Now, our own skipper, Captain Harrison, was particularly keen upon this sort of work, and was exceptionally well qualified to achieve success in it.  For, in the first place, he was a West Indian by birth, being the son of a Trinidad sugar-planter, and he consequently spoke Creole Spanish as fluently as he did his mother tongue.  Also his physical characteristics were such as to be of the greatest assistance to him in such enterprises; for he was tall, lean, and muscular, of swarthy complexion, with thick, black, curly hair, and large, black, flashing eyes, suggesting that he carried a touch of the tar-brush, although, as a matter of fact, he had not a drop of negro blood in him.  He was a man of dauntless courage, knowing not the meaning of fear, and absolutely revelling in situations of the most extreme peril, yet gifted with quite as much discretion as was needful for a man entrusted with heavy responsibilities involving the lives of many of his fellow-men.  He never sought danger for danger's sake alone, and never embarked in an enterprise which his reason assured him was hopelessly impracticable, but, on the other hand, he never hesitated to undertake the most perilous task if he believed he could see a way to its successful accomplishment.  It was his habit to assume a variety of disguises in which he would haunt the third and fourth rate taverns of Freetown, especially patronised by the slave-dealing fraternity, and mingling freely with these gentry, would boldly express his own views, adopted, of course, for the occasion, upon the various matters affecting the trade, or discuss with them the most promising schemes for baffling the efforts of the British cruisers.  He had noticed, very early in his career as an officer of the Slave Squadron, that it was always the _British_ who constituted the _bete noire_ of the slavers; the French they feared very little; the Americans not at all.