“‘Good God!’ I exclaimed, ‘we have no time to lose; the blacks will fire the schooner; let us make for the vessel.’
“We rushed down the hill, and in five minutes were in the midst of the conflict. Ten or twelve blacks and three whites lay stark and stiff on the ground.
“Pompey kept screaming to his countrymen that we were not come against them, but against Sinclair and the people of the schooner.
“The blacks raised a tremendous yell, and made a rush upon Sinclair and five white men, who were defending a large shed; but John Sinclair and his men saw us at once, and levelled their muskets at us as we advanced, wounding two of our party slightly. They then, cutlass and pistol in hand, made for the schooner, just as the crew, having brought the bow gun to act, fired it loaded with grape amongst the infuriated slaves, killing several and wounding numbers. This only exasperated them ten-fold. I was the youngest and fastest on foot of our little band, and, with a cutlass and pistol, I rushed after John Sinclair, to cut him off before he could get into the schooner. His five companions were some yards ahead—most anxious to reach the vessel, knowing they could make a desperate fight of it from her deck. I came within a yard of him, and, in my bitterness of feeling, I could have shot him, but I did not. He heard me calling on him, and, turning, deliberately fired his pistol, with a frightful curse, within a foot of my face. The ball merely raised the skin of my cheek, and then I made a cut at him with my cutlass, but he was a strong, powerful man—he knocked up the weapon, and made a cut at me, but slipped and stumbled. The next instant three or four negroes threw themselves, with yells horrible to hear, upon the man, and casting him upon the beach, despite all I could do, beat his brains out with hatchets; but the same instant the gun from the schooner was levelled at them, and stretched many of them, bleeding and wounded, beside their victim. A body of more than one hundred and fifty negroes now rushed frantically at the schooner; our party, excepting a few wounds and bruises, were all right, and Lieutenant Dobbs called out to those on the schooner’s deck to surrender, and give up the two young ladies on board, and their attendants, or the blacks would fire the vessel and murder them. Their reply was a volley of oaths and pistol shots. So we swung ourselves up by the ropes from the bowsprit, the blacks following, yelling with fury; but the nine men on board did not stop to resist us—they swung down over the quarters and made a rush for their boat, launched her, and pulled out into the bay. The schooner was gained by the maddened negroes, who commenced ransacking every part of her for spirits, and, having hauled up a cask, they broke in the head, and, with the yells and shouts of demons, commenced a negro orgie.
“Whilst this was going on, Lieutenant Dobbs and I broke open the cabin door, which was locked, and a bar placed across it. A cry of despair came from the cabin; I rushed in, and, with inexpressible delight, beheld the two sisters locked in each other’s arms, and the two horrified black girls on their knees beside them. But a faint light entered the cabin from bulls’ eyes on the deck, the skylight having been covered over. At first the two girls, who were paralysed by the firing and the hideous uproar above, did not recognise us as deliverers, but the sound of my voice re-assured them. Starting up, they threw themselves into my arms, and embraced me as a brother, with hysterical emotion, and bursting into a flood of tears.
“Pompey came rushing into the cabin, saying—‘Massa, massa, be quick; de fire de ship, and turn debbles wid drink; de turn and kill us, may be!’ The men above called out also to be quick, for the negroes were raving mad, and had set fire to the fore-cabin of the schooner.
“Having assured the terrified girls that their father was alive and quite safe—I did not like to say he was in a fever—we hurried on deck. It was a scene of horror. The negroes had drunk the spirit as if it were water; some howling and yelling, leaping about the deck, others lying about stupefied. Flames were coming up from the fore-cabin, and a set of drunken negroes were dancing around it, hand in hand, screaming and yelling.
“‘We must be off this instant,’ said Henry Stanhope; ‘they will surely turn upon us, if only one black rascal gives the signal. We have ropes ready to lower the females over the side.’
“In a few minutes the men flung themselves over the side, whilst Lieutenant Dobbs and I lowered the almost fainting girls, when, as Henry Stanhope expected, two or three of the drunken wretches cried out, ‘Let us kill the whites; don’t let them have the women.’ This was in their own language, which of course I did not understand, but Pompey, in his way, told us what they said. However, we all got out of the schooner safely—her fore-mast, rigging, and sails a sheet of flame. The negroes, all that could, threw themselves pell-mell over the side, for it was getting too hot for them, whilst we, supporting and partly carrying the poor girls, hurried from the place, avoiding the huts, and making the best of our way to our boat, which we reached at night-fall, thanking God that we had so fortunately succeeded in rescuing the Misses Packenham, and escaped from the drunken fury of the liberated slaves.”