Of course I thanked him, as in duty bound; and then he informed me that the ambuscade had been completely successful, the entire cauffle having been captured with the exchange of less than a score of shots; and that although three of the slave-traders had been killed and five wounded, not one of our own men had been hurt.  But he added that the unhappy blacks were so completely worn out with their long march down to the coast that it would only be rank cruelty to release them at once, and that he had therefore decided to house them in the barracoons and give them a week's complete rest before starting them back on their long homeward march.