In the Fernan Vaz River.
While we were awaiting the formal condemnation of the Doña Isabella by the Mixed Commission, and the trial of her crew upon the charge of piracy, Captain Harrison, our skipper, busily employed himself, as was his wont, in hunting up information relative to the movements, present and prospective, of the slavers upon the coast. And this was not quite so difficult to do as might at first be imagined; for, Sierra Leone being the headquarters, so to speak, of the British Slave Squadron, the persons actually engaged in the slave-trade found that it paid them well to maintain agents there for the sole purpose of picking up every possible item of information relative to the movements and doings of that squadron. For it not unfrequently happened that, to those behind the scenes, an apparently trivial and seemingly quite worthless bit of information, an imprudent word dropped by an unwary officer respecting one of our vessels, enabled the acute ones to calculate so closely that they often succeeded in making a dash into some river, shipping a cargo of slaves, and getting clear away to sea again only a few hours before our cruisers put in an appearance on the spot. And in the same way our own officers, by frequenting, in disguise, the haunts of the slavers and their agents, very often succeeded in catching a hint that, carefully followed up, led to most important captures being made. It was, indeed, through a hint so acquired that we had been put upon the track of the Doña Isabella.
Now, our own skipper, Captain Harrison, was particularly keen upon this sort of work, and was exceptionally well qualified to achieve success in it. For, in the first place, he was a West Indian by birth, being the son of a Trinidad sugar-planter, and he consequently spoke Creole Spanish as fluently as he did his mother tongue. Also his physical characteristics were such as to be of the greatest assistance to him in such enterprises; for he was tall, lean, and muscular, of swarthy complexion, with thick, black, curly hair, and large, black, flashing eyes, suggesting that he carried a touch of the tar-brush, although, as a matter of fact, he had not a drop of negro blood in him. He was a man of dauntless courage, knowing not the meaning of fear, and absolutely revelling in situations of the most extreme peril, yet gifted with quite as much discretion as was needful for a man entrusted with heavy responsibilities involving the lives of many of his fellow-men. He never sought danger for danger’s sake alone, and never embarked in an enterprise which his reason assured him was hopelessly impracticable, but, on the other hand, he never hesitated to undertake the most perilous task if he believed he could see a way to its successful accomplishment. It was his habit to assume a variety of disguises in which he would haunt the third and fourth rate taverns of Freetown, especially patronised by the slave-dealing fraternity, and mingling freely with these gentry, would boldly express his own views, adopted, of course, for the occasion, upon the various matters affecting the trade, or discuss with them the most promising schemes for baffling the efforts of the British cruisers. He had noticed, very early in his career as an officer of the Slave Squadron, that it was always the British who constituted the bête noire of the slavers; the French they feared very little; the Americans not at all.
These little incursions into the enemy’s territory Captain Harrison conducted with consummate boldness and skill, and with a considerable measure of success, for it was quite a favourite amusement of his to devise and suggest schemes of a particularly alluring character which, when adopted by the enemy, he of course triumphantly circumvented without difficulty. There was only one fault to find with this propensity on the part of our skipper, but in my humble judgment it constituted a serious one. It was this. Captain Harrison’s personality was a distinctly striking one; he was the kind of man who, once seen, is not easily forgotten; and I greatly dreaded that some day, sooner or later, the reckless frequenter of the low-class Freetown taverns would be identified as one and the same with the captain of H.M.S. Psyche, who was of course frequently to be seen about the streets in the uniform of a British naval captain. Indeed I once took the liberty of delicately hinting at this possibility; but the skipper laughed at the idea; he had, it appeared, the most implicit faith in his disguises, which included, amongst other things, a huge false moustache of most ferocious appearance, and an enormous pair of gold earrings.
We had been at Sierra Leone a little over a fortnight, and our business there was just completed, when the skipper came aboard on a certain afternoon in a state of the highest good-humour, occasioned, as soon transpired, by the fact that he had succeeded in obtaining full particulars of an exceptionally grand coup that had been planned by a number of slavers in conjunction, which they were perfectly confident of pulling off triumphantly.
It appeared, from his story, that intelligence had just been received of the successful conclusion of a great slave-hunting raid into the interior by a certain King Olomba, who had recently returned in triumph to his town of Olomba, on the left bank of the Fernan Vaz river, bringing with him nearly three thousand negroes, of whom over two thousand were males, all in prime condition. This information having reached the slavers’ agents at Sierra Leone through the mysterious channels by which news often travels in Africa, an effort of quite exceptional magnitude was to be made to get at least the two thousand males out of the country at one fell swoop; the present being regarded as an almost uniquely favourable opportunity for the accomplishment of this object, for the reason that the Psyche was just then the only ship which could by any possibility interfere with the scheme. And in the event of her happening to put in an inopportune appearance on that part of the coast at the critical moment—as she had a knack of doing, in the most unaccountable manner—she was to be decoyed away from the spot by the simple process of dispatching to sea a certain notorious schooner well-known to be in the trade, but which, for this occasion only, was to have no slaves or slave fittings or adjuncts on board, and after a chase of some two or three hundred miles to the southward, was to permit herself to be caught, only to be released again, of course, after an exhaustive overhaul.
It was an admirable scheme, beautifully simple, and could scarcely fail to achieve complete success, but for the fact that Captain Harrison had contrived to obtain full particulars of it, and therefore knew exactly how to frustrate the plan. His plot was as simple as that of the slavers: he would proceed in the Psyche to the scene of operations, and when the decoy schooner made her appearance she would be permitted to go on her way unmolested, while a boat expedition would be dispatched up the river to the town of Olomba, where the vessels actually engaged in shipping the two thousand blacks would be captured flagrante delicto.
Naturally we were all thrown into a high state of jubilation at the receipt of this intelligence; for it promised us a slice of good luck of such magnitude as very seldom fell to the lot of a single cruiser. To convey two thousand negroes across the Atlantic at once would necessitate the employment of at least three large ships, the value of which might be roughly calculated at, upon the very lowest estimate, ten thousand pounds each, or thirty thousand pounds in all, besides which there would be the head-money upon two thousand negroes, amounting altogether to quite a nice little sum in prize-money for a cruise of probably less than a month’s duration. Oh, how we chuckled as we pictured to ourselves the effect which the news of so magnificent a coup would create upon the minds of the rest of the Slave Squadron. The Psyche, from her phenomenal lack of speed, and general unsuitability for the service upon which she was employed, had, with her crew, become the butt and laughing-stock of every stupid and scurrilous jester on the coast, and many a time had we been made to writhe under the lash of some more than ordinarily envenomed gibe; but now the laugh was to be on our side; we were going to demonstrate to those shallow, jeering wits the superiority of brains over a clean pair of heels.
Of course we were all in a perfect fever of impatience to get to sea and make the best of our way to the scene of action, lest haply we should arrive too late and find the birds flown; but the skipper retained his coolness and would permit nothing to be done that could by any possibility suggest to the slavers the idea that the faintest hint of their audacious scheme had been allowed to get abroad. He insisted that we had plenty of time and to spare, and actually remained in harbour three whole days after the information had reached him. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, we weighed and stood out to sea, beating off the land against the sea-breeze until we ran into the calm belt between the sea-breeze and the trade-wind. Here we remained motionless for more than an hour until the trade-wind gradually ate its way inshore and reached 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—