thousand men all armed with muskets, and sixty guns.

"Happily the old King of Lagos lately died. He left his crown to a
fellow called Akitoye, the younger of two sons, the elder, Kosoko, being
a ragamuffin and banished. Akitoye, on coming to the throne, recalled
Kosoko; but, true to his character, the elder brother managed to bribe
the army, and to turn poor Akitoye out of the country. Akitoye took
shelter in Badagry, which place Kosoko was preparing to attack, being
promised a thousand men by the King of Dahomey. If he succeeds he will
undoubtedly attack Abeokuta. To prevent this, Mr Beecroft applied for
a naval force to bring Kosoko to reason.

"Accordingly, the _Bloodhound_ and a squadron of boats was sent off to
Lagos to reason with the usurper. He, however, did not understand what
they wanted, and, as they approached, opened a heavy fire on them from a
number of concealed batteries, both with great guns and small-arms.
Several poor fellows were killed and wounded, and at length the
expedition had to retire, there not being enough men to hold the town
had it been captured. The commodore has now resolved to send one of
ample strength to drive the slave-dealing sovereign, Kosoko, from his
throne and his stronghold altogether. This is the business we are
called on to perform. If we succeed, and there is no doubt about that I
should hope, we shall preserve Abeokuta, and enable the Christian
missionaries to labour on without interruption; we shall punish the
usurper, and restore the right man to his government; we shall rout out
a nest of slave-dealers, and put a stop to slave-dealing in Lagos; and
we shall teach the King of Dahomey to be cautious, lest the same
punishment we inflict on his friend there may overtake him. All these
things are well worth fighting for, you'll acknowledge."

All hands agreed that it would be difficult to have a better object than
that Murray had described for the proposed attack.

"Yes, indeed, it is a truly satisfactory feeling, to be sure, that the
cause you fight for is a righteous one," repeated Murray. "Still I do
not hold for one moment that it is not our duty to fight, as long as we
remain in the service, whenever we are ordered by our superiors. The
difference is this, in one case we fight heartily, in the other we do
only just what we are ordered; at all events we don't do it in the same
hearty way we would like."

"We'll fight heartily now, at all events," exclaim