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Updated: June 16, 2025
If the slavers had placed absolute confidence in the success of their plan to draw us away from the coast by means of the decoy schooner, they might not have troubled to keep a look-out; but if they were as cautious as such gentry usually are, and had left nothing to chance, it would be scarcely possible for the approach of the boats to have passed undetected.
At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal power of slavers, I found myself grinding my teeth closing my eyes in a futile attempt to blot out the pictures called up. Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story. Again, I would find myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems persistently haunted my mind. But, always, my heart had an answer.
Often we used to be sent away in her for days together from the ship, to lie in wait for slavers. The officers on such occasions used to allow us to talk pretty freely to one another and to express our minds. One day I said something which showed Mr Morgan what was in my mind how dark and ignorant it was.
Freetown, built on rising ground, close to the sea, has a very picturesque appearance. Jack and Adair were also struck with the number of people who came into the town to trade, and with the signs of industry everywhere visible. However, they were not sorry to find themselves once more at sea, with a sharp lookout kept night and day for slavers.
Her skipper came on board the Daphne and remained to breakfast with Captain Vernon, whom our skipper being a total stranger to the coast he posted up pretty thoroughly in the current news, as well as such of the "dodges" of the slavers as he had happened to have picked up.
But this, excellent as it was in itself, was by no means all; with two such perfectly equipped factories as we had found upon the river it was certain that the slave traffic on the Fernan Vaz must have assumed quite formidable proportions; and it was the skipper's idea that before our wounded should be lit to be moved, one or more slavers would certainly enter the river, when it would be our own fault if we did not capture them.
The people who told me about King Olomba's raid, and the plans laid by the slavers for carrying off the prisoners, were slavers themselves; and they told me of the scheme because they believed me to be the master of a slaver waiting for information from the Senegal river.
At that time slavers had to wait many months at a time for a human freight, and a certain sum per head was paid to the government for all that were exported. The duties derived from the exportation of slaves far exceeded those from other commerce, and, by agreeing to the suppression of this profitable traffic, the government actually sacrificed the chief part of the export revenue.
There are but two places between Sierra Leone and Accra, a distance of one thousand miles, whence slaves are exported. One is Gallinas; the other New Sesters. The English keep a cruiser off each of these rivers. Slavers run in, take their cargoes of human flesh and blood, and push off.
The moment that I entered the companion-way I was saluted by a whiff of moist, hot air loaded with a powerful, foetid, musky odour, of which I had already become vaguely conscious, accompanied by a deep, murmuring sound that seemed to proceed from the vessel's hold; and although this was my first experience with slavers, I knew in an instant that the brig had her human cargo on board, and that the sound and the odour proceeded from it.
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