My First Cruise | Page 6

what black men can do when left free with a good example before them. Monrovia is really a very respectable-looking city. There are a number of stone warehouses full of goods near the water, and a good many dwelling-houses of brick, nicely furnished, and of two storeys high, but the greater number of the habitations are of wood, on brick foundations. There are several churches, four or five at least, with black or coloured preachers. The greater part of the principal inhabitants are engaged in trade, exchanging palm oil, ivory, cam-wood, which is a valuable dye, for European or American manufactures. They have also a number of vessels manned by Liberian sailors, which sail along the coast to collect the produce of the country. Uncle Tom took me on shore, but we remained only a very short time, so that I cannot give you a more particular account of the place. Leaving the coast of Africa, we stood across the Atlantic towards that of America. We had left the land some four or five days when the wind fell, and we lay becalmed, one side and then the other dipping provokingly into the smooth, glassy, and shining water, and very nearly rolling our masts out. It was so hot, too, that the pitch bubbled up through the seams in the deck, and Dickey Snookes declared we could have roasted our dinners on the capstern-head. I believe, indeed, that we could. I was very glad when the sun went down, and the night came, but it was not so very much cooler even then, and most of the watch below remained on deck to swallow some fresh air, but very little any one of us benefited by it. The next day, at all events, I thought that we should get a breeze, but it was much the same. Hot! oh, how hot it was! We all went gasping about the decks, not knowing what to do with ourselves, and the sea shone so brightly that it was positively painful to look at it. I daresay that it would have been much worse on shore, for, at all events, the air we breathed was pure and clear, though it was pretty well roasted. It was curious to see the same chips of wood and empty hampers, and all the odds and ends thrown overboard, floating around us day after day. We had been a week thus becalmed when I was sent aloft, as the midshipmen occasionally are, to see what was to be seen. I did not expect to see anything, but I did, and that was a long, thin, dark blue line away to the north-east. I reported it to the officer of the watch. He said it was all right, and that we should have a breeze before long, and ordered the watch to trim sails. The blue line increased in width till it could be seen from the deck, and on it came, growing broader and broader every instant. Sure enough it was a breeze stirring up the surface of the ocean. In a little time the upper sails felt its influence, and then the topsails began to bulge out, and the courses moved, and away we glided through the still smooth water faster than we had done for many a day. For some hours we ran on till a sail was reported right ahead still becalmed. As we drew near we discovered her to be a large topsail schooner, with a very rakish appearance. She was still becalmed, but as we brought the breeze up with us her sails bulged out, and she began to glide through the water. There were many discussions as to what she was; some thought her an honest trader, others a slaver; some said she was American, and others Spanish or Portuguese. "One thing is in her favour," observed old Gregson, "she does not attempt to run away." "Good reason, Greggy," said Dickey Snookes aside to me, "she can't--just see what she will do when she gets the wind!" Though I had never seen a slaver, the stranger came exactly up to my idea of what a slaver was like. We always at sea call a vessel, whose name and country we don't know, a stranger. Still she did not run away even when she got the breeze, but hove her topsail to the mast, and kept bobbing gracefully away at us as we came up, while the stars and stripes of the United States flew out at her peak. All doubts as to the honesty of her character were dissipated when an officer standing at her gangway hailed and asked what frigate we were. The reply was given, and he was asked what schooner that was. "`The Wide Awake,' from New Orleans,