Then the need for fast vessels restricted hold room and the
methods of the trade attained a degree of barbarity that can not be
paralleled since the days of Nero.

[Illustration: "A FAVORITE TRICK OF THE FLEEING SLAVER WAS TO THROW OVER
SLAVES"]

Shackled together "spoon-wise," as the phrase was, they suffered and
sweltered through the long middle passage, dying by scores, so that often
a fifth of the cargo perished during the voyage. The stories of those who
took part in the effort to suppress the traffic give some idea of its
frightful cruelty.

The Rev. Pascoa Grenfell Hill, a chaplain in the British navy, once made a
short voyage on a slaver which his ship, the "Cleopatra," had captured.
The vessel had a full cargo, and when the capture was effected, the
negroes were all brought on deck for exercise and fresh air. The poor
creatures quite understood the meaning of the sudden change in their
masters, and kissed the hands and clothing of their deliverers. The ship
was headed for the Cape of Good Hope, where the slaves were to be
liberated; but a squall coming on, all were ordered below again. "The
night," enters Mr. Hill in his journal, "being intensely hot, four hundred
wretched beings thus crammed into a hold twelve yards in length, seven
feet in breadth, and only three and one-half feet in height, speedily
began to make an effort to reissue to the open air. Being thrust back and
striving the more to get out, the afterhatch was forced down upon them.
Over the other hatchway, in the fore part of the vessel, a wooden grating
was fastened. To this, the sole inlet for the air, the suffocating heat of
the hold and, perhaps, panic from the strangeness of their situation, made
them flock, and thus a great part of the space below was rendered useless.
They crowded to the grating and clinging to it for air, completely barred
its entrance. They strove to force their way through apertures in length
fourteen inches and barely six inches in breadth, and in some instances
succeeded. The cries, the heat, I may say without exaggeration, the smoke
of their torment which ascended can be compared to nothing earthly. One of
the Spaniards gave warning that the consequences would be 'many deaths;'
this prediction was fearfully verified, for the next morning 54 crushed
and mangled corpses were brought to the gangway and thrown overboard. Some
were emaciated from disease, many bruised and bloody. Antoine tells me
that some were found str