As soon as she was securely moored and a gangway plank rigged, I went aboard and had a good look at our latest acquisition.  There could be no doubt as to the fact that she was a slaver; for her slave-decks were already fitted, and she carried all the requisites, including meal and water, for the transport of a very large cargo of slaves.  She was, in fact, the largest slaver I ever saw, and had accommodation to--I had almost said _comfortably_--carry at least eight hundred slaves.  She was Spanish; named the _Dona Josefa_; hailed from Havana; was oak-built, coppered, and copper-fastened; was a brand-new ship, worth half a dozen _Psyches_; and her cabin accommodation aft was the most spacious and elegantly fitted that I had ever seen.  She was armed with eighteen twenty-four pounders, and carried a crew of ninety-eight, all told.  She was, in short, a most formidable ship; and, but for the fact of our having taken her by surprise as we did, she might have bade defiance to the slave squadron for years, and paid for herself twenty times over.