years,
laughing at everything--pleased with everybody--almost universally
liked--and his bold, free, and happy spirit unchecked by vicissitude or
hardship.

He served his time--was nearly turned back, when he was passing his
examination, for laughing, and then went laughing to sea again--was in
command of a boat at the cutting-out of a French corvette, and when on
board was so much amused by the little French captain skipping about
with his rapier, which proved fatal to many, that at last he received a
pink from the little gentleman himself, which laid him on deck. For
this affair, and in consideration of his wound, he obtained his
promotion to the rank of lieutenant--was appointed to a line-of-battle
ship in the West Indies--laughed at the yellow fever--was appointed to
the tender of that ship, a fine schooner, and was sent to cruise for
prize-money for the admiral, and promotion for himself, if he could, by
any fortunate encounter, be so lucky as to obtain it.

CHAPTER VII

SLEEPER'S BAY

On the western coast of Africa there is a small bay, which has received
more than one name from its occasional visitors. That by which it was
designated by the adventurous Portuguese, who first dared to cleave the
waves of the Southern Atlantic, has been forgotten with their lost
maritime preeminence; the name allotted to it by the woolly-headed
natives of the coast has never, perhaps, been ascertained; it is,
however, marked down in some of the old English charts as Sleeper's Bay.

The mainland which, by its curvature, has formed this little dent, on a
coast possessing, and certainly at present requiring, few harbours,
displays, perhaps, the least inviting of all prospects; offering to the
view nothing but a shelving beach of dazzling white sand, backed with a
few small hummocks beat up by the occasional fury of the Atlantic
gales--arid, bare, and without the slightest appearance of vegetable
life. The inland prospect is shrouded over by a dense mirage, through
which here and there are to be discovered the stems of a few distant
palm-trees, so broken and disjoined by refraction that they present to
the imagination anything but the idea of foliage or shade. The water in
the bay is calm and smooth as the polished mirror; not the smallest
ripple is to be heard on the beach, to break through the silence of
nature; not a breath of air sweeps over its glassy surface, which is
heated with the intense rays of a vertical noonda