e of the steersman, the
captain of the ship, and our servants, who all lay down together on some
carpets; the sailors slept upon the deck. We sailed on steadily all
night; the stars were wonderfully bright; and I looked out upon the
broad river and the flat silent shores, diversified here and there by a
black-looking village of mud huts, surrounded by a grove of palms,
whence the distant baying of the dogs was brought down upon the wind.
Sometimes there was the cry of a wild bird, but soon again the only
sound was the gentle ripple of the water against the sides of our boat.
If the steersman was not asleep, every one else was; but still we glided
on, and nothing occurred to disturb our repose, till the blazing light
of the morning sun recalled us to activity, and all the bustling
preparations for breakfast.

We had sailed on for some time after this important event, and I was
quietly reading in the shade of the cabin, when I was thrown backwards
by the sudden stopping of the vessel, which struck against something
with prodigious force, and screams of distress arose from the water all
around us. On rushing upon deck I found that we had run down another
boat, which had sunk so instantly that nothing was to be seen of it
except the top of the mast, whose red flag was fluttering just above
water, and to which two women were clinging. A few yards astern seven or
eight men were swimming towards the shore, and our steersman having in
his alarm left the rudder to its own devices, our great sails were
swinging and flapping over our heads. There was a cry that our bows were
stove in, and we were sinking; but, fortunately, before this could
happen, the stream had carried us ashore, where we stuck in the mud on a
shoal under a high bank, up which we all soon scrambled, glad to be on
terra firma. The country people came running down to satisfy their
curiosity, and we procured a small boat, which immediately rowed off to
rescue the women who were still clinging to the mast-head of the sunken
vessel, which was one of the kind called a djerm, and was laden with
thirty tons of corn, besides other goods. No one, luckily, was drowned,
though the loss was a serious one to the owners, for there was no chance
of recovering either the vessel or the cargo. Whilst we were looking,
the red flag to which the women had been clinging toppled over sideways,
which completed the entire disappearance of the unfortunate djerm.

Our reis, or captain, no