e unable to see how many
guns she carried, which was, however, an advantage to us, since, however
many guns she might mount on her broadsides, she could bring none of
them to bear upon us. We saw, however, that she carried two stern-
chasers--long nine's, apparently--and now, in the hope of dashing
alongside before those two guns could be cast loose and brought to bear
upon us, the captain stood up in the stern-sheets of the gig and waved
his arm to the other boats as a signal to them to give way--for, with
the coming of the daylight we could not possibly hope to remain
undiscovered above a second or two longer.

Indeed the boats' crews had scarcely bent their backs in response to the
signal when there arose a sudden startled outcry on board the ship,
followed by a volley of hurried commands and the hasty trampling of feet
upon her decks. But we were so close to her, when discovered, and the
surprise was so complete, that her crew had no time to do anything
effective in the way of defence; and in little over a couple of minutes
we had swept up alongside, clambered in over her lofty bulwarks, driven
her crew below, and were in full possession of the _Dona Isabella_ of
Havana, mounting twelve guns, with a crew of forty-six Spaniards,
Portuguese, and half-castes, constituting as ruffianly a lot as I had
ever met with. She had a cargo of seven hundred and forty negroes on
board, and was far and away the finest prize that had thus far fallen to
the lot of the _Psyche_. So valuable, indeed, was she that Captain
Harrison decided not to trust her entirely to a prize crew, but to
escort her to Sierra Leone in the corvette; and some two hours later,
having meanwhile made all the necessary dispositions, the two craft
trimmed sail with the first of the sea-breeze and hauled up for Sierra
Leone, where we arrived a week later after an uneventful passage.

CHAPTER TWO.

IN THE FERNAN VAZ RIVER.

While we were awaiting the formal condemnation of the _Dona Isabella_ by
the Mixed Commission, and the trial of her crew upon the charge of
piracy, Captain Harrison, our skipper, busily employed himself, as was
his wont, in hunting up information relative to the movements, present
and prospective, of the slavers upon the coast. And this was not quite
so difficult to do as might at first be imagined; for, Sierra Leone
being the headquarters, so to speak, of the British Slave Squadron, the
persons actually engaged in the slave-trade