Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason.  I first came to understand anything about “the man without a country” one day when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board.  An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few minutes, he sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him who could speak Portuguese.  We were all looking over the rail when the message came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain asked Who spoke Portuguese.  But none of the officers did; and just as the captain was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as he understood the language.  The captain thanked him, fitted out another boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.

When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want to.  Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the nastiness.  There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience’ sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner’s crew.  The negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him in every dialect, and patois of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to the Parisian of Beledeljereed.

As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had mounted in desperation, and said:—­

“For God’s love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand something?  The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them.  I knocked that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him.  And then I talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I’ll be hanged if they understood that as well as they understood the English.”

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.

“Tell them they are free,” said Vaughan; “and tell them that these rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough.”

Nolan “put that into Spanish,”—­that is, he explained it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of the negroes as could understand them.  Then there was such a yell of delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan’s feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous worship of Vaughan, as the deus ex machina of the occasion.

“Tell them,” said Vaughan, well pleased, “that I will take them all to Cape Palmas.”