id the little vessel altogether from my sight,
I saw, with a sad heart, that she had dwindled to a mere speck upon the
edge of the horizon!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

The chase, which had lasted for nearly the whole of a day, carried the
_Pandora_ a hundred miles out of her course before she had fairly
distanced the cutter; but she had to run still fifty miles further to
make sure that the latter had lost sight of her, and, of course,
abandoned the pursuit. The last part of the run, however, was made in a
direction diagonal to that in which she had been chased; and as the
morning broke, and there were no signs of the cutter nor any other sail,
the slaver once more headed in for the coast. She was now so far to the
south of the line on which she had encountered the cruiser, that,
whether the latter kept on in the pursuit, or returned as she had come,
in either case she would be too distant from the barque to make her out.
The darkness of the night had also favoured the slaver's escape, and,
when morning came, her commander felt quite sure that the cutter was
cruising far to the north of him, and beyond the range of the most
powerful telescope.

The deviation which the _Pandora_ had made from her course did not
signify much to such a light sailer as she. She soon made up the loss;
for next day the wind had veered round so as to answer for her course;
and, as it blew but lightly, she was able to go under studding-sails, at
the rate of ten and twelve knots an hour.

She was now heading directly for the African coast, and, before the sun
had set, my eyes rested on the land--that land so long famous, or rather
infamous, for its commerce in human beings--for the hunt, and the
barter, and sale of men, women, and children!

During the night the barque stood off and on at several miles' distance
from the shore, and with the earliest light of morning ran close in.

There was no port nor town. Not even a house was in sight. The land
was low, scarce rising above the sea-level, and appeared to be covered
with a dense forest to the water's edge. There was neither buoy nor
beacon to direct the course of the vessel, but, for all that, the
captain knew very well where he was steering to. It was not his first
slaving expedition to the coast of Africa nor yet to the very port he
was now heading for. He knew well where he was going; and, although the
country appeared to be quite wild and uninhabited, he knew that there
were peop