thy men have been wrong also in their conduct. I'lltell thee how thou shalt take this ship, without making use of thosethings called guns." "How can that be, William?" said I. "Why," said he,"thou mayest take her with thy helm; thou seest they keep no steerage,and thou seest the condition they are in; board her with thy ship uponher lee quarter, and so enter her from the ship. I am persuaded thouwilt take her without fighting, for there is some mischief has befallenthe ship, which we know nothing of."
In a word, it being a smooth sea, and little wind, I took his advice,and laid her aboard. Immediately our men entered the ship, where wefound a large ship, with upwards of 600 negroes, men and women, boys andgirls, and not one Christian or white man on board.
I was struck with horror at the sight; for immediately I concluded, aswas partly the case, that these black devils had got loose, had murderedall the white men, and thrown them into the sea; and I had no soonertold my mind to the men, but the thought so enraged them that I had muchado to keep my men from cutting them all in pieces. But William, withmany persuasions, prevailed upon them, by telling them that it wasnothing but what, if they were in the negroes' condition, they woulddo if they could; and that the negroes had really the highest injusticedone them, to be sold for slaves without their consent; and that thelaw of nature dictated it to them; that they ought not to kill them, andthat it would be wilful murder to do it.
This prevailed with them, and cooled their first heat; so they onlyknocked down twenty or thirty of them, and the rest ran all down betweendecks to their first places, believing, as we fancied, that we weretheir first masters come again.
It was a most unaccountable difficulty we had next; for we could notmake them understand one word we said, nor could we understand one wordourselves that they said. We endeavoured by signs to ask them whencethey came; but they could make nothing of it. We pointed to the greatcabin, to the round-house, to the cook-room, then to our faces, to askif they had no white men on board, and where they were gone; but theycould not understand what we meant. On the other hand, they pointed toour boat and to their ship, asking questions as well as they could, andsaid a thousand things, and expressed themselves with great earnestness;but we could not understand a word of it all, or know what they meant byany of their signs.
We knew very well they must have been taken on board the ship as slaves,and that it must be by some European people too. We could easily seethat the ship was a Dutch-built ship, but very much altered, having beenbuilt upon, and, as we supposed, in France; for we found two or threeFrench books on board, and afterwards we found clothes, linen, lace,some old shoes, and several other things. We found among the provisionssome barrels of Irish beef, some Newfoundland fish, and several otherevidences that there had been Christians on board, but saw no remains ofthem. We found not a sword, gun, pistol, or weapon of any kind, exceptsome cutlasses; and the negroes had hid them below where they lay. Weasked them what was become of all the small-arms, pointing to our ownand to the places where those belonging to the ship had hung. One ofthe negroes understood me presently, and beckoned to me to come upon thedeck, where, taking my fuzee, which I never let go out of my hand forsome time after we had mastered the ship--I say, offering to take holdof it, he made the proper motion of throwing it into the sea; by whichI understood, as I did afterwards, that they had thrown all thesmall-arms, powder, shot, swords, &c., into the sea, believing, as Isupposed, those things would kill them, though the men were gone.
After we understood this we made no question but that the ship's crew,having been surprised by these desperate rogues, had gone the same way,and had been thrown overboard also. We looked all over the ship tosee if we could find any blood, and we thought we did perceive some inseveral places; but the heat of the sun, melting the pitch and tar uponthe decks, made it impossible for us to discern it exactly, except inthe round-house, where we plainly saw that there had been much blood. Wefound the scuttle open, by which we supposed that the captain and thosethat were with him had made their retreat into the great cabin, or thosein the cabin had made their escape up into the round-house.
But that which confirmed us most of all in what had happened was that,upon further inquiry, we found that there were seven or eight of thenegroes very much wounded, two or three of them with shot, whereof onehad his leg broken and lay in a miserable condition, the flesh beingmortified, and, as our friend William said, in two days more he wouldhave died. William was a most dexterous surgeon, and he showed it inthis cure; for though all the surgeons we had on board both our ships(and we had no less than five that called themselves bred surgeons,besides two or three who were pretenders or assistants)--though allthese gave their opinions that the negro's leg must be cut off, andthat his life could not be saved without it; that the mortification hadtouched the marrow in the bone, that the tendons were mortified, andthat he could never have the use of his leg if it should be cured,William said nothing in general, but that his opinion was otherwise, andthat he desired the wound might be searched, and that he would thentell them further. Accordingly he went to work with the leg; and, ashe desired that he might have some of the surgeons to assist him, weappointed him two of the ablest of them to help, and all of them to lookon, if they thought fit.
William went to work his own way, and some of them pretended to findfault at first. However, he proceeded and searched every part of the legwhere he suspected the mortification had touched it; in a word, he cutoff a great deal of mortified flesh, in all which the poor fellow feltno pain. William proceeded till he brought the vessels which he had cutto bleed, and the man to cry out; then he reduced the splinters of thebone, and, calling for help, set it, as we call it, and bound it up, andlaid the man to rest, who found himself much easier than before.
At the first opening the surgeons began to triumph; the mortificationseemed to spread, and a long red streak of blood appeared from the woundupwards to the middle of the man's thigh, and the surgeons told me theman would die in a few hours. I went to look at it, and found Williamhimself under some surprise; but when I asked him how long he thoughtthe poor fellow could live, he looked gravely at me, and said, "As longas thou canst; I am not at all apprehensive of his life," said he, "butI would cure him, if I could, without making a cripple of him." I foundhe was not just then upon the operation as to his leg, but was mixingup something to give the poor creature, to repel, as I thought, thespreading contagion, and to abate or prevent any feverish temper thatmight happen in the blood; after which he went to work again, and openedthe leg in two places above the wound, cutting out a great deal ofmortified flesh, which it seemed was occasioned by the bandage, whichhad pressed the parts too much; and withal, the blood being at the timein a more than common disposition to mortify, might assist to spread it.
Well, our friend William conquered all this, cleared the spreadingmortification, and the red streak went off again, the flesh began toheal, and matter to run; and in a few days the man's spirits began torecover, his pulse beat regular, he had no fever, and gathered strengthdaily; and, in a word, he was a perfect sound man in about ten weeks,and we kept him amongst us, and made him an able seaman. But to returnto the ship: we never could come at a certain information about it, tillsome of the negroes which we kept on board, and whom we taught to speakEnglish, gave the account of it afterwards, and this maimed man inparticular.
We inquired, by all the signs and motions we could imagine, what wasbecome of the people, and yet we could get nothing from them. Ourlieutenant was for torturing some of them to make them confess,but William opposed that vehemently; and when he heard it was underconsideration he came to me. "Friend," says he, "I make a request tothee not to put any of these poor wretches to torment." "Why, William,"said I, "why not? You see they will not give any account of what isbecome of the white men." "Nay," says William, "do not say so; I supposethey have given thee a full account of every particular of it." "Howso?" says I; "pray what are we the wiser for all their jabbering?""Nay," says William, "that may be thy fault, for aught I know; thou wiltnot p
unish the poor men because they cannot speak English; and perhapsthey never heard a word of English before. Now, I may very well supposethat they have given thee a large account of everything; for thou seestwith what earnestness, and how long, some of them have talked to thee;and if thou canst not understand their language, nor they thine, how canthey help that? At the best, thou dost but suppose that they have nottold thee the whole truth of the story; and, on the contrary, I supposethey have; and how wilt thou decide the question, whether thou art rightor whether I am right? Besides, what can they say to thee when thouaskest them a question upon the torture, and at the same time they donot understand the question, and thou dost not know whether they say ayor no?"
It is no compliment to my moderation to say I was convinced by thesereasons; and yet we had