As no one took the trouble to investigate the facts and contradict the malicious lie, I have thought it but justice to tell the entire story, and exculpate a gentleman who met a terrible death in the bold prosecution of his duty. CHAPTER LVII. I took the earliest opportunity to apprise Don Pedro Blanco of the mishap that had befallen his factor's limb, so that I might receive the prompt aid of an additional clerk to attend the more active part of our business. Don Pedro's answer was extremely characteristic. The letter opened with a draft for five hundred dollars, which he authorized me to bestow on the widow and orphans of Governor Findley, if he left a family. The slaver of Gallinas then proceeded to comment upon my Quixotic expedition; and, in gentle terms, intimated a decided censure for my immature attempt to chastise the negroes. He did not disapprove my _motives_; but considered any revengeful assault on the natives unwise, unless every precaution had previously been taken to insure complete success. Don Pedro hoped that, henceforth, I would take things more coolly, so as not to hazard either my life or his property; and concluded the epistle by superscribing it: "To "_Senor_ POWDER, "_at his Magazine_, "NEW SESTROS." * * * * * The slug that struck the upper part of my foot, near the ankle joint, tore my flesh and tendons with a painfully dangerous wound, which, for nine months, kept me a prisoner on crutches. During the long and wearying confinement which almost broke my restless heart, I had little to do save to superintend the general fortunes of our factory. Now and then, an incident occurred to relieve the monotony of my sick chair, and make me forget, for a moment, the pangs of my crippled limb. One of these events flashes across my memory as I write, in the shape of a letter which was mysteriously delivered at my landing by a coaster, and came from poor Joseph, my ancient partner on the Rio Pongo. Coomba's spouse was in trouble! and the ungrateful scamp, though forgetful of my own appeals from the _Chateau of Brest_, did not hesitate to claim my brotherly aid. Captured in a Spanish slaver, and compromised beyond salvation, Joseph had been taken into Sierra Leone, where he was now under sentence of transportation. The letter hinted that a liberal sum might purchase his escape, even from the tenacious jaws of the British lion; and when I thought of old times, the laughable marriage ceremony, and the merry hours we enjoyed at Kambia, I forgave his neglect. A draft on Don Pedro was readily cashed at Sierra Leone, notwithstanding the paymaster was a slaver and the jurisdiction that of St. George and his Cross. The transaction, of course, was "purely commercial," and, therefore, sinless; so that, in less than a month, Joseph and the bribed turnkey were on their way to the Rio Pongo.