t pull. Then the slaves--600 in all--were brought up from
below, open-eyed, whispering, wondering what new act in the pitiful drama
of their lives this midnight summons portended. With blows and curses the
sailors ranged them along the rail and bound them to the chain cable. The
anchor was cut loose, plunging into the sea it carried the cable and the
shackled slaves with it to the bottom. The men on the approaching
man-of-war's boats, heard a great wail of many voices, a rumble, a splash,
then silence, and when they reached the ship its captain politely showed
them that there were no slaves aboard, and laughed at their comments on
the obvious signs of the recent presence of the blacks.

[Illustration: "BOUND THEM TO THE CHAIN CABLE"]

A favorite trick of the slaver, fleeing from a man-of-war, was to throw
over slaves a few at a time in the hope that the humanity of the pursuers
would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving
the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks
thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out
their children as ransom to pursuing wolves, were furnished with spars or
barrels to keep them afloat until the pursuer should come up; and
occasionally they were even set adrift by boat-loads. It was hard on the
men of the navy to steel their hearts to the cries of these castaways as
the ship sped by them; but if the great evil was to be broken up it could
not be by rescuing here and there a slave, but by capturing and punishing
the traders. Many officers of our navy have left on record their
abhorrence of the service they were thus engaged in, but at the same time
expressed their conviction that it was doing the work of humanity. They
were obliged to witness such human suffering as might well move the
stoutest human heart. At times they were even forced to seem as merciless
to the blacks as the slave-traders themselves; but in the end their work,
like the merciful cruelty of the surgeon, made for good.

When a slaver was overhauled after so swift a chase that her master had no
opportunity to get rid of his damning cargo, the boarding officers saw
sights that scarce Inferno itself could equal. To look into her hold,
filled with naked, writhing, screaming, struggling negroes was a sight
that one could see once and never forget. The effluvium that arose
polluted even the fresh air of the ocean, and burdened the breeze for
miles to wi