Page:Abstract of the evidence for the abolition of the slave-trade 1791.djvu/76

( 42 ) Mr. Claxton, the fourth surgeon examined on these points, declares the steerage and boys room to have been insufficient to receive the sick; they were therefore obliged to place together those that were, and those that were not diseased, and in consequence the disease and mortality spread more and more. The captain treated them with more tenderness than he has heard was usual, but the men were not humane. Some of the most diseased were obliged to keep on deck with a sail spread for them to lie on. This, in a little time, became nearly covered with blood and mucus, which involuntarily issued from them, and therefore the sailors, who had the disagreeable task of cleaning the sail, grew angry with the slaves, and used to beat them inhumanly with their hands, or with a cat. The slaves in consequence grew fearful of committing this involuntary action, and when they perceived they had done it, would immediately creep to the tubs, and there fit straining with such violence, as to produce a prolapsus ani, which could not be cured.

Some of the slaves on board the same ship, says Mr. Claxton, had such an aversion to leaving their native places, that they threw themselves overboard, on an idea that they should get back to their own country. The captain, in order to obviate this idea, thought of an expedient, viz. to cut off the heads of those who died, intimating to them, that if determined to go, they must return without their heads. The slaves were accordingly brought up to witness the operation. One of them seeing, when on deck, the carpenter standing with his hatchet up ready to strike off the head of a dead slave, with a violent exertion got loose, and flying to the place where the nettings had been unloosed, in order to empty the tubs, he darted overboard. The ship brought to, and a man was placed in the main chains to catch him, which he perceiving, dived under water, and rising again at a distance from the ship, made signs, which words cannot describe, expressive of his happiness in escaping. He then went down, and was seen no more. This circumstance deterred the captain from trying the expedient any more, and therefore he resolved for the future (as he saw they were determined to throw themselves overboard) to keep a strict watch; notwithstanding