Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/356

 of the party, who had been swindled of his wages at cards, appealed to his consul for relief. By dint of cross questions, the Gallic official extracted the tale of our voyage from his countryman, and took advantage of the fellow's destitution to make him a witness against a certain Don Téodore Canot, who was alleged to be a native of France! Besides this, the punishment of my mate was exaggerated by the recreant Frenchman into a most unjustifiable as well as cruel act.

"Of course the story was promptly detailed to the captain-general, who issued an order for my arrest. But I was too wary and flush to be caught so easily by the guardian of France's lilies. No person bearing my name could be found in the island; and as the schooner had entered port with Spanish papers, Spanish crew, and was regularly sold, it became manifest to the stupefied consul that the sailor's 'yarn' was an entire fabrication. That night a convenient press-gang, in want of recruits for the royal marine, seized the braggadocio crew, and as there were no witnesses to corroborate the consul's complaint, it was forthwith dismissed.

"Things are managed very cleverly in Havana — when you know how!"

The following extract presents a new phase of the slave-trade; as the ordinary horrors of the middle passage were increased by that terrible disease, the small-pox. The narrator had shipped as a sailing master on board the San Pablo. The vessel was disguised as a French cruiser; her officers wore the French uniform, and on all occasions, except in the presence of a genuine French cruiser, she hoisted the Bourbon lilies, and the vessel was conducted in every way as if she belonged to the royal navy. She proceeded to the Mozambique channel, took on board eight hundred victims, and started on the return voyage: "We had hardly reached the open sea before the captain was prostrated with an ague which refused to yield to ordinary remedies, and finally ripened into fever, that deprived him of reason. Other dangers thickened around us. We had been several days off the cape of Good Hope, buffeting a series of adverse gales, when word was brought me after a night of weary watching, that several slaves were ill of small-pox. Of all calamities that occur in the voyage of a slaver, this is the most dreaded and unmanageable. The news appalled me. Impetuous with anxiety, I rushed to the captain, and regardless of fever or insanity, disclosed the dreadful fact. He stared at me for a minute as if in doubt; then opening his bureau and pointing to a long coil of combustible material, said that it communicated through the decks with the powder magazine, and ordered me to — blow up the brig!

"The master's madness sobered his mate. I lost no time in securing both the dangerous implement and its perilous owner, while I called the officers into the cabin for inquiry and consultation as to our desperate state.

"The gale had lasted nine days without intermission, and during all this time with so much violence that it was impossible to take off the gratings, release the slaves, purify the decks, or rig the wind-sails. When the first lull occurred, a thorough inspection of the eight hundred was made, and a death announced. As life had departed during the tempest, a careful inspection of