranger who has not comprehended the object of this society, which, through a peculiarity which it were easy to explain, carefully conceals its good qualities, in order to display with ostentation its bad ones. Pure coquetry! for beneath this apparent frivolity there exists an incontestible superiority, and even a real and bitter sadness.

To behold the occupants of the Infernal Box assume a rudeness almost disgusting, and point their opera glasses with insolent effrontery at the features and dress of the ladies-to hear their shouts of laughter whilst every one else is silent-this, I say, would excite in a stranger mingled feelings of pity and indignation. He would take these men to be some of those illustrious nullities, who promenade their uselessness, their idleness, and their yellow gloves, from the wood of Boulogne to Frascati and the opera. But pity would ere long give place to astonishment. In fact, these dandies are men. After Byron and Pelham, their masters and models, they have made of folly a system and a mode of life.

Who form this society at the present day, I know not; but at the time of my history, (a year previous to the revolution of July,) the infernal phalanx was composed of men who have since become celebrated under various titles. Cavé and Ditmer, the witty authors of “Soireés de Neuilly,” were of the party, Mignet, the historian, was one of the faithful. Romieu, the king of good livers, who is now changed into a magistrate, and thunders against the "excesses of our evil passions," he who was one evening found dead drunk at a corner, surmounted by two lamps with the following