During our journey, neither the wind nor the rain had much abated.  It was quite dark on our arrival.  We found only one person, and he had been sitting up in expectation of us.  It was in vain that I asked him for a boat to put us across the water.  He said all the boatmen were in bed; and, if they were up, he was sure that none of them would venture out.  It was thought a mercy by all of them, that we were not lost last night.  Difficulties were also started about horses to take us another way.  Unable therefore to proceed, we took refreshment and went to bed.

We arrived at Bristol between nine and ten the next morning; but I was so ill, that I could go no further; I had been cold and shivering ever since my first passage across the Severn, and I had now a violent sore throat, and a fever with it.  All I could do was to see the witnesses off for London, and to assign them to the care of an attorney, who should conduct them to the trial.  For this purpose I gave them a letter to a friend of the name of Langdale.  I saw them depart.  The mother of William Lines accompanied them.  By a letter received on Tuesday, I learnt that they had not arrived in town till Monday morning at three o’clock; that at about nine or ten they found out the office of Mr. Langdale; that, on inquiring for him, they heard he was in the country, but that he would be home at noon; that, finding he had not then arrived, they acquainted his clerk with the nature of their business, and opened my letter to show him the contents of it; that the clerk went with them to consult some other person on the subject, when he conveyed them to the Old Bailey; but that, on inquiring at the proper place about the introduction of the witnesses, he learnt that the chief mate had been brought to the bar in the morning, and, no person then appearing against him, that he had been discharged by proclamation.  Such was the end of all my anxiety and labour in this affair.  I was very ill when I received the letter; but I saw the necessity of bearing up against the disappointment, and I endeavoured to discharge the subject from my mind with the following wish, that the narrow escape which the chief mate had experienced, and which was entirely owing to the accidental circumstances now explained, might have the effect, under Providence, of producing in him a deep contrition for his offence, and of awakening him to a serious attention to his future life[A].

[Footnote A:  He had undoubtedly a narrow escape, for Mr. Langdale’s clerk had learnt that he had no evidence to produce in his favour.  The slave-merchants, it seems, had counted most upon bribing those, who were to come against him, to disappear.]

I was obliged to remain in Bristol a few days longer in consequence of my illness; but as soon as I was able I reached London, when I attended a sitting of the commitee after an absence of more than five months.  At this commitee it was strongly recommended to me to publish a second edition of my Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, and to insert such of the facts in it, in their proper places, out of those collected in my late travels, as I might judge to be productive of an interesting effect.  There appeared also an earnest desire in the commitee, that, directly after this, I should begin my Essay on the Impolicy of the Slave-trade.