t moment that detained
us at anchor until nearly nightfall, and occasioned us a vast amount of
trotting about in the broiling sun to put some life into the dilatory
people who were keeping us waiting; the consequence of which was that
when at last we lifted the anchor and stood out of the bay with the very
last of the sea-breeze, to run into a calm when we had attained an
offing of some two miles, I felt altogether too tired and knocked up to
eat or drink; while, as for Ryan, he was in a state of high fever once
more.

We got the land breeze about eight o'clock that night, and stood away to
the southward and westward until midnight, in order that we might obtain
a good offing, when we hauled up on a south-east course for the Congo.
I remained on deck until midnight--at which hour I was relieved by
Pierrepoint--and then was obliged to send for the doctor, who, after
feeling my pulse, ordered me to my bunk at once, and when I was there
administered to me a tremendous dose of some frightfully bitter
concoction, telling me at the same time, for my comfort, that he would
not be in the least surprised if, when he next visited me, he should
find me suffering from a severe attack of coast fever. Happily, his
anticipations, so far as I was concerned, were unfounded; but by
daybreak poor Ryan was in a state of raving delirium, with three men in
his cabin told off to keep him in his bunk and prevent him from
inflicting upon himself some injury. As for me, the medicine that I had
taken threw me first into a profuse perspiration, and afterwards into a
deep sleep, from which I awoke next morning cool, free from pain, and
with a quiet, steady pulse, but very weak; and I did not fully recover
my strength until a day or two before we made the land about the Congo
mouth, which we did after a long passage that was uneventful in
everything save the persistency with which we were beset by calms and
light, baffling airs. By this time Ryan, too, had recovered to a
certain extent; that is to say, he was able to leave his bunk and to
stagger up on deck for an hour or so at a time, but he was still
frightfully weak; and it often appeared to me, from the rather wild talk
in which he sometimes indulged, that he had not thus far fully recovered
his mental balance.

We made the land about six bells in the forenoon watch, and stood
straight in for Shark Point, which we hugged pretty closely, in order to
cheat the current, which, as usual at that