spread on a floor of his apartment; his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was attending him, his head placed in her lap.  A violent noise arose below—­the door was heavily assailed—­it yielded—­a sharp conflict took place—­shouting and a rushing on the stair-case was heard, and the pirates were in the apartment.  “I read their purpose,” said Abder to me, “In their looks; but I was bed-ridden, and could not raise a finger to save her for whose life I would gladly have forfeited my own, Ramah, the pirate captain, approached her.  Entreaties for life were unavailing; yet for an instant her extreme beauty arrested his arm, but it was only for an instant.  His dagger again gleamed on high, and she sank a bleeding victim beside me.  Cold and apparently inanimate as I was, I nevertheless felt her warm blood flowing past me, and with her life it ebbed rapidly away.  My eyes must have been fixed with the vacant look of death:  I even felt unmoved as he bent down beside me, and, with spider-like fingers, stripped the jewels from my hand—­the touch of that villain who had deprived me of all which in life I valued.  At length, a happy insensibility stole over me.  How long I remained in this condition I know not; but when I recovered my senses, fever had left me—­cool blood again traversed my veins.  Beside me was a faithful slave, who was engaged bathing my temples.  He had escaped the slaughter by secreting himself while the murderers remained in the house.”

Ramah, although a man of few words with his crew, was nevertheless very communicative to our officers, whenever he fell in with them.  According to his own account, he managed them by never permitting any familiarities, nor communicating big plans, and by an impartial distribution of plunder; but the grand secret, he knew full well, was in his utter contempt of danger, and that terrible, untaught eloquence, at the hour of need, where time is brief, and sentences must be condensed into words, which marked his career.  Success crowned all his exploits; he made war, and levied contributions on whom he pleased.  Several times he kept important sea-port towns in a state of blockade, and his appearance was every where feared and dreaded.

He took possession of a small sandy islet, not many miles from his native place, where he built a fort, and would occasionally sally forth, and plunder and annoy any vessel that he met with.  Although now perfectly blind and wounded in almost every part of his body, yet such was the dread inspired by the energy of this old chief, that, for a long time, no one could be found willing to attack the single vessel which he possessed.  At length, a sheik, bolder than his neighbors, proceeded in three heavy boats to attack Ramah.  The followers of the latter, too well trained to feel or express alarm, save that which arose from affection for their chief, painted in strong terms the overwhelming superiority of the approaching force, and counseled his bearing away from them; but