It is owing to the dread instilled into these poor people, ground down by misery and want, and, above all, is it owing to this hideous hiding-place on board their vessels, that the slave dealers continue to carry on, in spite of Baker, their nefarious trade, and sail, unsuspected, past the very stations organized for their discovery. As a rule, their slaves remain on deck night and day, but as soon as a station is neared, or a man-of-war is signalled in the distance, the wretches are made to go below at once into the confined space we have described. There they are hermetically enclosed, there they are immured, not to be released until all danger has disappeared. An opening here and there in the vessel's side, just above the water-mark and too small to be seen, enables the inmates to struggle against suffocation for, perhaps, an hour. That limit passed, the deaths are about twenty a minute, the strongest, those who need a larger quantum of air for their spacious lungs, being the first to succumb. The weak and ailing alone exist for any length of time, and so, at the end of a couple of hours, there is no longer any hurry to open the trap, for out of it would only come worthless, valueless slaves.
But if the openings, of which we have spoken, are not large enough to prevent suffocation, they still allow the escape of the miasma produced by this compressed, over-heated human mass. The wind had borne this stench towards the Egyptian vessel, and thus, by a mere accident, one of the countless devices of these dealers in human flesh was found out.
It was necessary to employ force to get the slaves to emerge from their den, for they were under the impression that if they went on deck they would be massacred. In fact, they were running a great risk, the Mussulman Captain and his ten men having taken advantage of the attention of the Europeans being devoted to the rescue of the slaves, to construct a barricade aft.
They had rolled together three barrels of powder, and they declared positively that if they were to be ruined, if their slaves were taken away, they would blow up the boat and everybody on board.
CHAPTER II.
The threat, however, did not appear to affect either the Europeans or the Egyptian Commander; they went on leisurely with their work of deliverance, dragging one slave after another out of the black hole, and placing them on deck, where Dr. Delange attended to the worst cases. M. de Morin alone, after having exchanged a few words in a whisper with the Commander, went over the side, descended the rope ladder attached to it, got into the boat which had brought him, and, rowed by a couple of men, pulled towards the flotilla.
At length, the last slave was brought on deck; he was still breathing, and M. Delange managed, in a minute or two, to set him on his legs again, but of the hundred and twenty beings who had been set free, eight were suffocated, and defied every effort to restore animation to them. The remainder were as well as ever, despite their incarceration.
M. Périères asked himself whether it would not be better to order the slaves to rush all at once aft and massacre their former masters before the latter had time to set fire to the powder barrels with the matches they were seen to hold in their hands. But one glance at the human crowd surrounding him sufficed to dispel the idea, for he saw that it consisted of men barely adults, a large proportion of women, and children of from eight to twelve years old. It would have been imprudent, in spite of their numbers, to rely upon such allies. Action, and that too of the most energetic sort possible, must be taken without any assistance from them. The reis and his men, in order to rouse themselves to courage and revenge, had just broached a cask of brandy, and, notwithstanding the precepts of the Koran, which they, in all probability, habitually set at nought, they were drinking bumpers of the ardent spirit. There was everything to be feared from their drunken excitement.
The Egyptian officer saw the danger, and, advancing alone along the deck, until within about a couple of yards from the barricade, he addressed the reis, who, though placid enough at the commencement when he thought he could escape any inspection, was now furious at seeing himself unmasked, ruined, and exposed to severe punishment.
"You will immediately order your men," said the Commander firmly, "to put out their portfires, and lay down their arms. In that way alone will you save your lives, for, if you have not complied in five minutes' time, I will have the whole lot of you put to death."