my time had come.  Just then I looked on shore, and saw two of my men dragging some one from the water, and at that sight I struck out with one despairing kick, and managed to get near enough for two of the men to reach me; but that was all I knew of the affair until a little after sunset, when I became conscious of the fact that I was being well shaken, and I heard one of the men say, ’Cheer up, Mr. Perkins!  Your boat and all the men are on shore.’  This was such good news that I did not much mind the uncomfortable position in which I found myself.  I was covered with sand and stretched across a log about two feet high, my head on one side and my feet on the other.  The men had worked a long while to bring me to.  Three of the men were half-drowned and one injured.  We managed to get the boat in the river, but suffered awfully from thirst.  The next morning we lost our way, and, after pulling around till mid-afternoon, we stumbled on some natives fishing.  We followed them home, but found them such a miserable, bad-looking lot of negroes that we expected trouble.  Knowing that the native villages in the daytime are left in charge of the old men and women, and not knowing what might happen when the men came back, we killed some chickens, and, with some sweet potatoes, made quite a meal.  The strongest of us, myself and three others, got ready for a fight, while the rest manned the boat ready for our retreat.  Shortly after this the chief came back, and about a hundred men with him.  I told the chief I had come to pay him a visit, and we had a great palaver; but he would not give us anything to eat, and we made up our minds that it was a dangerous neighborhood; so we moved down on a sand-spit in sight of the ship, and there we stayed three days and nights.  We built a tent and fortification, traded off most of our clothes for something to eat, and slept unpleasantly near several hundred yelling savages.  All this while the ship could render no assistance; but on the third day the Kroomen came on shore with some oars, and, after trying all one day, we managed, just at night, to get through the surf and back to the ship.  It was a happy time for us, and I may say for all on board, as they had been very anxious about us.  Not far north of this, if you happen to get cast ashore, they kill and eat you at once, for cannibalism is by no means extinct among the negroes.”

The sequel of this perilous experience was that all of them were stricken down with the dread African fever which, if it does not at all times kill, but too often shatters the constitution beyond remedy; and the fact that five officers, including one commanding officer, and a proportionate number of men, had been invalided home, and another commanding officer had died, all due to climatic causes, attests the general unhealthfulness of the coast.  Other interesting incidents and narrow escapes, in which Master Perkins had part, might be told, did not lack of space forbid; but enough has been shown to impress the fact that African cruising, even in a well-found man-of-war, is not altogether the work and pleasure of a holiday; yet, in looking over young Perkins’s letters, we cannot forbear this description of the expertness of the Kroomen in landing through the surf.