get hold of any
slavers for want of looking for them."

The next day we made the land about the mouth of the Sherbro River, and
had to beat up against as oppressive a wind as I ever recollect
experiencing. One is apt to fancy that the sky and water in that
climate must always be blue. Now, and on many other occasions, instead
of there being any cerulean tints in any direction, the sky was of a
dirty copper tinge, or rather such as is seen spread out like a canopy
over London on a calm damp day in November; while the sea, which rolled
along in vast and sluggish undulations, looked as if it was formed of
sheets of lead of the same hue. Looking astern, one almost expected to
see the wake we ploughed up remaining indelible as on a hard substance.
Over the land hung a mist of the same brownish-yellow hue, hiding
everything but the faint outline of the coast.

"This is what I call a right-down regular Harmattan," said the master,
who, like me, had been before in that delectable clime. The rest of the
officers were new to it. "It will put the purser's whiskers in curl if
he gives them a turn round with a marline-spike. Don't you smell the
earthy flavour of the sands of Africa?"

"In truth I think I do," said Jenkins, the second lieutenant, one of a
group who were collected on the weather side of the quarter-deck. "I
can distinguish the lions' and boa-constrictors' breath in it, too, if
I'm not mistaken. Not much of Araby's spicy gales here, at all events."

"Blue skies, and verdant groves, and spicy gales sound very pretty in
poetry, but very little of them do we get in reality," said the master.
"And when there is a blue sky there's such a dreadfully hot sun peeps
out of it, that one feels as if all the marrow in one's bones was being
dried up. But this won't last long. We shall have a change soon."

"Glad you think so," observed Jenkins; "I'm tired of this already."

"I didn't say the change would be for the better," answered the master.
"We may have a black squall come roaring up from off the land, and take
our topsails out of the bolt-ropes, or our topmasts over the side,
before we know where we are, if you don't keep a bright look-out for it;
and we shall have the rainy season beginning in earnest directly, and
then look out for wet jackets."

"A pleasant prospect you give us, Smith," said I. "I wish I could draw
a better, but my experience won't let me differ from you."

The fog and the heat continued