Captain Page found in Maranham a dull market for his East India goods. His provisions and his flour, however, bought a good price, but the greatest per centum of profit was made on cigars. One of the owners of the Clarissa stepped into an auction store in State Street one day, when a lot of fifty thousand cigars, imported in an English vessel from St. Jago de Cuba, were put up for sale. The duty on foreign cigars, at that time, was three dollars and a half a thousand. These cigars had been regularly entered at the custom house, and were entitled to debenture, that is, to a return of the duties, on sufficient proof being furnished that they had been exported and landed in a foreign port. As there were few bidders, and the cigars were of inferior quality, the owner of the Clarissa bought the lot at the rate of three dollars per thousand, and put them on board the brig. They were sold in Maranham as "Cuban cigars" for fifteen dollars a thousand, and on the return of the brig the custom house handed over the debenture three dollars and a half a thousand! This was what may be called a neat speculation, certainly a SAFE one, as the return duty alone would have covered the cost and expenses! In the river, opposite the city, the current was rapid, especially during the ebb tide, and sharks were numerous. We caught three or four heavy and voracious ones with a shark-hook while lying at anchor. Only a few days before we arrived a negro child was carried off by one of these monsters, while bathing near the steps of the public landing-place, and devoured. A few days before we left port I sculled ashore in the yawl, bearing a message from the mate to the captain. It was nearly low water, the flood tide having just commenced, and I hauled the boat on the flats, calculating to be absent but a few minutes. Having been delayed by business, when I approached the spot where I left the boat I found, to my great mortification, that the boat had floated with the rise of the tide, and was borne by a fresh breeze some twenty or thirty yards from the shore. My chagrin may be imagined when I beheld the boat drifting merrily up the river, at the rate of three or four knots an hour! I stood on the shore and gazed wistfully on the departing yawl. There was no boat in the vicinity, and only one mode of arresting the progress of the fugitive. I almost wept through vexation. I hesitated one moment on account of the sharks, then plunged into the river, and with rapid and strong strokes swam towards the boat. I was soon alongside, seized the gunwale, and, expecting every moment that a shark would seize me by the leg, by a convulsive movement threw myself into the boat.