After the old gentleman's steam had gone down a little I replied, 'Really, general, I hardly know how to answer you. Your daughter and I are very good friends, the place is most detestably dull, there is nothing to do, and if we amuse ourselves with a little love-making, surely there can be no great harm.' This rejoinder of mine made things worse; I thought the old boy would have had a fit. At last he said, 'The mail steamer leaves for England to-morrow; you shall go home by her, I order you to do so!' I replied that I should please myself, and that I was not under his orders. The general went away uttering threats. After he was gone I thought seriously over the matter. I calculated that my income of 120_l._ a year would scarcely suffice to keep a wife, and I decided to renounce my dream of love. I went to pay a farewell visit to my young lady, but found that she was locked up, so away I went and soon forgot all about it. Shortly afterwards I heard that the governor's daughter married the man whose leg I had lamed for his impertinence to me. My last adventure while employed in the suppression of the slave trade is perhaps worth describing. By international law it was ruled that a vessel on her way to Africa, if fitted out in a certain manner, whereby it was evident that she was employed in the nefarious traffic of slavery, was liable to capture and condemnation by the mixed tribunals, or in other words became the lawful prize of her captors. While cruising off Pernambuco we boarded a Portuguese vessel bound to Africa, so evidently fitted out for the purpose of slave trade that my captain took possession of her, and sent me to convey her to the Cape of Good Hope for adjudication. It was the usual thing to send the captain of a vessel so captured as a prisoner on board his ship, so that he might be interrogated at the trial. In this case the master and three of his crew were sent. The prize crew consisted of myself and six men. Now the captain was an exceedingly gentlemanlike man, a good sailor, and a first-rate navigator. At first I treated him as a prisoner, but by degrees he insinuated himself into my good graces to such an extent that after a while I invited him to mess with me, in fact, made a friend of him, little thinking of the serpent I was nourishing. For several days all went well. I was as unsuspicious as a child of foul play. We lived together and worked our daily navigation together, played at cards together, in fact were quite chums. The three men who were supposed to be prisoners were allowed considerable liberty, and as they had, as I found out afterwards, a private stock of grog stowed away somewhere, which they occasionally produced and gave to my men, they managed to be pretty free to do as they wished. For all that, I ordered that the three prisoners should be confined below during the night.