from the shore now rapidly increased in intensity, and by and
by we suddenly found that they proceeded from both sides of the boats.
Smellie drew out his watch and consulted it by the light of the boat's
binnacle.

"Twenty minutes to twelve! and we are now entering the creek," he
whispered to me.

The slavers, we knew, were anchored about two miles up the creek, and
the conviction suddenly smote me that in another half-hour I should in
all probability be engaged in a fierce and deadly struggle. Somehow up
to that moment I had only regarded the attack as a remote possibility--a
something which _might_ but was not very likely to happen. I suppose I
had unconsciously been entertaining a doubt as to the possibility of our
finding the creek. Yet, there we were in it, and nothing could now
avert a combat, and more or less bloodshed. Nothing, that is, except
the exceedingly unlikely circumstance of our finding the birds flown.

Did I wish this? Was I _afraid_?

Honestly, I am unable to say whether I was or not; but I am inclined to
acquit myself of the charge of cowardice. My sensations were peculiar
and rather unpleasant, I freely admit; but looking back upon them now in
the light of long years of experience, I am disposed to attribute them
entirely to nervous excitement. Hitherto my nostrils had never sniffed
the odour of powder burned in anger; I was about to undergo a perfectly
new experience; I was about to engage with my fellow-men in mortal
combat; to come face to face with and within arm's-length of those who,
if the opportunity occurred, would take my life deliberately and without
a moment's hesitation. In a short half-hour I might be dying--or
_dead_. As this disagreeable and inopportune reflection flashed through
my mind my heart throbbed violently, the blood rushed to my head, and my
breathing became so laboured that I felt as though I was stifling.
These disagreeable--indeed I might more truthfully call them _painful_--
sensations lasted in their intensity perhaps as long as five minutes,
after which they rapidly subsided, to be succeeded by a feverish longing
and impatience for the moment of action. My excitement ceased; my
breathing again became regular; but the period of suspense--that period
which only a few minutes before had seemed so short--now felt as though
it were lengthening out to a veritable eternity. I wanted to begin at
once, to know the worst, and to get it over.

I had not much lo