their lives, intending to leave me and my companions to our fate. The sea was foaming and roaring around us. It seemed that at any moment the dhow would sink. The sail was now lowered, and the boat and canoe were got into the water. The cry arose that the dhow was sinking, and the Arabs leapt into them in such haste that the boat was upset, and all in her were speedily overwhelmed. The canoe, after being tossed about on the tops of the waves for a few minutes, was also turned over, and all in her shared the fate of their companions. She was not far off at the time. I thought that I might reach her, but I remembered my fellow-slaves. I found a knife which one of the Arabs had left on the deck, and was endeavouring to release some of the men, who might be able to swim with me to the canoe, when I felt that the dhow was going down. I sprang overboard, and with a few strokes gained the canoe, being almost thrown on to her by the seas, when I felt that she was being drawn under the surface; but I clutched tight hold of her, and she quickly came up again. For a few moments the shrieks and cries of my drowning countrymen rose high above the loud dashing of the waves and the howling of the storm, but they were speedily silenced, and I found myself floating alone on the tossing waters. I wished to live for the sake of my wife and child. In my ignorance I knew not how far I was away from the land, still I struggled for life. All night long I clung to the canoe, and before morning the wind had fallen and the sea had become smooth. I was able to right the canoe, when I saw close to me a gourd and a paddle. I reached them by working the canoe on with my hands, and contrived to bale her out. I saw the sun rise, and knew that the land lay on the opposite side. I tried to paddle towards it; but I had had no food and no water, and the sun came down with a heat I had never felt on shore. Still, for hours I paddled on, when I saw the sails of a big ship rising above the horizon. She must be, I thought, the one which had captured the dhows. Fear filled my heart, for the Arabs had told us that the white men would kill and eat us. Terror and the suffering I had undergone overcame me; I sank down at the bottom of the canoe, and knew no more until I found myself on board a ship, with white people standing round me. I could not understand a word they said, nor tell them how I came to be in the canoe, but they looked kind, and my fears left me. I was well fed and cared for, and soon recovered my strength. There were several persons whom I now know to have been passengers. One lady, very fair and beautiful, who spoke in a gentle, sweet voice to me, trying to make me comprehend what she meant. She had a little girl with her. I loved that child from the first, for she made me think of my own boy by her playful ways and happy laugh, though she was fair as a lily, and my boy was as black as I am, but I thought not of the difference of colour. I felt that I should never wish to leave that kind lady and her child. In a few days the weather again became bad, a fearful gale began to blow. The ship was tossed about far more violently than the dhow had been. Presently, during the night, I heard a loud crash, followed by the shouts and shrieks of the crew and passengers. My first thought was of the little girl. On reaching the deck a flash of lightning showed her to me, clinging to her mother’s arms. I made signs that I would try and save her, and I wrapped her up in some shawls which had been brought from below. The officers and crew were, I saw, trying to lower the boats. Whether they succeeded or not I could not tell, for the seas were sweeping over the ship, and I knew too that she was sinking, as the dhow had done. While I was standing by the lady’s side, looking for one of the boats into which to help her, a huge sea separated us, carrying me off my legs, and I found myself struggling amid the foaming waves. I had caught sight of a dark object floating near, far larger than a boat. By what means I know not I reached it. It was part of the wreck of a dhow or of some other vessel against which our ship had struck. I climbed upon it with my little charge, whose head I had managed to keep above water. She was crying out for her mamma. I knew that name. I tried to console her. For some time voices reached my ear, but whether they came from the boats or the deck of the ship I could not tell; I guessed, too truly, that she had gone down, for when morning at last dawned neither she nor the boats were to be seen. I feared that the little girl would sink from hunger and thirst, for I remembered what I had endured in the canoe; but scarcely had the sun risen than I saw a ship approaching, and you, Massa Pack, know the rest.’

“It was my ship which Tom saw coming. Of course we soon had him and his little charge on board. You will understand that I have given what I may call a translation of his yarn. It was spun, as it were, in a number of shreds, and I have put them together; still I have expressed his sentiments, and have not adorned his tale by adding to it anything he did not say. Many a time did he melt into tears as he spoke of his own child and the love he bore him, and it would be difficult to picture fully all the horrors he endured during his journey overland and his voyage in the slave dhow. To send him back to his home I knew was impossible, he would have been retaken by the first Arab party he fell in with, or been murdered as he was trying to pass through the territory of any hostile tribe. He therefore cheerfully remained on board my ship, and has stayed with me ever since, pretty well reconciled to his lot, his whole soul wrapped up in Mary, who has taken the place in his affections of the son from whom he has, he believes, for ever been separated, though he is devoted also to my sister, and to Ned and me. That black fellow has as big a heart as any white man. He does not, however, forget his wife and child, for since he became a Christian, his great desire is that they should be brought to a knowledge of the truth. If it were possible, I would help him to get back to his native village, but to do so is beyond my means. Indeed, from what I hear I fear that the Arabs have long ere this carried them off into captivity, or that, deprived of their protector, they have died of hunger or been killed by their cruel persecutors. Those Arabs have long been the curse of that part of Africa—indeed, for the purpose of obtaining slaves, they have devastated many of its most fertile districts.”

His guest listened with evident interest to the account given by the lieutenant.

“I have not hitherto turned my attention in that direction,” observed the former. “Of course I have heard much of the slave trade on the western coast and of the horrors of the middle passage, but I believed that it is now carried on only in a very limited degree, and that the inhabitants of the east coast are well able to take care of themselves.”

“I have cruised on both coasts, and am convinced that the people on the east part of Africa are subjected to cruelties fully equal to those which the western tribes have for so many ages endured,” answered the lieutenant. “Tom’s experience is that of thousands; but he did not describe the miseries suffered by those left behind, the despair of the women and children, and of the men who may have escaped from the sudden attack made on their village, to find it when they have returned burned to the ground, their fields laid waste, and their cattle carried off. No one can calculate the numbers who have died from hunger in a land teeming with abundance.”

Ned and Mary came in during the latter part of the conversation, to which they paid the greatest attention.

“I wish I could help to put a stop to such horrible doings,” exclaimed Ned. “I should like to see an English fleet employed in catching all the dhows, and an army sent to march through the country to turn all the Arabs out of it. It would be an honour to serve even as a drummer-boy on shore, or as a powder-monkey on board one of the