oot, near the ankle joint,
tore my flesh and tendons with a painfully dangerous wound, which, for
nine months, kept me a prisoner on crutches. During the long and
wearying confinement which almost broke my restless heart, I had
little to do save to superintend the general fortunes of our factory.
Now and then, an incident occurred to relieve the monotony of my sick
chair, and make me forget, for a moment, the pangs of my crippled
limb. One of these events flashes across my memory as I write, in the
shape of a letter which was mysteriously delivered at my landing by a
coaster, and came from poor Joseph, my ancient partner on the Rio
Pongo. Coomba's spouse was in trouble! and the ungrateful scamp,
though forgetful of my own appeals from the _Chateau of Brest_, did
not hesitate to claim my brotherly aid. Captured in a Spanish slaver,
and compromised beyond salvation, Joseph had been taken into Sierra
Leone, where he was now under sentence of transportation. The letter
hinted that a liberal sum might purchase his escape, even from the
tenacious jaws of the British lion; and when I thought of old times,
the laughable marriage ceremony, and the merry hours we enjoyed at
Kambia, I forgave his neglect. A draft on Don Pedro was readily cashed
at Sierra Leone, notwithstanding the paymaster was a slaver and the
jurisdiction that of St. George and his Cross. The transaction, of
course, was "purely commercial," and, therefore, sinless; so that, in
less than a month, Joseph and the bribed turnkey were on their way to
the Rio Pongo.

By this time the sub-factory of New Sestros was somewhat renowned in
Cuba and Porto Rico. Our dealings with commanders, the character of my
cargoes, and the rapidity with which I despatched a customer and his
craft were proverbial in the islands. Indeed, the third year of my
lodgment had not rolled over, before the slave-demand was so great,
that in spite of rum, cottons, muskets, powder, kidnapping and Prince
Freeman's wars, the country could not supply our demand.

To aid New Sestros, I had established several _nurseries_, or junior
factories, at Little Bassa and Digby; points a few miles from the
limits of Liberia. These "chapels of ease" furnished my parent
_barracoons_ with young and small negroes, mostly kidnapped, I
suppose, in the neighborhood of the beach.

When I was perfectly cured of the injury I sustained in my first
philanthropic fight, I loaded my spacious cutter with a choice
collectio