e its work, have the goodness to haul it down,
and keep the French flag flying, if you please; I quite expect that we
shall have two or three more ships here to help in the conveyance of
this huge cauffle of slaves across the Atlantic; and I do not wish them
to be alarmed and put on their guard--should they come upon us
unexpectedly--by seeing a vessel riding at anchor with the signal flying
that she has been captured by the English."

This was, of course, sound common sense, and I lost not a moment in
returning to the brig and making the required alteration in the
arrangement of the flags. That being done, it occurred to me that it
would be a wise thing to clear the remainder of the French crew out of
the vessel; and this I also did; afterwards assisting in transporting
the miserable slaves across the channel to the island, and helping to
arrange for their comfort and well-being during the night. They were,
without exception, what the slave-dealers would doubtless have called "a
prime lot"--numbering fifteen hundred and eighty-four, of whom less than
two hundred were women; but they were all worn to skin and bone with the
fatigue and hardship which they had been called upon to endure on the
march from their own country down to the coast, and were so dead-beaten
with fatigue that they appeared to have sunk into such a state of apathy
that even the prospect of immediate rest, plenty of good food, and a
speedy restoration to liberty seemed insufficient to lift them out of
it. But after they had been made to bathe and thoroughly cleanse
themselves from the dust and other impurities of the march, prior to
being housed in the barracoons, they seemed to pluck up a little
spirit,--a salt-water bath is a wonderful tonic,--and later on in the
evening, when a plentiful meal was served out to them, they so far
recovered their spirits as to begin to jabber among themselves. It was
close upon sunset before the last batch had been ferried across to the
island and lodged in the barracoons; and then, in accordance with an
order from the skipper, I took a working-party on board the brig, and,
casting her off from the buoy to which she had been moored, warped her
in alongside the wharf and made her fast there.

The next two days were entirely devoid of incident; but we were all kept
busy in attending to the unfortunate captive blacks, supervising the
bathing of them in batches, inducing them to take a moderate amount of
exercise in