As the weather was very hot I always slept in a little place on deck called a bunk, a thing more like a dog-kennel than aught else I can compare it to, excepting that the hole for entrance and exit was somewhat larger than that generally used for the canine species. I always slept with a pistol (revolvers were unknown in those days) under my pillow. Luckily for me that I did so, as the result will show. I had remarked (this I thought of afterwards) that the prisoner captain and some of his men had been whispering together a good deal lately; but not being in the slightest degree suspicious I thought nothing of it. One evening I retired to my sleeping place as usual, after having passed a pleasant chatty evening with my prisoner. I was settling myself to sleep, in fact I think I was asleep as far as it would be called so, for I had from habit the custom of sleeping with one eye open, when I saw or _felt_ the flash of a knife over my head. The entrance to my couch was very limited, so that my would-be murderer had some difficulty in striking the fatal blow. Instinct at once showed me my danger. To draw my pistol from under my pillow was the work of a second; to fire it into the body of the man who was trying to stab me, that of another. A groan and a heavy fall on the deck told me what had happened, and springing out of my sleeping berth I found my ci-devant friend the captain lying on his face, dead as a door nail. In the meantime I heard a row in the fore-part of the ship. On going forward I saw one of the prisoners in the act of falling overboard, and another extended full length on the deck, while my stalwart quarter-master was flourishing a handspike with which he had knocked one of his assailants overboard and floored the other. Now it will be asked what was the man at the wheel doing? Hereby hangs a tale. He swore that he heard or saw nothing. Considering this sufficient evidence of his guilt, I put him in irons. Shortly afterwards he confessed the whole story. It seems that a conspiracy had been planned among the prisoners to retake the ship--that the man at the wheel had been bribed to let free two of the prisoners, under promise of a large reward if the result had been the retaking of the ship. The only provision he made was that he was to take no murderous action against his countrymen. The man at the helm and the quarter-master being the only men on deck, and I being gone to roost, all seemed easy enough, but Providence willed it otherwise. I buried the captain in the sea without further ceremony; the man who fell overboard I suppose was drowned (I did not try to pick him up); the man knocked down was put in irons, and all went smoothly for the rest of the voyage; but when I arrived at the Cape of Good Hope without the captain, the lawyers who defended the ship wanted to make out that I had murdered him, and I was very nearly sent to prison on the charge of murder.