man, tired by his morning labour, working cargo in the stewing heat, and strong in the virtue of an unblemished life here, had gone to sleep in his cabin, out of which he was routed and confronted with his accusatrix and the small frightened man she had got with her, whom she kept on introducing as "my brudah, sah." Unfortunately for the lady, it was not the same gallant officer who held the post of second mate, but another, and our injured innocent, joining in the chorus, returned thanks for his disturbance in language of singular fluency. He is the only man I have ever met whose powers of expression were equal to his feelings, and it is a merciful providence for him it is so, for what that man feels sometimes I think would burst a rock.
The lady and her brother went crestfallen ashore, but the policemen stayed on board until we left, getting exceedingly drunk the while. Looking over the side, I saw one of them fold himself over the gunwale of the boat in which they were going ashore with his head close to the water. His companions heeded not, and I insisted on my friend the quartermaster rescuing the sufferer, and arranging him in the bottom of the boat, for not only was he in danger of drowning, but of acting as an all too tempting live-bait for the sharks, which swarm in the harbour. The quartermaster evidently thought this was foolish weakness on my part, for it "was only a policeman, and what are policemen but a kind of a sort of a custom house officer, and what are custom house officers but the very deuce?"
This, however, was not on the Batanga, but in the days before I was an honorary aide-de-camp, remember. This voyage out on the Batanga not even Sierra Leone could find anything to summon us for.
