Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England The Pirate Slaver, a Story of the West African Coast, by Harry Collingwood. ________________________________________________________________________ This is a very well-written book, especially from the nautical point of view. It is written as by a midshipman in a British warship patrolling the west coast of Africa, especially the Congo area, to try to prevent the slave traders, especially the Portuguese, from succeeding in their efforts to get the poor captured Africans over the Atlantic to Cuba in the most miserable conditions. But it doesn't work out as simply as that! For the hero, Harry Dugdale, is captured in an action, and would have been killed but for the interest taken in him by the slaver-captain's son. From this there sprang a deal with the slaver that Harry would assist with navigation and watch-keeping, but must go below decks when there is an action in progress. We won't tell you much more than that but cannot refrain from commenting that the book is at least as good as the best by Kingston, though in this book the action is almost entirely at sea, or at least on board a sea-going vessel. ________________________________________________________________________ THE PIRATE SLAVER, A STORY OF THE WEST AFRICAN COAST, BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD. CHAPTER ONE. THE CONGO RIVER. "Land ho! broad on the port bow!" The cry arose from the look-out on the forecastle of her Britannic Majesty's 18-gun brig _Barracouta_, on a certain morning near the middle of the month of November, 1840; the vessel then being situated in about latitude 6 degrees 5 minutes south and about 120 east longitude. She was heading to the eastward, close-hauled on the port tack, under every rag that her crew could spread to the light and almost imperceptible draught of warm, damp air that came creeping out from the northward. So light was the breeze that it scarcely wrinkled the glassy smoothness of the long undulations upon which the brig rocked and swayed heavily while her lofty trucks described wide arcs across the paling sky overhead, from which the stars were vanishing one after another before the advance of the pallid dawn. And at every lee roll her canvas flapped with a rattle as of a volley of musketry to the masts, sending down a smart shower from the dew-saturated cloths upon the deck, to fill again with the report of a nine-pounder and a great slatting of sheets and blocks as the ship recovered herself and rolled to windward.