A table covered with the union-jack was placed upon the quarter-deck, under the penthouse roof of the hulk, at which sat the British consul in his war-paint, surely the best of good fellows and finest of officers. Poor fellow! He never wore his war-paint again, as the sequel will show. On each side of the consul sat a wandering M.P. and myself as visitors; and next to us, again, sat Captain Barrow, the secretary of the governor of the Gold Coast, who was down here to prepare for a Niger recruiting expedition; and Captain Von Donop of Her Majesty’s ship _Decoy_, whose orders would not allow him to bring his ship into the pestilent river, but who came in himself, accompanied by two black Houssa troops. In a semicircle in front of us sat the Bonny chiefs; and similarly behind us were ranged the New Calabar chiefs, most of whom carried a large portion of their wealth round their necks in the form of enormous coral beads, of almost fabulous value, and some of whom had their arms literally covered with beautiful ivory bangles. In advance of the Bonny-men sat King George, a fine, tall, well-educated young negro, well known in London, and a very favourable specimen of his race, but an utter cipher in his so-called kingdom; a well-dressed and well-behaved enough young oil-merchant, but, from a regal point of view, a decided fraud, as his father was before him. It had been proposed that the neighbouring King Ja-Ja of Opobó should act as arbitrator in the dispute, which was really between Bonny and New Calabar, the insurgent Will Braid and Yellow being quite powerless to resist their sovereign without the Bonny-men’s assistance; and across the thick yellow haze and sheets of falling rain, which blurred the endless vista of mangrove swamps, we all stretched our eyes to watch for the arrival of King Ja-Ja. But Ja-Ja had once, and not so long ago, been a Bonny chief himself; and after many years of fierce warfare with his great rival, the mighty Oko Jumbo, had slipped away one night in the dark with all his people, his wives, and his riches, and founded a kingdom for himself a few miles away on the Opobó river, where he had waxed rich and powerful; so the wily old Ja-Ja thought it wisest to avoid the reaches of the Bonny, even with the king-making consul as his friend, for who could tell whither the far-reaching vengeance of the dread Oko might extend? So Ja-Ja sent a very diplomatic message, saying he had mistaken the day, and hoped to see the consul next week to talk over the matter at Opobó.