Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England The Black Bar, by George Manville Fenn. _______________________________________________________________________ HMS Nautilus is on patrol off the west coast of Africa, intercepting the American slave ships that were trying at that time to purchase cargoes of slaves from the dealers, and then to take them across the Atlantic in loathsome conditions. Slavery had been abolished in British territories in 1772, many years before, and the British were actively policing African waters in the hope of deterring the Americans and the Portuguese from retaining the slave trade. Nautilus has two midshipmen aboard, and one of these, Mark Vandean, is the hero of the story. The book is in the usual Manville Fenn style, with a succession of dreadful situations in which the hero finds himself. "How ever does he extricate himself from this?" the reader is continually asking. Of course he does, but it is often by means of something quite unexpected. A Black Bar is a device in heraldry, indicating that there is something shameful in the wearer's ancestry. NH ________________________________________________________________________ THE BLACK BAR, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. CHAPTER ONE. TWO MIDDIES AND A MONKEY. "We've done wrong, Van. There'll be a jolly row about it." "Get out! What's the good of talking now? You were as ready to have him as I was. Lie still, will you? or I'll pitch you overboard." Two middies talking in the stern-sheets of the cutter belonging to Her Majesty's fast little cruiser _Nautilus_, stationed on the west coast of Africa "blackberrying," so the men called their duty, Tom Fillot, one of their jokers, giving as the reason that the job was "black and berry nasty." The sun shone as it can shine in the neighbourhood of the equator, and the sea looked like so much glistening oil, as it slowly heaved up and sank with the long ground swell, the light flashing from the surface attacking the eyes with blinding power, bronzing the faces of some, peeling the noses of others. Setting aside the smart crew of the cutter in their white duck shirts and trousers and straw hats, with faces, necks, and hands of a mahogany brown, the two speakers may be taken as fair samples of what the sun could do with a fresh-coloured English lad of sixteen or seventeen. Mark Vandean, who leaned back and had wrenched himself round to sharply adjure something behind him in the bottom of the boat, was burned of a good warm Russian leather brown, while his companion, Bob Howlett, who held the rudder-lines, displayed in addition to ruddy brown cheeks a nose in a most disreputable state of rag.