raught of warm, damp air that came creeping out from the northward. So
light was the breeze that it scarcely wrinkled the glassy smoothness of
the long undulations upon which the brig rocked and swayed heavily while
her lofty trucks described wide arcs across the paling sky overhead,
from which the stars were vanishing one after another before the advance
of the pallid dawn. And at every lee roll her canvas flapped with a
rattle as of a volley of musketry to the masts, sending down a smart
shower from the dew-saturated cloths upon the deck, to fill again with
the report of a nine-pounder and a great slatting of sheets and blocks
as the ship recovered herself and rolled to windward.

The brig was just two months out from England, from whence she had been
dispatched to the West African coast to form a portion of the
slave-squadron and to relieve the old _Garnet_, which, from her
phenomenal lack of speed, had proved utterly unsuitable for the service
of chasing and capturing the nimble slavers who, despite all our
precautions, were still pursuing their cruel and nefarious vocation with
unparalleled audacity and success. We had relieved the _Garnet_, and
had looked in at Sierra Leone for the latest news; the result of this
visit being that we were now heading in for the mouth of the Congo,
which river had been strongly commended to our especial attention by the
Governor of the little British colony. Our captain, Commander Henry
Stopford, was by no means a communicative man, it being a theory of his
that it is a mistake on the part of a chief to confide more to his
officers than is absolutely necessary for the efficient and intelligent
performance of their duty; hence he had not seen fit to make public the
exact particulars of the information thus received. But he had of
course made an exception in favour of Mr Young, our popular first luff;
and as I--Henry Dugdale, senior mid of the _Barracouta_--happened to be
something of a favourite with the latter, I learned from him, in the
course of conversation, some of the circumstances that were actuating
our movements. The intelligence, however, was of a very meagre
character, and simply amounted to this: That large numbers of African
slaves were being continually landed on the Spanish West Indian islands;
that two boats with their crews had mysteriously disappeared in the
Congo while engaged upon a search of that river for slavers; and that a
small felucca named the _Wasp_--