The casualties in this last affair were, of course, by no means all on
the British side; we had suffered pretty severely in the three affairs
in which we had been involved since the departure of the boat expedition
from the ship, our total amounting to eleven killed and twenty-six
wounded; but the losses on the part of the enemy had been very
considerably greater, their dead, in this last fight alone, numbering
nineteen killed, while thirty-three wounded had been hurriedly bestowed
in one of the houses, to be attended to by the surgeons as soon as our
own people had been patched up; thus Hutchinson and Murdoch were kept
busy the whole of that night, while Copplestone, Keene, and Parkinson--
the three uninjured midshipmen--were impressed as ward-attendants to
keep watch over our own wounded, and administer medicine, drink, and
nourishment from time to time.
It was a most fortunate circumstance for all hands that this last
factory had been discovered and captured; for we were thus provided with
cool, comfortable living quarters, instead of being compelled to camp
out on the exposed beach opposite the wreck; and to this circumstance
alone may be attributed the saving of several of the more severely
wounded, to say nothing of the fact that we now occupied a position
which could be effectually defended from such attacks as that to which
we had been exposed on the spit during the previous night. Moreover, it
relieved the captain of a very heavy load of anxiety, since, but for the
fortunate circumstance of this capture, he would have had no alternative
but to have continued in the occupation of our makeshift camp on the
spit, it being impossible for him to undertake a boat voyage to Sierra
Leone with so many wounded on his hands. It is true that he might have
sent away the launch, with an officer and half a dozen hands, to Sierra
Leone to summon assistance; but his ambition was not to be so easily
satisfied. We had done splendid service in capturing two factories and
destroying one of them--the second would also, of course, be destroyed
when we abandoned it--but the loss of the _Psyche_ was a very serious
matter, which must be atoned for in some shape or another; and he soon
allowed it to be understood that he was in no particular hurry to quit
our present quarters, where the wounded were making admirable progress,
and the sound were comfortably housed, while provisions of all kinds
were plentiful and the water was good. But this, excellent as it was in
itself, was by no means all; with two such perfectly equipped factories
as we had found upon the river it was certain that the slave traffic on
the Fernan Vaz must have assumed quite formidable proportions; and it
was the skipper's idea that before our wounded should be lit to be
moved, one or more slavers would certainly enter the river, when it
would be our own fault if we did not capture them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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