were asked if they would like to go off to an
island where they would have plenty of food and be well treated, if they
would engage to serve a master for a certain number of years. Of
course, very few refused these terms, and they were carried off as free
labourers to Reunion or to other places. Those who refused were allowed
to perish, as a warning to the rest. The Arab master declared that all
the blacks we found on board had come voluntarily; and though they
themselves told a different tale, Captain Armstrong had no means of
punishing him or his people. They were, therefore, to be landed at
Mozambique; while Captain Armstrong resolved to carry the poor blacks,
if they wished it, back to the part of the coast from whence they had
been taken.

Scarcely had we stowed our unexpected passengers away, and very much
crowded up we were with them, than a sail was reported to the southward.
We stood towards her. For some time she did not alter her course.
Probably we were not perceived. We made her out to be a large topsail
schooner. Suddenly she kept away, and went off before the wind under
all the canvas she could carry. This at once made her character
suspected, and we accordingly made sail after her. The _Star_ sailed
remarkably well. The midshipmen always declared that she ought to have
been called the _Shooting Star_. The schooner evidently also had a fast
pair of heels, but we came up with her. I saw Johnny Spratt looking at
her very attentively, when after three or four hours' chase we had got
near enough to see her hold from the deck.

"Well, Spratt, what do you think of her?" I asked.

"Why, sir, I may be wrong or I may be right, but to my mind that
schooner out there is no other than the craft which that Captain
Hansleig, who was aboard us in the _Orion_, is said to command. I have
fallen in with her two or three times since I have been out in these
seas. He has been bold enough when he has no slaves on board, because
he thinks that then no one can touch him; and so I have no doubt he has
got home now, or he wouldn't be in such a hurry to run away."

On hearing Spratt's remark, I looked at the schooner more attentively
than before through my glass, and had little doubt that she was the very
vessel which had carried off Sills and the seaman Brown from the island.
When Biggs saw her he pronounced her at once to be the piratical craft
from which he had urged the Arabs to try and escape when he was wr