but my detailed narrative of the affair, which was
confirmed in every particular by poor old Mildmay, soon satisfied him
that the fault, if fault there was, rested not with us; and both Mildmay
and myself were fully exonerated from all blame. Nay more--the master
generously represented my defence of the battery in such a light that I
received the skipper's highest commendations and renewed promises of
support and assistance in my career.

At sunrise next morning we weighed and stood out to sea, bound on a
cruise to the westward.

The next two months passed away in the most drearily uneventful manner,
the ship being at sea the whole time. At the end of that period, being
in latitude 4 degrees south and longitude 5 degrees east on our way back
to the Congo, the ship standing to the northward and eastward at the
time, under all plain sail, with light baffling south-easterly airs, the
look-out aloft, just before being relieved at noon, reported two sail,
close together, hove-to broad on our lee bow. The usual form of
questions being duly put by Armitage, who happened to be the officer of
the watch, the further information was elicited that one of them was a
brig and the other a full-rigged ship, but of what nationality they were
it was difficult to say, nothing but the heads of their topgallant-sails
being visible above the horizon from our fore-topmast crosstrees. The
matter being reported to Captain Vernon, orders were given for our
course to be so altered as to allow of our edging down upon the
strangers; the fact of their being hove-to so close together having a
somewhat suspicious appearance.

By three o'clock p.m. we had neared the two vessels sufficiently to
bring their hulls into view from the main-royal-yard; they were then
lying broadside-on to us with their heads to the eastward, the ship
being between us and the brig; but by the aid of our glasses we were
able to make out that they had apparently dropped alongside each other,
and the skipper gave it as his decided opinion that foul play was going
on on the part of one or the other of the two craft. This opinion was
shortly afterwards confirmed by the appearance of thick clouds of black
smoke arising from the ship; the brig hauling off and standing to the
westward under every stitch of canvas she could spread.

"Undoubtedly a most daring act of piracy, committed under our _very_
noses, too," commented the skipper to me as the smoke rose up into the
clea