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Here, as might have been expected, Longford found plenty of congenial companions to “whet his almost blunted purpose” of vicious propensity and indulgence. In a drunken quarrel at the gaming-table, knives were drawn, and Longford stabbed his antagonist-to the heart. Murders are so exceedingly common in all the Spanish possessions and settlements in America, that but seldom or never is any inquiry set on foot with regard to them. The only judicial formality consists in laying the dead bodies on their backs, with a plate upon the breast of each to receive the contributions of those who are disposed to assist in defraying the expenses of burial. But the murdered person, in this case, was a man of considerable consequence in the Buenos Ayrean government, having the charge and management of certain public moneys, and in consequence, the “authorities” thought it worth their while to ask a few questions about his “taking off.” Longford was well aware of these facts, and with considerable difficulty and danger made his escape to the other side of the river.

After remaining concealed for some time, he ventured down to Monte Video, where he found the English brig Swan, bound round Cape Horn. Her crew, deluded by the false and extravagant promises of privateering captains and owners, had all deserted. In this dilemma the captain was compelled to supply their places with such materials as could be picked up in the streets of Monte Video, and which were as bad as bad could be. Indeed, from the lawless state of all South America, it would have been next to impossible to have procured, “for love or money,” twenty good and orderly seamen, from Darien to Patagonia. Among these vagabonds Longford recognised many of his gaming-table acquaintances at Buenos Ayres, who had left that city to get out of the way of certain impertinent questions that the police had taken the liberty to ask concerning the murder that has already been mentioned. These fellows had imbibed a notion that seems to be an easily-besetting one among sailors who enter on board a ship in the middle of her voyage, namely, that there is money on board; which notion is but too often followed by an exceedingly strong inclination to appropriate it to their own use and behoof. Sailors seem to understand but confusedly the tenth commandment, which forbids us to covet any thing that is our neighbor’s.

The subject was discussed on the passage, the plan arranged, and the unsuspecting officers, passengers, and two lads, apprentices to the captain, murdered and thrown overboard. My readers would be, perhaps, but little edified by a more circumstantial narrative. There is so little variation in the details of shipwreck, acts of piracy, obituary notices, ordinations, commencements, murders, suicides, mammoth turnips, and Fourth of July celebrations, that printers would find it a great saving of time, money, and labor, to have regular and approved forms of each stereotyped, with blank spaces for names and dates.

This bloody deed was executed near the southern extremity of the then half province and half republic of Chili; and the murderers, with considerable difficulty, succeeded in running the ship between the island of Santa Marie and the main, and anchoring near the town or city of Aranco, which was then in the hands of Benavidas, above mentioned.

This sanguinary freebooter was then, under the auspices and with the assistance of the equally sanguinary royal governor of Chili, Sanchez, carrying on a most horrid and cruel war of extermination against the republican inhabitants of the southern part of Chili. Into the hands of this murderous ruffian and his ragamuffin gang the Swan was delivered; but the villany of her piratical crew was soon to receive its just punishment. Benavidas, who suspected them of having kept back no trifling part of the plunder, with very little privacy and no formality, shot them all but Longford, whom, for some unaccountable reason or other, he spared.