LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 380, 31 August 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

AN EVENING WITH CAPTAIN BOYTON, BY ARCHIBALD M'NEILL. [From the Gentleman's Magazine.] (Conchtded.) 1 After I left there I had a curious adventure with a shark. I was down on a nasty rock-bottom. A man never feels comfortable on them ; he can't tell what big creature may be hiding under the huge quarter-deck sea leaves which grow there. The first part of the time I was visited by a porcupine fish whicli kept sticking its quills up and bobbing in front of my helmet. Soon after I saw a big shadow fall across me, and looking up there was an infernal shark playing about my tubing. It makes you feel chilly in the back when they're about. He came down to me slick as I looked up. I made at him, and he sheered off. For near an hour he worked at it, till I could stand it no longer. If you can keep your head level it's all right, and you're pretty safe if they're not on you sharp. This ugly brute was twenty feet long I should think, for when I lay down all my length on the bottom he stretched a considerable way ahead of me, and I could see him beyond my feet. Then I waited. They must turn over to bite, and my lying down bothered him. He swam over three or four times, and then skulked off to a big thicket of sea-weed to consider. I knew he'd come back when he'd settled his mind. It seemed a long time waiting for him. At last he came viciously over me, but, like the time before, too far from my arms. The next time I had my chance, and ripped him with my knife as neatly as I could. A shark always remembers he's got business somewhere else when he's cut, so off this fellow goes. It is a curious thing, too, that all the sharks about will follow in the blood trail he leaves. I got on my hands and knees, and as he swam off I noticed four dark shadows slip after him. I saw no more that time. They did not like my company.' After a short period of experience in pearl-diving, and next the loss of nearly everything that he possessed, including his diving apparatus, in a great conflagration, Captain Boyton in a sort of desperation took service in the Mexican war, and led an exciting life till, growing tired of the semibarbarian mode of warfare, he deserted, crossing the Matamoros at midnight in an old tub of a boat, in which he expected every minute to go to the bottom. Arriving at Brownsville, he ' fixed himself into hard work' at a dry goods store. Then he Avrote home, and, hearing that his father was dead, grew restless again, and ' waded away north,' through Victoria, San Antonio, Indianola, and by aschoonerfrom Galveston, whence he proceeded tl rough New Orleans, Savanagh, Charleston, and Willington'to New York. There he stayed till he had filled his pockets once again, and having set himself up with a diving suit he shipped for Havre, where he found himself at once in the midst of the Franco-German war, heard people shouting 'A has la Prv.isr,' got excited and with some difficulty induced the authorities to accept him as a franc-tire ur. His adventures in the war are well worth the telling, but they have already found their Way into print, and I will pass them over. After the war he returned to the States, but presently grew restless again, and turned his face towards Europe with a view to the diamond fields of Africa. At Cape Town, however, he took the fever, and when he recovered gave up the pursuit of diamonds and for awhile followed a sailor's career. Here again I will let him tell his own story:— 'ln 1873 I settled down in Philadelphia to o. spell of work, Then I went down to Atlantic city, and in a short time got com* maud of the Life Service there. All that snoW-aeaaon I worked at an invention which I have not brought out yet—'The Boyton Adjustable Life Line,' and at my suit, "When I was perfecting the latter I Used to f;o up and down the Delaware river in it. 1 ook with the suit on like a geography picture of an Esquimaux catching seals ; and as I used to slip into the water to go down with the current everybody would put off in boats to Bave what they thought was a drowning man. This was powerful inconvenient. It was like a crowd worrying a dog. Ferry boats, tug boats, boats from the navy yard, boats with private people in them, all persisted at first in pelting after me, till I might as well have attempted to swim down the staircase of an hotel.

' In the season of 1874 I again took charge of the Life Service at Atlantic city, and saved over forty lives. The excursionists are such all-fired fools. They rush by the train sometimes two thousand a day by the Camden and Atlantic Eailway Company, and then off for a din without a -thought of the currents. Unl 1 th; t saason there had always been a powerful heavy loss of life. Young people would trip over the sands in the morning fall of life as a cardinal flower of colour, and be brought ashore in the afternoon with all the pink washed out of their dead cheeks. The season last from June to September; and for months I had made up my mind to have a long swim in my suit. The papers wrote some spry things about what they called my novel method of comrmtting'suicide in an indiarubber duster. The English papers have pretty well dug up all that part of my little life-story, 1 couldn't drop on the American side, so 1 took the English and landed at Skibbereen, The rest of my doings I may say are almost public property. The next time I croßs the Channel in the Boyton Life Dress I shall start from Cape Crinez. But I had better pull up slick. 1 have had a powerful long talk myself, and have cleared out a pretty considoiablc stock of third vowels.

My renders will think that Captain Boytoll has wa ted no time in amassing these experiences of hard and active life in .America, Europe, and Africa, when 1 mention thd ftttt that lie is Hot more than twenty-stjv-yu years of tfga,

A I'tiJszler. English tottridt (inquiringly, itfttl- itsking the way) • How is it, Pat, you do tint peel your potatoes ? Pat; A mill ! and why shottld 1 be afther pttlih' 'cm ? Phure, ar.d ain't they all Wrapped lip in blessed Hiouthfuls ? A drawing-master in Edinburgh, who had been •worrying a pupil with contemptuous remarks about his deficiency of skill in the use of the pencil, ended by saying, "If you v. ere to draw me, for example, tell me what part you would draw first!" The pupil, with a significant meaning in his eye, looked up in his master's face, and quietly said, ''Xour pegk, sir,"