, as
they frequently were, there being always fever on the high Barbary coast;
and that though the captain was occasionally sick himself, his being so
made no difference, or rather it did make a difference, though for the
worse, he being when sick always more inveterate and malignant than at
other times. He said that once, when he himself was sick, his captain
had pitched his face all over, which exploit was much applauded by the
other high Barbary captains--all of whom, from what my brother said,
appeared to be of much the same disposition as my brother's captain,
taking wonderful delight in tormenting the crews, and doing all manner of
terrible things. My brother frequently said that nothing whatever
prevented him from running away from his ship, and never returning, but
the hope he entertained of one day being captain himself, and able to
torment people in his turn, which he solemnly vowed he would do, as a
kind of compensation for what he himself had undergone. And if things
were going on in a strange way off the high Barbary shore amongst those
who came there to trade, they were going on in a way yet stranger with
the people who lived upon it.

'Oh the strange ways of the black men who lived on that shore, of which
my brother used to tell us at home--selling their sons, daughters, and
servants for slaves, and the prisoners taken in battle, to the Spanish
captains, to be carried to Havannah, and when there, sold at a profit,
the idea of which, my brother said, went to the hearts of our own
captains, who used to say what a hard thing it was that free-born
Englishmen could not have a hand in the traffic, seeing that it was
forbidden by the laws of their country; talking fondly of the good old
times when their forefathers used to carry slaves to Jamaica and
Barbadoes, realising immense profit, besides the pleasure of hearing
their shrieks on the voyage; and then the superstitions of the blacks,
which my brother used to talk of; their sharks' teeth, their wisps of
fowls' feathers, their half-baked pots full of burnt bones, of which they
used to make what they called fetish, and bow down to, and ask favours
of, and then, perhaps, abuse and strike, provided the senseless rubbish
did not give them what they asked for; and then, above all, Mumbo Jumbo,
the grand fetish master, who lived somewhere in the woods, and who used
to come out every now and then with his fetish companions; a monstrous
figure, all wound round with