very much afraid that he would examine his. Just, however, as he was
about to do so up went a rocket high into the sky, let off probably as a
signal for some purpose or other. It had the effect of calling off the
old man's attention from him. The people in the advancing boats seemed
not to have any notion that they were so near the fort, for they pulled
on, without in any way quickening their speed, right up towards the
guns.

Jack had remarked the mode in which the place was fortified, so likely
to lead strangers into a trap. In front of the stockades was a deep
broad ditch, and then beyond it rose a low bank of soft slimy mud, held
together by reeds and aquatic plants, and which sloped away again down
to the river. This bank was covered at high water, but even then Jack
doubted whether a boat could be got across it. The slave-traders and
blacks grinned as they thought of the trap into which the British seamen
were about to fall. Jack watched the approach of the boats. Oh! how he
longed to warn his friends of the danger threatening them. He would
have shouted out to them, but they could not have heard him; and then he
thought that he would climb up to the top of the stockade and warn them
off; but he knew that the moment he was seen by the blacks to make any
signal, a pistol-bullet would be sent through his head. Jack was
perfectly ready to run any risk for an adequate object; but after a
moment's reflection he felt perfectly sure that the boats would come on
notwithstanding anything he might do, and that the moment for
sacrificing his life had not yet arrived.

As the boats drew near so did the flurry and excitement among the blacks
increase: the white men looked along their guns and prepared for action;
the little wizened old Spaniard posted himself in a position whence he
could observe all that was going forward. Jack saw that he was watching
him, and he also heard him tell one of the Spaniards, who had before
paid him so much polite attention, to keep an eye on his movements. The
old man, probably, had no great confidence in Jack's honesty of
intentions. Luckily no one found what Jack had been about with the gun,
or it would have fared ill with him. Jack cast many an anxious glance
through the embrasure, to catch the movements of the boats. There were
a good many of them--that was one comfort. His friends were not so
likely to be overpowered as he at first feared. Evidently another ship,
or perha