"How are all the wounded this morning?" "All doing well, sir." "And Lennox, how is he?" The doctor laughed. "Oh, all right with him now, sir; but the poor fellow is awfully ashamed at the exhibition his messmates have told him he made yesterday. He is much better, however; and I hope will be out of his hammock this forenoon, if the weather keeps fine." I had a sort of anxiety to know, from my own observation, how the poor fellows were getting on; so I followed our friend, and descended with him in his visit to the sick and hurt. Almost the first man I spoke to was Lennox. "Glad to find you so much better, my man; I hope you feel yourself stronger this morning?" A faint blush spread over the poor fellow's thin wasted features, and he hesitated in his answer. At length he stammered out--"Thank you, sir; I am much better, sir." "Who is that blocking up the hatchway?"' said the doctor, as some dark body nearly filled the entire aperture. Presently the half-naked figure of Serjeant Quacco descended the ladder. He paid no attention to me, or any body else; but spoke to some one on deck in the Eboe tongue, when his wife appeared at the coamings of the hatchway, hugging and fondling the identical and most abominable little graven image we had seen in the fetish hut, as if it had been her child--her own flesh and blood. She handed it down to the black Serjeant, who placed it in a corner, nuzzling, and rubbing his nose all over it, as if he had been propitiating the tiny Moloch by the abjectness of his abasement. I was curious to see how Lennox would take all this, but it produced no effect: he looked with a quizzical expression of countenance at the figure for some time, and then lay back in his hammock, and seemed to be composing himself to sleep. I went on deck, leaving the negro and his sable helpmate below amongst the men, and was conversing with Mr Sprawl, who had by this time made his appearance; when we were suddenly startled by a loud shriek from the negress, who shot up from below, plunged instantly overboard, and began to swim with great speed towards the shore. She was instantly followed by our friend the serjeant, who for a second or two looked forth after the sable naiad, in an attitude as if the very next moment he would have followed her. I hailed the dingy Venus--"Come back, my dear--come back." She turned round with a laughing countenance, but never for a moment hesitated in her shoreward progress. "What sall become of me!" screamed Serjeant Quacco--"Oh, Lord, I sail lose my vife--debil fetch dem sailor buccra--cost me feefty dallar--Lose my vife I--dat de dam little fetish say mosh be save. Oh, poor debil dat I is I"--and here followed a long tirade in some African dialect, that was utterly unintelligible to us. "My good fellow, don't make such an uproar, will ye?" said I. "Leave your wife to her fate: you cannot better yourself if you would die for it."