ob was done. I had not thought upon sharks while
swimming ashore, but now I thought of them, and it gave me the
creeps. I dare say I sat on the shore for an hour, staring at the
boat before I made up my mind to risk it. There was a plenty of
sharks, too. When I reached the boat and climbed aboard of her, I
took a look around and saw their fins playing about in the shallows,
being drawn off there by the dead bodies the gunpowder had blown into
the water.

The boat had a mast and spritsail. I reckoned that I would wait
until sunset, then hoist sail and hold on past the river and along
shore towards Whydah. I counted on a breeze coming off shore towards
evening, which it did, and blew all night, so stiff that at two
miles' distance, which I kept by guess, I could smell the stink of
swamps. I ought to say here that, before starting, I had climbed
aboard the _Mary Pynsent_ and provisioned the boat. The niggers had
left a few stores, but the mess on board made me sick.

The breeze held all night, and towards daybreak freshened so that I
reckoned myself safe against any canoe overtaking me if any should
put out from shore; for my boat, with the wind on her quarter, was
making from six to seven knots. She measured seventeen feet.

The breeze dried up as the day grew hotter, and in the end I downed
sail and rowed the last few miles. I know Whydah pretty well, having
had dealings there. It is a fine place, with orange-trees growing
wild and great green meadows, and rivers chock full of fish, and the
whole of it full of fever as an egg is of meat. The factory there
was kept by an old man, an Englishman, who pretended to be Dutch and
called himself Klootz, but was known to all as Bristol Pete.
The building stood on a rise at the back of the swamps. It had a
verandah in front, with a tier of guns which he loaded and fired off
on King George's birthday, and in the rear a hell of a barracks,
where he kept the slaves, ready for dealing. He was turned sixty and
grown careless in his talk, and he lived there with nine wives and
ten strapping daughters. Sons did not thrive with him, somehow.
In the matter of men he was short-handed, his habit being to entice
seamen off the ships trading there to take service with him on the
promise of marrying them up to his daughters. It looked like a good
speculation, for the old man had money. But every one of the women
was a widow, and the most of them widowed two deep. The climat