"No, by the Portuguese."
"Before you had got rid of your cargo?"
Negoro hesitated a moment before replying.
"No," he said, presently, and added, "The Portuguese have changed their game: for a long time they carried on the trade themselves, but now they have got wonderfully particular; so I was caught, and condemned to end my days in the penitentiary at St. Paul de Loanda."
"Confound it!" exclaimed Harris, "a hundred times better be hanged!"
"I'm not so sure of that," the Portuguese replied, "for when I had been at the galleys about a fortnight I managed to escape, and got into the hold of an English steamer bound for New Zealand. I wedged myself in between a cask of water and a case of preserved meat, and so managed to exist for a month. It was close quarters, I can tell you, but I preferred to travel incognito rather than run the risk of being handed over again to the authorities at Loanda."
"Well done!" exclaimed the American, "and so you had a free passage to the land of the Maoris. But you didn't come back in the same fashion?"
"No; I always had a hankering to be here again at my old trade; but for a year and a half...."
He stopped abruptly, and grasped Harris by the arm.
"Hush," he whispered, "didn't you hear a rustling in that clump of papyrus?"