nd the lads who did
that."

"More shame to him, then," growled the skipper. "I should have thought
you were seaman enough, Joe Cross, to have kept her afloat and not run
her aground like this."

"Well, I do call that ungrateful," cried Rodd. "I say, uncle, oughtn't
he to have saved the schooner from being taken?"

"That's one for me, doctor," said the skipper, with a grim smile and a
twinkle in his eye. "The boys of this here generation seem to grow up
pretty sharp. But he's quite right. They pretty well caught a weasel
asleep that time."

"But how was it?" cried Rodd.

"How was it, my lad? Why, we was hard at work one morning, when up the
river comes another of them nice respectable schooners in the oil trade.
Oil trade, indeed! Rank slavers, that's what they were, carrying on
trade with one of those murderous chiefs up country! Set of black
Satans as attack villages and carry off the poor wretches to sell to
your oil traders for sending off to the plantations. Well, one don't
like killing fellow-creatures, or seeing them pulled down below by the
crocs, but somehow I don't feel so very uncomfortable about them as we
had to fight with and have got the worst of it. What are you smiling
at, young Squire Rodd?"

"I was only thinking how you always hated the slave trade, captain."

"Right," said Captain Chubb, with a friendly nod. "Well, the schooner
sends her skipper aboard the three-master. Then he comes to where I was
busy at work with the men, putting the finishing touches to the brig,
and tells me and the Count a long tale about his having come up to join
his friend the Spanish captain, who he hears has gone up the river for a
row. Then he goes back to his schooner, makes her snug, and it seemed
as if him and his men had all gone to sleep, when it was me."

"You?" cried Rodd wonderingly.

"Well, what they call metyphorically, my boy, for I was wide awake
enough; but I couldn't see anything beyond the _Dagobert_, nor the Count
neither, for he wanted her afloat. Then the time went on, and all very
quiet, till just in the middle of one of the hottest days when I was in
full feather, thinking that I could tell the Count that night that the
job was done, and we could let her sit the water again next day when the
tide served, all at once we had a surprise. There were only four or
five men aboard the schooner, and I suppose they were keeping their
watch, but just all at once a couple of boats rowed u