Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/137

 the captain who brought them, fearing be had done wrong, meditated carrying or sending them back, but Mr. Jones, of Bristol, who had ships trading to Old Calabar, and hearing who they were, bad them taken from the ship, where they were in irons, by habeas corpus. After inquiry how they were brought from Africa, they were liberated, and put in one of Mr. Jones's ships for Old Calabar, where Captain Hall was, when they arrived in the ship Cato.

So satisfied were the people of Old Town, in 1767, of the sincerity of the captains who invited them, and of the New Town people, towards a reconciliation, that the night before the massacre, the chief man of Old Town gave to the chief man of New Town one of his favorite women as a wife. It was said that from three to four hundred persons were killed that day, in the ships, in the water, or carried off the coast. The king escaped from the ship he was in, by killing two of the crew, who attempted to seize him. He then got into a one-man canoe, and paddled to the shore. A six pounder from one of the ships struck the canoe to pieces; he then swam on shore to the woods near the ships, and reached his own town, though closely pursued. It was said he received eleven wounds from musket shot.

Captain Hall, in his first voyage on board the Neptune, had this account from the boatswain, Thomas Rutter, who, in 1767, had been boatswain to the Canterbury, Captain Sparkes, of London, and concerned in the said massacre. Rutter told him the story exactly as related, and never varied in it. He had it also from the king's two brothers, who agreed exactly with Rutter. Captain Hall also saw at Calabar, in the possession of the king's two brothers, then depositions taken at Bristol, and of Mr. Floyd, who was mate of one of the ships when the transaction happened, but he took no copy. Mr. Millar says that a quarrel happened between the people of Old and New Town, which prevented the ships lying in Calabar river from being slaved. He believes that in June, 1767, Captain S. Sparkes, (captain of his ship, the Canterbury,) came one evening to him, and told him that the two towns, so quarreling, would meet on board the different ships, and ordered him to hand up some swords.

The next day several canoes, as Sparkes had before advertised him, came from both of the towns, on board the Canterbury, Mr. Millar's own ship, and one of the persons so coming onboard, brought a letter, which he gave Sparkes, immediately on the receipt of which, he, Sparkes, took a hanger, and attacked one of the Old Town people then on board, cutting him immediately on the arms, head and body. The man fled, ran down the steps leading to the cabin, and Sparkes still following him with the hanger, darted into the boy's room Mr. Millar is sure this circumstance can never be effaced from his memory From this room he was, however, brought up by means of a rope, and Sparkes renewing his attack on him, he leaped overboard.

This being concluded, Sparkes left his own ship to go on board some of the other ships then lying in the river. Soon after he was gone, a boy belonging to Mr. Millar's ship came and informed him, Mr. Millar, that he had discovered a man concealed behind the medicine chest. Mr. Millar went and found the man. He was the person before mentioned as having brought a letter on