Unhappy beings! I shuddered as I reflected on what was before them.
They were to endure thirst in all its gradations--from the simple,
scarce painful longing for water--which most of them already felt--to
the extremest agony and torture which that appetite can inflict. But a
few days before, I had myself experienced thirst; but what signified
that compared to what they would be compelled to endure? Simply
nothing--a mere foretaste, that enabled me to judge how terribly painful
thirst may become. Yes; I shuddered as I reflected on what was before
them!
Little did I dream how short was to be the period of their endurance.
Little thought I, as I paced along the deck and listened to their cries
for water, that their sufferings from thirst would soon be at an end.
It was not their destiny to die from the want of water. Alas! a far
more horrible doom was in store for them--a doom that I almost shudder
to recount.
As the day advanced, their cries for water--"agoa! agoa!"--became more
frequent and plaintive. There were some who shouted in anger.
Wondering why they had been denied their customary allowance, there were
some who fancied it arose either from neglect on the part of their white
tyrants--whom they saw moving about perfectly indifferent to their
entreaties--or else from some capricious cruelty to torture and punish
them! It is hard to say what might have been their imaginings; but many
of them exhibited symptoms of fury amounting almost to frenzy. They
approached the grating with gestures of menace, and endeavoured by main
strength to force the strong woodwork from off the hatch. Some gnashed
their teeth and frothed at the lips; beating their breasts with clenched
fists, and yelling their native war-cries, until their voices echoed far
over the waters!
To all these demonstrations the crew of the _Pandora_ paid no heed--
except that two sentries instead of one were placed over the hatchway
where the male portion of the slaves were confined. This precaution was
taken, because it was now deemed possible that the negroes might make
their way upon deck; and, should they succeed in doing so in their
infuriated state, woe to the white men who had hitherto ruled them!
Both sticks and bayonets were used freely upon the frantic creatures,
until the carpenter with ready tools had strengthened the grating and
battened it down, beyond the possibility of its being raised up, or
broken by those who were striving underneath.
What added to the sufferings of the slaves, as also to the apprehension
of the _Pandora's_ crew, was that the wind had suddenly ceased, and it
had fallen to a dead calm.
The heat of the sun, no longer fanned by the slightest breeze, had grown
intolerable. The pitch melted upon the ropes and in the seams of the
deck; and every article, whether of hemp, wood, or iron, was as hot as
if taken out of a fire. We had arrived in that part of the Atlantic
Ocean, known among Spanish seamen as the "horse latitudes," because that
there, during the early days of Spanish adventure, vessels often got
becalmed, and their cargoes of horses, dying of the heat, were thrown
overboard wholesale. This is one of the explanations given for the
singular appellation--though others have been assigned.
Into the "horse latitudes," then, had the _Pandora_ found her way; and
the complete calm into which the atmosphere had all at once fallen was
not only a source of suffering to all on board--but to the sailors an
object of new apprehension.
On first discovering the shortness of the supply of water, a calm sea
was the very thing they had most dreaded. A storm they feared not to
encounter. Through that--even though the wind were dead ahead--they
could still make way; but in a calm they could do nothing but lie quiet
upon the hot bosom of the sleeping ocean, wasting their days and hours--
wasting what was now more precious than all--their scanty supply of
water.
One and all were terrified at the prospect. They were all men who had
made many a trip across the line, and had run the torrid zone both
eastward and westward. They could read well the indications of the sky;
and from its present appearance most of them foresaw, and were not slow
to foretell, a long-continued calm. It might last a week, perhaps twice
or three times as long. Sometimes there is a month of such windless
weather in these latitudes. If it continued only for the shortest of
these periods, then, indeed, would they be in danger, and no wonder they
were freshly apprehensive.
As the sun went down, his disc appeared red and fiery. There was not a
cloud in the sky--not a curl upon the sea.
It was the last time that sun ever shone upon the _Pandora_--when
morning came, that bad, but beautiful barque, was a wreck upon the sea--
a field of floating fragments!