ks, or rig the wind-sails.
When the first lull occurred, a thorough inspection of the eight
hundred was made, and _a death announced_. As life had departed during
the tempest, a careful inspection of the body was made, and it was
this that first disclosed the pestilence in our midst. The corpse was
silently thrown into the sea, and the malady kept secret from crew and
negroes.

When breakfast was over on that fatal morning, I determined to visit
the slave deck myself, and ordering an abundant supply of lanterns,
descended to the cavern, which still reeked horribly with human vapor,
even after ventilation. But here, alas! I found nine of the negroes
infected by the disease. We took counsel as to the use of laudanum in
ridding ourselves speedily of the sufferers,--a remedy that is seldom
and secretly used in _desperate_ cases to preserve the living from
contagion. But it was quickly resolved that it had already gone too
far, when nine were prostrated, to save the rest by depriving them of
life. Accordingly, these wretched beings were at once sent to the
forecastle as a hospital, and given in charge to the vaccinated or
innoculated as nurses. The hold was then ventilated and limed; yet
before the gale abated, our sick list was increased to thirty. The
hospital could hold no more. Twelve of the sailors took the infection,
and fifteen corpses had been cast in the sea!

All reserve was now at an end. Body after body fed the deep, and still
the gale held on. At last, when the wind and waves had lulled so much
as to allow the gratings to be removed from our hatches, our
consternation knew no bounds when we found that nearly all the slaves
were dead or dying with the distemper. I will not dwell on the scene
or our sensations. It is a picture that must gape with all its horrors
before the least vivid imagination. Yet there was no time for languor
or sentimental sorrow. Twelve of the stoutest survivors were ordered
to drag out the dead from among the ill, and though they were
constantly drenched with rum to brutalize them, still we were forced
to aid the gang by reckless volunteers from our crew, who, arming
their hands with tarred mittens, flung the foetid masses of
putrefaction into the sea!

One day was a counterpart of another; and yet the love of life, or,
perhaps, the love of gold, made us fight the monster with a courage
that became a better cause. At length death was satisfied, but not
until the eight hundred beings we