The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ned Garth, by W. H. G. Kingston

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Title: Ned Garth
Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade

Author: W. H. G. Kingston

Release Date: May 15, 2007 [EBook #21472]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NED GARTH ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Ned Garth; Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade, by W H G
Kingston.

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NED GARTH; MADE PRISONER IN AFRICA. A TALE OF THE SLAVE TRADE, BY W H G
KINGSTON.

CHAPTER ONE.

"Can you make her out, Ned? My eyes are not so sharp as they used to
be, and I lost sight of the craft when came on."

"She has tacked, uncle; I see her masts in one, and she's standing to
the westward."

"I was afraid so; she must be a stranger, or she would have kept her
course. She'll not weather the head as she's now standing, and if it
doesn't clear and show her the land, she'll be on shore, as sure as my
name is John Pack."

The speaker was a strongly built man, dressed in a thick pea-coat
buttoned closely over his breast, the collar turned up to protect his
neck. A white, low-crowned, weather-beaten, broadish-brimmed hat
covered his head, and he held in his hand a thick stick, which he
pressed firmly on the ground as he walked, for he had been deprived of
one of his legs, its place being supplied by a wooden substitute
resembling a mop handle in shape. His appearance was decidedly
nautical, and though habited in plain clothes, he might have been known
at a glance to be a naval officer.

His companion, a boy of about fourteen years of age, though from his
height and breadth of shoulders he might have been supposed to be older,
wore a thick monkey jacket, a necessary protection against the strong
wind and dense masses of rain and mist which swept up from the ocean.

They stood on the top of a cliff on the southern coast of England,
which, circling round from the north-west to the south-east, formed a
broad deep bay, terminated on the further side by a bluff headland, and
on the other by a rocky point, a ledge partly under