It was on the 2d of September, 1826, after a charming _dejeuner_, that I bade farewell to my friend Carlo on the deck of the Areostatico, cleared for the Cape de Verd isles, but, in truth, bound for the Rio Pongo. Our crew consisted of twenty-one scamps--Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, and mongrels. The Majorcan captain was an odd character to intrust with such an enterprise, and probably nowhere else, save in Havana at that period, would he have been allowed to command a slaver. He was a scientific navigator, but no sailor;--afraid of his shadow, he had not a particle of confidence in his own judgment; every body was listened to, and he readily yielded his opinions without argument or controversy. Our chief officer, a Catalonian cousin of the captain, made no pretensions to seamanship, yet he was a good mathematician. I still remember the laughs I had at the care he took of his lily-white hands, and the jokes we cracked upon his girl-like manners, voice, and conversation. The boatswain, who was in his watch, assured me that he rarely gave an order without humming it out to a tune of some favorite opera. In this fantastic group, I occupied the position of supernumerary officer and interpreter; but accustomed, as I had been, to wholesome _American_ seamanship and discipline, I trembled not a little when I discovered the amazing ignorance of the master, and observed the utter worthlessness of our crew. These things made me doubly vigilant; and sometimes I grieved that I was not still in Regla, or on the _paseo_. On the tenth day out, a northwester began to pipe and ripen to a gale as the sea rose with it. Sail had been soon diminished on the schooner; but when I was relieved in my watch by the first officer, I hinted to the captain that it would be best to lay the vessel to as soon as possible. We had been scudding before the tempest for some hours under a close-reefed foresail, and I feared if we did not bring our craft to the wind at once, we would either run her under, or be swamped in attempting the manoeuvre when the waves got higher. The captain, however, with his usual submission to the views of the wrong person, took the advice of the helmsman, who happened to be older than I, and the schooner was allowed to dash on either through or over the seas, at the speed of a racer.