"My cargo of slaves, sir? What are you talking about?" exclaimed the Mussulman, raising his eyes to heaven as if to summon it to bear witness to his veracity, "I am a straightforward trader, and I am on my way back from the Grazelle River with a cargo of ivory from the Southern provinces."
"Where is your cargo?" asked the officer.
"Here are a few samples?" replied the Turk, pointing to a number of elephants' tusks which were strung up along the mast.
"You have made a dangerous trip solely for ivory, have you?" was the Egyptian's reply. "I know you and your kindred spirits too well to be taken in by any such tale as that. Where have you hidden your human merchandize? Answer."
"Nowhere, I assure you, sir. You may search the ship if you like."
"That is exactly what I am going to do."
"When you please."
The Egyptian officer was beginning to feel non-plussed. In vain he looked around him, he could only discover about eight or ten men, rather a villainous-looking lot truly, doing odd jobs about the ship.
In the meantime, the stench, which had first become noticeable about half an hour previously, appeared now to increase in intensity every moment, and whiffs of hot, one might almost say putrified, air surged up without intermission from somewhere or other. Whence could possibly come these foul exhalations, this suffocating heat, which seemed to emanate from some cribb'd, cabined, and confined human herd? If the vessel had been a slaver in the Indian Ocean or the Red Sea, there would not have been any need for hesitation. The removal of the hatches would have at once exposed to view two or three hundred blacks, chained along the side of the hold, or stowed away in the centre like bales of cotton or hogsheads of sugar. But the large boat, on board which they were, drew but little water, and she had not depth enough for either a hold or a lower deck.
Fortunately, the sailors of the "Khedive," were whiling away the time by making a tour of inspection on their own behalf, and some of them, who had made their way forwards, took it into their heads to remove some very suspicious looking sacks of grain, thereby uncovering a trap-door which they set to work to raise.