o your cabin as quickly as may
be."

"I am much obliged to you for your warning, monsieur," said I, "and I
will act upon it. Do you care to increase my obligation to you by
stating why your captain has such a--prejudice, shall we call it,
against British naval officers?"

"Well," replied my new acquaintance--whose name I subsequently learned
was Gaston Marcel--"for one thing, this ship, which is his own property,
is employed in the slave-trade, and Captain Tourville has already
suffered much loss and damage through the meddlesome interference of
your pestilent cruisers. But I believe he has other and more private
reasons for his hatred of your nation and comrades."

So that was it. After having suffered shipwreck, I had been run down
and narrowly escaped with my life, only to fall into the hands of a
Frenchman--and a slaver at that! Now, most slavers were little if
anything better than pirates; they were outlaws whose crimes were
punishable with death; trusting for their safety, for the most part, to
the speed of their ships, but fighting with the desperation of cornered
rats when there was no other way of escape; neither giving nor asking
quarter; and, in many cases, guilty of the most unspeakable atrocities
toward those hapless individuals serving in the Slave Squadron who were
unfortunate enough to fall into their hands. This was especially true
in the case of those who carried on their nefarious traffic under the
French flag; for they were, almost without exception, West Indian
Creoles, most of whom bore a dash of negro blood in their veins,
therefore adding the inherited ferocity of the West African savage to
the natural depravity of those to whose unbridled passions they owed
their being. If, as was more than likely, I had fallen into the power
of one of these fiends, my plight was like to be desperate indeed. I
came to the conclusion that I could not do better than act upon the
advice of the second mate, and abide the issue of events with as much
equanimity as I could muster. Accordingly, as soon as I had taken my
bath I returned to the state-room which had been assigned to me by the
mate, and there remained _perdu_, awaiting the moment when that somewhat
formidable individual the captain should be pleased to send for me.

The approach to my state-room was, it will be remembered, through the
main cabin; and as I passed through the latter the ugly, shock-headed
steward, more ugly and more shock-headed