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Updated: June 1, 2025
At the same moment there shot out from a little nook or bay in the rear of the barracoons, a light skiff propelled by a single oarsman, who rowed his bark in true seamen style, cross-handed, while a second party sat in the stern. The rower was Captain Ratlin, and his companion was the swarthy and fierce-looking Don Leonardo.
I have received notice that a piratical band of Arabs, who have long had possession of a strong fort up the river Angoxa, have a number of barracoons full of slaves and several dhows lying under the protection of their guns. I have resolved to make a dash up the river to cut out the vessels, capture the slaves, and destroy the fort."
But he added that the unhappy blacks were so completely worn out with their long march down to the coast that it would only be rank cruelty to release them at once, and that he had therefore decided to house them in the barracoons and give them a week's complete rest before starting them back on their long homeward march.
There were several memoranda jotted down upon the chart for our guidance, and among these was an intimation to look out for a clump of exceptionally tall trees on the southern bank of the creek, under the broad shadow of which the slave barracoons were stated to be built.
When you arrived at Banana Point on that particular morning, your presence seriously threatened to entirely upset a very important transaction which Senor Lobo had in hand, namely, the disposal and shipment of a prime lot of nearly a thousand able-bodied, full-grown, male blacks that he had got snugly stowed away in two big barracoons a short distance up the creek from his factory.
The whole surface of this island, except a narrow belt along its southern shore, had been completely cleared of vegetation; and upon the cleared space had been erected two enormous barracoons and, as Purchase had said, a regular village of well-constructed, stone-built houses raised on massive piers of masonry, and with broad galleries and verandahs all round them, evidently intended for the occupation of the slave-dealers and their dependants.
Not only were the squadron engaged in capturing slavers at sea, but whenever it could be legally done, the boats were sent on shore to destroy the slave barracoons, and to set the occupants at liberty. This was often dangerous work, for whenever the slave-dealers thought they could do so with success, they did not scruple with their armed men to fire on their assailants.
Faulkner, and returned once more to the seaboard and the establishment of Don Leonardo. Here it would be necessary for him to remain for a week or more, while the Spaniard sent his runners inland to the chiefs of the various coast tribes to forward the prisoners of war to his barracoons.
He then frankly assured them that he was growing far richer as an honest trader, keeping a monopoly of the chief articles himself, by-the-by, than he had by all his connexions with the slave-dealers, taking into account the occasional burning of his barracoons, and the hot water in which he was continually kept. Of course King Bom-Bom was a sensible fellow, and saw things in their true light.
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.
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