I have said that I was among those who were wounded on this occasion.  What my friend A.C. did so far outshone anything that I had accomplished, that it is hardly worth while speaking of my share in the fray.  However, as I am writing sketches from my life, I will not omit to describe the way in which I was wounded.  We were, as I have said, making a rush to assist our gallant leader, who was alone on board the slaver.  The reader will have seen that our business was boarding and fighting our enemy hand to hand.  As I was making a jump on board I saw the white of the eye of a great black man turned on me; he brandished a huge axe, which I had a sort of presentiment was intended for me.  I sprang as it were straight at my destiny, for as I grasped the gunnel down came the axe, and I received the full edge of the beastly thing across the back of my hand.  I fell into the water, but was picked up by my sailors, and managed to get on board again.  Had it not been for a clever young assistant surgeon, who bound up the wound in a most scientific manner, I should probably have quite lost the use of my hand; the mark remains across my knuckles to this day.

CHAPTER VII.

Love and murder.

I was once sent from Rio to Demerara, an English colony on the coast of Brazil, with a cargo of blacks that we had freed.  Then it was that I had a good opportunity of studying the character of these people certainly in their primitive state, and if ever men and women resembled wild animals it was my swarthy charges.  When I arrived at Demerara I handed them over to their new masters, to whom they were apprenticed for seven years, and from all I can understand they were, during their apprenticeship, treated pretty much as slaves in every respect.

During the time I visited Demerara (and I fancy it is very slightly changed now) it was one of the vilest holes in creation.  It is built on a low sandy point of land at the entrance of a great river, and is almost the hottest place on the earth.  Mosquitos in thousands of millions; nothing for the natives to do but to cultivate sugar-canes and to perspire.  There were two crack regiments quartered at Demerara, who, having to withstand the dreadful monotony of doing nothing, took I fear to living rather too well; the consequence was that many a fine fellow had been carried off by yellow fever.  For my part, I took a rather high flight in the way of pastime by falling (as I imagined) desperately in love with the governor’s daughter.  The governor, I must tell my readers, was a very great swell, a general, a K.C.B., &c., and his daughter was a mighty pretty girl, much run after by the garrison; so it was thought great impertinence on my part, as a humble sub-lieutenant, to presume to make love to the reigning, if not the only, beauty in the place.