one day being captain himself, and able to torment people in his turn,
which he solemnly vowed he would do, as a kind of compensation for what
he himself had undergone. And if things were going on in a strange way
off the high Barbary shore amongst those who came there to trade, they
were going on in a way yet stranger with the people who lived upon it.

"Oh the strange ways of the black men who lived on that shore, of which
my brother used to tell us at home; selling their sons, daughters, and
servants for slaves, and the prisoners taken in battle, to the Spanish
captains, to be carried to Havannah, and when there, sold at a profit,
the idea of which, my brother said, went to the hearts of our own
captains, who used to say what a hard thing it was that free-born
Englishmen could not have a hand in the traffic, seeing that it was
forbidden by the laws of their country; talking fondly of the good old
times when their forefathers used to carry slaves to Jamaica and
Barbadoes, realizing immense profit, besides the pleasure of hearing
their shrieks on the voyage; and then the superstitions of the blacks,
which my brother used to talk of; their sharks' teeth, their wisps of
fowls' feathers, their half-baked pots, full of burnt bones, of which
they used to make what they called fetish; and bow down to, and ask
favours of, and then, perhaps, abuse and strike, provided the senseless
rubbish did not give them what they asked for; and then, above all, Mumbo
Jumbo, the grand fetish master, who lived somewhere in the woods, and who
used to come out every now and then with his fetish companions; a
monstrous figure, all wound round with leaves and branches, so as to be
quite indistinguishable, and, seating himself on the high seat in the
villages, receive homage from the people, and also gifts and offerings,
the most valuable of which were pretty damsels, and then betake himself
back again, with his followers, into the woods. Oh the tales that my
brother used to tell us of the high Barbary shore! Poor fellow! what
became of him I can't say; the last time he came back from a voyage, he
told us that his captain, as soon as he had brought his vessel to port,
and settled with his owner, drowned himself off the quay, in a fit of the
horrors, which it seems high Barbary captains, after a certain number of
years, are much subject to. After staying about a month with us, he went
to sea again, with another captain; and, bad as the old one h