And then we had the
unspeakable mortification of discovering that the expedition must result
in failure; for, save a few canoes, the creek was innocent of craft of
every description--_there were no slavers in it_! Moreover, the so-
called town of King Olomba consisted only of about fifty miserable
native huts in the very last stage of sordidness and dilapidation; and
there was no sign that a slave barracoon had ever existed near the
place.

The captain stared across the water as though he found it quite
impossible to believe his eyes. Then he drew the sketch map from his
pocket and once more studied it attentively, muttering to himself the
while. Finally he sat himself down upon a knot of twisted roots, with
his back against the trunk of the tree, and, spreading the sketch wide
open on his knee, beckoned me to place myself beside him.

"Just come here and look at this map, Mr Fortescue," he said, and he
spoke with the air and in the tones of a man who is so utterly dazed
with disappointment that he begins to doubt the evidence of his own
senses. "Just give me your opinion, will ye. I cannot understand this
business at all. This map, although only a free-hand sketch, seems to
me to be perfectly accurate. There, you see, is the mouth of the river,
just as we found it; there are the little islets that we passed
immediately after getting inside; there are the dry mud-banks; and
there, you see, the river widens out, in precise accordance with our
experience; here it narrows again at the bend; there is where the boats
are lying concealed; and this," laying his finger upon a particular part
of the sketch, "is the creek that we are now looking at; and there is
the town of Olomba. It all seems to me to be absolutely correct. Does
it not appear so to you?"

"Certainly, sir," I answered. "The sketch answers in every particular
to what we have seen since entering the river--answers to it so
perfectly, indeed, that it might have been copied from a carefully
plotted survey."

"Exactly," assented the skipper. "Yet it is nothing of the kind; for
with my own eyes I saw it drawn from memory by a man whom I happened to
meet in one of the third-rate hotels in Freetown, which are frequented
by the masters and mates of palm-oil traders and the like. I happened
to hear him mention that he had been in and out of the Fernan Vaz at
least a dozen times, in his search for cargo along the coast, so I
waited until the people with w