“Croire Anglais tues tous Francais.  Voir Francais.  Trouver pere.  Contents, tous contents.  Envoie commandant a nous.  Pitit-Roi.  Contents, tous contents.  Tous femmes, tous filles a toi, tous contents!” “Think English killed all French.  See Frenchman.  Find father.  Glad, all glad.  Sent captain to us.  Little king.  Glad, all glad.  All women, all girls for you.  All glad!” And the young ladies smiled still broader, and contorted their bodies still more violently, while the tomtoms crashed louder than ever.  It was clear the crowd expected something, and as it did not see any sign of what it desired, the old negro became yet more explicit both in speech and gesture.  The populace actually expected me to provide them with a scion of the royal race!  And the commander of the Favorite, Larrieu, flew at me instantly.  “Come, Monseigneur,” he cried, “here’s a chance of distinguishing yourself.  Noblesse oblige!”

“My dear fellow,” I replied, “I leave you to represent me,” and I beat an ignominious retreat, which the crowd did not misunderstand, to judge by the grunts of disappointment I overheard.

That night I dined with Cha-Cha off silver plate, under the light shed by church candelabra and candlesticks; and the toasts of the King and Queen, and Prosperity to France, were each saluted by twenty-one guns, for Cha-Cha’s factory and harem, in which he was said to keep a thousand women, formed a real fortress, bristling with cannon, and with the additional natural defence of the lagoon before it.  Most of Cha-Cha’s children were present at the dinner, and several captains of slave ships, brimful of stories of their adventures.  Cha-Cha made me a present of a box of Havanas, the like of which the King of all the Spains had never smoked.  I handed it over to Larrieu, and the next day I returned on board my ship, not without having one or two encounters.

The first of these was with the freshly-landed crews of the slavers which had been captured the week before, about fifty determined-looking men of all nationalities, who stopped me and requested in the most arrogant manner to be taken to some port where they might reengage—­an impossible thing for me to do.

The second encounter was more painful.  A crowd of lame or sickly slaves escaped from the barracoons and threw themselves at my feet, clinging to my clothes, wailing and beseeching me to buy them.  The poor wretches, who had no market value, and whom therefore the King did not care to feed, expected to be sent shortly to Abomey for human sacrifices.  There were hundreds of them—­a most distressing sight.