hom he was talking had left him, and then
I entered into conversation with him, finally inducing him to furnish me
with this sketch."

"And was it from him, sir, that you also obtained the information upon
the strength of which you determined upon this expedition?" I asked.

"Oh, no," answered the skipper. "I had that from quite a different
source, in a very different kind of house. The people who told me about
King Olomba's raid, and the plans laid by the slavers for carrying off
the prisoners, were slavers themselves; and they told me of the scheme
because they believed me to be the master of a slaver waiting for
information from the Senegal river. The cream of the joke was that
these fellows should have told me--_me_, the captain of the _Psyche_--
that the scheme had been carefully planned with the express object of
putting the _Psyche_ upon a false scent and so getting her out of the
way while the negroes were being shipped."

"Yet there seems to have been something wrong somewhere, sir," I
ventured to suggest. "But it is not with your map; that appears to be
marvellously accurate for a mere free-hand sketch; there is no attempt
at deception apparent there. This creek that we are looking at is
undoubtedly the one shown on your map, and there is King Olomba's town,
precisely in the position indicated on the sketch; the assumption
therefore is that the man who drew the map for you was dealing quite
honestly with you. The misleading information, consequently must, it
appears to me, have come from the others; as indeed is the case, seeing
that they led you to believe that you would find at least three or four
large ships in the creek, whereas there are none."

"That is perfectly true," concurred the skipper. "Yet I quite
understood my informants to say that they were the persons who had
formulated the scheme."

"I suppose, sir," said I, giving voice to an idea that had been
gradually shaping itself in my brain, "it is not possible that the
people who were so singularly frank with you happened to recognise you
as Captain Harrison of H.M.S. _Psyche_, and gave you that bit of
information with the deliberate purpose of misleading you and putting
you upon a false scent, in order that while you are searching for them
here they may have the opportunity to carry out their scheme elsewhere?
Their story may in the main be perfectly true, but if by any chance they
should have happened to recognise you it would not be