a dozen lanterns, we could not see a
boat's length in any direction. As the foul water went swirling away
past us great bubbles came rising up from the mud below, from time to
time, bursting as they reached the surface, and giving off little puffs
of noxious, vile-smelling gas that were heavy with disease-germs. Yet,
singularly enough, when at length the morning dawned and the fog
dispersed, not one of us aboard the gig betrayed the slightest trace of
fever, although, among them, the other boats mustered nearly a dozen
cases.

Our first business, after once more joining forces, was to pull into the
creek and call upon his Majesty, King Olomba; but, upon interviewing
that potentate, through the medium of Cupid, who acted as interpreter,
it at once became evident that our worthy skipper had been made the
victim of an elaborate hoax--even more elaborate, indeed, than we at the
moment expected; for the king not only vigorously disclaimed any
propensity toward slave-hunting or slave-dealing, but went the length of
strenuously denying that the river was ever used at all by slavers; also
he several times endeavoured to divert the conversation into another
channel by pointedly hinting at his readiness to accept a cask of rum as
a present, to which hint the skipper of course turned a deaf ear. Then,
having got out of the old boy all the information that we could
extract--which, when we came to analyse it, amounted to just nothing--we
carefully searched the bush in the neighbourhood of the town, to see if
we could discover anything in the nature of a barracoon, but found no
trace whatever of any such thing.

Having drawn the creek blank, the skipper next determined to search a
spot known as the Camma Lagoon, some twelve miles farther up the river;
and, the sea-breeze having by this time set in, we stepped the masts and
made sail upon the boats, creeping up the river close to its northern
bank in order to dodge the current as much as possible.

Upon reaching the lagoon we found it to be in reality a sort of bay in
the north bank of the river, some five and a half miles long by about
three and three-quarter miles wide, with an island in the centre of it
occupying so large an extent of its area that at one spot the creek
behind was barely wide enough to allow the passage of a vessel of
moderate tonnage. The eastern extremity of this creek, however, widened
out until it presented a sheet of water some two miles long by about a