Chased and Chaser—A Strange Reunion.

In my many talks with this grand old rover, scientist and philosopher, all this, a bookful of it, was gradually unfolded. But the strangest happening of all was an incident which occurred when I chanced to be staying at his hotel in 1894 or 1895. One of the guests who arrived from Auckland about the same time was a veteran naval officer, Captain Lang, of H.M.S. Tauranga (he was afterwards drowned, on the China Station). The two old sailors soon were deep in yarns of the rolling sea and the ships and men of other days. Lang mentioned that he had seen something of slaver-chasing when he was a midshipman on the West African Station, sometime before 1860.

“Why,” said my friend, cocking that keen blue gaze of his on the naval man, “I saw a bit of slave-chasing too, but I was the chased. I was one of the crew, shipped at Bahia, of a big Brazilian schooner that an English brig captured with a full hold of slaves. We were fast, but she was faster; our Spaniola skipper hove-to when she put a shot over us.”

“What was the name of your vessel?' asked Captain Lang.

“The ‘Tris,’” said the other. “The British brig that caught us and took us to St. Helena was called the ‘Cygnet,’”

“By Christmas—the ‘Cygnet’!” the Captain exclaimed. “Why, that was my ship—that was the old brig! And the ‘Iris’ was one of the slavers we nabbed. I was a youngster in the ‘Cygnet’ when we captured you. You must have been just about my age; and we turned you, adrift on the old rock. Good Lord, to think of it!”

“Old sailors are apt to meet again,” said “Taare,” in his dry way. “I had better luck on the East Coast, and I learned Arabic and Swahili there. Well, here's to our old shipmates.”