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"It's no joke when the doctor of one of these isolated gunboats himself falls ill," continues the surgeon after a pause. "You might think it easy for him to prescribe for himself, but this fever knocks you down like a club, and you haven't strength left to brush a mosquito off your face. I had a touch of it at Lagos, and I know what I am telling you.
Lagos, one of the chief strongholds of the slave-dealers, which the Yorubans most had to fear, has since been taken possession of by the British, and has been declared an English colony or settlement; but Dahomey, governed by its bloodthirsty monarch, with his army of six thousand Amazons and five thousand male warriors, still exists as a terrible scourge to the surrounding territories.
Never had England played so great a part in the history of mankind as in the year 1759. It was a year of triumphs in every quarter of the world. In September came the news of Minden, and of a victory off Lagos. In October came tidings of the capture of Quebec. November brought word of the French defeat at Quiberon.
The former in particular, whose loss he more especially lamented, had been captured by the Lagos people, who were his most inveterate enemies. When this unfortunate man was taken prisoner, his right hand was immediately nailed to his head, and the other lopped off like a twig.
But although the West Coast trader has at his disposal these vessels, he has by no means an easy time, or cheap methods, of getting his stuff on board, save at Sierra Leone and in the Oil Rivers. Of the Gold Coast surf, and Lagos bar I have already spoken, and the Calemma as we call the South-west Coast surf is nearly, if not quite as bad as that on the Gold Coast.
In our own possessions the making of plantations is being carried on with much energy by Messrs. Miller Brothers on the Gold Coast, by several private capitalists, including Mr. A. L. Jones of Liverpool, at Lagos; by the Royal Niger Company in their territory, and by several head Agents in the Niger Coast Protectorate.
Rooke and Shovel met off Lagos, and there held a council of war, in which the former, who was senior, declared that his instructions forbade his undertaking anything without the consent of the kings of Spain and Portugal.
As the court of Portugal had made remonstrances to the British ministry against the proceedings of the English squadron under admiral Boscawen, which had attacked and destroyed some French ships under the Portuguese fort in the bay of Lagos, his Britannic majesty thought proper to send the earl of Kinnoul as ambassador-extraordinary to Lisbon, where that nobleman made such excuses for the insult of the English admiral, as entirely removed all the misunderstanding between the two crowns; and could not fail of being agreeable to the Portuguese monarch, thus respected, soothed, and deprecated by a mighty nation, in the very zenith of power and prosperity.
The past was past what of the future? He was going back to her. He was to have the torturing happiness of seeing her again but what would his re-entry into her life mean to her? What had these two years of which he knew nothing done for her? There had been an accumulated mail waiting for him at Lagos. She had written regularly but she had told him nothing.
"We was lying in Forcados river, shifting cargo to the Lagos boat alongside. Barret, my townie, was on board her; he'd made a run in Arcturus, and told me about the wreck. When she struck, Mr. Herries swung out number two surf-boat and Barret was her bowman. He went to the lazaret with Herries and they got up some bags of special gum and some heavy boxes.
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