Page:The American Slave Trade (Spears).djvu/186

 before the cruisers arrived at their range, and at that Homans set his largest anchor ready for dropping. Then he hauled the chain-cable out through the hawse-pipe and stretched it around the ship outside the rail, by means of slender stops, and to this chain he bound every slave on board — about 600 in number, piling them up at the rail and securing their armshackles to it by strong cords through the chain links. ‘There the slaves remained until the war-ship boats were heard coming near at hand, and then he cast loose the anchor, and down all those slaves were carried into the sea.

Although the crews of the war-ship boats had heard the noise and the outcries when the slaves were sent to the bottom, and the hold of the slaver contained indisputable evidence that the slaves had been there but a few minutes before the boats arrived, they had to let the slaver go free. Indeed, Homans jeered in their faces and defied them as they stood on his deck, but they had no redress.

The British war-ship Medina on boarding a slaver off the Gallinas River found no slaves on board. The officers learned afterward, however, that her captain really had had a mulatto girl in the cabin. He kept her for some time after the cruiser appeared, but seeing that he was to be boarded, and knowing that the presence of one slave was enough to condemn the ship, he tied her to a kedge anchor and dropped her into the sea. And so, as is believed, he drowned his own unborn flesh and blood, as well as the slave girl.

In view of the murders invariably committed on board the slavers, it is not without interest to recall that among those captured in 1828 was one on its way