CHAPTER V.DEMARARA.
A circumstance occurred not long before our arrival at Demarara, which, being somewhat remarkable in its character, furnished a fruitful theme for conversation and comment.

This was the arrival of a vessel from Cadiz, with only one person on board.
It seems that a Captain Shackford, of Portsmouth, N.H., was the master and owner of a sloop of some sixty or eighty tons.

He proceeded to Cadiz, and there took in a cargo for Guiana.

When on the eve of sailing, his crew, dissatisfied with some of his proceedings, left the vessel.
Captain Shackford, a resolute but eccentric man, resolved not to be disappointed in his calculations, or delayed in his voyage by the desertion of his crew, and boldly put to sea on the day appointed for sailing, trusting in his own unaided efforts and energies to manage the vessel on a passage across the ocean of thirty-five hundred miles.

He was seventy-four days on his passage; but brought his vessel into port in tolerable order, having experienced no difficulty on his way, and losing only one day of his reckoning.
The arrival of a vessel in Demarara, under such singular circumstances, caused quite a sensation among the authorities, and gave rise to suspicions by no means favorable to the character of the captain as an honest man, and which his long, tangled locks and hirsute countenance for he had not combed his hair or shaved his face during the passage tended to confirm.