I saw one of the prisoners in the act of falling overboard, and another extended full length on the deck, while my stalwart quarter-master was flourishing a handspike with which he had knocked one of his assailants overboard and floored the other.  Now it will be asked what was the man at the wheel doing?  Hereby hangs a tale.  He swore that he heard or saw nothing.  Considering this sufficient 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.  On arriving there I was appointed to the Queen’s yacht, as a reward for what their lordships at the Admiralty were good enough to designate my active and zealous services while employed in suppression of the slave trade.