most of them die early. More over, I expect her skipper is still below
poring over his charts and trying to make up what he is pleased to call
his mind what spot to steer for in order to get another cargo."

"Very possibly," I assented, with a laugh. "By the way, it is curious,
but I could almost fancy her deeper in the water than she was; does it
not strike you so?"

"Deeper in the water?" he exclaimed sharply. "No, I cannot say that it
does; and even were such a thing possible, it would need an uncommonly
sharp eye to discern it in such a light as this. She may be, however,
for that rascal Jose wrung enough good Spanish dollars out of me, for
his rubbish, to sink her to her waterways. But come, here is the
steward, so I suppose supper is ready, and if so we may as well go below
and get it, for I must plead guilty to being most ravenously hungry."

Notwithstanding which statement I could not avoid noticing that he toyed
a great deal with his food and ate very little; which was not to be
wondered at under the circumstances, for I afterwards learned that while
I was below in my berth, suspecting nothing worse than the purchase and
transfer of a cargo of slaves from one ship to another, a most atrocious
and cold-blooded act of piracy had been committed, and that, too, under
the shadow and disguise of the British flag; Mendouca having coolly
hoisted British colours the moment that I left the deck, and, in the
guise of a British cruiser, compelled the Portuguese brig to heave-to
and disgorge her cargo; after which he had confined the crew below,
bound hand and foot, and had scuttled their ship, leaving them to perish
in her when she went down! But of this I had not the faintest suspicion
until the tale was told me some time afterwards by one of the
_Francesca's_ own crew.

With the setting of the sun the wind evinced a very decided tendency to
drop, growing steadily lighter all through the first watch, until when
Mendouca relieved me at midnight the ship was moving at a rate of barely
five knots, although she was carrying studding-sails on both sides; and
when I went on deck again at four o'clock next morning it was a flat
calm, and the ship was lying motionless upon the water, with her head
swung round to the south-east; the swell, too, had gone down, and there
was every appearance of the calm lasting for several hours at least.
The appearance of the sun, as he rose, also confirmed this impression,
the sky being-