Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/266

 for many consecutive months there was no Dutch cruiser to patrol the coast; and even if there were, a slave ship could be captured only when flying a British or a Dutch flag; the French flag was therefore usually adopted. The indignant British Judge himself writes:— “Could I help quarrelling with a set of infidels who treated the treaty itself and the whole subject with derision? — I will mention one case, just as a sample of the spirit I had to contend with. I had with great labour and pains procured an order from the King of the Netherlands, that the cargo of a particular slave-ship seized in the act of smuggling in slaves (consisting of five young Africans in the prime of health and youth) should be free, according to the treaty, and delivered over to the Government — instead of which, they sold to the planters all these fine young Africans, and took an equal number of old superannuated and crippled negroes, and giving them a nominal liberty, sent word that the order of the King had been complied with.”

The shape in which this quarrel came to light was this. Before the ten years were expired (perhaps before half of the period — I have no list to refer to) all the Commissary Judges had died from the effects of the climate, except Mr. Lefroy. He himself thought that his own death was at hand, and wished to leave behind him a strong and sounding protest against the evasion of the treaty, and against the specially polluted and cruel slavery of the Dutch colony, and also against (to use his own epithets) “the revolting, frightful, all-crime-comprising, all-depravity-inducing, all-humanity-deriding, heaven-outraging, and demoniacal practice, the West Indian Slave Trade.” He accordingly wrote a Novel, with notes and an epilogue, and sent it to England to be printed without the author’s name. Copies arrived at Surinamin the year 1826. What must have been the surprise of the Governor and the highest officials on receiving as a present a volume of 324 pages, with the title-page and dedicatory epistle:—

The volume is a romance in which fiction as to names and as to exact occurrences is a framework for true statements and anecdotes. Outalissi is a slave, the chief of an African village, who with all his people was conveyed to Dutch Guiana in a French ship commanded by Captain Legere. Bob Jackson, an English sailor, was one of the crew, and afterwards made a deposition in the presence of Captain Bentinck, of which the following is the substance:—

“Captain Ledger, as they calls him, seeing me unemployed, said I was a good likely sea-looking lad, and asked if I had a mind to take a run with him to Africa for a cargo of mules. Being quite out of prog, and rather sulky, I said I didn’t care, and he took me aboard with him immediately. When we came into the Bight of Benin, I soon found what a cargo of mules meant, and one of the men, an Englishman like myself, said he know’d of a king as lived somewhere in those parts, about twenty miles up the country, that had taken him home and cured him of a fever once when he was wrecked upon that coast, and that if the captain Mould send a dozen hands with him, and give a trifle head-money, he’d bring away the whole village, king and all. So I was ordered of the party, &c.” The attack began by setting the village on fire; then the people were captured, but Outalissi hid himself in his woods. He lost his liberty, however, by leaving his hiding-place; the king “came stealing out of the woods to reach an oyster, I thinks ’twas as Bill said, or some such lubberly lingo as he larned when he was a soldier, for this Bill isn’t above a half-bred sort of a land swab of a sailor after all.” (The author explains that Bob was trying to say reconnoitre.) On being asked why he did not make an affidavit before the Commissioners, Bob replied that as an Englishman he would be liable to be sent to England to be tried and hanged for slave-trading, and “they wouldn’t believe that I didn’t know what mules meant when this here Frenchman engaged me.”

I give some specimens of dialogues introduced in this tale:—

Page 45. “There are different modes of conducting all employments,” said Mr. Cotton. “Captain Legère, for example, never stows above three mules to a ton, or loses more than a third of his cargo on a voyage, and his decks are as clean nearly as those of a man-of-war. I will not, however, deny that it would be desirable to avoid even such a waste of valuable life and muscle as that; but the risk and penalties are now so heavy as to compel the traders, like