e days after our arrival there, our vessel, not being anchored
close to the "Ariel," for we had run in under the lee of the fort, led to
the surmise on board the "Orestes" that we had gone to the bottom.
Captain Chapman and his officers pronounced the "Lady Nyassa" to be the
finest little sea-boat they had ever seen. She certainly was a contrast
to the "Ma-Robert," and did great credit to her builders, Ted and
Macgregor of Glasgow. We can but regret that she was not employed on the
Lake after which she was named, and for which she was intended and was so
well adapted.

What struck us most, during the trip from the Zambesi to Mosambique, was
the admirable way in which Captain Chapman handled the "Ariel" in the
heavy sea of the hurricane; the promptitude and skill with which, when we
had broken three hawsers, others were passed to us by the rapid
evolutions of a big ship round a little one; and the ready appliance of
means shown in cutting the hawser off the screw nine feet under water
with long chisels made for the occasion; a task which it took three days
to accomplish. Captain Chapman very kindly invited us on board the
"Ariel," and we accepted his hospitality after the weather had moderated.

The little vessel was hauled through and against the huge seas with such
force that two hawsers measuring eleven inches each in circumference
parted. Many of the blows we received from the billows made every plate
quiver from stem to stern, and the motion was so quick that we had to
hold on continually to avoid being tossed from one side to the other or
into the sea. Ten of the late Bishop's flock whom we had on board became
so sick and helpless that do what we could to aid them they were so very
much in the way that the idea broke in upon us, that the close packing
resorted to by slavers is one of the necessities of the traffic. If this
is so, it would account for the fact that even when the trade was legal
the same injurious custom was common, if not universal. If, instead of
ten such passengers, we had been carrying two hundred, with the wind
driving the rain and spray, as by night it did, nearly as hard as hail
against our faces, and nothing whatever to be seen to windward but the
occasional gleam of the crest of a wave, and no sound heard save the
whistling of the storm through the rigging, it would have been absolutely
necessary for the working of the ship and safety of the whole that the
live cargo should all have b