A Middy of the Slave Squadron: A West African Story

Harry Collingwood

"A Middy of the Slave Squadron"

Chapter One.

A sound through the darkness.

“Phew!” ejaculated Mr Perry, first lieutenant of His Britannic Majesty’s corvette Psyche, as he removed his hat and mopped the perspiration from his streaming forehead with an enormous spotted pocket-handkerchief. “I believe it’s getting hotter instead of cooler; although, by all the laws that are supposed to govern this pestiferous climate, we ought to be close upon the coolest hour of the twenty-four! Just step aft to the skylight, Mr Fortescue, and see what the time is, will ye? It must surely be nearing two bells.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” I dutifully answered; and, moving aft to the skylight, raised the canvas cover which had been placed over it to mask the light of the low-turned lamp which was kept burning all night in the fore cabin, and glanced at the clock which, screwed to the coaming on one side of the tell-tale compass, balanced the barometer which, hung in gimbals, was suspended on the other side. The clock marked the time as two minutes to five a.m., or within two minutes of two bells in the morning watch.

Dropping the canvas screen back into place, I was about to announce the time to my superior officer, when I thought I caught, through the faint creak of the ship’s timbers and the light rustling of the canvas aloft, a slight, far off sound, like the squeak of a sheave on a rusty pin. Therefore, instead of proclaiming the time aloud, I stepped quietly to the side of the first luff, and asked, almost in a whisper—

“Did you hear anything just then, sir?”

“Hear anything?” reiterated Mr Perry, unconsciously lowering his usually stentorian voice in response to the suggestion of secrecy conveyed by my whisper; “no, I can’t say that I did. What d’ye mean, Mr Fortescue?”

“I mean, sir,” I replied, “that I thought I caught, a moment ago, a sound like that of—ah! did you hear that, then, sir?” as a voice, uttering some words of command, apparently in the Spanish language, came floating to us, faint but clear, across the invisible water upon which the Psyche lay rolling almost imperceptibly.

“Ay, I did,” answered Mr Perry, modulating his voice still further. “No mistake about that, eh? There’s a craft of some sort out there, less than a mile distant, I should say. Did you catch the words? They sounded to me like some foreign lingo.”

“No, sir,” I replied, “I did not quite catch them, but, as you say, they appeared to be foreign, and I believe they were Spanish. What about striking two bells, sir? It only wanted two minutes—”

“On no account whatever, Mr Fortescue,” hastily interrupted my companion. “On the contrary, have the kindness to slip for’ard and caution the watch not to sing out, or make the slightest noise, on any account, but to come quietly aft if they happen to have anything to report. And when you have done that, kindly go down and call Captain Harrison.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” I answered; and, kicking off my shoes, lest the sound of them upon the deck should reach the stranger through that still and breathless atmosphere, I proceeded upon my twofold errand.

But it is time to tell the reader where the Psyche was upon this dark and stifling night; what she was doing there; and why the precautions above referred to were deemed necessary.

As has already been mentioned, the Psyche was a British man-o’-war. She was a sloop, armed with fourteen long 18-pounders; and carried a crew which had originally consisted of one hundred and thirty men, but which had now been reduced by sickness and casualties to one hundred and four, all told. She was a unit in the somewhat scanty Slave Squadron which Great Britain had stationed on the West African coast for the suppression of the infamous slave-trade; and when this story opens—namely, about the middle of the year 1822—had been upon the station nearly two years, during the whole of which period I, Richard Fortescue, hailing from the neighbourhood of the good town of Plymouth, had been on board her, and now held the responsible position of senior midshipman; being, at the above date, just turned seventeen years of age.

The Psyche was a fine, stout, roomy, and comfortable craft of her class; but about as unsuitable for the work upon which she was now engaged as could well be, for she was a converted merchant ship, built for the purpose of carrying the biggest possible cargo that could be packed into certain prescribed limits, and consequently, as might be expected, phenomenally slow. To commission such a vessel to chase and capture the nimble craft that were usually employed to transport the unhappy blacks across the Atlantic was simply a ghastly farce, and caused us, her unfortunate crew, to be the laughing-stock of the entire coast. Yet, considering all things, we had not done so very badly; for realising, early in the commission, that we need never hope for success from the speed of our ship, we had invoked the aid of strategy, and by dint of long practice had brought the trapping of slavers almost up to the level of high art. Consequently the Psyche, despite the disabilities arising from her astonishing lack of speed, had acquired a certain reputation among the slave-dealing fraternity, and was as intensely detested by them as any ship on the station.

At the moment when the reader first finds himself a member of her crew the Psyche was lying near the mouth of the Benin river, some two miles off the shore and about twice that distance from the river’s mouth, at which point we had arrived at midnight; having made our way thither in consequence of “information received,” which led us to believe that a large ship was at that moment in the river taking on board a full cargo of blacks. We had drifted down to the position which we then occupied under the impulse of the last of the land-breeze, which had died out and left us becalmed some two miles short of the precise spot for which we were aiming. Still, we were near enough for all practical purposes, or believed that we were; for we thought that if a thoroughly smart look-out were maintained—and we had grown to be adepts at that sort of thing—it would be impossible for a slaver to attempt to slip out of the river without our becoming cognisant of the fact. And now, to return to my story.

Having first stolen forward and warned the watch that a craft of some sort was within hearing distance of us, and that they were therefore carefully to avoid crying out, or making any other sound that might betray our presence, I returned aft, in the same cautious manner, and was on the point of descending the companion ladder to call the captain, when ting-ting came the soft chiming of a ship’s bell, mellowed by distance, from somewhere in the offing, evidencing—or so it seemed to me—the fact that the stranger had not as yet discovered our proximity.

The skipper, accustomed to being disturbed at all hours of the night, awoke at the first touch of my knuckles upon his cabin door.

“Yes!” he called; “what is it?”

“There is a strange craft not far from us, sir,” I answered; “and Mr Perry considered that you should be apprised of the fact. We know nothing whatever about her, except that she is there; for the night is so intensely dark that we have been unable to catch the faintest glimpse of her, but we have just heard them strike two bells aboard her. We have not struck our own bell, sir, thinking—”

“Yes, of course, quite right,” interrupted the skipper, as he landed with a soft thud on the floor of his state-room. “Tell Mr Perry that I’ll be on deck in a brace of shakes.”

He followed close at my heels up the companion ladder, having paused only long enough to slip into his nether garments, and came groping blindly out on deck.

“Phew!” he muttered, as he emerged from the companion; “it’s as dark as the inside of a cow. Where are you, Mr Perry?”

“Here I am, sir; close alongside you,” answered the first luff, stretching out his hand and lightly touching the skipper’s arm. “Yes,” he continued, “it certainly is dark, unusually so; so dark that I am in hopes of keeping our presence a secret from the fellow out yonder until you shall have decided what is to be done.”

“Mr Fortescue tells me that you have not seen anything of him thus far,” remarked the captain. “Whereabout is he, and how far off, do you reckon?”

“Somewhere away in that direction,” indicated the lieutenant, with a flourish of his arm. “As to the distance—well, that is rather difficult to judge. Sound travels far on such a night as this; but I should say that the craft is not more than half a mile distant, or three-quarters, at the utmost.”

“Um!” commented the captain meditatively. “I suppose it is not, by any chance, the craft which we are after, which has slipped out of the river in the darkness, eh?”

“I should scarcely think so, sir,” answered Perry. “A man would literally have to be able to find his way about blindfolded to attempt to run out of the river on such a night as this. No, I am inclined to think that it is some inward-bound craft, becalmed like ourselves. We caught the sound of some order spoken on board her when we first became aware of her presence, and Mr Fortescue here was of opinion that the words used were Spanish, although the distance was too great to enable us to distinguish just what was said.”

“Ay,” responded the skipper; “two out of every three slavers doing business on this coast are either Spaniards or Portuguese. Now, the question is, What are we to do with regard to our unknown friend out yonder? Either she is, or is not, the craft that we are on the look-out for. If she is, we must take her, by hook or by crook, before the sea-breeze sets in and gives her the chance to run away from us; and that means a jaunt in the boats. On the other hand, if she is not the craft that we are after, she is still in all probability a slaver, and in any case will doubtless pay for an overhaul, which again means a boat trip. Therefore, Mr Perry, be good enough to have the hands called, and the boats got into the water as silently as possible. If the men are quick we may be able to get away, and perhaps alongside her, before the dawn breaks. I will take charge of this little pleasure-party myself, and you can stay here and keep house during my absence.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Perry, in tones which clearly betrayed his disappointment at the arrangement come to by the skipper. “I will put matters in hand.”

“Yes, do,” returned the skipper; “and meanwhile I will go and dress. It shall be your turn next time, Perry,” he chuckled, as he turned away to go below again.

“Ay,” grumbled the lieutenant to himself, but audibly enough for me to hear. “Same old yarn—‘your turn next time, Perry.’ This will make the third time running that I have been left behind to ‘keep house,’ but there’s not going to be a fourth, I’ll see to that; it is time that this child stood up for his rights. Now, Mr Fortescue, have the goodness, if you please, to pass the word for all hands to arm and man boats; and to be quiet about it, too, and show no lights.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” I briskly responded, as I turned to hurry away; “I’ll see that our lambs don’t bleat too loudly. And—I suppose—that I may take it for granted that—”

“That you will make one of the ‘pleasure-party’?” interrupted the lieutenant, with a laugh, as he put his disappointment and ill-humour away from him. “Oh, yes, I suppose so. At all events there will be no harm in making your preparations; the captain is pretty certain to take you.”

Still on my bare feet, I hurried forward and found the boatswain.

“That you, Mr Futtock?” I inquired, as I made out his burly form.

“Ay, ay, Mr Fortescue, it’s me, right enough,” was the answer. “I presoom, sir, it’s another boat job, eh? You heard that bell?”

“We did, Mr Futtock; yes, we heard it distinctly, seeing that we don’t ‘caulk’ in our watch on deck,” I retorted. “Yes, it’s another boat affair; so be good enough to have all hands called at once, if you please. And kindly make it your personal business to see that nobody raises his voice, lets anything fall, or otherwise creates row enough to wake the dead. This is going to be a little surprise visit, you understand.”

“Ay, ay, Mr Fortescue, I understands,” answered Futtock, as he moved toward the open hatchway; “I’ll see that the swabs don’t make no noise. The man that raises his voice above a whisper won’t go. That’s all.”

“Just one word more, Mr Futtock,” I hastily interposed, as the boatswain stepped over the coaming to descend the hatchway. “You may do me a favour, if you will. Kindly ask the armourer to pick me out a nice sharp cutlass, if you please. You can bring it on deck with you when you come up.”

To this request the boatswain readily enough assented; and matters being thus far satisfactorily arranged I descended to the cockroach-haunted den wherein we mids. ate and slept, to find that little Tom Copplestone—who shared my watch, and who was a special favourite of mine because of his gentle, genial disposition, and also perhaps because he hailed from the same county as myself—having overheard the conversation between Mr Perry and myself, had already come below and roused the occupants of the place, who, by the smoky rays of a flaring oil lamp that did its best to make the atmosphere quite unendurable, were hastily arraying themselves.

“Murder!” I ejaculated, as I entered the pokey little place and got my first whiff of its close, reeking, smoke-laden atmosphere; “put out that abominable lamp and light a candle or two, somebody, for pity’s sake. How the dickens you fellows can manage to breathe down here I can’t understand. And, boy,” to the messenger outside, “pass the word for Cupid to bring us along some cocoa from the galley.”

“There’s no need,” remarked Nugent, the master’s mate, as he struggled ineffectively to find the left sleeve of his jacket. “The word has already been passed; I passed it myself when Master Cock-robin there,” pointing to Copplestone, “came and roused us out. And, as to candles, I’m afraid we haven’t any; the rats appear to have eaten the last two we had in the locker. However—ah, here comes the cocoa. Put the pot down there, Cupid—never mind if it does soil our beautiful damask table-cloth, we’re going to have it washed next time we go into Sierra Leone. And just see if you can find us a biscuit or two and some butter, will ye, you black angel? Here, avast there,”—as the black was about to retire—“produce our best china breakfast-set before you go, you swab, and pour out the cocoa.”

The black, a herculean Krooboy, picked up when we first arrived on the Coast, and promptly christened “Cupid” by the master’s mate, who, possibly because of sundry disappointments, had developed a somewhat sardonic turn of humour, grinned appreciatively at Nugent’s sorry jest respecting “our best china breakfast-set,” and proceeded to rout out the heterogeneous assortment of delf and tin cups, basins, and plates that constituted the table-equipage of the midshipmen’s berth, poured out a generous allowance of cocoa for each of us, and then departed, with the empty bread-barge, in quest of a supply of ship’s biscuit. By the time that Cupid returned with this, we had gulped down our cocoa and were ready to go on deck. I therefore helped myself to a couple of biscuits which, breaking into pieces of convenient size by the simple process of dashing them against my elbow, I crammed into my jacket pocket, and then rushed up the ladder to the deck, leaving my companions to follow after they had snatched a hasty bite or two of food; for there was now no knowing when we might get breakfast.

Upon my arrival on deck I found the hands already mustering under the supervision of the first lieutenant, and a moment later I encountered the boatswain, who handed over to me a good serviceable ship’s cutlass—worth a dozen of the ridiculous little dirks which were considered suitable weapons for midshipmen—which I promptly girded about my waist. At this moment all was bustle and animation throughout the ship, yet so sedulously had we been trained to act in perfect silence that I am certain the stealthy footfalls of the men hurrying to their stations, and the whispered words of command, were quite inaudible at a distance of twenty yards from the ship. Within a minute or two, however, even these faint sounds had subsided, the crew were all mustered, and the first lieutenant, assisted by a quartermaster who carried a carefully masked lantern, was carefully, yet rapidly, inspecting each man’s weapons and equipment, scrutinising the flints in the locks of the pistols, and otherwise satisfying himself of the efficiency of our hurried preparations. While the inspection was still in progress the captain came on deck, with his sword girded to his side and a brace of pistols thrust into his belt, and stood quietly looking on until the inspection was completed and Mr Perry had reported that everything was in order.

Then the skipper announced that he would personally lead the attack in his own gig, manned by eight oarsmen, a coxswain, and a midshipman—myself; while the first cutter, manned by sixteen oarsmen, a coxswain, and a midshipman—Jack Keene—was to be commanded by Mr Purchase, the second lieutenant; and the second cutter, with twelve oarsmen, a coxswain, and Nugent, the master’s mate, was to be under the command of the boatswain. Thus the attacking party was to consist of forty-five persons, all told, which was as many, I suppose, as the skipper felt justified in taking out of the ship under the circumstances.

Then ensued a busy five minutes, during which the boats were being noiselessly lowered and manned, the oars muffled, and every possible precaution observed to enable us to take our unseen but doubtless vigilant enemy unawares. This was just then regarded as of especial importance, for at the time of which I am now writing the traffic in slaves was regarded as piracy, and rendered its perpetrators liable to capital punishment, in consequence of which almost every slaver went heavily armed, and her crew, knowing that the halter was already about their necks, resisted capture by every means which their ingenuity could devise, whenever they had the chance, and often fought with desperate valour.

As I hurried aft to attend to the lowering of the gig, which hung from davits over the stern, a hand was suddenly laid upon my arm, and, turning, I found myself confronted by Cupid, the Krooboy servant who “did for us” in the midshipmen’s berth. His eyes were aglow with excitement, he carried a short-handled hatchet, with a head somewhat bigger and heavier than that of a ship’s tomahawk, in his hand, and he was naked, save for a pair of dungaree trousers, the legs of which were rolled up above his knees.

“Mr Fortescue, sar, I fit for go in dem boat wid you, sar,” he whispered eagerly.

“Yes, I quite believe it, Cupid,” I replied. “But you know perfectly well that I cannot give you permission to join the gig’s crew. If the captain had been anxious to have the pleasure of your company I feel sure that he would have mentioned the fact. Besides, if you should happen to be killed, what would become of us poor midshipmen?”

A suppressed chuckle, and a gleam of white teeth through the darkness, betrayed Cupid’s appreciation of the compliment subtly conveyed in the suggestion that the budding admirals inhabiting the midshipmen’s berth aboard H.M.S. Psyche would suffer, should he unhappily be slain in the impending conflict, but he hastened to reassure me.

“No fear, sar,” he whispered. “Dem slaber no lib for kill me. I, Cupid, too much plenty black for see in de dark; an’ if dey no see me, dey no kill. Savvey? Please, Mr Fortescue, sar. I no lib for fight too much plenty long time.”

“Look here, Cupid,” I replied. “It is no use for you to ask me for permission to go in the gig, for I cannot give it you. But,”—meaningly—“if you were to stow yourself away in the eyes of the gig it is just possible that the captain might not notice you until we had got too far from the ship to turn back. Only don’t let me see you doing it, that’s all.”

“Dat all right, sar,” answered the black, with a sigh of extreme content. “If you no look for dem Cupid you no see um.” And he turned and ostentatiously walked away forward.

The boats having been gently and carefully lowered into the water without a splash, or so much as a single tell-tale squeak from the tackle-blocks—the pins and bushes of which were habitually overhauled at frequent intervals and kept well lubricated with a mixture of melted tallow and plumbago—the crews took their places, each man carefully depositing his drawn cutlass on the bottom-boards between his feet, and we shoved off with muffled oars, the three boats pulling abreast, with about a ship’s length between each; so that if perchance we should happen to be seen, we should present as small a target as possible to aim at.

We pulled slowly and with the utmost caution, for the twofold reason that we had not yet caught sight of our quarry and only knew in a general sort of way that she was somewhere to seaward of us, and because we were anxious to avoid premature discovery from the splash of our oars. It was of course perfectly right and proper that we should observe all the precautions that I have indicated; for if we could but contrive to creep up alongside the stranger without being detected, it would undoubtedly mean the prevention of much loss of life. But, personally, I had very little hope of our being able to do so; for the night was so breathlessly still that, if any sort of look-out at all were being kept aboard the stranger—and slavers usually slept with one eye open—they must surely have caught some hint of our proximity, careful as we had been to maintain as complete silence as possible while making our preparations. Besides, as ill-luck would have it, the water was in an unusually brilliant phosphorescent condition just then, the slightest disturbance of it caused a silvery glow that could be seen a mile away; and, be as silent as we might, the dip of our oars and the passage of the boats through the water set up such a blaze as could not fail to betray us, should a man happen to glance in our direction.

At length, when we had pulled about half a mile, as nearly as I could judge, I detected a slight suspicion of a softening in the velvety blackness of the sky in the eastern quarter. It brightened, even as I looked, and a solitary star, low down in the sky, seemed to flicker, faintly and more faintly, for half a dozen seconds, and then disappear.

“The dawn is coming, sir,” I whispered to the skipper, by whose side I was sitting, “and in another minute or two we ought to—ah! there she is. Do you see her, sir?” And I pointed in the direction of a faint, ghostlike blotch that had suddenly appeared at a spot some three points on our port bow.

“Where away?” demanded the skipper, instinctively raising his hand to shade his eyes; but he had scarcely lifted it to the height of his shoulder when he too caught sight of the object.

“Ay,” he exclaimed, “I see her. And a big craft she is, too; a barque, apparently. Surely that cannot be the craft that we are after? Yet it looks very like her. If so, she must have slipped out of the river with the last of the land-breeze last night, and lain becalmed all night where she is. Now what are the other boats about that they have not seen her? Parkinson,” to the coxswain, “show that lantern for a moment to the other boats, but take care to shield it with—ah! never mind, there are both their lights. Give way, men. Put me alongside under her mizen chains, my lad. Either side; I don’t care which.”

While the captain had been speaking the faint, ghostly glimmer that I had detected had resolved itself into the spectral semblance of a large ship clothed from her trucks down with canvas upon which the rapidly growing light of the advancing dawn was falling and thus rendering it just barely visible against its dark background of sky.

In the tropics day comes and goes with a rush, and, even while the skipper had been speaking, the object which had first revealed itself to me, a minute earlier, as a mere wan, ghostly suggestion had assumed solidity and definiteness of form, and now stood out against the sky behind her as a full-rigged ship of some seven hundred and fifty tons burthen, her hull painted bright green, and coppered to the water-line. She was lying stern-on to us, and sat deep in the water, from which latter fact one inferred that she had her cargo of slaves on board and had doubtless, as the skipper conjectured, come out of the river with the last of the land-breeze during the previous night, and had remained becalmed near us, and, we hoped, quite unaware of our proximity all night. She was now within a cable’s length of the boats, but, lying as she was, dead stern-on to us, we in the gig were unable to see how many guns she carried, which was, however, an advantage to us, since, however many guns she might mount on her broadsides, she could bring none of them to bear upon us. We saw, however, that she carried two stern-chasers—long nine’s, apparently—and now, in the hope of dashing alongside before those two guns could be cast loose and brought to bear upon us, the captain stood up in the stern-sheets of the gig and waved his arm to the other boats as a signal to them to give way—for, with the coming of the daylight we could not possibly hope to remain undiscovered above a second or two longer.

Indeed the boats’ crews had scarcely bent their backs in response to the signal when there arose a sudden startled outcry on board the ship, followed by a volley of hurried commands and the hasty trampling of feet upon her decks. But we were so close to her, when discovered, and the surprise was so complete, that her crew had no time to do anything effective in the way of defence; and in little over a couple of minutes we had swept up alongside, clambered in over her lofty bulwarks, driven her crew below, and were in full possession of the Doña Isabella of Havana, mounting twelve guns, with a crew of forty-six Spaniards, Portuguese, and half-castes, constituting as ruffianly a lot as I had ever met with. She had a cargo of seven hundred and forty negroes on board, and was far and away the finest prize that had thus far fallen to the lot of the Psyche. So valuable, indeed, was she that Captain Harrison decided not to trust her entirely to a prize crew, but to escort her to Sierra Leone in the corvette; and some two hours later, having meanwhile made all the necessary dispositions, the two craft trimmed sail with the first of the sea-breeze and hauled up for Sierra Leone, where we arrived a week later after an uneventful passage.

Chapter Two.

In the Fernan Vaz River.

While we were awaiting the formal condemnation of the Doña Isabella by the Mixed Commission, and the trial of her crew upon the charge of piracy, Captain Harrison, our skipper, busily employed himself, as was his wont, in hunting up information relative to the movements, present and prospective, of the slavers upon the coast. And this was not quite so difficult to do as might at first be imagined; for, Sierra Leone being the headquarters, so to speak, of the British Slave Squadron, the persons actually engaged in the slave-trade found that it paid them well to maintain agents there for the sole purpose of picking up every possible item of information relative to the movements and doings of that squadron. For it not unfrequently happened that, to those behind the scenes, an apparently trivial and seemingly quite worthless bit of information, an imprudent word dropped by an unwary officer respecting one of our vessels, enabled the acute ones to calculate so closely that they often succeeded in making a dash into some river, shipping a cargo of slaves, and getting clear away to sea again only a few hours before our cruisers put in an appearance on the spot. And in the same way our own officers, by frequenting, in disguise, the haunts of the slavers and their agents, very often succeeded in catching a hint that, carefully followed up, led to most important captures being made. It was, indeed, through a hint so acquired that we had been put upon the track of the Doña Isabella.

Now, our own skipper, Captain Harrison, was particularly keen upon this sort of work, and was exceptionally well qualified to achieve success in it. For, in the first place, he was a West Indian by birth, being the son of a Trinidad sugar-planter, and he consequently spoke Creole Spanish as fluently as he did his mother tongue. Also his physical characteristics were such as to be of the greatest assistance to him in such enterprises; for he was tall, lean, and muscular, of swarthy complexion, with thick, black, curly hair, and large, black, flashing eyes, suggesting that he carried a touch of the tar-brush, although, as a matter of fact, he had not a drop of negro blood in him. He was a man of dauntless courage, knowing not the meaning of fear, and absolutely revelling in situations of the most extreme peril, yet gifted with quite as much discretion as was needful for a man entrusted with heavy responsibilities involving the lives of many of his fellow-men. He never sought danger for danger’s sake alone, and never embarked in an enterprise which his reason assured him was hopelessly impracticable, but, on the other hand, he never hesitated to undertake the most perilous task if he believed he could see a way to its successful accomplishment. It was his habit to assume a variety of disguises in which he would haunt the third and fourth rate taverns of Freetown, especially patronised by the slave-dealing fraternity, and mingling freely with these gentry, would boldly express his own views, adopted, of course, for the occasion, upon the various matters affecting the trade, or discuss with them the most promising schemes for baffling the efforts of the British cruisers. He had noticed, very early in his career as an officer of the Slave Squadron, that it was always the British who constituted the bête noire of the slavers; the French they feared very little; the Americans not at all.

These little incursions into the enemy’s territory Captain Harrison conducted with consummate boldness and skill, and with a considerable measure of success, for it was quite a favourite amusement of his to devise and suggest schemes of a particularly alluring character which, when adopted by the enemy, he of course triumphantly circumvented without difficulty. There was only one fault to find with this propensity on the part of our skipper, but in my humble judgment it constituted a serious one. It was this. Captain Harrison’s personality was a distinctly striking one; he was the kind of man who, once seen, is not easily forgotten; and I greatly dreaded that some day, sooner or later, the reckless frequenter of the low-class Freetown taverns would be identified as one and the same with the captain of H.M.S. Psyche, who was of course frequently to be seen about the streets in the uniform of a British naval captain. Indeed I once took the liberty of delicately hinting at this possibility; but the skipper laughed at the idea; he had, it appeared, the most implicit faith in his disguises, which included, amongst other things, a huge false moustache of most ferocious appearance, and an enormous pair of gold earrings.

We had been at Sierra Leone a little over a fortnight, and our business there was just completed, when the skipper came aboard on a certain afternoon in a state of the highest good-humour, occasioned, as soon transpired, by the fact that he had succeeded in obtaining full particulars of an exceptionally grand coup that had been planned by a number of slavers in conjunction, which they were perfectly confident of pulling off triumphantly.

It appeared, from his story, that intelligence had just been received of the successful conclusion of a great slave-hunting raid into the interior by a certain King Olomba, who had recently returned in triumph to his town of Olomba, on the left bank of the Fernan Vaz river, bringing with him nearly three thousand negroes, of whom over two thousand were males, all in prime condition. This information having reached the slavers’ agents at Sierra Leone through the mysterious channels by which news often travels in Africa, an effort of quite exceptional magnitude was to be made to get at least the two thousand males out of the country at one fell swoop; the present being regarded as an almost uniquely favourable opportunity for the accomplishment of this object, for the reason that the Psyche was just then the only ship which could by any possibility interfere with the scheme. And in the event of her happening to put in an inopportune appearance on that part of the coast at the critical moment—as she had a knack of doing, in the most unaccountable manner—she was to be decoyed away from the spot by the simple process of dispatching to sea a certain notorious schooner well-known to be in the trade, but which, for this occasion only, was to have no slaves or slave fittings or adjuncts on board, and after a chase of some two or three hundred miles to the southward, was to permit herself to be caught, only to be released again, of course, after an exhaustive overhaul.

It was an admirable scheme, beautifully simple, and could scarcely fail to achieve complete success, but for the fact that Captain Harrison had contrived to obtain full particulars of it, and therefore knew exactly how to frustrate the plan. His plot was as simple as that of the slavers: he would proceed in the Psyche to the scene of operations, and when the decoy schooner made her appearance she would be permitted to go on her way unmolested, while a boat expedition would be dispatched up the river to the town of Olomba, where the vessels actually engaged in shipping the two thousand blacks would be captured flagrante delicto.

Naturally we were all thrown into a high state of jubilation at the receipt of this intelligence; for it promised us a slice of good luck of such magnitude as very seldom fell to the lot of a single cruiser. To convey two thousand negroes across the Atlantic at once would necessitate the employment of at least three large ships, the value of which might be roughly calculated at, upon the very lowest estimate, ten thousand pounds each, or thirty thousand pounds in all, besides which there would be the head-money upon two thousand negroes, amounting altogether to quite a nice little sum in prize-money for a cruise of probably less than a month’s duration. Oh, how we chuckled as we pictured to ourselves the effect which the news of so magnificent a coup would create upon the minds of the rest of the Slave Squadron. The Psyche, from her phenomenal lack of speed, and general unsuitability for the service upon which she was employed, had, with her crew, become the butt and laughing-stock of every stupid and scurrilous jester on the coast, and many a time had we been made to writhe under the lash of some more than ordinarily envenomed gibe; but now the laugh was to be on our side; we were going to demonstrate to those shallow, jeering wits the superiority of brains over a clean pair of heels.

Of course we were all in a perfect fever of impatience to get to sea and make the best of our way to the scene of action, lest haply we should arrive too late and find the birds flown; but the skipper retained his coolness and would permit nothing to be done that could by any possibility suggest to the slavers the idea that the faintest hint of their audacious scheme had been allowed to get abroad. He insisted that we had plenty of time and to spare, and actually remained in harbour three whole days after the information had reached him. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, we weighed and stood out to sea, beating off the land against the sea-breeze until we ran into the calm belt between the sea-breeze and the trade-wind. Here we remained motionless for more than an hour until the trade-wind gradually ate its way inshore and reached us, when we ran right out to sea until we had sunk the land astern of us. Then we hauled up to the southward on a taut bowline, and, under easy canvas, made our leisurely way toward the mouth of the Fernan Vaz river, off which we arrived five days later, making the land from the masthead about an hour before sunset.

All that night, the whole of the next day, and all the night following we remained hove-to under topsails, jib, and spanker, dodging to and fro athwart the mouth of the river, with a man on the main-royal yard, during the hours of daylight, to give us timely notice of the appearance of the craft which was to play the part of decoy; while with the approach of nightfall we made sail and beat in to within a distance of some three miles of the coast, running off into the offing again an hour before daylight. At length, when we had hung upon the tenterhooks of suspense for close upon forty hours, and were beginning to fear that the captain, in his resolve to cut matters as fine as possible, had overdone the thing and allowed the quarry to escape, we were gladdened by the hail from aloft of—

“Sail he! A large schooner just comin’ out o’ the river, sir.”

“Ay, ay,” answered the first lieutenant, whose watch it happened to be. “Just keep your eye on her, my lad, and let me know how she steers when she is clear of the bar.”

We were heading to the southward at the time, and were about three miles south of the river entrance, and some sixteen miles off the land; by pretending therefore not to see her for the next quarter of an hour or so, and keeping the Psyche still heading to the southward, we should afford the stranger an excellent opportunity to secure a sufficient offing to make good her escape. Then we would heave about, make sail in chase, drive her off the coast, and work in as close to the river’s mouth as we dared venture, when the ship was to be brought to an anchor, and the boats manned, armed, and dispatched into the river.

Meanwhile, as previously arranged, Captain Harrison was aroused, and informed of the fact that the decoy schooner, or what was assumed to be such, had made her appearance and was now fairly at sea, steering a little to the northward of west under a heavy press of sail; and close upon the heels of the returning messenger the worthy skipper himself appeared. He sprang upon a gun-carriage and peered intently shoreward under the shade of his hand; but only the upper canvas of the stranger was visible from our deck; and he impatiently hailed the look-out aloft to give him a detailed description of the vessel. The fellow in the cross-trees happened, however, to be a poor sort of unintelligent fellow, and could say very little about the craft beyond stating the fact that she was a schooner, painted black; that she sat deep in the water, showed an immense spread of canvas, and appeared to be very fast.

“I have no sort of doubt that yonder schooner is the craft whose duty it is to draw us off the coast and leave the way clear for the other fellows to get out to sea,” he said. “But I should like to have a somewhat better description of her than that ‘sodger’ up aloft there seems able to give.”

He glanced round the deck and his eye fell upon me.

“Ah, Mr Fortescue,” he exclaimed, “you will doubtless be able to do what I want. Just slip down into my cabin; you will find my glass hanging above the head of my bunk. Throw the strap of it over your shoulder, and shin up alongside that fellow in the cross-trees; take a good look at the stranger; and report to me any peculiarities that you may detect in her, will ye.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” I replied, touching my hat; and five minutes later I was sitting in the main-topmast cross-trees, with the long barrel of the telescope steadied against the topmast-head, and my eye glued to the eye-piece. From this elevation I commanded a complete, if distant, view of the low land about the river entrance, with its fringe of mangrove trees running away inland, the sand hummocks, sparsely clothed with coarse, reedy grass and trailing plants, and the endless line of the surf-beaten African beach. Also through the skipper’s powerful lenses I obtained a most excellent view of the strange schooner, from her trucks to her water-line, including such details as I could have discerned with the naked eye at a distance of about half a mile. I saw, for example, that, as the look-out had already reported, she was a large schooner—I estimated her to be one hundred and eighty tons burthen at the least; I verified the statement that her hull was painted all black from the rail to the top of her copper; that she showed an enormous spread of canvas; and that she sat very low in the water. But I noticed a few other peculiarities as well; I saw that her bowsprit was painted black, while her jib-booms were scraped and varnished; that her foremast, fore-topmast, and fore-topgallant and royal-mast were varnished, while the mast heads were painted black, and that the whole of the mainmast, from the cap down, was painted white, which was a peculiarity that ought to have been sufficient to identify her as far as one could see her. And so it was; for the moment that I reported it the skipper hailed—

“Thank you, Mr Fortescue; that will do; you may come down. Or—hold on a minute. Is the stranger far enough out of the river to enable her to get clear away, think ye?”

“She is fully a mile from the mouth of the river, sir,” I answered.

“Ah, that will do, then, thank you; you may both come down,” answered the skipper. And as I swung myself down through the cross-trees to the topmast rigging, I heard him give the order to “Wear ship and make sail.”

Five minutes later the Psyche was heading to the northward, close-hauled on the port tack, under all plain sail to her royals, doing nearly seven knots, and laying a course that, with nice steering, would just enable us to fetch the river’s mouth handsomely without breaking tacks. The schooner, meanwhile, was romping along at a pace of at least twelve knots per hour, on the starboard tack, throwing the spray over her weather bow to half the height of her lower yard, and shaping a course which would enable her to pass us at a distance of fully eight miles dead to windward. We allowed her to go on her way unmolested.

It was just noon when, having arrived off the mouth of the river, we made a flying moor of it, letting go the first and then the second bower anchor in ten fathoms, at a distance of about one and a half miles from the shore, and at a spot from which the river mouth and perhaps half a mile of the river itself were in plain view. The town of King Olomba, it was understood, was situated at a distance of about thirty-two miles from our anchorage; and as the captain was anxious that the journey should be made at an easy pace, so that the men might arrive comparatively fresh, and in fit condition for the rather stiff bit of work that lay at the end of it, eight hours were to be allowed for the passage of the boats to their destination. And as it was highly undesirable that the expedition should be unduly exposed in the boats to the pestiferous effects of the miasmatic night-fogs which gather upon most of the West African rivers after sunset, it had already been arranged that the attacking party should not start until the following morning, at an hour which would enable us to reach the scene of operations in time to make a reconnaissance and arrange the plan of attack by nightfall. The remainder of that day was therefore employed in getting the boats ready, stocking them with three days’ rations of provisions and water, overhauling the boat guns and slinging them ready for lowering, filling the ammunition boxes, sharpening cutlasses, fixing new flints to the pistols, where necessary, and generally completing our preparations. We also sent down royal and topgallant yards and housed the topgallant-masts, in order that, should it by any chance come on to blow heavily from the westward during our absence the ship might ride the more easily at her anchors. We also made preparation, in view of the foregoing contingency, for backing the bowers with the two stream anchors, and otherwise made every possible preparation for the safety of the ship during our absence; for the expedition in which we were about to engage was one of very considerable importance, and the task which we had set ourselves to perform was so formidable that, in order to insure success, it would be necessary to employ practically the entire ship’s company, leaving the vessel in charge of the second lieutenant and only enough hands to keep a look-out and perform such tasks as, for example, the letting go of the stream anchors in case of necessity, the paying out of the additional amount of cable, the keeping of the ship reasonably clean, and so on.

On the following morning, having washed decks and partaken of breakfast, the hands were mustered and inspected, the boats lowered, guns secured in the bows of the launch, pinnace, and first and second cutters, ammunition boxes passed down, masts stepped, sails cast loose, yards hooked on, and, in short, everything made ready for a start. Then we went down over the side and took our places in the boats to which we were severally appointed, the captain going as usual in his own gig, while Mr Perry, the first luff, was in command of the launch; Mr Hoskins, the third lieutenant, commanding the pinnace; Mr Marline, the master, having charge of the first cutter, while Mr Tompson, the gunner, commanded the second cutter. The skipper took me, as he generally did, in his own boat, but the other three mids. were left on board the Psyche to keep Mr Purchase company. For the rest, Nugent, the master’s mate, went with the first lieutenant, while Peter Futtock, the boatswain, accompanied the third lieutenant in the pinnace.

We mustered ninety all told, and were none too many for the work that we had undertaken to do, which was—to capture three, if not four, large ships; capture and demolish the shore batteries which the slavers very frequently erected for the defence of their strongholds; and also, most likely, fight King Olomba and a whole flotilla of war canoes. The task was indeed a formidable one; the more so that we, the attacking party, would be, at least at the beginning of the fight, huddled closely together in boats, while our antagonists would have all the advantage of roomy decks to move about on, and steady gun platforms from which to pour in their fire, to say nothing of a tremendous superiority in point of numbers. We thought nothing of all this, however; we were going to have a change from the monotony of shipboard life; we should be certain to see new sights of a more or less interesting character; there was the excitement and exhilaration of a stiff fight awaiting us at the end of our journey; and, finally, there was the prospect of a pocketful of prize-money as a wind-up to the whole affair. What more could any reasonable individual desire?

Like most African rivers, the Fernan Vaz has a bar, but the sea breaks upon it only when the wind blows fresh from the north-west, owing to the fact that as far up as the town of Olomba the river flows parallel to the line of coast, being separated from the open Atlantic by a low, sandy peninsula, varying from one to three miles in breadth, terminating in a spit which ordinarily shelters the bar from the rollers, leaving a narrow channel of unbroken water, wide enough to enable a couple of craft of moderate tonnage to pass each other comfortably.

And well was it for us that this was the case; for as we approached the river’s mouth we saw that the ground-swell was rapidly increasing in weight, and that the surf was breaking upon the beach with such violence that if it happened to be also breaking upon the bar it would be quite useless for us to attempt to enter the river. Indeed, so formidable did the appearance of the surf at length become that the captain ordered the rest of the boats to heave-to, while we in the gig went ahead to reconnoitre and inspect the condition of the bar. This was a bit of work for which the gig was peculiarly well adapted, for she was a beautifully modelled boat, double-ended, with a long flat floor—a splendid sailer, and a boat which would claw off a lee shore in almost any weather, the skipper having had her fitted with a good, deep, false keel.

The wind was blowing a moderately fresh breeze from the westward at the time, thus, the rest of the boats having hove-to, it did not take us very long to run in far enough to get a sight of the bar. This was a rather trying experience for the nerves of us all; for the surf was pounding on the beach ahead of us in a constant succession of towering walls of water, that reared themselves to a height of fully thirty feet ere they curled over and broke in thunder so deafening that we presently found it impossible to make our voices heard above its continuous roar. But the skipper, standing up in the stern-sheets, soon detected the smooth, narrow strip of unbroken water, and directed the coxswain to shift his helm for it. I sprang up on a thwart and waved a small white flag as a signal to the other boats to fill away and follow us; and as soon as we had reached the very middle of the channel we rounded-to and lowered our sail, remaining where we were to act as a guide to the other boats.

Keeping our position with the aid of a couple of oars thrown over to enable us to stem the out-flowing current, which we now began to feel, we allowed the other boats to pass in over the bar and reach the smooth water before us; then, hoisting our sail again, we followed them in and presently resumed our position at the head of the line.

The change from the scene of wind-flecked blue sea, stately march of the swell, and thunderous roar and creaming froth of the breakers outside to the oil-smooth, mud-laden, strong-smelling river, with its tiny, swirling eddies here and there, its mangrove-lined banks, and its silence, through which the roar of the surf came to us over the intervening sand spit, mellowed and subdued by distance, was so marked that, although this was by no means my first experience of that kind of thing, I found myself rubbing my eyes as though I were by no means certain that I was awake; and I noticed others doing the same. A sharp word from the skipper, however, cautioning all hands to maintain a smart look-out, soon brought to us the realisation of our surroundings; for the river here was narrow, being not more than half a mile wide, with a number of small islets dotted about it, any one of which might prove to be the hiding-place of a formidable foe. When at length we had passed these without interference, and had reached the point where the river began to widen out somewhat, we were no better off, but rather the worse; for here the stream was encumbered with extensive sandbanks, to avoid which we were compelled to approach the margin of the river so closely that a well-arranged ambush might have practically annihilated us before we could have effected a landing through the thick, viscid mud and the almost impenetrable growth of mangroves that divided the waters of the river from the solid ground of the shore. Fortunately for us, the slavers appeared unaccountably to have overlooked the admirable opportunities thus afforded for frustrating an attack; or possibly, as we thought, it was that they had fully relied upon the power of the decoy schooner to draw us away from the coast, and thus leave the way free for them to escape.

The passage of this part of the river occupied us until noon, and was rather trying to the nerves of all hands, for not only were we constantly exposed to attack by the slavers, but there were the natives also to be reckoned with; and these, as we all knew, had a most objectionable habit of using poisoned arrows, the slightest wound from which was invariably followed by death after some eight to twelve hours of dreadful suffering. Shortly after noon we emerged from these natural entanglements into a long reach of the river where the stream expanded to a width of some three and a half miles, with a narrow deep-water channel running about midway between the banks. Here we were quite free from any possibility of ambush of any kind; and with a sigh of intense relief the captain gave the word to pipe to dinner.

About four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived at a point where the river again narrowed to a width of about a mile; but some two miles farther on it again widened out, and changed its direction, trending away almost due east, or about at right angles to its former course; and this, according to the information in the skipper’s possession, indicated that we were nearing our destination. Drawing from his pocket a sketch chart which he had already consulted several times during our passage up the river, he again studied it intently for several minutes, carefully comparing the configurations delineated upon it with our actual surroundings; then, apparently satisfied with the result, he refolded the paper, returned it to his pocket, and directed the coxswain to bear away a couple of points toward a projecting point—which we afterwards discovered to be the western extremity of an islet—on the far side of the river. As we approached the spot for which we were heading it became apparent that there were two islets instead of one between us and the river bank; and a quarter of an hour later the gig, with the rest of the flotilla following her, glided in between these two islets, and, lowering her sails, made the signal for the other boats to anchor.

The boats were now completely concealed from all possible observation, for we soon saw that the islets between which we were anchored consisted merely of mud-banks thickly overgrown with mangroves, and absolutely uninhabitable even by natives; for there did not appear to be an inch of ground upon either of the islets sufficiently solid to support even a reed hut, while the mangroves were tall enough and grew densely enough to hide the boats from all possible observation from the mainland. The only question which now troubled us was whether the presence of the boats in the river had already been observed. If the slavers had placed absolute confidence in the success of their plan to draw us away from the coast by means of the decoy schooner, they might not have troubled to keep a look-out; but if they were as cautious as such gentry usually are, and had left nothing to chance, it would be scarcely possible for the approach of the boats to have passed undetected. This was the question to which the captain was now going to seek an answer.

Chapter Three.

At the Camma Lagoon.

Distant about a mile from our hiding-place, there was, according to the captain’s rough sketch map, a small peninsula enclosing a little bay, or creek, at the inner extremity of which was situated King Olomba’s town; and it was here that we were led to believe we should find the slavers busily engaged in shipping their human cargoes. And truly, as seen from the boats, the ingenuity of man could scarcely have devised a more perfect spot whereat to conduct the infamous traffic; for the configuration of the land was such that boats, entering the river merely on an exploring expedition, without having first obtained, like ourselves, special information, would never have suspected the existence of the creek, or of the town which lay concealed within it. Nor would it have been possible to detect the presence of slave craft in the creek; for the peninsula which masked it was thickly overgrown with lofty trees which would effectually conceal all but the upper spars of a ship, and these would doubtless be struck or housed while she was lying in the creek.

The skipper having explained to the officers in command of the other boats what he intended to do, and given them instructions how to act in the event of certain contingencies arising, the gig’s crew manned their oars, and we pulled away in the direction of the peninsula, which we reached in the course of a few minutes. Now our real troubles began, for our object was not only to reach the peninsula but also to land upon and walk across it until a spot could be found from which, unseen ourselves, we could obtain a clear view of the creek and everything in it, and upon approaching the shore of the peninsula we discovered that, in common with as much of the river bank as we had yet seen, it consisted, first of all, of a wide belt of soft, fathomless mud overgrown with mangrove trees; the mud being of such a consistency that to attempt to walk upon it would mean being swallowed up and suffocated in it, for a sixteen-foot oar could be thrust perpendicularly into it with scarcely any effort, although when one of the men incautiously tried the experiment, it was only with the utmost difficulty that he was able to withdraw the oar, so tenaciously did the mud cling to it. Yet it was not sufficiently liquid to allow of the gig being forced through it, even if the thickly clustering mangrove roots would have permitted of such a proceeding. The only alternative left to us, therefore, was to endeavour to reach solid ground by clambering over the slippery mangrove roots, with the possibility that at any moment one or another of us might lose our footing, fall into the mud, and be swallowed up by it. However, “needs must” under certain circumstances, the skipper and I therefore scrambled out of the boat—taking Cupid with us to search out the way and carry a small coil of light line in case it should be wanted—and proceeded cautiously to claw our way like so many parrots, over and among the gnarled and twisted roots of the mangrove trees, the Krooboy leading the way, leaping and swinging himself with marvellous agility from tree to tree, while we followed slowly in his wake, as often as not being obliged to make a slip-rope of the line to enable us to cross some exceptionally wide or awkward gap. In this manner, after about half an hour’s arduous toil, with the perspiration pouring out of us until our clothes were saturated with it, while we were driven nearly frantic by the attacks of the mosquitoes and stinging flies that beset us by thousands, and could by no means be driven away, we contrived at length to reach soil firm enough to support our weight, and, some five minutes later, the solid ground itself.

But, even now, our troubles were only half over; for after we had crossed the peninsula we still found it impossible to discover a spot from which the interior of the creek could be seen without laying out upon the roots of the mangrove trees that bordered the inner as well as the outer shore of the peninsula, the wearisome business of crawling and climbing had therefore all to be gone over again, with the result that the sun was close upon setting before we had reached a spot from which a clear view of the entire creek could be obtained. And then we had the unspeakable mortification of discovering that the expedition must result in failure; for, save a few canoes, the creek was innocent of craft of every description—there were no slavers in it! Moreover, the so-called town of King Olomba consisted only of about fifty miserable native huts in the very last stage of sordidness and dilapidation; and there was no sign that a slave barracoon had ever existed near the place.

The captain stared across the water as though he found it quite impossible to believe his eyes. Then he drew the sketch map from his pocket and once more studied it attentively, muttering to himself the while. Finally he sat himself down upon a knot of twisted roots, with his back against the trunk of the tree, and, spreading the sketch wide open on his knee, beckoned me to place myself beside him.

“Just come here and look at this map, Mr Fortescue,” he said, and he spoke with the air and in the tones of a man who is so utterly dazed with disappointment that he begins to doubt the evidence of his own senses. “Just give me your opinion, will ye. I cannot understand this business at all. This map, although only a free-hand sketch, seems to me to be perfectly accurate. There, you see, is the mouth of the river, just as we found it; there are the little islets that we passed immediately after getting inside; there are the dry mud-banks; and there, you see, the river widens out, in precise accordance with our experience; here it narrows again at the bend; there is where the boats are lying concealed; and this,” laying his finger upon a particular part of the sketch, “is the creek that we are now looking at; and there is the town of Olomba. It all seems to me to be absolutely correct. Does it not appear so to you?”

“Certainly, sir,” I answered. “The sketch answers in every particular to what we have seen since entering the river—answers to it so perfectly, indeed, that it might have been copied from a carefully plotted survey.”

“Exactly,” assented the skipper. “Yet it is nothing of the kind; for with my own eyes I saw it drawn from memory by a man whom I happened to meet in one of the third-rate hotels in Freetown, which are frequented by the masters and mates of palm-oil traders and the like. I happened to hear him mention that he had been in and out of the Fernan Vaz at least a dozen times, in his search for cargo along the coast, so I waited until the people with whom he was talking had left him, and then I entered into conversation with him, finally inducing him to furnish me with this sketch.”

“And was it from him, sir, that you also obtained the information upon the strength of which you determined upon this expedition?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” answered the skipper. “I had that from quite a different source, in a very different kind of house. The people who told me about King Olomba’s raid, and the plans laid by the slavers for carrying off the prisoners, were slavers themselves; and they told me of the scheme because they believed me to be the master of a slaver waiting for information from the Senegal river. The cream of the joke was that these fellows should have told me—me, the captain of the Psyche—that the scheme had been carefully planned with the express object of putting the Psyche upon a false scent and so getting her out of the way while the negroes were being shipped.”

“Yet there seems to have been something wrong somewhere, sir,” I ventured to suggest. “But it is not with your map; that appears to be marvellously accurate for a mere free-hand sketch; there is no attempt at deception apparent there. This creek that we are looking at is undoubtedly the one shown on your map, and there is King Olomba’s town, precisely in the position indicated on the sketch; the assumption therefore is that the man who drew the map for you was dealing quite honestly with you. The misleading information, consequently must, it appears to me, have come from the others; as indeed is the case, seeing that they led you to believe that you would find at least three or four large ships in the creek, whereas there are none.”

“That is perfectly true,” concurred the skipper. “Yet I quite understood my informants to say that they were the persons who had formulated the scheme.”

“I suppose, sir,” said I, giving voice to an idea that had been gradually shaping itself in my brain, “it is not possible that the people who were so singularly frank with you happened to recognise you as Captain Harrison of H.M.S. Psyche, and gave you that bit of information with the deliberate purpose of misleading you and putting you upon a false scent, in order that while you are searching for them here they may have the opportunity to carry out their scheme elsewhere? Their story may in the main be perfectly true, but if by any chance they should have happened to recognise you it would not be very difficult for them to substitute the name of the Fernan Vaz for that of some other river, and to mention King Olomba instead of some other king.”

“N–o–o,” said the skipper dubiously; “it would not. Yet I cannot see why, if they had recognised me, they should have gone to the trouble of spinning an elaborate yarn merely to deceive me. It would have been just as easy for them to have knifed me, for there were seven of them, while I was quite alone. No, I don’t quite see—”

“Do you not, sir?” I interrupted with a smile.

“I do. I see quite clearly two very excellent reasons why they did not resort to the rough and ready method of the knife. In the first place, these fellows attach a ridiculously high value to their own skins, and never seem to imperil them when an alternative will serve their purpose equally well; and although they were seven to one, if they really recognised you they would know perfectly well that, while the ultimate result of a fight would probably be in their favour, you would certainly not perish alone; and I suppose none of them were particularly anxious to accompany you into the Great Beyond. And, apart from that, they would know quite well that were the captain of a British man-o’-war to go a-missing there would be such a stir among their rookeries that soon there would be no rookeries left. Oh, no, sir! glad as they might be to put you quietly out of the way if they had the chance, depend upon it the last thing that they would dream of would be to attempt anything of the sort in Sierra Leone.”

“Well, well, well, perhaps you are right, young gentleman, perhaps you are right. You seem to have quite a gift for reasoning things out,” replied the skipper, as he pocketed his map and hove himself up into a standing position. “But it is high time that we should get under way, for the sun is setting, and we shall have all our work cut out to find our road back to the boat. Do you think you will be able to find the gig, Cupid?”

“Yes, I fit, sar,” answered the Krooboy. “But we mus’ make plenty haste; for dem darkness he come too much plenty soon, an’ if we slip and fall into dem mud we lib for die one time.”

“Ay, ay,” answered the skipper, with an involuntary shudder at the hideous fate thus tersely sketched by Cupid; “I know that, my lad, without any telling; so heave ahead as smartly as you like.”

And therewith we started upon our return journey with all speed; striding, leaping, slipping, and scrambling from root to root, Cupid leading the way, I following, and the skipper bringing up the rear, until at length we stood upon solid ground once more. But by this time not only had the sun set but the dusk was gathering about us like a curtain, while star after star came twinkling out from the rapidly darkening blue overhead, and the foliage of the trees that hemmed us in on every side was changing, even as we stood and watched while recovering our breath, from olive to deepest black. Now, too, we were beset, even more pertinaciously than before, by the myriads of mosquitoes, sand flies, gnats, and other winged biting creatures with which the islet swarmed; to say nothing of ants; indeed it almost seemed as though every individual insect upon that particular patch of soil and vegetation had scented us out and, having found us, was quite determined that we should never escape them alive. When presently we again began to move, it seemed impossible to take a single step without tripping over a land-crab’s hole, or treading upon one of the creatures and hearing and feeling it crackle and writhe underfoot. Ugh! it was horrible.

All these unpleasantnesses were sharply accentuated by the darkness, which fell upon us like a pall; for now the stars began to be obscured by great black clouds that came sweeping in from seaward, while the increasing roar and swish in the boughs overhead seemed to indicate that the wind was freshening. Progress was difficult enough, under such conditions, while we were traversing solid ground and had no special need to pick our footsteps; how would it be, I wondered, when it came to our re-crossing the belt of mangroves and mud that lay between us and the gig? Then, to add still further to our difficulties, the dank, heavy, pestilential fog that rises from the tropical African rivers at nightfall began to gather about us, and in a few minutes, from being bathed in perspiration from our exertions, we were chilled to the bone, with our teeth chattering to such an extent that we could scarcely articulate an intelligible word.

“Plenty too much fever here come,” remarked Cupid, while his teeth clattered together like castanets. “Sar, you lib for carry dem quinine powder dat dem doctor sarve out dis morning?”

“Certainly, Cupid,” jibbered the skipper. “M–m–many thanks for the hint. M–m–m–mister Fortes—ugh! t–t–take a p–p–pow-ow-der at once.”

I did so, and handed one to the Krooboy, who simply put it, paper and all, into his mouth, and swallowed the whole. Having done this, Cupid announced, as well as his chattering teeth would permit, that in view of the fog and the intense darkness it would be simply suicidal for us to attempt the passage of the mangroves without a light, and that therefore he proposed to make his way alone to the gig, not only to reassure her crew as to our safety, but also to procure a lantern. And he enjoined the skipper and me to remain exactly where we were until he should return. After an absence which seemed to be an age in duration, but which was really not quite three-quarters of an hour, he reappeared, accompanied by the coxswain of the boat and two other seamen, who brought along with them a couple of lighted lanterns. Thus reinforced and assisted, we got under way again, and eventually, after a most fatiguing and dangerous journey, reached the boat and shoved off into the stream. The gig was of course provided with a boat compass, and we knew the exact bearing of the spot where the other boats lay hidden; but we already knew also how complicated and confusing was the set of the currents in the river, and how hopeless would consequently be any attempt to find our friends in that thick fog. We therefore did not make the attempt, but, pushing off into the stream until we were clear of the mosquitoes and other winged plagues that had been tormenting all hands for so many hours, let go our anchor in one and a half fathoms of water, and proceeded to take a meal prior to turning-in for the night.

Never in my life before, I think, had I spent so absolutely uncomfortable a night. What with the rats, cockroaches, fleas, and other vermin with which the ship was overrun, to say nothing of the complication of stenches which poisoned the atmosphere, the midshipmen’s berth aboard the Psyche was by no means an ideal place to sleep in, but it was luxury compared with the state of affairs in the gig. For aboard the Psyche we at least slept dry, while in the boat we were fully exposed to the encroachments of that vile, malodorous, disease-laden fog which hemmed us in and pressed down upon us like a saturated blanket, penetrating everywhere, soaking our clothing until we were wet to the skin, chilling us to the very marrow, despite our greatcoats, so that we were too miserable to sleep; while it so completely enveloped us that, even with the help of half a dozen lanterns, we could not see a boat’s length in any direction. As the foul water went swirling away past us great bubbles came rising up from the mud below, from time to time, bursting as they reached the surface, and giving off little puffs of noxious, vile-smelling gas that were heavy with disease-germs. Yet, singularly enough, when at length the morning dawned and the fog dispersed, not one of us aboard the gig betrayed the slightest trace of fever, although, among them, the other boats mustered nearly a dozen cases.

Our first business, after once more joining forces, was to pull into the creek and call upon his Majesty, King Olomba; but, upon interviewing that potentate, through the medium of Cupid, who acted as interpreter, it at once became evident that our worthy skipper had been made the victim of an elaborate hoax—even more elaborate, indeed, than we at the moment expected; for the king not only vigorously disclaimed any propensity toward slave-hunting or slave-dealing, but went the length of strenuously denying that the river was ever used at all by slavers; also he several times endeavoured to divert the conversation into another channel by pointedly hinting at his readiness to accept a cask of rum as a present, to which hint the skipper of course turned a deaf ear. Then, having got out of the old boy all the information that we could extract—which, when we came to analyse it, amounted to just nothing—we carefully searched the bush in the neighbourhood of the town, to see if we could discover anything in the nature of a barracoon, but found no trace whatever of any such thing.

Having drawn the creek blank, the skipper next determined to search a spot known as the Camma Lagoon, some twelve miles farther up the river; and, the sea-breeze having by this time set in, we stepped the masts and made sail upon the boats, creeping up the river close to its northern bank in order to dodge the current as much as possible.

Upon reaching the lagoon we found it to be in reality a sort of bay in the north bank of the river, some five and a half miles long by about three and three-quarter miles wide, with an island in the centre of it occupying so large an extent of its area that at one spot the creek behind was barely wide enough to allow the passage of a vessel of moderate tonnage. The eastern extremity of this creek, however, widened out until it presented a sheet of water some two miles long by about a mile and a half in width, with a depth of water ranging from two to three fathoms. Furthermore, the island itself and the adjacent banks of the river were thickly wooded, affording perfect concealment, behind which half a dozen slavers might lurk undetected; and altogether it wore, as seen from the river, the aspect of an exceedingly promising spot. We therefore lowered the boats’ sails, unshipped their masts, and, keeping a bright look-out all round us, pulled warily into the lagoon at its eastern extremity.

For the first mile of our passage we detected nothing whatever of a suspicious character; but upon rounding the eastern extremity of the island and entering the widest part of the lagoon we sighted two large canoes paddling furiously up the creek, about a mile ahead of us. The captain at once brought his telescope to bear upon these craft, and with its aid discovered that each canoe was manned by about forty black paddlers, while the after end of each craft was occupied by some ten or a dozen men in European dress, most of whom appeared to be armed with muskets. These men had the appearance of being either Portuguese or Spaniards, and their presence in such a spot could mean but one thing, namely, that there was a barracoon somewhere near at hand. The skipper accordingly gave the order to chase the two canoes, to which the boats’ crews responded with a cheer, and laid themselves down to their oars with such a will that they almost lifted the boats out of the water. But we had scarcely traversed a distance of half a dozen boats’ lengths when, upon opening up a little indentation in the shore of the mainland, we saw before us a substantial wharf, long enough to accommodate two fair-sized craft at once, with a wide open space at the back of it upon which stood some eight or ten buildings, one of which was unmistakably a barracoon of enormous size.

With another cheer the course of the boats was at once diverted toward the wharf; and we had arrived within less than a hundred yards of it when the deathlike silence which had hitherto prevailed ashore was pierced by a shrill whistle, in response to which the whole face of the bush bordering the open space at once began to spit flame, while the air around us hummed and whined to the passage of a perfect storm of bullets and slugs, among which could be detected the hum of round shot, apparently nine-pounders, the gig weathered the storm unscathed; but upon glancing back I saw that the other boats had been less fortunate, there being a gap or two here and there where a moment before a man had sat, while certain of the oars were at that moment slipping through the rowlocks to trail in the water by their lanyards a second later. Here and there, too, could be seen a man hastily binding up a wounded limb or head, either his own or that of a shipmate.

The skipper sprang to his feet in the stern-sheets of the gig, and drew his sword.

“Hurrah, lads!” he shouted. “Give way, and get alongside that wharf as quickly as you can. Then let every man run his hardest for the shelter of the buildings, carrying his musket and ammunition with him. One hand remain in each boat as boat-keeper, who must crouch down under the shelter of the wharf face. Mr Fortescue, stick close alongside me, please; I shall probably want you to carry messages for me.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” I answered; and the next moment the voice of the coxswain pealed out: “Oars! rowed of all!” followed by the clatter of the long ash staves as they were laid in on the thwarts, and the gig, still leading the other boats, swept up alongside the low wharf and hooked on.

With a yell of fierce delight, and eyes blazing with excitement, Cupid, the Krooboy, bounded up on the wharf, and extended one great black paw to assist the skipper, while in the other he grasped his favourite weapon, an axe, the edge of which he had carefully ground and honed until one could have shaved with it; in addition to which he wore a ship’s cutlass girded about his waist. Moreover he had “cleared for action,” by stripping off the jacket and shirt which he usually wore, and stowing them carefully away in the stern-sheets of the boat; so that his garb consisted simply of a pair of dungaree trousers rolled up above his knees and braced tight to his waist by the broad belt from which hung his cutlass.

In a second the gig was empty save for her boat-keeper, and her crew were racing for the shelter afforded by the barracoon, where, as I understood it, the captain intended to announce his arrangements for clearing the enemy out of the bush. But when we had accomplished about half the distance between the edge of the wharf and the barracoon there came a sudden splutter of fire from the windows of the other buildings—which were so arranged as to enfilade the whole of the open space—and in a moment we once more found ourselves in the midst of a storm of flying bullets. The skipper, who was a pace ahead of me, stumbled, staggered a pace or two, and fell headlong upon his face, where he lay still, while his sword flew from his grasp with a ringing clatter. At the same moment the two cutters dashed up alongside the wharf, and their crews came swarming up out of them, to be met by another murderous discharge from the enemy lurking in the bush.

I came to a halt beside the skipper, and looked round me. A couple of yards away stood Cupid, who, it seemed, had just caught sight of the captain as he fell, and had pulled himself up short.

“You, Cupid,” I shouted, “come back here, sir, and lend me a hand to get the captain back into the gig.”

The fellow came, and stooping over the skipper’s body raised it tenderly in his arms.

“All right, Mistah Fortescue, sar,” he said; “you no trouble. I take dem captain back to de gig by myself, and find Mistah Hutchinson,” (the surgeon). “But it no good, sar; he gone dead. Look dere.” And he pointed to a ghastly great hole in the side of the skipper’s head, just above the left ear, where a piece of langrage of some description had crashed its way through the poor fellow’s skull into his brain. It was a horrid sight, and it turned me quite sick for the moment, accustomed though I was by this time to see men suffering from all sorts of injuries.

“Very well,” I said; “take it—the captain, I mean—back to the gig, anyway, and do not leave him until you have turned him over to Mr Hutchinson; who, by the way, is in the launch, which I see is just coming alongside. I will find Mr Hutchinson and send him to you.” And away I hurried toward the spot where I saw the launch approaching, for the double purpose of reporting to Mr Perry the news of the captain’s fall, and dispatching the surgeon to see if life still remained in the body.

The first luff was terribly shocked at the news which I had to tell him; from a distance he had seen the skipper fall, but had hoped that it was a wound, at most. But this was not the moment for unavailing regrets; the fall of the captain at once placed Perry in command and made him responsible for the fate of the expedition. He therefore gave orders for the guns which were mounted in the bows of the launch, pinnace, and first and second cutters to be cast loose and landed, the men not engaged in this work being placed under the command of the third lieutenant, with instructions to load their muskets and keep up a constant fire upon the windows of the various buildings. Then, as soon as the guns were landed, two of them were loaded with double charges of grape, for the purpose of clearing the bush of the hidden foe, while the remaining two were double shotted and then run close up to the barricaded doors of the buildings, which were thus blown in, one after the other. As each door was blown in the building to which it belonged was stormed; the enemy, however, contriving to effect an exit by the rear as our lads poured in at the front. In ten minutes the whole of the buildings were ours, without further casualties on our side; after which we set them on fire and, waiting until they were well alight, retired in good order to the boats, in which we hauled off far enough to enable us to effectively cover the burning buildings with our musketry fire and thus defeat any attempt to extinguish the flames. An hour later the entire settlement was reduced to a heap of smouldering ashes; whereupon we pulled away round to the main stream once more by way of the back of the island, in search of further possible barracoons, but found none.

Our loss in this affair, considering its importance, was comparatively slight, amounting as it did to two killed—of whom one was the skipper—and seven wounded. But we were a sorrowful party as we left the lagoon behind us and found ourselves once more in the main stream and on our way back to the ship; for Captain Harrison was beloved by everybody, fore and aft, and we all felt that we could better have spared any one else than him.

Chapter Four.

The wreck of the Psyche.

Our journey down the river was a very different affair from that of our upward passage; for whereas in the latter we had been compelled to force our way against an adverse current, we now had that current favouring us; thus it came about that although the sun had passed the meridian when the boats emerged from the Camma Lagoon, after destroying the slave factory therein, it yet wanted an hour to sunset when the gig, still leading the rest of the flotilla, entered the last reach of the river and we once more caught sight and sound of the breakers beyond the bar.

Mr Perry, the late first lieutenant, who now, by the death of Captain Harrison, had automatically become acting captain of the Psyche, had turned over the command of the launch to the master’s mate, for the return passage, and was in the gig with me; and as we drew nearer to the river’s mouth I noticed that he rose in the stern-sheets of the boat and glanced somewhat anxiously to seaward. For a full minute or more he stood gazing under the sharp of his hand out across the sandbank as it seemed to glide rapidly past us, its summit momentarily growing lower as the gig swept along toward the point where the dwindling spit plunged beneath the surface of the water, and, as he gazed, the expression of puzzlement and anxiety on his face rapidly intensified. By this time, too, his action and attitude had attracted the attention of those in the boats astern, and, glancing back at them, I saw that Nugent, in the launch, and Hoskins, the third lieutenant, in the pinnace, had followed his example. Naturally, I did the same, wondering meanwhile what it was at which they were all looking so intently, when Mr Perry suddenly turned upon me and demanded, almost angrily—

“I say, Mr Fortescue, what has become of the ship? D’ye see anything of her?”

“The ship, sir?” I echoed dazedly—for, with the question, it had come to me in a flash that we ought by this time to be able to see at least the spars of the Psyche swaying rhythmically athwart the sky out over the low sandbank, if she still lay at anchor where we had left her;—“the ship? No, sir, I confess that I can’t see her anywhere. Surely Mr Purchase cannot have shifted his berth, for any reason? But—no,” I continued, as the absurdity of the suggestion came home to me—“of course he hasn’t; he hasn’t enough hands left with him to make sail upon the ship, even if he were obliged to slip his cables.”

At that moment a hail of “Gig ahoy!” came from Nugent aboard the launch; and, glancing back at him, we saw him pointing at some object that had suddenly appeared on the ridge of the spit, away on our port quarter. It was a man, a white man, a seaman, if one might judge from his costume, and he was waving a large coloured handkerchief, or something of the kind, with the evident object of attracting our attention. While we still stood at gaze, wondering what this apparition could possibly mean, another man appeared beside him.

“Down helm, and run the boat in on the bank,” ordered our new skipper. “I must see what this means.”

“Flatten in, fore and aft, and stand by to let run your halyards!” ordered the coxswain, easing his helm down; and as he spoke I stepped upon the stern thwart with the object of getting a somewhat more extended view over the sandbank. But there was nothing to be seen—stay! why was the spray from the surf flying so much higher in one particular spot than elsewhere? And that spot appeared to be about abreast of that part of the bank where the two men were standing. I stood a moment or two longer, seeking an explanation of the phenomenon, and then fell headlong over the man who was sitting upon the aftermost thwart gathering in the slack of the mainsail as the yard came down; for at that moment the gig grounded on the bank and shot a quarter of her length high and dry with the way that she had on her. As I picked myself up, rubbing my barked elbows ruefully, to the accompaniment of a suppressed snigger from the boat’s crew, Mr Perry, with a brief “Make way, there, lads,” sprang upon the thwarts and, striding rapidly from thwart to thwart, rushed along the length of the boat, placed one foot lightly on the gunwale, close to the stem head, and leaped out on to the sand, with me close at his heels.

Together we raced for the crest of the spit; but even before we had reached it the terrible truth lay plain before us. For there, about a quarter of a mile to the southward of us, on the seaward side of the spit, lay the Psyche, hard and fast aground, dismasted, and on her beam-ends, with the surf pounding at her, and her spars and rigging, worked up into a raft, floating in the swirl alongside the beach; while on the shore, opposite where she lay, the little company that had been left aboard to take care of her laboured to save such flotsam and jetsam as the surf flung up within their reach.

For a full minute the new skipper, thus by a cruel stroke of malicious fortune robbed of the command that had been his for such a few brief hours, stood gazing with stern, set features at the melancholy scene. Then he turned to me and said—very quietly—

“Mr Fortescue, be good enough to go down to Mr Hoskins, and request him, with my compliments, to take the boats back up the river until they are abreast the spot where the wreck lies, and there beach them; after which, leaving a boat-keeper to watch each boat, he will take the men over to the other side of the spit to assist in salving such matters as may come ashore. Having delivered this message, you will please join me yonder.” And he pointed to where the little group of men were toiling on the beach.

“Ay, ay, sir!” I answered. And, touching my hat, I turned and hurried down to the river bank, alongside which the other boats were now lying, with lowered sails, evidently awaiting orders. Meanwhile Mr Perry strode off over the ridge in the direction of the wreck.

I quickly found Mr Hoskins and delivered my message, with the result that the entire flotilla pushed off again and headed up-stream, one of the men having landed upon the narrow spit and ascended to its ridge in order that he might notify the boats’ crews when they should have arrived at the spot on the seaward side of which lay the wreck; while I, burning with curiosity to learn how the disaster had been brought about, hurried after the skipper. As he walked, while I ran, I managed to overtake him at the precise moment when Mr Purchase, who had been left by Captain Harrison in charge of the ship, met him at a little distance from the spot where the party of salvors were at work.

“Mr Purchase,” said the skipper, as the two men met and halted, “I deeply regret to inform you that Captain Harrison is dead—killed this morning, with one other, while gallantly leading us to the attack of a strongly defended slave barracoon. We have both bodies in the boats, yonder, and it was my intention to have buried them at sea to-night; but that, I perceive, is no longer possible. And now, sir, perhaps you will be good enough to explain to me how the Psyche comes to be where I see her.”

“Ah, sir!” answered Mr Purchase, removing his hat and mopping his forehead in great perturbation of spirit, “I wish I could tell you. All I know—all that any of us knows, so far as I have been able to ascertain—is that we were cut adrift—both cables, sir, cut through as clean as a whistle—and allowed to drive ashore!”

“Cut adrift?” reiterated the captain incredulously. “Cut adrift? Really, my dear Purchase, you must excuse me if I say that I utterly fail to understand you. How the mischief could you possibly be cut adrift from where you were anchored; and by whom? You surely do not intend to insinuate that any one of the ship’s company—?”

“No—no; certainly not,” interrupted Purchase. “Nothing of the kind. Let me tell you the whole yarn, Perry; then you will be as wise as myself, and can give me your opinion of the affair, which I admit is most extraordinary.

“Nothing in the least remarkable occurred for some hours after the boats left the ship yesterday morning. I stood aft and watched you through the starboard stern port until you had all safely crossed the bar and disappeared behind the sand spit; and then I set the hands to work upon various small jobs; after which I went round the ship and satisfied myself that everything was perfectly safe and snug on deck and below. Then, feeling tolerably certain that you would not return until to-day at the earliest, and that consequently it would be necessary for me to be up and about during the greater part of the coming night, I went below and turned in all standing, to get as much sleep as possible, leaving the boatswain’s mate in charge of the deck, together with midshipmen Keene and Parkinson.

“The day passed quite uneventfully; everything went perfectly smoothly; the ship rode easily to her anchors; and there had been nothing to report. But about two bells in the first dog-watch I noticed that the sky was beginning to look a bit windy away down in the western quarter—nothing to speak of, you understand, or to cause any uneasiness; but it made me take a look at the barometer, and I saw that it had dropped a trifle since eight bells; and at the same time the wind was distinctly freshening and the swell gathering weight. All this, of course, meant more wind within the next few hours; I therefore kept a sharp eye on the barometer; and when at four bells I found it still dropping I decided to let go the two stream anchors, as a precautionary measure, while we had light enough to see what we were doing; and this I did, at the same time paying out an extra fifty fathoms on each cable, after which I felt that we were perfectly safe in the face of anything short of a hurricane.”

The new skipper nodded his approval, but said nothing; and Purchase proceeded with his story.

“Well, as you probably noticed, shortly after sunset the wind breezed up quite strongly; but I was not in the least uneasy, for the barometer had ceased to drop before eight bells, and, although the sky was overcast and the night very dark, there was nothing threatening in the look of the weather, and it was only occasionally that we really tautened out our cables. Still, I made up my mind to remain on deck all night, having had a good spell of sleep during the day.

“As the night wore on and the wind held fresh but steady, I felt that after all I really need not have let go the streams, for the bowers alone would have held us quite easily against six times as much wind and sea as we had; you may therefore perhaps be able to picture to yourself my amazement and consternation when, a few minutes before six bells in the middle watch, I became aware that the ship was adrift and fast driving down toward the breakers!”

“How did you discover that the ship was adrift? Did you feel her cables parting?” demanded the skipper.

“No,” answered Purchase; “we never felt anything of that kind; but I suddenly noticed that she was falling off and canting broadside-on to the wind and sea, so I knew at once that something was wrong—that in fact we had, in some incomprehensible way, struck adrift. I therefore sang out to Thompson, the boatswain’s mate, to pipe all hands to make sail, intending to run her into the river, if possible. But by the time that we had got the mizzen and fore-topmast staysail upon her, and were loosing the main-topmast staysail, we were in the first line of breakers; and a moment later she struck heavily. Then a big comber came roaring in and broke over us, lifted us up, swept us shoreward a good twenty fathoms, and we struck again, with such violence this time that all three masts went over the side together. After that we had a very bad half-hour, for every roller that came in swept clean over us, carrying away everything that was movable, smashing the bulwarks flat, and hammering the poor old barkie so furiously upon the sand that I momentarily expected her to go to pieces under our feet. To add to our difficulties, it was so intensely dark that we could not see where we were; true, the water all round us was ablaze with phosphorescence, which enabled us to discern that land of some sort lay about a couple of cables’ lengths to leeward of us, but it was quite indistinguishable, and the water between us and it was leaping and spouting so furiously that I did not feel justified in making any attempt to get the men ashore, especially as we were then being swept so heavily that we had all our work cut out to hold on for our lives. About half an hour later, however, the tide turned and began to ebb, and then matters improved a bit.

“But it was not until daybreak that we were able to do anything really useful; and then all hands of us got to work and built a raft of sorts, after which we got up a good supply of provisions and water, sails to serve as tents, light line, and, in short, everything likely to be useful, and managed to get ashore without very much difficulty. But before I left the ship I had the cables hauled in through the hawse-pipes, and examined them most carefully. They were both unmistakably cut through—a clean cut, sir, evidently done with a sharp knife—at about the level of the water’s edge.”

“Most extraordinary!” commented Perry. “And I presume nobody saw anything, either immediately before you went adrift or afterwards—no boat, or anything of that kind, I mean—to account for the affair?”

“No,” answered Purchase, “nothing. Yet I was not only wide-awake and on the alert myself, but I took care that the anchor watch should be so also; for I felt the responsibility of having such a ship as the Psyche to take care of, with only twenty hands, all told, to help me.”

“Of course,” agreed the skipper. “And did you succeed in getting everybody ashore safely?”

“Yes, thank God!” answered Purchase fervently. “We are all safe and sound, and very little the worse for our adventure, thus far.”

“Ah! that at least is good news,” remarked Perry. “Well,” he continued, “there is one very melancholy duty demanding our immediate attention, Mr Purchase, namely, the interment of Captain Harrison and the other poor fellow who fell during the attack upon the barracoon to-day. I will see about that matter personally, by choosing a suitable spot and getting the graves dug, for we shall soon have the darkness upon us. Meanwhile, you will be good enough to get tents rigged and such other preparations made as may be possible for the comfort of all hands, and especially the wounded, during the coming night; for we have all had a very trying day, and it is imperative that we should secure a good night’s rest. Mr Fortescue, come with me, if you please.”

Now, during the progress of the foregoing conversation the boat party had not been idle; for, as soon as the fact of the wreck had become known to them, Mr Hoskins, the third lieutenant, seeing how matters stood, had grappled with the situation by causing the guns, ammunition, and stores of all kinds to be landed from the boats, and the craft themselves to be hauled up high and dry upon the beach on the river-side of the sand spit; and then, leading his men over the ridge, to where the others were at work upon the salving of wreckage from the surf, he had detailed a party to pick out from among the pile of heterogeneous articles such things as were most needed to meet our more immediate wants, and carry or drag them up the slope to the spot which Henderson, the surgeon, had already selected as the most suitable spot for a camp.

It was toward this party that Mr Perry and I now directed our steps; and when we had joined it the skipper, picking out a dozen of the most handy men, gave them instructions to provide themselves with tools of some sort suitable for the purpose of digging a couple of graves in the loose, yielding sand above the level of high-water mark; and while they were doing this, under my supervision, my companion wandered away by himself in search of a suitable site for the graves. As a matter of fact there was very little in the nature of choice, the entire spit, or at least that portion of it which we occupied, consisting of loose sand, sparsely covered, along the ridge and far a few yards on either side of it, with a kind of creeper with thick, tough, hairy stems and large, broad leaves, the upper surface of which bristled with hairy spicules about a quarter of an inch long. This plant, it was evident, bound the otherwise loose drifts and into a sufficiently firm condition to resist the perpetual scouring action of the wind; it was in this portion of the spit, therefore, that Mr Perry gave orders for the two graves to be dug; and presently my little gang of twelve were busily engaged in scooping out two holes, some twenty feet apart, to serve as graves. They were obliged to work with such tools as came to hand, and these consisted of splintered pieces of plank, the boats’ balers, and some wooden buckets that had come ashore.

Under such circumstances the task of excavation was distinctly difficult, the more so that the sand ran back into the holes almost as fast as it was scooped up and thrown out; but at length, by dint of strenuous labour, a depth of some three feet was reached just as the sun’s rim touched the western horizon and flung a trail of blood athwart the tumble of waters that lay between. Then, the exigencies of the occasion admitting of no further delay, the task was suspended; all hands knocked off work; and, the bodies having meanwhile been enclosed in rough coffins very hastily put together by the carpenter and his mate, we all fell in; the gig’s crew shouldered the late captain’s coffin, while six of his mates acted as bearers to the other dead man; and, with Mr Perry leading the way and reading the burial service from a prayer-book, which it appeared he always carried about with him, we marched, slowly, solemnly, and bare-headed, up the slope of the sand spit to the spot which had been selected for the last resting-place of the dead. Arrived there, the two coffins were at once deposited in their respective graves, when the new captain, standing between the two holes, somewhat hurriedly completed the ritual—for the light was fading fast; whereupon, after bestowing a final parting glance at the rough, uncouth box which concealed our beloved chief’s body, we all turned slowly and reluctantly away to retrace our steps back to the apology for a camp which was to shelter us for the night, leaving a fresh party of workers to fill in the graves.

In neither arm of the British fighting service do men unduly dwell upon the loss of fallen comrades, for it is quite justly held that the man who yields up his life in the service of his country has done a glorious thing, whether he falls in a pitched battle deciding the fate of an empire, or in some such obscure and scarcely chronicled event as the attack upon a slave factory. He is, where such is possible, laid in his last resting-place with all the honourable observance that circumstances permit, and his memory is cherished in the hearts of his comrades; but whether his fame pass with the echo of the last volley fired over his grave, or outlives the brass of the tablet which records his name and deeds, there is no room for grief. Wherefore, when we got back to camp and had made the best possible arrangements for the coming night, there was little reference in our conversation to the tragic events of the past twenty-four hours; Mr Perry took up the reins of government, and matters proceeded precisely as they would have done had Captain Harrison been still alive and among us.

Our “camp” was, naturally, an exceedingly primitive affair; our living and sleeping quarters consisting simply of sails cut from the yards and stretched over such supports as could be contrived by inserting the lower ends of spars or planks in the sand and lashing their upper ends together. These structures we dignified with the name of “tents.” The exigencies of the situation did not permit of the observance of such nice distinctions of rank in the matter of accommodation as exist under ordinary conditions, it therefore came about that we of the midshipmen’s berth were lodged for the night in the same tent as the ward-room officers, and consequently we heard much of the conversation that passed between them, particularly at dinner. This meal—consisting of boiled salt beef and pork, with a few sweet potatoes, and a “duff” made of flour, damaged by sea water, with a few currants and raisins dotted about here and there in it—was served upon the Psyche’s mizzen royal stretched upon the bare sand in the centre of our “tent”; and we partook of it squatted round the sail cross-legged on the sand, finding the way to our mouths by the light of four ship’s lanterns symmetrically arranged one at each corner of the sail.

Naturally enough, Mr Purchase—now ranking as first lieutenant vice Mr Perry, acting captain—having told the tale of the happenings which had resulted in our becoming castaways, was anxious to hear full particulars of what had befallen the boat expedition; and this Mr Perry proceeded to relate to him as we sat round the “table.” When he had finished there was silence for a moment; then Purchase looked up and said—

“Don’t you think it very strange that your experiences throughout should have accorded so ill with the information that Captain Harrison acquired at so much trouble and personal risk? Hitherto it has always happened that such information as he has been able to pick up has proved to be accurate in every particular.”

“Yes,” agreed Mr Perry, “it has. I’ve been thinking a good deal about that to-day; and the opinion I have arrived at is that Harrison played the game once too often, with this result—” and he waved his right hand comprehensively about him, indicating the tent, the makeshift dinner, and our condition generally.

“What I mean is this,” he continued, in reply to Purchase’s glance of inquiry. “The poor old Psyche, as we all know, was a phenomenally slow ship, yet her successes, since she came on the Coast, have been greater and more brilliant than those of any other vessel belonging to the squadron. And why? Because she had a trick of always turning up on the right spot at the right moment. Now it seems to me that this peculiarity of hers can scarcely have escaped the notice of the slave-trading fraternity, because it was so very marked. I imagine that they must often have wondered by what means we gained our information; and when at length the thing had become so unmistakable as to provoke both conjecture and discussion it would not take them long to arrive at a very shrewd suspicion of the truth. When once the matter had reached this stage discovery could not possibly be very long delayed. Captain Harrison was undoubtedly a well-known figure in Sierra Leone; he was of so striking a personality that it could not be otherwise, and I am of opinion that at length his disguise was penetrated. He was recognised in one of those flash places in Freetown that are especially patronised by individuals of shady and doubtful character; and a scheme was devised for his and our undoing which has succeeded only too well. In a word, I believe that the whole of the information upon which he acted when arranging this most unfortunate expedition was carefully fabricated for the express purpose of bringing about the destruction of the ship, and was confided to him by some one who had recognised him as her captain. I believe, Purchase, that you were cut adrift last night, either by the individual who spun the yarn, or by some emissary or emissaries of his who have a lurking-place somewhere in this neighbourhood; and, if the truth could be got at, I believe it would be found that the schooner which we saw come out of this river on the day before yesterday—and which the captain was led to believe was a decoy intended to draw us off the coast—was actually chock-full of slaves!”

“By Jove!” ejaculated Purchase. “What a very extraordinary idea!”

“I don’t think so at all,” cut in Hoskins, before Mr Perry could reply. “It may seem so to you, Purchase, because it has just been presented to you, fresh and unexpectedly, as it were. But when we arrived at King Olomba’s town yesterday morning, and found neither slaves nor barracoon there, I must confess that I was visited by some such suspicion as that of which Captain Perry has just been speaking, although in my case it did not take quite such a concrete and connected form. To my mind there is only one thing against your theory, sir,” he continued, turning to the skipper, “and that is the existence of the factory on the lagoon.”

“Yes,” agreed the captain, “I admit that to be somewhat difficult to account for. And yet, perhaps not so very difficult either; because if the fellows who gave Captain Harrison the information upon which he acted happened to have a grudge against the owners of that factory they would naturally be more than glad if, while groping about in search of the imaginary slavers and barracoon, we should stumble upon the real thing and destroy it. All this, however, is mere idle conjecture, which may be either well founded or the opposite; but there is one indisputable fact about this business, which is—unless Mr Purchase is altogether mistaken, which I do not for a moment believe—that the Psyche was last night cut adrift from her anchors and wrecked by somebody who must have a lurking-place in this immediate neighbourhood; and I intend to have a hunt for that somebody to-morrow.”

Chapter Five.

The Battle of the Sand Spit.

As the evening progressed it became evident to me that our new captain had developed a very preoccupied mood; he fell into long fits of abstraction; and often answered very much at random such remarks as happened to be addressed to him. He appeared to be turning over some puzzling matter in his mind; and at length that matter came to the surface and found expression in speech.

“Mr Purchase,” he said, “I have been trying to put two and two together—or, in other words, I have been endeavouring to find an explanation of the puzzle which this business of the wreck of the Psyche presents. I can understand quite clearly that poor Captain Harrison was deliberately deceived and misled by certain persons in Sierra Leone in order that the ship might be cast away. But why here particularly? For if my theory be correct that the supposed decoy schooner actually sailed out of this river with a full cargo of black ivory, there must certainly be a barracoon somewhere close at hand from which she drew her supplies; and the people who planned the destruction of the sloop could scarcely have been so short-sighted as to have overlooked the fact that such a happening would leave us here stranded in close proximity to a slave factory which, presumably, they would be most anxious should remain undiscovered by us. That is the point which I cannot understand; and I have come to the conclusion that my theory with regard to the schooner must be altogether wrong, or there must be something else in the wind—that, in short, the wreck of the sloop is only a part instead of the whole of their plan.”

“But what about the barracoon which you destroyed to-day, sir?” asked Purchase. “Might not that be the place from which those fellows draw their supplies of slaves?”

“It might, of course,” admitted the skipper; “but, all the same, I do not believe it was. For the people who supplied Captain Harrison with false information would surely know enough of him and his methods to be certain that, failing to find anything in the nature of a slave factory at King Olomba’s town, we should not leave the river again until we had thoroughly explored it; and if they knew the river at all they would also know that the factory on the Camma Lagoon could scarcely be overlooked by us. No; in my own mind I feel convinced that the factory which we destroyed to-day was not the one in which those fellows are interested; there is another one somewhere in the river; and I will not leave until I have discovered and destroyed it. But that only brings me back to the point from which I started, and once more raises the question, Why did they cast us away within a few miles of this other factory which I am persuaded exists? Is it that the place is so strongly fortified that they are confident of our inability to take it? Or is there something else at the back of it all, of which we have not yet got an inkling?”

Purchase shook his head hopelessly. “Upon my word, sir,” he answered, “it is quite impossible for me to say. When you come to put the matter like that it becomes as inexplicable as a Chinese puzzle. What is your own opinion?”

“I haven’t been able to form one at all,” answered the skipper. “But the matter is puzzling enough to convince me that it would be folly on our part to assume that the casting away of the ship is the beginning and ending of the adventure; therefore we will neglect no precautions, Mr Purchase, lest we find ourselves landed in an even worse predicament than our present one. Our first and most important precaution must be to maintain a strict watch throughout the night. It need not be a very strong watch, but it must be a vigilant one; therefore each watch will be kept under the supervision of an officer who will be responsible for the vigilance of the men under him. Moreover, all hands must see that their muskets and pistols are loaded and ready for instant action; for it would not be a very difficult matter to surprise this camp of ours sometime during the small hours. Just come outside with me and let us take a look round.”

The result of the above conversation and the “look round” was an arrangement that the night was to be divided into five watches of two hours each, beginning at eight o’clock in the evening and ending at six o’clock in the morning; each watch to consist of twelve men, fully armed, who were to act as sentries, half of them being detailed to watch the river in the neighbourhood of the boats, while the other half kept watch and ward over the land approach to our encampment, being stretched across the narrow isthmus in open order from the water’s edge on the river-side to that on the sea-side. Each watch was commanded by an officer, with a midshipman under him; and the general orders were to fire a single shot at the first sign of anything of an alarming character, and then retire upon the camp, if an attack should threaten to cut off the outpost from the main body.

The first watch was taken by the captain, with me for his subordinate; and I was given the command of the party of six guarding the shore approach to the camp, while the skipper took the party mounting guard near the boats, as it was his opinion that if danger threatened it was most likely to come by way of the river.

My instructions were to march my men out to a distance of not more than two cables’ lengths from the camp, and there take such cover as might be possible. At first sight it did not appear that there was the least bit of cover of any description available, for the spit or peninsula on which we were encamped was just bare sand for a distance of fully a mile from the spot whereon our camp was pitched, and then there began a growth of scrubby bush which gradually became more dense as one proceeded in a southerly direction; but I solved the difficulty by causing each man to scoop a little pit for himself in the loose sand, in which it was easy for him to crouch perfectly concealed particularly as there was no moon, and the light from the stars was not strong enough to reveal objects at a distance much beyond a quarter of a mile.

The first, second, and third watches passed uneventfully; but the fourth watch was little more than half through when—about a quarter after three o’clock in the morning—the whole camp was roused from its slumbers by the sound of musket-shots, one from the party guarding the boats and the river approach, quickly followed by three in rapid succession from the contingent that occupied the sand pits stretched across the neck of the peninsula. Then three or four more shots from the river party spurted out, and it began to dawn upon us that the matter threatened to be serious. Of course none of us had thought of discarding any of our clothing that night, the second shot therefore had scarcely pealed out upon the night air before we in the camp were upon our feet, with our weapons in our hands, and all drawn up in regular array ready for the next move in the game, with the skipper in command.

“Where are Mr Fortescue and Mr Copplestone?” demanded the captain, looking about him, as soon as the first momentary bustle was over.

“Here I am, sir,” answered I, stepping forward and mechanically touching my hat; and “Here I am, sir,” answered Tom Copplestone, suddenly appearing from nowhere in particular.

“Mr Fortescue,” ordered the captain, “take to your heels and run out to Mr Nugent as fast as you can; ascertain from him the reason for the firing from his party; ask him whether he requires any assistance; and then return to me with his reply as quickly as possible. Mr Copplestone, you will run down to the boats with a similar message to Mr Marline.”

Away we both went, as fast as we could lay legs to the ground, Copplestone down-hill toward the river beach, and I along the sand spit, making upward gradually toward the ridge as I ran. Running in that fine, heavy sand was, however, horribly exhausting work, especially to one whose only mode of taking exercise was to stump the lee side of the quarter-deck during his watch, and I was soon so completely blown that, with the best will in the world to hurry, I was brought to walking pace. But before I had made twenty fathoms from my starting-point two more shots rang out from the party by the boats, and a moment later one of the boat guns began to speak. I looked out over the river, striving to discover what the disturbance was about, and thought I could dimly make out several dark blurs on the faintly shimmering surface of the water, which I conjectured must be canoes, but I could not be sure; meanwhile my business was not with them, whatever they were, but with Nugent and his party, from whom, as I struggled along, two more musket-shots cracked out almost simultaneously. Then, down by the river-side, a second shot roared from a boat gun, and this time before the ringing report of the piece died away I distinctly heard a crash followed by loud shrieks and much splashing out somewhere on the surface of the river. A few seconds later, panting and gasping for breath, I staggered up to a figure which I had made out standing upright and motionless on the crest of the spit, and found it to be Nugent, with his drawn sword tucked under his right arm while with both hands he held his night glass to his eye.

“Who goes there?” he demanded sharply, wheeling round and seizing his sword as he heard the noise of my panting behind him.

“Friend!” I answered. “The sk–—captain desires to know why you are firing, out here, and whether you require any assistance.”

“Oh! is that Fortescue? All right. Just take my night glass, will you, and sweep the face of the spit carefully at about two hundred yards distance from here. Then tell me if you can see anything,” answered Nugent. “And, if it comes to that, why are the others firing, down by the boats?”

“Can’t say for certain,” I answered, as I took the proffered night glass and raised it to my eye, “but I believe some suspicious canoes or boats have hove in sight, and they are just giving them a hint to keep their distance.”

“Ah! just so,” returned Nugent. “Now we are firing because, although we can’t be absolutely certain in this darkness, we think that there is a body of men out there who would be not altogether disinclined to rush the camp, if we gave them the opportunity; so we are just potting at them—or what we fancy to be them—whenever we get a clear enough sight of them, just as a hint that we are awake. But as to assistance—n–no, I don’t think we need any, at least not at present. Should we do so, later on, I will blow a blast on this whistle of mine.” And he produced from his pocket a whistle possessing a particularly shrill and piercing note, with which he had been wont to summon Cupid to the midshipmen’s berth aboard the Psyche, when that individual’s presence had been needed with especial urgency.

“Well, d’ye see anything?” he demanded, after I had been peering through his glass for a full minute or more.

“I am really not at all certain whether I do, or not,” I answered, still working away with the glass. “I thought, a moment or two ago, that I caught sight of something in motion for an instant, but it is so abominably dark, as you say, that—but stay a moment, what is that dark mass out there stretching across the ridge? I don’t remember having noticed anything there before nightfall.”

“Dark mass?” reiterated Nugent; “what dark mass d’ye mean? There is nothing out there, so far as I—”

“By Jingo! but there is, though, sir; I can see it myself now, wi’ the naked eye!” exclaimed a seaman who was crouching in a sand pit a yard or so distant from where Nugent and I were standing. “There, don’t ye see it, Mr Nugent, stretchin’ athwart the back of the spit? Why, I can make it out quite distinctly.”

“Give me the glass,” demanded Nugent, snatching the instrument from me and applying it to his eye. For some eight or ten seconds he peered intently through the tube, then exclaimed excitedly—

“Ah, now I have it. Yes, by Jove, Fortescue, you are right, there is something out there; and it looks like—like—ay, and it is, too—a body of blacks creeping along toward us on their stomachs! Why, there must be hundreds of ’em, by the look of it; they reach right across the spit! Yes, we shall certainly want help, and plenty of it, to keep those fellows at arm’s length. I thought it was only some twenty or thirty when I first made them out. Yes, cut away to the skipper, Fortescue, as hard as you can pelt; tell him what you’ve seen; and say that I shall be obliged if he will kindly send me as many men as he can spare. That disturbance down by the boats seems to have ceased, so he ought to be able to send us a pretty strong reinforcement.”

“All right,” I said; “I’ll tell him, and then comeback with the men.” And away I went back through the heavy sand at racing pace, and delivered my message.

The captain listened patiently to my breathless and somewhat disconnected story, and then turned to Mr Purchase, who was standing close at hand, and said—

“Mr Purchase, have the goodness to take the entire port watch, and go out to Mr Nugent’s assistance. But do not allow your men to fire away their ammunition recklessly, for we have very little of it. Let no man pull trigger until he is quite certain of hitting his mark.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” answered Purchase. “Port watch, follow me.” And away he and his following trudged into the darkness. I was making to join them, but the skipper happened, unfortunately, to see me, and called me back.

“No, no, Mr Fortescue,” he said; “you and Mr Copplestone will please remain with me. I may want one or both of you to run messages for me presently.”

So we remained. But I at once ranged up alongside Copplestone, for I was anxious to hear the news from Marline, down by the boats.

“Well, Tommy,” I said, “what was old Marline blazing away at? Whatever it was, he managed to hit it, for I heard the smash.”

“Yes,” answered Copplestone. “But it was more a case of luck than of good shooting, for it is as dark as a wolf’s mouth. Some of his men, however, had eyes keen enough to see that there was a whole flotilla of boats, or canoes, or something of that sort, hovering in the river and manoeuvring in such a fashion as to lead to the suspicion that they had designs upon our boats, so he dosed them with a few charges of grape, which caused them to sheer off ‘one time,’ as Cupid is wont to remark. What was the row with Nugent?”

“Lot of niggers creeping along the spit on their stomachs toward him,” I answered. “Got some idea of rushing the camp for the sake of the plunder in it, I expect. But now that Mr Purchase and the port watch have gone out to back him up I think we need not—hillo! that sounds like business, though, and no mistake.”

My ejaculation was caused by a sudden cracking off of some six or eight muskets, one after the other, closely followed by a heavy if slightly irregular volley, and the next instant the air seemed to become positively vibrant with a perfect pandemonium of shrieks, howls, yells, and shouts as of men engaged in close and desperate conflict. The skipper pricked up his ears and clapped his hand to his sword-hilt; then he turned to where Tommy and I were standing close beside him.

“Mr Copplestone,” he said, “take twenty men—the first you can pick—and go with them to support Mr Marline, for I fancy he will need a little help presently. The rest of us are going out to support Mr Purchase and Mr Nugent.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered Tommy. He picked out the first twenty men he could lay hands on and taarched them off to join Mr Marline’s “picnic,” as he expressed it, and the rest of us went off at the double to take part in the scrimmage that was proceeding in the neighbourhood of the sand pits. And a very pretty scrimmage it was, if one might judge from the tremendous medley of sounds that reached us from that direction. The firing was now very irregular and intermittent, but there was plenty of yelling and shrieking mingled, as we drew nearer to the scene of the fray, with sounds of gasping as of men engaged in a tremendous struggle, quick ejaculations, a running fire of forecastle imprecations, the occasional sharp order of an officer to “Rally here, lads!” dull, sickening thuds as of heavy blows crashing through yielding bones, and here and there a groan, or a cry for water. It was evident that the fight had resolved itself into a desperate hand-to-hand struggle; and it seemed to me that our lads were being hard put to it to hold their own. But the worst feature of the whole affair, to my mind, was that the darkness was so intense that it was almost impossible to distinguish friend from foe.

We reached the scene of the struggle so much sooner than I had expected that it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that our people were being steadily forced back in the direction of the camp; and this I afterwards found to be correct; but the appearance of the skipper with his reinforcements soon put another face upon the matter. It was evident that the foe—consisting of some hundreds of negro savages had been under the impression that they were fighting the entire strength of the British, but when we came up they at once discovered their mistake, which, with the knowledge that, for aught they could tell, there might be further reinforcements waiting to take a hand in the game, somewhat damped their courage. Not by any means at once, however; indeed it was not for perhaps two or three minutes after our appearance upon the scene that the first actual check upon their advance occurred. For they appeared to number seven or eight to every one of us, and moreover they were all picked warriors in the very prime of life, brave, fierce, determined fellows, every one of them, and well armed with spear, shield, war-club, and, in some cases, a most formidable kind of battle-axe.

“Spread out right and left, and cut in wherever you can find room,” ordered the skipper as we plunged, stumbling and gasping, into the midst of the fray. And there was no difficulty in obeying this order; for, narrow as the sand spit was, it was yet too wide for Mr Purchase and the port watch to draw a close cordon across it; there were gaps of a fathom or more in width between each of our men, and those gaps were rapidly widening as some poor wretch went down, transfixed by a broad-bladed spear, was clove to the shoulder by the terrific blow of an axe, or had his brains dashed out by a war-club. But as our contingent arrived each man chose an enemy—there was no difficulty in doing that—and pulled trigger upon him, generally bringing him down, for we were too close to miss; after which it became literally a hand-to-hand fight, some using their discharged muskets as clubs while others flung them away and trusted to their cutlasses, and one or two at least—for I saw them close alongside me—depended entirely upon the weapons with which nature had provided them, first dealing an enemy a knock-out blow with the clenched fist and then dispatching him with one of his own weapons. As for me, I still had the brace of pistols and the cutlass with which I had provided myself when setting-out upon our ill-starred boat expedition up the river, and I made play as best I could with these, bowling over a savage with each of my pistols and then whipping out my cutlass. For a time I did pretty well, I and those on either side of me not only holding our ground but actually beginning to force the enemy back; but at length a huge savage loomed up before me with his war-club raised to strike. My only chance seemed to be to get in a cut or a thrust before the blow could fall, and I accordingly lunged out at his great brawny chest. But the fellow was keen-eyed and active as a cat; he sprang to one side, avoiding my thrust, and at the same instant brought down his club upon my blade with a force that shattered the latter like glass and made my arm tingle to such an extent that for the moment at least I was powerless in the right arm. Then, quick as thought, he swung up the huge club again, with the evident determination to brain me. Disarmed and defenceless, I did the on’y thing that was possible, which was to spring at his great throat and grip it with my left hand, pressing my thumb hard upon his wind-pipe. But I was like a child in his hands; he shook me off with scarcely an effort; and as I went reeling backward I saw his club come sweeping down straight for the top of my head. At that precise instant something seemed to flash dully before my eyes in a momentary gleam of starlight, a sharp tchick came to my ears, a few spots of what felt like hot rain spattered in my face, and the great savage, his knees doubling beneath him, reeled backward with a horrible groan and crashed to the sand, with Cupid’s axe quivering in his brain, while the club, flying from his relaxed grasp, caught me on the left forearm, which I had instinctively flung up to defend myself, snapping the bone like a carrot, and then whirling over and catching me a blow upon the head that stretched me senseless. But before I fell I had become conscious that through the distracting noises of the fight that raged around me I could hear the sound of renewed firing spluttering out from the direction of the boats.

When my senses returned to me the day was apparently some three or four hours old, for the shadows of certain objects upon which my eyes happened to fall as I first opened them were, if anything, a trifle shorter than the objects themselves, which was a sure indication that the sun stood high in the heavens. I was lying, with a number of other people, in the large tent-like structure which the ward-room officers had used on the preceding evening; and Hutchinson, the ship’s surgeon, was busily engaged in attending to the hurts of a seaman who lay not far from me.

This was the first general impression that I gained of my surroundings with the recovery of consciousness; the next was that my left arm, which was throbbing and burning with a dull, aching pain from wrist to shoulder, was firmly bound up and strapped tightly to my body, and that my head, which also ached most abominably, was likewise swathed in bandages. I was parched with thirst, which was increased by the sound of a man drinking eagerly at no great distance from me, and, turning my head painfully in the direction of the sound, I saw Jack Keene, a fellow-mid., administering drink out of a tin pannikin to a man whom I presently recognised as Nugent, the master’s mate, who, poor fellow, seemed to be pretty near his last gasp.

“Jack,” I called feebly, “you might bring me a drink presently, when you have finished with Nugent, will you? How are you feeling, Nugent? Not very badly hurt, I hope.”

I saw Nugent’s lips move, as though attempting to answer me, but no sound came from them, while Keene, glancing towards me, shook his head and laid his finger upon his lips as a sign, I took it, that I should not attempt to engage the poor fellow in conversation.

“All right, Fortescue,” he said, in a low voice, “I’ll attend to you in a brace of shakes.”

He laid Nugent’s head very gently back upon a jacket which had been folded to serve as a pillow, and then, refilling the pannikin from a bucket which stood close at hand, he came to me.

“Feeling bad, old chap?” he asked, as he raised my head and placed the pannikin to my lips. I emptied the pannikin before attempting to reply, and then said—

“Not so bad but that I might easily be a jolly sight worse. Bring me another drink, Jack, there’s a good boy; that was like nectar.”

“Ah; glad you enjoyed it,” was the reply. “But you’ll have to wait a spell for your next drink; Hutchinson’s orders to me are that water is to be administered to you fellows very sparingly, as it is drawn from the river and is probably none too wholesome. What are your hurts?”

“Broken arm and a cracked skull, so far as I know,” I answered. “What’s the matter with poor Nugent?” I added, in a whisper. “He looks as though he is about to slip his cable.”

Jack nodded. “Yes, poor chap,” he whispered. “No chance of his weathering it. Ripped open by one of those broad-bladed spears. Can’t possibly recover. Well, I must go and look after my other patients; I’m acting surgeon’s mate, you know.”

“Surgeon’s mate!” I ejaculated. “Why, you surely don’t mean to say that Murdoch has been bowled over, too, do you?”

“No; not so bad as that,” answered Jack. “He’s away with the rest in the boats. The skipper’s gone to pay a return visit to those fellows who beat up our quarters last night. And now I really must be off, you know. Go to sleep, if you can; it will do you all the good in the world.”

Go to sleep! Yes, it was excellent advice, but I did not seem able to follow it just then; the throbbing and aching of my arm and the racking pain of my sore head were altogether against it, to say nothing of the continuous groaning and moaning of the injured men round about me, and the occasional sharp ejaculations of agony extorted from the unfortunate individual who happened at the moment to be under the surgeon’s hands. So, instead, I looked about me and endeavoured to form some idea of the extent of our casualties during the past night. Judging from what I saw, they must have been pretty heavy, for I counted twenty-three wounded, including myself, and I realised that there might be others elsewhere, for the tent in which we lay was full; there did not seem to be room enough for another patient in it without undue crowding. And even supposing that we comprised the sum total of the wounded, there must have been a large proportion of dead in so desperate an affair as that of the past night. I estimated that in so obstinately contested a fight as that in which we had all sustained our injuries, and against such tremendous odds as those which were opposed to us, there must have been at least half as many dead as wounded, which would make our casualties up to thirty-five; a very heavy percentage out of a crew that, owing to various causes, was already, before this fresh misfortune, growing short-handed. When to these came to be added the casualties sustained on the preceding day in the attack upon the barracoon, it seemed to me that our new captain would have little more than a mere handful of men available for service on this fresh expedition upon which he had embarked—for I did not suppose that he had gone off taking with him every sound man and leaving the camp and the wounded entirely unprotected and exposed to a renewed attack by the savages.

After about an hour’s absence Jack came back to me again and gave me another draught of water, which so greatly refreshed me that the excitement and uneasiness under which I had been labouring since his first visit gradually subsided, my aches and pains grew rather more tolerable; my thoughts grew first more placid and then gradually more disconnected, wandering away from the present into the past and to more agreeable themes, my memory of past incidents became confused, and finally I slept.

I must have slept some three or four hours; for when I awoke it was undoubtedly afternoon; Hutchinson had completed his gruesome labours and was sitting not very far away entering some notes in his notebook, and a few of the less seriously wounded were sitting up partaking of soup or broth of some kind out of basins, pannikins, or anything of the kind that came most handy. The sight of these people refreshing themselves reminded me that I was beginning to feel the need of food, and I called out to the doctor to ask if I might have something to eat and drink. He at once rose up and came to me, felt my pulse, looked at my tongue, and prescribed a small quantity of broth, which Jack Keene presently brought me, and which I found delicious. I may here mention that several days later I became aware that this same broth—the origin of which puzzled me at the moment, though not enough to prevent me from taking it—had been prepared from a kind of tortoise, the existence of which in large numbers on the spit Hutchinson had accidentally discovered that very morning, and in pursuit of which he had sent out two of the most slightly wounded with a sack, and instructions to catch and bring in as many of the creatures as they could readily find.

While I was taking my broth the worthy medico stepped to where Nugent was lying and bent over the poor fellow, feeling his pulse and watching his white, pain-drawn face. Then, rising softly, he went into a dark corner of the tent, where, it appeared, his medicine-chest was stowed away, and quickly prepared a draught, which he brought and held to the lips of the patient, tenderly raising the head of the latter to enable him to drink it. Then, having replaced the sufferer’s head upon the makeshift pillow, he bent over and murmured a few words in the dying man’s ear. What they were I know not, nor did I catch Nugent’s response, but the effect of the brief colloquy was that Hutchinson drew from his pocket a small copy of the New Testament and, after glancing here and there at its opened pages, finally began to read, in a clear voice and very impressively, the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, reading it through to the end. As he proceeded I saw poor Nugent slowly and painfully draw up his hands, that had lain clenched upon the sand beside him, until they were folded upon his breast in the attitude of prayer. And when at length Hutchinson, with a steady voice, but with the tears trickling down his cheeks, reached the passage, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory,” Nugent’s lips began to move as though he were silently repeating the words. The chapter ended, Hutchinson remained silent for a few moments, regarding his patient, who he evidently believed was praying. Suddenly Nugent’s eyes opened wide, and he stared up in surprise at the canvas roof over his head as though he beheld some wonderful sight; the colour flowed back into his cheeks and lips, and gradually his face became illumined with a smile of ecstatic joy.

“Yes,” he murmured, “thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory—the victory—victory!” As he spoke his voice rose until the final word was a shout of inexpressible triumph. Then the colour ebbed away again from cheeks and lips, a film seemed to gather over the still open eyes, the death-rattle sounded in the patient’s throat, he gasped once, as if for breath, and then a look of perfect, ineffable peace settled upon the waxen features. Nugent’s gallant soul had gone forth to join the ranks of the great Captain of his salvation.

Chapter Six.

We find new quarters.

It was about half an hour after Nugent’s death that young Parkinson, who had been engaged somewhere outside the tent, came in and said to Hutchinson—

“The launch, under sail, and with only about half a dozen hands in her, has just hove in sight from somewhere up the river. None of the other boats seem to be in company, but as she is flying her ensign at the peak,”—the launch, it may be mentioned, was rigged as a fore-and-aft schooner—“I suppose it’s all right.”

“It is to be hoped so,” fervently responded the medico; “goodness knows we don’t want anything further in the nature of a disaster; we’ve had quite enough of that sort of thing already. Could you distinguish the features of any of the people in the boat?”

“No, sir,” answered the lad. “I hadn’t a glass with me. Is there such a thing knocking about anywhere here in the tent, I wonder?”

“Yes,” answered Hutchinson. “You will find Mr Nugent’s somewhere about. It was picked up and brought in by the fatigue-party this morning. You might take it, if you can find it, and see if you can distinguish an officer in the boat. The glass ought to be somewhere over there.”

Parkinson went to the spot indicated, and proceeded to rummage among the heterogeneous articles that had been recovered from the scene of the previous night’s fight, and soon routed out the instrument of which he was in search, with which he went to the opening of the tent, from which the launch was by this time visible. Applying the telescope to his eye, he focussed it upon the fast-approaching boat and stared intently through the tube.

“Yes,” he said at length, “I can make out Mr Purchase in the stern-sheets, with Rawlings, the coxswain, alongside of him; and there is Cupid’s ugly mug acting as figure-head to the boat. The beggar is grinning like a Cheshire cat—I can see his double row of ivories distinctly—so I expect there is nothing much the matter.”

Presently, from where I was lying, the launch slid into view, coming down-stream at a great pace under whole canvas, and driven along by a breeze that laid her over gunwale-to. She was edging in toward our side of the river; and as I watched her movements, her crew suddenly sprang to their feet, apparently in obedience to an order; her foresail and mainsail were simultaneously brailed up at the same moment that her staysail was hauled down, then her helm was put up and she swerved inward toward the beach, upon which she grounded a minute later. Then Mr Purchase rose to his feet, sprang up on the thwarts, and, striding from one to the other, finally sprang out upon the beach, up which, followed by Cupid, he made his way toward our tent. A couple of minutes later he stood in the entrance, waiting for his eyes to accustom themselves to the comparative darkness of the interior.

“Well, doc.,” he exclaimed cheerily, “how have things been going with you to-day?”

“Quite as well as I could reasonably have expected, taking all things into consideration,” answered Hutchinson. “Poor Nugent has passed away—went about half an hour ago—but the rest of the wounded are doing excellently. How have things gone with you, and where are the others?”

“Left them behind busily preparing quarters for you and your contingent,” answered Purchase. “We have had a pretty lively time of it, I can tell you, since we left here this morning. Searched both banks of the river for a dozen miles or more, exploring creeks in search of the gentry who attacked us from the river last night, and who undoubtedly put the savages up to the shore attack upon the camp, and eventually found them snugly tucked away in a big lagoon about twelve miles from here, the entrance of which is so artfully concealed that we might have passed it within a hundred fathoms and never suspected its existence. Splendid place it is for carrying on the slave traffic; large open lagoon, with an average of about fifteen feet of water everywhere; fine spacious wharf, with water enough for ships to lie alongside; two spanking big barracoons; and a regular village of well-built houses; in fact, the finest and most complete slave factory that I’ve ever seen. Well-arranged defences, too; battery of four nine-pounders; houses loop-holed for musketry; and a garrison of about a hundred of the most villainous-looking Portuguese, Spaniards, and half-breeds that one need wish to meet. They were evidently on the look-out for us—had been watching us all day, I expect—and opened a brisk fire upon us the moment that we hove in sight. Luckily for us their shooting was simply disgraceful, and we managed to effect a landing, with only two or three hurt. But then came the tug-of-war. The beggars barricaded themselves inside their houses, and blazed away at us at short range, and then, of course, our people began to drop. But Perry wouldn’t take any refusal; landed the boat guns, dragged them forward, and blew in the doors, one after the other, stormed the houses, and carried them in succession at the sword’s point. After that it was all plain sailing, but very grim work, doc, I can tell you; our people had got their blood up, and went for the Dagoes like so many tigers. It lasted about a quarter of an hour after we had blown the doors down, and I don’t believe that more than a dozen of the other side escaped. Of course we, too, suffered heavily, and there are a lot of fresh cases waiting for you, but Murdoch is working like a Trojan. And now I have come to fetch you and your contingent away out of this; there is a fine, big, airy house that Murdoch has turned into a hospital, where the wounded will be in clover, comparatively speaking; so, if you don’t mind, we’ll get to work at once and shift quarters before nightfall.”

No sooner said than done. As I had surmised, a party of twenty unwounded men, under the boatswain, had been left behind by the skipper to look after the camp when he had gone away early in the morning, and these men were now called in to convey the most seriously wounded down to the launch, while the less seriously hurt helped each other; and in this way the whole of the occupants of the camp were got down to the launch and placed on board her in about twenty minutes. Then Hutchinson caused his medicine-chest to be taken down to the boat, together with such other matters as he thought might be useful; and, lastly, poor Nugent’s body was taken down and reverently covered over with the ship’s ensign, which had been saved, laid on a rough, impromptu platform on the thwarts amidships—the other poor fellows who had fallen in the fight had been buried before the setting-out of the boat expedition, I now learned. A final look round the camp was then taken by Purchase and Hutchinson; a few more articles that were thought worth preserving from possible midnight raiders were brought down; and then we got under way and stood up the river, keeping in the slack water as much as possible, in order to cheat the current.

It was within an hour of sunset when Purchase, who had been standing up in the stern-sheets of the boat, intently studying the shore of the right bank of the river for some ten minutes, gave the order to douse the canvas and stand by to ship the oars; and as he did so he waved his hand to the coxswain, who put down his helm and sheered the boat in toward what looked like an unbroken belt of mangroves stretching for miles along the bank. But as the launch, with plenty of way on her, surged forward, an opening gradually revealed itself; and presently we slid into a creek, or channel, some two hundred feet wide, the margins of which were heavily fringed with mangroves, and at once found ourselves winding along this narrow passage of oil-smooth, turbid water, in a stagnant atmosphere of roasting heat that was redolent of all the odours of foetid mud and decaying vegetation. This channel proved to be about a mile long, and curved round gradually from a north-easterly to a south-easterly direction, ending in a fine spacious lagoon about eight miles long by from three to four miles wide at its widest point, arrived in which we once more felt the breeze and the sails were again set, the boat heading about south-east, close-hauled on the port tack, toward what eventually proved to be an island of very fair size, fringed with the inevitable mangroves, but heavily timbered, as to its interior, with magnificent trees of several descriptions, among which I distinguished several very fine specimens of the bombax. Handsomely weathering this island, with a few fathoms to spare, and standing on until we could weather a small, low-lying island to windward of us on the next tack, we then hove about and stood for the northern shore of the lagoon, by that time some five miles distant, finally shooting in between the mainland and an island nearly two miles long, upon which stood the slave factory that our lads had captured earlier in the day. The whole surface of this island, except a narrow belt along its southern shore, had been completely cleared of vegetation; and upon the cleared space had been erected two enormous barracoons and, as Purchase had said, a regular village of well-constructed, stone-built houses raised on massive piers of masonry, and with broad galleries and verandahs all round them, evidently intended for the occupation of the slave-dealers and their dependants. A fine timber wharf extended along the entire northern side of the island, with massive bollards sunk into the soil at regular intervals for ships to make fast to; half a dozen trunk buoys occupied the middle of the fairway; and the whole settlement was completely screened from prying eyes by the heavy belt of standing timber that had been left undisturbed on the southern shore of the island. I had thought that the factory on the Camma Lagoon represented the last word in the construction of slave-dealing establishments; but this concern was quite twice as extensive, and more elaborately complete in every respect.

By the time that we invalids were landed it was close upon sunset, and under Purchase’s guidance we were all conducted up to the largest house in the place, where, in one of the rooms, Murdoch was still hard at work attending to the batch of patients that were the result of that day’s work. We, the new arrivals, however, were shepherded into another room, where fairly comfortable beds were arranged along the two sides, and into these beds the worst cases were at once put and turned over to Murdoch’s care, while Hutchinson promptly pulled off his coat and took up Murdoch’s work in what might be termed the operating-room. I, however, was not considered a bad case, and was accordingly placed in another smaller room, or ward, along with about half a dozen others in like condition with myself.

While these arrangements were proceeding, a fatigue-party had been busy at work in a secluded spot chosen by the skipper, at some distance from the houses; and before we, the wounded, had all been comfortably disposed of for the night, the dead Nugent included—were laid to rest with such honourable observance as the exigencies of the moment would permit.

The casualties in this last affair were, of course, by no means all on the British side; we had suffered pretty severely in the three affairs in which we had been involved since the departure of the boat expedition from the ship, our total amounting to eleven killed and twenty-six wounded; but the losses on the part of the enemy had been very considerably greater, their dead, in this last fight alone, numbering nineteen killed, while thirty-three wounded had been hurriedly bestowed in one of the houses, to be attended to by the surgeons as soon as our own people had been patched up; thus Hutchinson and Murdoch were kept busy the whole of that night, while Copplestone, Keene, and Parkinson—the three uninjured midshipmen—were impressed as ward-attendants to keep watch over our own wounded, and administer medicine, drink, and nourishment from time to time.

It was a most fortunate circumstance for all hands that this last factory had been discovered and captured; for we were thus provided with cool, comfortable living quarters, instead of being compelled to camp out on the exposed beach opposite the wreck; and to this circumstance alone may be attributed the saving of several of the more severely wounded, to say nothing of the fact that we now occupied a position which could be effectually defended from such attacks as that to which we had been exposed on the spit during the previous night. Moreover, it relieved the captain of a very heavy load of anxiety, since, but for the fortunate circumstance of this capture, he would have had no alternative but to have continued in the occupation of our makeshift camp on the spit, it being impossible for him to undertake a boat voyage to Sierra Leone with so many wounded on his hands. It is true that he might have sent away the launch, with an officer and half a dozen hands, to Sierra Leone to summon assistance; but his ambition was not to be so easily satisfied. We had done splendid service in capturing two factories and destroying one of them—the second would also, of course, be destroyed when we abandoned it—but the loss of the Psyche was a very serious matter, which must be atoned for in some shape or another; and he soon allowed it to be understood that he was in no particular hurry to quit our present quarters, where the wounded were making admirable progress, and the sound were comfortably housed, while provisions of all kinds were plentiful and the water was good. But this, excellent as it was in itself, was by no means all; with two such perfectly equipped factories as we had found upon the river it was certain that the slave traffic on the Fernan Vaz must have assumed quite formidable proportions; and it was the skipper’s idea that before our wounded should be lit to be moved, one or more slavers would certainly enter the river, when it would be our own fault if we did not capture them.

The most careful dispositions were accordingly made, with this object in view; the gig, in charge of an officer, was daily dispatched to the entrance of the lagoon in order that, herself concealed, her crew might maintain a watch upon the river and report the passage of any vessels upward-bound for the Camma Lagoon, while, so far as our own quarters were concerned, everything was allowed to remain as nearly as possible as it was before it fell into our hands, in order that, should a slaver arrive at the factory, there should be nothing about the place to give the alarm until it should be too late for her to effect her escape. As a final precaution, a sort of crow’s-nest arrangement was rigged up in a lofty silk-cotton tree which had been left standing in the screening belt of timber along the southern shore of the island, in order that a look-out might be maintained upon the approach channel during the hours of daylight, and timely notice given to us of the approach of slavers to the factory of which we were in occupation.

A full week elapsed from the date of our desperate fight on the sand spit, with no occurrence of any moment save that, thanks to the skill and indefatigable exertions of Hutchinson and Murdoch, all our wounded were doing remarkably well, two or three of them, indeed, having so far recovered that they were actually able to perform such light duty as that of hospital ward-attendants; while the unwounded had been kept perpetually busy at the scene of the wreck, salving such matters as were washed ashore, and transferring everything of any value to our quarters. Meanwhile, the ship had parted amidships, and was fast going to pieces, so that our labours in that direction were coming to an end, and in the course of another week or two there would be nothing more than a rib showing here and there above water, and a few trifles of wreckage scattered along the beach to tell to strangers the story of our disaster. The enemy’s wounded also, who were sharing with us the attentions of the surgeon and his mate, were doing well upon the whole, although there had been some half a dozen deaths among them, and there were a few more, whose hurts were of an exceptionally severe character, with whom the issue still remained doubtful.

It chanced that among these last there was a negro who seemed gradually to be sinking, despite the utmost efforts of Hutchinson to save him; and this individual, named M’Pandala, had latterly evinced a disposition to be friendly and communicative to Cupid, our Krooboy, who had been told off for hospital duty in the house occupied by the enemy’s wounded; and at length—it was on the tenth day of our occupation of the island, and I was by this time well enough to be out and about again, although still unable to do much on account of my disabled arm—this negro made a certain communication to Cupid which the latter deemed it his duty to pass on to me without loss of time. Accordingly, on the evening of that day, after Cupid had been relieved—he was on day duty—he sought me out and began—

“Mr Fortescue, sar, you know dem M’Pandala, in dere?” pointing with his chin toward the house in which the wounded man was lodged.

“No, Cupid,” I answered. “I cannot truthfully say that I enjoy the honour of the gentleman’s acquaintance. Who and what is he?”

Cupid grinned. “Him one Eboe man,” he answered, “employed by dem Portugee to cook for and look after dem captain’s house. He lib for die, one time now; and ’cause I been good to him, and gib him plenty drink when he thirsty, he tell me to-day one t’ing dat I t’ink de captain be glad to know. He say dat very soon—perhaps to-morrow or next day, or de day after—one big cauffle of slabe most likely comin’ here for be ship away from de coas’; and now dat he am goin’ to die he feel sorry for dem slabe and feel glad if dem was set free.”

“Whew!” I whistled. “That is a bit of news well worth knowing—if it can be relied upon. Do you believe that the fellow is telling the truth, Cupid?”

“Cartain, Mr Fortescue, sar,” answered the Krooboy, with conviction. “He lib for die now; what he want to tell me lie for? He no want debbil to come after him and say, ‘Hi, you M’Pandala, why you tell dem white men lie about slabe cauffle comin’ down to de coas’? You come along wid me, sar!’ No, he not want dat, for cartain.”

“When did he tell you this, Cupid?” I demanded.

“’Bout two hour ago,” answered Cupid. “He say to me, ‘Cupid, I lib for die to-night, and when you come on duty to-morrow you find me gone. So I want to tell you somet’ing now, before it too late.’ And den he tell me de news, Mr Fortescue, sar, just as I tell it to you, only in de Eboe language, which I understand, bein’ well educate.”

“All right,” said I. “In that case you had better come with me at once to the captain, and we will tell him the yarn. The sooner he hears it the better. Did he tell you where the cauffle was coming from, and which way?”

“He say,” answered Cupid, “dat dem cauffle am comin’ down from de Bakota country, where ’most all de slabe sent from dis place come from; and dere is only one way for dem to come here, t’rough de bush ober de oder side ob de water. Den dey bring dem across to de island in dem big flat-bottom punt dat lay moored up by de top end ob de wharf.”

We found the captain in the store with Mr Futtock, the boatswain, overhauling the various articles salved from the wreck, and as soon as he had seen all that he desired, and was ready to leave the building, I got hold of him and repeated the yarn that Cupid had spun to me, the Krooboy confirming and elaborating my statement from time to time as I went on, and answering such questions as the skipper put to him. When at length we had brought the yarn to an end the captain stood for some minutes wrapped in deep thought, and then said—

“This is a very valuable piece of information that you have managed to pick up, Cupid: and if it should prove to be well founded I will not forget that we owe it to you. It is too late now, Mr Fortescue, to do anything in the matter to-night, for it will be dark in less than half an hour; but the first thing to-morrow morning you and Cupid here had better take the dinghy, pull across to the mainland, and endeavour to find the road by which the cauffle will come—there ought not to be very much difficulty in doing that, I should think. And, having found it, it will be well for the pair of you to proceed along the road on the look-out for some suitable spot at which to ambush the party, after which the rest should be easy. There is, however, another matter that needs consideration. How are we to ascertain the precise moment at which to expect the arrival of the slave-dealers? Because it will be hardly desirable to take a party out, day after day, and keep them in the bush all day waiting for the cauffle to come along. We are all doing excellently well here; but two or three days spent in the bush would very possibly mean half the party being down with fever.”

Here Cupid, bursting with pride and importance at finding himself, as it were, a member of a council over which the captain was presiding, struck in—

“You jus’ leabe dat to me, sar. Suppose you gib me leabe to go, I take ration for, say, free day, and go off by myself into de bush to meet dem cauffle. Dhen when I hab met dem I soon find out when dem expec’ to arribe here, and I come back and tell you.”

The skipper regarded the black doubtfully.

“But,” he objected, “if you fall in with them, my man, the traders are as likely as not to shoot you; or, if not that, at least to seize you and chain you on to the cauffle. Then how could you let us know when to expect the beggars?”

“No fear ob dat, sar,” answered Cupid with a grin. “I shall take care dat dem do not know I, Cupid, am anywhere near dem. Dem shall neber suspec’ my presence, sar; but I shall be dere, all de same, and shall take partikler care to hear eberyt’ing dat dem say, so dat we may know exactly when to expec’ dem. And when I hab learned dat piece of information, I shall hurry back so as to let you know as early as possible. I don’ t’ink dat dere is much fault to find wid dat plan, sar.”

“No,” answered the skipper, smiling at the black’s eagerness and excitement, “provided, of course, that you are quite confident of your ability to carry it through.”

“You trust me, sar; I’ll carry it through all right, sar,” answered Cupid, in huge delight at being specially entrusted by the skipper with this mission. “You hab but to gib me leabe to go, and I will undertake to carry out de enterprise to your entire satisfaction.”

“Very well,” said the skipper, now struggling manfully to suppress his inclination to laugh outright at the man’s high-flown phraseology; “let it be so, then. Mr Fortescue, I leave it with you to arrange the matter.” And he turned away.

On the following morning, Cupid having called me at daylight, I snatched a hasty breakfast of cocoa and biscuit, and then wended my way to the wharf, where the Krooboy, in light marching order, with three days’ rations—which he proposed to supplement on the way, if necessary—tied up in a gaudy bandana handkerchief, awaited me in the dinghy. Scrambling down into the boat with some circumspection—for my broken arm, although knitting together again nicely, was still rather painful at times, and very liable to break again in the same place if treated roughly—I took my place in the stern-sheets, whereupon Cupid, giving the little cockle-shell a powerful thrust off from the wharf wall, threw out the two tiny oars by which the boat was usually propelled, and proceeded with long powerful strokes to row across to the mainland, at this point a bare half-mile distant. As we went the black informed me that, with the view of ascertaining a few additional items of information of which he had thought during the night, he had looked into the ward wherein his friend M’Pandala had been lodged, but had discovered, as he indeed more than half feared, that the Eboe had quietly slipped his moorings during the night and passed on into his own particular “happy hunting grounds.” But he added cheerfully that, after all, it really did not greatly matter; he would probably be able to obtain the required information in some other way.

Arrived at the other side of the inlet, it became necessary for us to search the shore for the spot at which the bush road debouched, and this we eventually found with some difficulty, for, like everything else connected with the factory, it had been very carefully arranged with the object of screening it from casual observation. But once discovered, our difficulties in that respect were at an end, for we found that it ran down into a tiny indentation in the shore, just sufficiently spacious to accommodate two of the large flats or punts at a time, with firm ground, sloping gently down into the water, affording admirable facilities for the rapid embarkation of large numbers of people.

Hauling the dinghy’s stem up on this piece of firm sloping ground, and making fast her painter to a convenient tree, as a further precaution, Cupid and I set out along the firm, well-beaten path, some six feet in width, which had been cleared through the dense and impenetrable bush that hemmed us in on either hand, tormented all the while by the dense clouds of mosquitoes and other stinging and biting insects that hovered about us in clouds and positively declined to be driven away.