ter a quarrel with Ormond, who gave him but a hundred
negroes for his cargo; and a Spanish brig was waiting my arrival,--for
the boy I sent home from the Isles de Loss had reported my engagement,
capture, and escape.

_La soupe sur la table_, we attacked a smoking tureen of _bouillon
gras_, while a heaping dish of toasted bread stood in the middle. The
captain loaded my plate with two slices of this sunburnt material,
which he deluged with a couple of ladles of savory broth. A long fast
is a good sauce, and I need not assert that I began _sans facon_. My
appetite was sharp, and the vapor of the liquid inviting. For a while
there was a dead silence, save when broken by smacking and relishing
lips. Spoonful after spoonful was sucked in as rapidly as the heat
allowed; and, indeed, I hardly took time to bestow a blessing on the
cook. Being the guest of the day, my plate had been the first one
served, and of course, was the first one finished. Perhaps I rather
hurried myself, for lenten diet made me greedy and I was somewhat
anxious to anticipate the calls of my companions on the tureen.
Accordingly, I once more ballasted my plate with toast, and, with a
charming bow and a civil "_s'il vous plait_," applied, like Oliver
Twist, "for more."

As the captain was helping me to the second ladle, he politely
demanded whether I was "fond of the thick;" and as I replied in the
affirmative, he made another dive to the bottom and brought up the
instrument with a heaping mass in whose centre was a diminutive
African skull, face upwards, gaping at the guests with an infernal
grin!

My plate fell from my hand at the tureen's edge. The boiling liquid
splashed over the table. I stood fascinated by the horrible apparition
as the captain continued to hold its dreadful bones in view. Presently
my head swam; a painful oppression weighed at my heart; I was ill;
and, in a jiffy, the appalling spectre was laid beneath the calm
waters of the Rio Pongo.

Before sundown I made a speedy retreat from among the _anthropophagi_;
but all their assurances, oaths, and protestations, could not satisfy
me that the broth did not owe its substance to something more human
than an African _baboon_.

CHAPTER XXXII.

There was rejoicing that night in Kambia among my people, for it is
not necessary that a despised slaver should always be a cruel master.
I had many a friend among the villagers, both there and at Bangalang,
and when the "barker" came