A Middy of the Slave Squadron | Page 9

us, when we ran right out to sea until we had sunk the land
astern of us. Then we hauled up to the southward on a taut bowline, and,
under easy canvas, made our leisurely way toward the mouth of the
Fernan Vaz river, off which we arrived five days later, making the land

from the masthead about an hour before sunset.
All that night, the whole of the next day, and all the night following we
remained hove-to under topsails, jib, and spanker, dodging to and fro
athwart the mouth of the river, with a man on the main-royal yard,
during the hours of daylight, to give us timely notice of the appearance
of the craft which was to play the part of decoy; while with the
approach of nightfall we made sail and beat in to within a distance of
some three miles of the coast, running off into the offing again an hour
before daylight. At length, when we had hung upon the tenterhooks of
suspense for close upon forty hours, and were beginning to fear that the
captain, in his resolve to cut matters as fine as possible, had overdone
the thing and allowed the quarry to escape, we were gladdened by the
hail from aloft of--
"Sail he! A large schooner just comin' out o' the river, sir."
"Ay, ay," answered the first lieutenant, whose watch it happened to be.
"Just keep your eye on her, my lad, and let me know how she steers
when she is clear of the bar."
We were heading to the southward at the time, and were about three
miles south of the river entrance, and some sixteen miles off the land;
by pretending therefore not to see her for the next quarter of an hour or
so, and keeping the Psyche still heading to the southward, we should
afford the stranger an excellent opportunity to secure a sufficient offing
to make good her escape. Then we would heave about, make sail in
chase, drive her off the coast, and work in as close to the river's mouth
as we dared venture, when the ship was to be brought to an anchor, and
the boats manned, armed, and dispatched into the river.
Meanwhile, as previously arranged, Captain Harrison was aroused, and
informed of the fact that the decoy schooner, or what was assumed to
be such, had made her appearance and was now fairly at sea, steering a
little to the northward of west under a heavy press of sail; and close
upon the heels of the returning messenger the worthy skipper himself
appeared. He sprang upon a gun-carriage and peered intently shoreward
under the shade of his hand; but only the upper canvas of the stranger

was visible from our deck; and he impatiently hailed the look-out aloft
to give him a detailed description of the vessel. The fellow in the
cross-trees happened, however, to be a poor sort of unintelligent fellow,
and could say very little about the craft beyond stating the fact that she
was a schooner, painted black; that she sat deep in the water, showed an
immense spread of canvas, and appeared to be very fast.
"I have no sort of doubt that yonder schooner is the craft whose duty it
is to draw us off the coast and leave the way clear for the other fellows
to get out to sea," he said. "But I should like to have a somewhat better
description of her than that `sodger' up aloft there seems able to give."
He glanced round the deck and his eye fell upon me.
"Ah, Mr Fortescue," he exclaimed, "you will doubtless be able to do
what I want. Just slip down into my cabin; you will find my glass
hanging above the head of my bunk. Throw the strap of it over your
shoulder, and shin up alongside that fellow in the cross-trees; take a
good look at the stranger; and report to me any peculiarities that you
may detect in her, will ye."
"Ay, ay, sir," I replied, touching my hat; and five minutes later I was
sitting in the main-topmast cross-trees, with the long barrel of the
telescope steadied against the topmast-head, and my eye glued to the
eye-piece. From this elevation I commanded a complete, if distant,
view of the low land about the river entrance, with its fringe of
mangrove trees running away inland, the sand hummocks, sparsely
clothed with coarse, reedy grass and trailing plants, and the endless line
of the surf-beaten African beach. Also through the skipper's powerful
lenses I obtained a most excellent view of the strange schooner, from
her trucks to her water-line, including such details as I could have
discerned with the naked eye at a distance of about half a mile. I