If a slaver could not get a full cargo, and met with a weaker vessel which was full, it was at once attacked and plundered. Sometimes there would be desperate resistance, with the aid of the slaves. "I have seen the scuppers run with blood," said the captain. And so on, with much more of the same sort, all of which has since been recorded in the "Journal of Captain Canot," from which latter book I really learned nothing new. I might add the "Life of Hobart Pacha," whom I met many times in London. A real old-fashioned slaver was fully a hundred times worse than an average pirate, because he _was_ the latter whenever he wished to rob, and in his business was the cause of far more suffering and death. The captain was very fond of reading poetry, his favourite being Wordsworth. This formed quite a tie between us. He was always rather mild, quiet, and old-fashioned--in fact, muffish. Once only did I see a spark from him which showed what was latent. Captain Jack was describing a most extraordinary run which we had made before a gale from Gibraltar to Cape de Creux, which was, indeed, true enough, he having a very fast vessel. But the _Guinea_ captain denied that such time had ever been made by any craft ever built. "And I have had to sail sometimes pretty fast in my time," he added with one sharp glance--no more--but, as Byron says of the look of Gulleyaz, 'twas like a short glimpse of hell. Pretty fast! I should think so--now and then from an English cruiser, all sails wetted down, with the gallows in the background. But as I had been on board with Sam, the question was settled. We _had_ made a run which was beyond all precedent. I fancy that the captain, if he escaped the halter or the wave, in after years settled down in some English coast-village, where he read Wordsworth, and attended church regularly, and was probably regarded as a gentle old duffer by the younger members of society. But take him for all in all, he was the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat, and he always behaved to me like a perfect gentleman, and never uttered an improper word.