born, rather than sick. Getting angry as the little one repeatedly turned its head from the food, he grabbed it from its mother's arms. He tied a twelve-pound stick of wood to its neck as a punishment, and thereafter flogged it with the cat at each meal-time until the fourth day, when, after the whipping, it died. To make complete his work, the captain, whip in hand, then called the child's mother to pick up the little body and throw it over the rail. She refused at first, but, tortured by the cat, she took up the child, walked to the ship's side, and turning her head away dropped the body into the sea.
Of the truth of the story there is no doubt. It was told under oath before a committee of Parliament, and of all the tales of inhuman deeds perpetrated by the slavers, none had more effect in ridding the earth of the traffic than this.
From one point of view the picture of a gang of slaves when on deck for an airing was one of the most shocking known to the trade. For the slaver captain knew how much brooding over their wrongs tended to promote disease, and his chief object in bringing them on deck was to cheer them. He wanted them to sing and dance, and he saw that they did it too — he applied the lash not only to make them eat, but to make them sing. There they stood in rows and as the brawny slaver, whip in hand, paced to and fro, they sang their home-songs, and danced, each with his free foot slapping the deck.
When the slaves tried to kill themselves because they believed in the resurrection and a life in their old homes after death, some of the slaver captains mutilated the bodies of the dead by cutting off and
