esert from the ship on the African coast would be sheer madness.
"Bad," said he, "as are these fellows on board the _Pandy_, still they
have white skins and something human about them; but as for the rascals
we are to meet over yonder they are devils, both soul and body--you
shall see 'em, my boy, and judge for yourself." These remarks my patron
had made some days before, when we were talking of our intention to
escape; and as I looked into that long canoe, and scanned the faces of
the half-score of men that sat within it, I was forcibly struck with the
truthfulness of the assertion. A more ferocious set of men I never
looked upon--very devils did they appear!

There were eleven of them in all, and most of them were as black as
shoe-leather, though there was a variety of colour, from jet-black to a
bad tawny-yellow. It was evident they were not all of one race, for
there is scarcely any part of the western coast of Africa where there is
not an admixture of different races,--arising, no doubt, from the
long-continued slave-traffic between the coast and the interior. If
these eleven gentlemen differed slightly in colour, there were other
points in which they differed not at all. All of them had thick lips,
beetle-brows, short kinky wool upon their heads, and the most ferocious
and brutal expression upon their faces. Eight out of the eleven were
naked as at the hour of their birth, with the exception of a narrow
swathing of cotton cloth around their hips and thighs. These eight used
the paddles, and I could perceive that they had spears and old muskets
in the boat beside them. The other three were of superior class. Two
of them were better clad than the eight rowers--but no better looking--
while the third presented to the eye an aspect at once so hideously
tierce, and yet so ludicrous, that it was difficult to determine whether
you ought to laugh at or to fear him.

This man was a true negro,--black as gun powder, gross as a water-butt,
and of enormous dimensions. His face was not so negrofied (if I may use
the word) as some of his companions', but it had a still worse
expression than that of the very thick-lipped kind, for it was not
stupid like theirs. On the contrary, it exhibited a mixture of ferocity
with a large share of cunning--a countenance, in fact, full of all
wickedness. It resembled a good deal the faces I have afterwards
observed in India,--among the fat despotic princes that are still
permitted