124 THE AFRICAN TRADER.

They were treated with scant ceremony, but with-
out any undue harshness, on board, and berthed
together in a cabin run up on the lower deck. I
was, however, able to speak a good word for the
officer who had treated me kindly, and been the
means of saving my life, and I was pleased to hear
the captain thank him, and afterwards the officers, to
show their sense of his conduct, invited him to mess
with them. He declined doing so, however. He
afterwards told my cousin Jack that in consequence

 

of the scenes he had witnessed he had resolved to
have nothing more to do with the slave trade.

‘It was a great temptation,’ he said. ‘I ex-
pected to make my fortune in a short time, and
that induced me to engage in the accursed trafic.’

The corvette now took the schooner in tow.
‘As soon as the sea was calm enough hands were
sent on board her to rig jury masts, and a course
was steered for Sierra Leone. The slaver, as may
be supposed, was condemned, the slaves liberated,
and the whole of them settled in the colony. Paul
entered on board the ‘ Triton,’ and I was placed as
a midshipman on her quarter-deck.

We cruised for a short time longer on the coast,
and captured another slaver, and then, as the cor-