Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/360

 caused much uneasiness among the officers, and induced me to make every preparation for a revolt.

"We had been at sea about three weeks without further disturbance, and there was so much merriment among the gangs that were allowed to come on deck, that my apprehensions of danger began gradually to wear away. Suddenly, however, one fair afternoon, a squall broke forth from an almost cloudless sky; and as the boatswain's whistle piped all hands to take in sail, a simultaneous rush was made by the confined slaves at all the after-gratings, and amid the confusion of the rising gale, they knocked down the guard and poured upon deck. The sentry at the fore-hatch seized the cook's axe, and sweeping it around him like a scythe, kept at bay the band that sought to emerge from below him. Meantime, the women in the cabin were not idle. Seconding the males, they rose in a body, and the helmsman was forced to stab several with his knife before he could drive them below again.

"About forty stalwart devils, yelling aud grinning with all the savage ferocity of their wilderness, were now on deck, armed with staves of broken water-casks, or billets of wood, found in the hold. The suddenness of this outbreak did not [sic]appal me, for, in the dangerous life of Africa, a trader must be always admonished and never off his guard. The blow that prostrated the first white man was the earliest symptom I detected of the revolt; but in an instant I had the arm-chest open on the quarter-deck, and the mate and steward beside me to protect it. Matters, however, did not stand so well forward of the mainmast. Four of the hands were disabled by clubs, while the rest defended themselves and the wounded as well as they could with handspikes, or whatever could suddenly be clutched. I had always charged the cook, on such an emergency, to distribute from his coppers a liberal supply of scalding water upon the belligerents; and, at the first sign of revolt, he endeavored to baptize the heathen with his steaming slush. But dinner had been over for some time, so that the lukewarm liquid only irritated the savages, one of whom laid the unfortunate ' doctor ' bleeding in the scuppers.

"All this occurred in perhaps less time than I have taken to tell it; yet, rapid as was the transaction, I saw that, between the squall with its flying sails, and the revolt with its raving blacks, we would soon be in a desperate plight, unless I gave the order to shoot. Accordingly, I told my comrades to aim low and fire at once.

"Our carbines had been purposely loaded with buck-shot, to suit such an occasion, so that the first two discharges brought several of the rebels to their knees. Still, the unharmed neither fled nor ceased brandishing their weapons. Two more discharges drove them forward among the mass of my crew, who had retreated to the bowsprit; but, being reinforced by the boatswain and carpenter, we took command of the hatches so effectually, that a dozen additional discharges among the ebony legs, drove the refractory to their quarters below.

"It was time; for sails, ropes, tacks, sheets, and blocks, were flapping, dashing and rolling about the masts and decks, threatening us with imminent