send off a message to a small creek close to the shipping, where the natives used to wait with their oil until it was jammed for, id est, agreed for, and order three or four canoes of oil to be sent off to me, though I had not seen its owner to agree with him as to what he was to get for it. I held this appointment for a little over six months, when, my senior having returned, I had to go back to my duties in Bonny under the chief agent of the firm, a Captain Peter Thompson, one of the kindest-hearted skippers that ever entered Bonny river. In those days we all had some nickname that we were known by amongst the natives, and another amongst the white men. Amongst the former he was called Calla Thompson, because he was short, in contradistinction to another Thompson who was tall, called Opo Thompson; but his name amongst the white men was Panter Thompson, owing to his inability to pronounce the "th" in panther during a discussion as to whether we had tigers or only panthers on the West Coast of Africa. Poor Panter, after a most successful voyage of a little over two years, was preparing to return home, and had only a few more weeks to remain in Bonny, when in stepping into his boat his foot slipped and he fell into the river at a point known to be infested with sharks. A brother skipper jumped into the boat, and actually clutched him by his cap at the same moment poor Panter said "I am gone, Ned!" no doubt feeling himself being drawn down by some hungry shark.
His son now commands one of the finest steamers of the African Steamship Company, and seems to have inherited in a marked degree all the good qualities of his father; so, travellers to West Africa, if you want a comfortable ship and a thorough good fellow to travel with
