How long I remained in this state of wretchedness I cannot tell, for I soon lost count of time and indeed at last sank into a state of semi- delirium; but I think from subsequent calculations it must have been about ten or twelve days after the date of my incarceration that I was aroused once more to a complete consciousness of my surroundings by observing that a change had occurred in the motion of the ship. She no longer pitched and rolled as does a vessel in the open sea, but slid along--as I could tell by the gurgling sound of the water along her bends--upon a perfectly even keel except for the slight list or inclination due to the pressure of the wind upon her sails. I conjectured that she must have arrived at the end of her voyage and entered the Kwara river, a conjecture that was shortly afterward confirmed by the sounds on deck of shouted orders and the bustle and confusion attendant upon the operation of shortening sail, soon followed by the splash of an anchor from the bows and the rumble of the stout hempen cable through the hawse-pipe. Then ensued a period of quiet of several hours' duration, broken at length by the appearance of the carpenter and another seaman who, having removed my irons, gruffly ordered me to follow them up on deck. I felt altogether too wretchedly ill, and too utterly indifferent respecting my fate, to ask these men any questions, but contrived, by almost superhuman exertion, to climb up the perpendicular ladder which led to the deck; and when I presently emerged from the foetid atmosphere of the hold into the free air and dazzling sunshine of what proved to be early morning, I was so overcome by the sudden transition that I swooned away. I must have remained in a state of complete unconsciousness for several hours, for when at length I again opened my eyes and looked about me the sun was nearly overhead, and I was lying unbound in the bottom of a long craft that my slowly returning senses at length enabled me to recognise as a native dug-out canoe. She was about forty feet long by four feet beam and about two feet deep; and was manned by thirty as ferocious- looking savages as one need ever wish to see. They were stark naked, save for a kind of breech-clout round the loins, and squatted in pairs along the bottom of the canoe, plying short broad-bladed paddles with which they seemed to be urging their craft at a pretty good pace through the water. A big, brawny, and most repulsive-looking savage, who was probably the captain of the craft, sat perched up in the stern, steering with a somewhat longer and broader-bladed paddle, and urging his crew to maintain their exertions by continually giving utterance to the most hair-raising shrieks and yells.