"And you are, I am aware, sufficiently popular with the people here to enable you to do so?" "I think I am," I said, with a modest acquiescence in an assertion which I felt to be so much to my credit. But I blushed for its untruth. "Then," said Sir Ferdinando, "there is nothing for it but that he must take you with him." There came upon me a sudden shock when I heard these words, which exceeded anything which I had yet felt. Me, the President of a foreign nation, the first officer of a people with whom Great Britain was at peace,--the captain of one of her gunboats must carry me off, hurry me away a prisoner, whither I knew not, and leave the country ungoverned, with no President as yet elected to supply my place! And I, looking at the matter from my own point of view, was a husband, the head of a family, a man largely concerned in business,--I was to be carried away in bondage--I, who had done no wrong, had disobeyed no law, who had indeed been conspicuous for my adherence to my duties! No opposition ever shown to Columbus and Galileo had come near to this in audacity and oppression. I, the President of a free republic, the elected of all its people, the chosen depository of its official life,--I was to be kidnapped and carried off in a ship of war, because, forsooth, I was deemed too popular to rule the country! And this was told to me in my own room in the executive chambers, in the very sanctum of public life, by a stout florid gentleman in a black coat, of whom I hitherto knew nothing except that his name was Brown! "Sir," I said, after a pause, and turning to Captain Battleax and addressing him, "I cannot believe that you, as an officer in the British navy, will commit any act of tyranny so oppressive, and of injustice so gross, as that which this gentleman has named." "You hear what Sir Ferdinando Brown has said," replied Captain Battleax. "I do not know the gentleman,--except as having been introduced to him at your hospitable table. Sir Ferdinando Brown is to me--simply Sir Ferdinando Brown." "Sir Ferdinando has lately been our British Governor in Ashantee, where he has, as I may truly say, 'bought golden opinions from all sorts of people.' He has now been sent here on this delicate mission, and to no one could it be intrusted by whom it would be performed with more scrupulous honour." This was simply the opinion of Captain Battleax, and expressed in the presence of the gentleman himself whom he so lauded. "But what is the delicate mission?" I asked.