Under these apprehensions I was to pass the night, and to prepare for my appearance before certainly the _blackest!_ tribunal that ever sat in judgment. I, however, confined my reflections to the best means of destroying my baggage, including my military appointments; which I happily effected by putting trunks and all out of the cabin window in the dead of the night, with a weight attached sufficient to sink them. The silence of the night, interrupted only by the murmurs of the ocean—the clamours of the guard, and the distant sounds from the shore, induced a stronger degree of melancholy than I, perhaps, ever experienced.——A confused idea of my fate, with the _shame_ rather than the terrors of an ignominious death, revolving in my mind, deprived me of the possibility of rest, or the smallest preparation for the event so soon and so harshly announced. In the morning I was taken before a black general, named Muro, whose appearance augured well, for he bore the principal mythological characteristics of justice—he was _blind of an eye_. He interrogated me, and insisted I was not an American, but an English spy reconnoitering the coast. He informed me, that on the morrow I should be tried by a General Court Martial—and dismissed me. I was then conducted to a dark prison, with the usual concomitants of wretchedness, and treated as one who meditated some dire plot against the happiness of their country. I had no bed, nor other provision but some coarse dry fish which I could not eat. Next morning, at ten o’clock, I was regularly brought before a military court, composed of twelve general officers.—All I could plead in my behalf would not avail me, not having the proper passports, or American certificates; in fact, my trial _was prompt and decisive_—I was condemned to suffer DEATH on the next day! The master of the vessel, poor Frazer, with great dignity of character and the most affectionate solicitude, exerted the utmost of his little power by protesting against the judgment, and insisting I was an American—but it was without effect, and I was remanded to my cell, loaded with chains, and consigned to misery, till the sentence of the Court should be transmitted to TOUSSAINT, without whose sanction it could not be executed. For fourteen days I lay suspended between life and death, without any other consolation than the kindness of my gaoler, whose taciturnity extended to inform me, every night, I should be _hanged_ on the next day. To afford me repose, I was furnished with dried sugar-canes, and was ill supplied nightly with coarse flesh and water—the cheering delusions of hope no longer lightened my imagination, and I abandoned all human projects for ever.[4]