case we never could have got on board the
vessel, considering the speed she was going through the water. What he
did was a glorious piece of pluck, that in these days would have been
rewarded with the Victoria Cross as the least recompense they could have
given to so gallant an officer. Poor fellow! all the reward he got,
beyond the intense admiration of those who saw him, was a bad attack of
small-pox from the diseased _animals_ (there is no other name for
negroes in the state they were in) on board the slave-vessel, which
somewhat injured the face of one of the handsomest men I ever saw. He is
now an admiral, has done many gallant acts since then, but none could
beat what he did on that memorable morning.

I have said that I was among those who were wounded on this occasion.
What my friend A.C. did so far outshone anything that I had
accomplished, that it is hardly worth while speaking of my share in the
fray. However, as I am writing sketches from my life, I will not omit to
describe the way in which I was wounded. We were, as I have said, making
a rush to assist our gallant leader, who was alone on board the slaver.
The reader will have seen that our business was boarding and fighting
our enemy hand to hand. As I was making a jump on board I saw the white
of the eye of a great black man turned on me; he brandished a huge axe,
which I had a sort of presentiment was intended for me. I sprang as it
were straight at my destiny, for as I grasped the gunnel down came the
axe, and I received the full edge of the beastly thing across the back
of my hand. I fell into the water, but was picked up by my sailors, and
managed to get on board again. Had it not been for a clever young
assistant surgeon, who bound up the wound in a most scientific manner, I
should probably have quite lost the use of my hand; the mark remains
across my knuckles to this day.

CHAPTER VII.

LOVE AND MURDER.

I was once sent from Rio to Demerara, an English colony on the coast of
Brazil, with a cargo of blacks that we had freed. Then it was that I had
a good opportunity of studying the character of these people certainly
in their primitive state, and if ever men and women resembled wild
animals it was my swarthy charges. When I arrived at Demerara I handed
them over to their new masters, to whom they were apprenticed for seven
years, and from all I can understand they were, during their
apprenticeship, treated pretty much as slaves in every