corners of the fat blubber lips were drawn down with a most sour and evil expression, and all round them, and on the chin, were ragged sprouts of beard, like flakes of black wool stuck upon the grisly visage. Such was the tall diver, who was called by his African name of Wooroo. His speech was broken Spanish, which he did not speak half so well as his countryman, the short negro. But, in truth, he seldom spoke at all, being generally squatted on his hams in some remote corner of the vessel, where he would pass hours muttering to himself. He wore a pair of tattered old breeches, and upon his naked chest, fastened round his neck, there lay a sort of amulet, or charm, made of feathers, stuck through a ball of hard baked clay, crammed into a rude wooden case full of uncouth carvings. He was a worshipper of Ob, and this was his fetish. ‘Look at that hangdog thief Wooroo,’ said Garbo to me the second afternoon we were at sea. ‘That fellow has just two good qualities. He is the best diver who ever went into the sea, and he is tractable to me who am his owner. I took him from the mines among the mountains, and the animal, after his sort, is grateful. For, in truth, I believe that he is amphibious in his nature, and that the water is as necessary for him that he may live, as is land, and, perhaps, a little more so.’ In answer to my further inquiries, the captain said that he was a slave, brought from the Guinea coast, where of late a great many negroes had been delivered up bound by tribes hostile to them, and sold to Spaniards, Englishmen, Frenchmen, and others, who employed them in those sorts of work in the Indies, which white men cannot perform and live. Soon after this, imagining, from the sombre and brooding look of this savage, that he could if he pleased tell us some story of his nation and of his captivity which would be worth hearing, I communicated my thought to Garbo. The captain laughed. ‘What can the savage have to say,’ quoth he, ‘but that some other savage fetched him a blow on the head with a war-club, or battle-axe, and then sold him to some Spanish trader for a cup of strong waters? But you shall be gratified: that is, if the monster chooses to unloose his tongue.’ That night, the captain keeping the first watch, the weather being clear, and we and our consort sliding slowly over the long swells of the sea, the captain called the negro aft to where we sat upon the deck. The savage came with his usual slouching gait and scowling visage. ‘Wooroo,’ quoth the captain, ‘we want to hear something about you; where you were born, and how you came hither.’ The gigantic African only stared. ‘Come, now,’ says Captain Garbo, ‘tell us your story, Wooroo—tell us about what you were in Africa, and what you did there.’ The black at last opened his blubber lips, and replied, in broken Spanish, which I may render into English thus: ‘What am me to you? What you want hear about me for?’