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Captain Ratlin and Don Leonardo quietly pulled back towards the barracoons, and as they neared the shore they saw the form of a female, which both at once recognized to be that of Miss Huntington, who stood there pale as death, and who gazed intently at the young commander as he drew nearer and nearer, and as he jumped upon the shore, said, hastily: "You have been on a fearful errand.
Pity and compassion had been generated in the subterranean barracoons of the slaves and were no more than the agony and sweat of the crowded miserables and weaklings. "Overdue" still continued to lie forgotten on the table. Every manuscript that he had had out now lay under the table. Only one manuscript he kept going, and that was Brissenden's "Ephemera."
The blacks told us how they had been kidnapped in their youth from the interior of Africa, carried down to the coast, confined in barracoons for some weeks till they were shipped on board a Spanish schooner.
She stood boldly on up the river towards the barracoons, either not observing the little Lark, or, at all events, not suspecting into whose hands she had fallen.
In these barracoons the slaves, when purchased, are imprisoned, till shipped on board a slave-vessel. If the barracoon be a large one, there is a centre row of piles, and along each line of piles is a chain, and at intervals of about two feet is a large neck-link, in one of which each slave is padlocked.
They had erected barracoons on those parts of the coast where slaves could be collected with the greatest ease. At stated periods vessels visited them, and took away the slaves without being detained on the coast more than twenty-four hours, and often a less time. They had from forty to fifty points where barracoons were placed, and many thousands of slaves every year were exported from them.
The wretched beings were marched, in the first instance, to the trader's barracoons, where they could be sorted and regain some of their strength. Harry and I were paying all the attention we could to the wounded men, who, enjoying the advantage of fresh provisions, were quickly recovering their health.
The flames spread amid the wooden and thatch-roof buildings, till the surrounding stockades caught fire, and the whole hornets' nest was one sea of flame. The barracoons, from which the slaves had, as it was expected, been removed, were treated in the same manner, when the commodore, highly satisfied with the result of the expedition, ordered the men to embark.
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.
Had your captain taken it into his head to land a party and make a search of the peninsula, the barracoons would have been discovered, and friend Lobo would have been a ruined man.
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