rds took Antonio, the cabin-boy and slave to Captain
Ferrer, and stamped him on the shoulder with a hot iron; then
put powder, palm oil, &c. upon the wound, so that they 'could
know him for their slave.' The cook, a colored Spaniard, told
them that on their arrival at Principe, in three days, they
would have their throats cut, be chopped in pieces, and salted
down for meat for the Spaniards. He pointed to some barrels of
beef on the deck, then to an empty barrel, and by significant
gestures,--as the Mendians say, by 'talking with his
fingers,'--he made them understand that they were to be slain,
&c. At four o'clock that day, when they were called on deck to
eat, Cinque found a nail, which he secreted under his arm. In
the night they held a counsel as to what was best to be done.
'We feel bad,' said Kin-na, 'and we ask Cinque what we had best
do. Cinque say, "Me think, and by and by I tell you."' He then
said, 'If we do nothing, we be killed. We may as well die in
trying to be free as to be killed and eaten.' Cinque afterwards
told them what he would do. With the aid of the nail and the
assistance of Grabeau, he freed himself from the irons on his
wrists and ancles, and from the chain on his neck. He then, with
his own hands, wrested the irons from the limbs and necks of his
countrymen. It is not in my power to give an adequate
description of Cinque when he showed how he did this and led his
comrades to the conflict and achieved their freedom. In my
younger years I saw Kemble and Siddons, and the representation
of Othello, at Covent Garden, but no acting that I ever
witnessed came near that to which I allude. When delivered from
their irons, the Mendians, with the exception of the children,
who were asleep, about four or five o'clock in the morning,
armed with cane-knives, some boxes of which they found in the
hold, leaped upon the deck. Cinque killed the cook. The captain
fought desperately. He inflicted wounds on two of the Africans,
who soon after died, and cut severely one or two of those who
now survive. Two sailors leaped over the side of the vessel. The
Mendians say 'they could not catch land--they must have swum to
the bottom of the sea,' but Ruiz and Montez supposed they
reached the island in a boat. Cinque now took command of the
vessel; placed Si-si at the helm; ga