1829.] TheManqflll-Omen. 209 



eagerness to overpower my understanding, had very fully set me the 

 example, the tone was rather louder than became the business. The 

 dialogue concerned myself; and, to my sincere surprise, I heai'd the 

 slave-dealer striking a bargain for the disposal of my faculties with the 

 owner of a Sicilian chaloupe, who had joined us at our coffee, and 

 enjoyed with infinite laughter the capture of the antiquarian. The bar- 

 gain was struck in my hearing ; and, if I had had any vanity, it would have 

 been completely punished by the low price that I bore in the market. 

 But my time was to come. IMy first thought was to start up, and shame 

 both the traffickers j but my second thought told me that the probable re- 

 ward of my putting them to the trouble of making apologies, would be a 

 brace of bullets through my head. I lay in the most profound sleep that 

 ever man wore upon his features, in the chance of having his throat cut ; 

 and, by degrees, had their whole story, and discovered they were rapidly 

 getting drunk. The talking ceased : I awoke as they fell asleep. There 

 was not a soul within view of the tent, which we had pitched out of sight 

 of our rabble of drivers, to carry on the Englishman's transfer more at our 

 ease. I arose, and made a rapid examination of their persons, which I 

 relieved of every temptation to the lovers of watches, purses, and bills 

 of exchange. The tent was next inquired into, thoroughly cleared, its 

 portable contents thrown into a pair of panniers, and, on the Sicilian's 

 mule, I took my departure under the shelving shore, in the cool of an 

 evening that would have set a lover of the picturesque out of his senses. 

 But I had eyes for other thingS-than seas blue as indigo, and gold and 

 silver tissued skies. My eyes were fully employed in looking out for 

 the chaloupe ; and gladly I saw the smoke of its little stove rising from 

 behind one of the ridges covered with wild orange-trees that are so 

 common along the African shore. I found the crew already more than 

 tired of waiting for their captain, and prodigiously anxious to set sail 

 with a little cargo of IMoorish sheep, which they had purloined the night 

 before. The fear of impalement was in every rogue's face ; and never 

 was man received with more popularity than I, on displaying the cap- 

 tain's papers, of which I had taken especial care, and giving liis order 

 for instantly hoisting sail, and steering for Messina. 



" The distance of the Moorish coast from the Italian is the most conve- 

 nient one in the world for sweeping off the superfluous population of 

 my countrymen. A single puff of wind from the south, and twenty-four 

 hours, carries the corsair clear into the Strait; and he must be an 

 unlucky devil of a captain who does not, in the course of a night, pick 

 up a cargo, whether of monks or princes. But it was our purpose not 

 to relieve, l^ut to increase the burthen of the soil. Our passage was 

 disastrous from the first half-hour. The wind changed to all the points 

 of the compass at once. My seamanship was good lor nocuing, with a 

 crew of such piety, that, at every roll of the httle chaloupe, they fell on 

 their knees, roaring out to the Virgin ; and I began- at last to tremble 

 for my doubloons. One entire week saw us tossing about in billows as 

 liigh as the mast-head ; and, on my soul, I do not believe that, in the 

 entire week, we stirred a hundred yards from the same spot. My crew 

 were half dead, and had even given up praying to the IMadonna ; and I 

 was taking what I thought a last meal upon our last biscuit, when a 

 brigantine shot by us full of as ill-looking ruffians as ever bore arms in 

 the service of monarchy. They sent up a roar of laughter at our bat- 

 tered appearance, and left us to go to the bottom if we would. But they 



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