‘We had good food and good water; we grew stout again, lusty, and strong. A moon passed away, and then we saw land, and a city of the white men. The city was called Porto Bello. We were sold there. My master took me up far into great mountains, where there was gold. The gold was down in the earth. The slaves dug holes in the sides of the steep hills. We crawled into these holes. We dug and hammered in dark places under ground, and white men with whips lashed us if we stopped to rest. But I longed and panted again for rivers and the sea. I grew weak, and my arms were soft and thin, and a spirit whispered to me, and I put earth and clay into my mouth, and swallowed them. Other slaves did the same, and slowly they died, and flew back to Africa. I wanted to die, and I ate much clay. I was very sick and weak, but they flogged me with whips, until I crawled into the holes, digging and hollowing under the earth for gold. At last—’ ‘At last,’ said Captain Garbo, ‘you have got so far with your story, that I may finish it for you. Being on a visit to see some of the gold mines of Darien, the overseer of one of them told me that he was losing almost all his negroes of the disease or superstition peculiar, I believe, to those Africans and called ‘dirt-eating.’ He pointed out to Wooroo there, as one of them who was dying the fastest, and on my speaking to him, he told me what he has several times repeated, that he was a great swimmer and a diver. So such being the case, and being then, as now, much engaged in the pearl fishery, I bought the fellow for a trifle, took him down to the coast, and I am bound to say that a better hand under water never plunged over a boat. As soon as he was afloat, he recovered his health and spirits fast; and now, I suppose, there are not two men, white or black, in the fleet, that the fellow could not grasp in either of his hands, and smash their heads together.’ As soon as his master had interrupted him, and bade him cease speaking, Wooroo lost all the look of intelligence and excitement which had gleamed in his eyes. He sat like a brainless statue of black wood. He had performed his task, and at length he held out both hands towards the spirit-flask, and only muttered— ‘Give me the wages you said—make me much drunk.’ Captain Garbo, without a word, filled a large measure with brandy, and handed it to the savage, who rose with it, and walked to a corner in the deep-waist of the ship. Passing there an hour after, I saw the brute lying insensibly drunk, with the empty measure still grasped in his hand. CHAPTER XXIV. MY ADVENTURES AMONG THE PEARL FISHERS, AND MY ESCAPE FROM THE FLEET.