which our boat attack was to be made; I can see nothing like a plot
or treachery in that."

"No; of course you cannot, you sweet innocent," retorted Mendouca, with
fine sarcasm, "for the simple reason, as I say, that the British are
altogether too trustful and confiding to see treachery or double-dealing
until it is thrust openly in their faces. You are altogether too simple
and unsuspicious, you navy men, to deal with the tricks and ruses of the
slave-dealing fraternity; and before your eyes are opened you either die
of fever, or are killed in some brush with us, or are invalided home."

"It may be so," I agreed; "but so general a statement as that does not
in the least help me to see what was the character of Lobo's plot, or
even that there was a plot at all."

"Well, I will tell you," said Mendouca thickly, helping himself to
another caulker of rum--he had already swallowed two tumblers of stiff
grog since the subject had been broached, in addition to what he had
previously taken--"I will tell you, because, having made up my mind that
you shall never rejoin your own people, the information is not likely to
do Lobo any harm. When you arrived at Banana Point on that particular
morning, your presence seriously threatened to entirely upset a very
important transaction which Senor Lobo had in hand, namely, the disposal
and shipment of a prime lot of nearly a thousand able-bodied,
full-grown, male blacks that he had got snugly stowed away in two big
barracoons a short distance up the creek from his factory. Had your
captain taken it into his head to land a party and make a search of the
peninsula, the barracoons would have been discovered, and friend Lobo
would have been a ruined man. So, as soon as your brig was identified
as a man-o'-war--and that was as soon as she could be distinctly made
out--another mistake that you man-o'-war's men make, friend Dugdale; you
can scarcely ever bring yourselves to disguise your ships; they declare
their character as far as it is possible to see them.--Let me see, what
was I saying? I have run clean off my course, and don't know where I
am."

"You were going to tell me what happened when the _Barracouta_ was
identified from Banana Point as a man-o'-war," said I.

"Ah, yes, exactly," answered Mendouca. "Well, as soon as it was
discovered that your brig was a British man-o'-war, every available hand
was set to work to clear everything of an incriminating character out of
the tw