it was a favourite with Sir Thomas Maitland, High Commissioner
of the Ionian Islands--King Tom, as he was called--who frequently took
passage in the _Larne_. King Tom knew every inch of the Mediterranean,
and was a terror to the officers of the watch. He would come on deck at
night; and with his broad Scots accent, "Well, sir," he would say, "what
depth of water have ye? Well, now, sound; and ye'll just find so or so
many fathoms," as the case might be; and the obnoxious passenger was
generally right. On one occasion, as the ship was going into Corfu, Sir
Thomas came up the hatchway and cast his eyes towards the gallows.
"Bangham"--Charles Jenkin heard him say to his aide-de-camp, Lord
Bangham--"where the devil is that other chap? I left four fellows
hanging there; now I can only see three. Mind there is another there
to-morrow." And sure enough there was another Greek dangling the next
day. "Captain Hamilton, of the _Cambrian_, kept the Greeks in order
afloat," writes my author, "and King Tom ashore."

From 1823 onward, the chief scene of Charles Jenkin's activities was in
the West Indies, where he was engaged off and on till 1844, now as a
subaltern, now in a vessel of his own, hunting out pirates, "then very
notorious," in the Leeward Islands, cruising after slavers, or carrying
dollars and provisions for the Government. While yet a midshipman, he
accompanied Mr. Cockburn to Caraccas and had a sight of Bolivar. In the
brigantine _Griffon_, which he commanded in his last years in the West
Indies, he carried aid to Guadeloupe after the earthquake, and twice
earned the thanks of Government: once for an expedition to Nicaragua to
extort, under threat of a blockade, proper apologies and a sum of money
due to certain British merchants; and once during an insurrection in San
Domingo, for the rescue of certain others from a perilous imprisonment
and the recovery of a "chest of money" of which they had been robbed.
Once, on the other hand, he earned his share of public censure. This was
in 1837, when he commanded the _Romney_, lying in the inner harbour of
Havannah. The _Romney_ was in no proper sense a man-of-war; she was a
slave-hulk, the bonded warehouse of the Mixed Slave Commission; where
negroes, captured out of slavers under Spanish colours, were detained
provisionally, till the Commission should decide upon their case, and
either set them free or bind them to apprenticeship. To this ship,
already an eyesore to the auth