y anxious to
accompany us, and so was little Tommy Bigg.

"He might be of use dressed up as a little nigger," I heard his father
remark. "But I don't know; the risk may be very great, and though I
wouldn't grudge it for the sake of serving young Mr Marsden, I think we
may do very well without him."

On hearing this I begged that Tommy might on no account accompany us,
but I determined to take Solon. We weighed the advantages against the
disadvantages in so doing. He might certainly make the natives suppose
that we were not negroes by his foreign appearance, he being so unlike
any dogs they have; but then, it might appear probable that he might
have been obtained from some slaver or vessel wrecked on the coast. He
might possibly also remember Alfred, or Alfred might see that he was an
English dog, and call him and talk to him. To have a further chance of
communicating with Alfred, I wrote a note telling him that I was looking
for him, that the _Star_ was off the coast ready to receive him on
board, and urging him to endeavour to make his escape without delay. I
wrote also to the same effect on an immense number of bits of paper,
which I proposed to fasten to all the trinkets, and knives, and
handkerchiefs, and other articles which the natives value, which I could
obtain on board, in the hopes that one of them might fall into Alfred's
hands, and that he might thus know that efforts were making for his
liberation.

The appearance of the coast as we stood along it was not attractive.
Beyond a white sandy beach, which looked glittering and scorching hot in
the sun, the ground rose slightly, fringed on the upper ridge by low,
stunted trees bending towards the south-west, exhibiting proofs of the
force of the hurricanes, which blow down the Mozambique Channel from the
north-east. Talking of the hurricanes which prevail hereabouts, I ought
to have mentioned that it was during one of them in this channel that
the poet Falconer, whose deeply interesting poem of "The Shipwreck" had
been a great favourite with Alfred and me, lost his life. The ship in
which he sailed as purser foundered, and he, and I believe everybody on
board, perished. No work, either in prose or poetry, so admirably, so
graphically, and so truly describes a shipwreck as does his. It is
curious that after its publication he should have lost his life amid the
scene which he has so perfectly described. In the same way no writer
has more vividly paint