We caught three or four heavy and voracious ones with a shark-hook while lying at anchor.

Only a few days before we arrived a negro child was carried off by one of these monsters, while bathing near the steps of the public landing-place, and devoured.
A few days before we left port I sculled ashore in the yawl, bearing a message from the mate to the captain.

It was nearly low water, the flood tide having just commenced, and I hauled the boat on the flats, calculating to be absent but a few minutes.

Having been delayed by business, when I approached the spot where I left the boat I found, to my great mortification, that the boat had floated with the rise of the tide, and was borne by a fresh breeze some twenty or thirty yards from the shore.

My chagrin may be imagined when I beheld the boat drifting merrily up the river, at the rate of three or four knots an hour! I stood on the shore and gazed wistfully on the departing yawl.