ent evidence of his guilt, I put him in irons.
Shortly afterwards he confessed the whole story. It seems that a
conspiracy had been planned among the prisoners to retake the ship--that
the man at the wheel had been bribed to let free two of the prisoners,
under promise of a large reward if the result had been the retaking of
the ship.

The only provision he made was that he was to take no murderous action
against his countrymen. The man at the helm and the quarter-master being
the only men on deck, and I being gone to roost, all seemed easy enough,
but Providence willed it otherwise.

I buried the captain in the sea without further ceremony; the man who
fell overboard I suppose was drowned (I did not try to pick him up); the
man knocked down was put in irons, and all went smoothly for the rest of
the voyage; but when I arrived at the Cape of Good Hope without the
captain, the lawyers who defended the ship wanted to make out that I had
murdered him, and I was very nearly sent to prison on the charge of
murder.

In the above pages I have endeavoured to give some notion of what used
to go on in old times when there were no steam launches, and when, I may
be forgiven for saying it, sailors were in every sense of the word
sailors.

I could recount many more adventures somewhat similar to those I have
described, but I do not wish to bore my readers or appear egotistical in
their eyes. The only comparison I would make in regard to our doings in
those days is with the work done by the blockading squadron during the
civil war in America; for if ever men required plucky endurance and
self-denial it was the poor fellows who had to keep, or endeavour to
keep, blockade-runners if not slavers from communicating with the stormy
shores of Florida and South Carolina. They are too modest now to tell us
what they went through. Perhaps forty years hence they will do as I am
doing, and recount some of their adventures, which I am convinced would
quite put into the shade anything I or my boat's crew ever did.

I do not wish to be mistaken in my remarks about the black race. I will
not venture to give an opinion as to what Providence meant to be done
with those interesting creatures. I only assert, and this I do from my
own personal experience, that a black man is a happier and wiser man in
America than he is in his own wretched country, North and South.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE QUEEN'S YACHT.

I returned from the Cape to England