is most prominent characteristics, he first gave orders that the half-
a-dozen hands rescued with me should receive every attention, and then
carried me off to his own cabin and rigged me in a jury suit of his own
clothes--which, by the way, were several sizes too big for me--whilst my
own togs were drying; and then, giving orders for breakfast to be served
in the cabin at the earliest possible moment, he sat down and listened
to my story.

His distress at the loss of so many friends was keen and sincere, but it
did not for a moment obscure his sound common sense. A few minutes
sufficed me to give him a hasty outline of the disaster and to make him
acquainted with the direction of our drift during the night; the which
he had no sooner ascertained than he altered the brig's course as much
as was necessary to take her over the scene of the catastrophe, at the
same time sending three hands aloft to keep a sharp look-out for
wreckage or any other indications that we were nearing the spot, and
especially for possible survivors.

Half an hour later we passed a grating, then a spare studding-sail boom,
then a couple of hen-coops close together; after which fragments of
wreckage became increasingly frequent until we reached a spot where one
of the _Daphne's_ boats was found floating with her stern torn out of
her; several hatch-covers, the mizen topgallant-mast and sail, three
dead sheep, a wash-deck tub, and other relics being in company; after
which the wreckage suddenly ceased. We had evidently passed over the
spot where the _Daphne_ had gone down. And the brig was immediately
hove-to and all the boats despatched upon a search expedition--unhappily
a vain one, for not a sign of another survivor could be found, nor even
a dead body to which we could give decent and Christian burial.

This melancholy fact at length indubitably established, Smellie gave the
order to make sail, shaping a course for the Congo, whither we felt sure
the _Black Venus_ had made the best of her way.

Crowding sail upon the _Virginia_ we made the passage to the river's
mouth in a trifle over five days, during the last three of which the
wind was light and variable with us, anchoring in Banana Creek at two
p.m. on the fifth day from that on which we had been picked up. The
_Virginia_ having succeeded in completing her complement of officers and
men at Sierra Leone, the half-dozen picked up with me had been acting as
supernumeraries on board, whil