A hot West Indian sun was rapidly declining towards the Caribbean Sea--
as if hastening to cool his fiery orb in the blue water--when a ship,
that had rounded Pedro Point, in the Island of Jamaica, was seen
standing eastward for Montego Bay.
She was a three-masted vessel--a barque--as could be told by the lateen
rig of her mizen-mast--and apparently of some three or four hundred tons
burden.
As she was running under one of the gentlest of breezes, all her canvas
was spread; and the weather-worn appearance of her sails denoted that
she was making land at the termination of a long ocean voyage. This was
further manifest by the faded paint upon her sides, and the dark,
dirt-coloured blotches that marked the position of her hawse-holes and
scuppers.
Besides the private ensign that streamed, pennon-like from her peak,
another trailed over her taffrail; which, unfolded by the motion of the
vessel, displayed a blue starry field with white and crimson stripes.
In this case the flag was appropriate--that is, in its stripes and their
colour. Though justly vaunted as the flag of the free, here was it
covering a cargo of slaves: the ship was a _slaver_.
After getting fairly inside the bay, but still at a long distance from
the town, she was observed suddenly to tack; and, instead of continuing
on towards the harbour, head for a point on the southern side, where the
shore was uninhabited and solitary.
On arriving within a mile of the land she took in sail, until every inch
of canvas was furled upon her yards. Then the sharp rattling of the
chain, as it dragged through the iron ring of the hawse-hole, announced
the dropping of an anchor.
In a few moments after the ship swung round; and, drifting till the
chain cable became taut, lay motionless upon the water.
The object for which the slaver had thus anchored short of the harbour
will be learnt by our going aboard of her--though this was a privilege
not granted to the idle or curious. Only the initiated were permitted
to witness the spectacle of which her decks now became the theatre: only
those who had an interest in the disposal of her cargo.
Viewed from a distance, the slaver lay apparently inert; but for all
that a scene of active life was passing upon her deck--a scene of rare
and painful interest.
She carried a cargo of two hundred human beings--"bales," according to
the phraseology of the slave-trader. These bales were not exactly
alike. It was, as her skipper jocularly styled it, an "assorted
cargo"--that is, one shipped on different points of the African coast,
and, consequently, embracing many distinct varieties of the Ethiopian
race. There was the tawny, but intelligent Mandingo, and by his side
the Jolof of ebon hue. There the fierce and warlike Coromantee,
alongside the docile and submissive Pawpaw; the yellow Ebo, with the
visage of a baboon, wretched and desponding, face to face with the
cannibal Moco, or chained wrist to wrist with the light-hearted native
of Congo and Angola.
None, however, appeared of light heart on board the slaver. The horrors
of the "middle passage" had equally affected them all, until the dancing
Congese, and the Lucumi, prone to suicide, seemed equally to suffer from
dejection. The bright picture that now presented itself before their
eyes--a landscape gleaming with all the gay colours of tropical
vegetation--was viewed by them with very different emotions. Some
seemed to regard it with indifference; others it reminded of their own
African homes, from which they had been dragged by rude and ruffian men;
while not a few gazed upon the scene with feelings of keen
apprehension--believing it to be the dreaded _Koomi_, the land of the
gigantic cannibals--and that they had been brought thither _to be
eaten_!
Reflection might have convinced them that this would scarcely be the
intention of the _Tobon-doo_--those white tyrants who had carried them
across the ocean. The hard, unhusked rice, and coarse maize corn--their
only food during the voyage--were not viands likely to fatten them for
the feast of Anthropophagi; and their once smooth and shining skins now
exhibited a dry, shrivelled appearance, from the surface coating of
dandruff, and the scars of the hideous _cra-cra_.
The blacks among them, by the hardships of that fearful voyage, had
turned ashy grey and the yellows of a sickly and bilious hue. Males and
females--for there were many of the latter--appeared to have been alike
the objects of ill-usage, the victims of a starved stomach and a stifled
atmosphere.
Some half-dozen of the latter--seen in the precincts of the cabin--
presented a different aspect. These were young girls, picked from the
common crowd on account of the superiority of their personal charms; and
the flaunting vestments that adorned their bodies--contrasting with the
complete nudity of their fellow-voyagers--told too plainly why they had
been thus distinguished. A horrid contrast--wantonness in the midst of
woe!
On the quarter-deck stood the slave-skipper--a tall, lathy individual of
sallow hue--and, beside him, his mate--a dark-bearded ruffian; while a
score of like stamp, but lower grade, acting under their orders, were
distributed in different parts of the ship.
These last, as they tramped to and fro over the deck, might be heard at
intervals giving utterance to profane oaths--as often laying violent
hands upon one or other of their unfortunate captives--apparently out of
the sheer wantonness of cruelty!
Immediately after the anchor had been dropped, and the ropes belayed and
coiled in their places, a new scene of this disgusting drama was entered
upon. The living "bales," hitherto restrained below, were now ordered,
or rather driven, upon deck--not all at once, but in lots of three or
four at a time. Each individual, as he came up the hatchway, was rudely
seized by a sailor, who stood by with a soft brush in his hand and a
pail at his feet; the latter containing a black composition of
gunpowder, lemon-juice, and palm-oil. Of this mixture the unresisting
captive received a coating; which, by the hand of another sailor, was
rubbed into the skin, and then polished with a "dandybrush," until the
sable epidermis glistened like a newly-blacked boot.
A strange operation it might have appeared to those who saw it, had they
not been initiated into its object and meaning. But to the spectators
there present it was no uncommon sight. It was not the first time those
unfeeling men had assisted at the spectacle of black bales _being made
ready for the market_!
One after another were the dark-skinned victims of human cupidity
brought from below, and submitted to this demoniac anointment--to which
one and all yielded with an appearance of patient resignation, like
sheep under the hands of the shearer.
In the looks of many of them could be detected the traces of that
apprehension felt in the first hours of their captivity, and which had
not yet forsaken them. Might not this process be a prelude to some
fearful sacrifice?
Even the females were not exempted from this disgusting desecration of
God's image; and they too, one after another, were passed through the
hands of the rough operators, with an accompaniment of brutal jests, and
peals of ribald laughter!
Volume One, Chapter VI.