As he spoke he hauled out a long strong iron bar, to which leg irons were attached, and a padlock fastened to the end.
“Now,” said the skipper, “we can not only smell the rat, but see it.”
“Blackbirders!”
“Blackbirders,” repeated D’Acre, “evidently.”
For the benefit of the uninitiated, I beg to say that in some parts of Australia—Queensland, in particular, I think—black labour is hired from the islands of the South Pacific. The natives—call them savages, if you please—who “volunteer,” are offered good wages and a free and safe passage back to their own homes. It is almost needless to say that they seldom see those homes again.
But the men engaged in this nefarious trade are called Blackbirders, and as a rule the business resolves itself into one of kidnapping the blacks, oftentimes associated with the most shocking atrocities and cruelties that can be imagined.
As long as Blackbirding is suffered to exist, slavery of the basest sort must be supposed to flourish. I know there are people even now that deny the existence of Blackbirding, or that it ever did flourish in cruelty and tyranny. Proofs are all against these people, and many a burned and blackened island, many a desolated village, and many an ant-cleaned skeleton lying unburied and bleaching in the sun, shall testify to what I say.
“Yes, she is a Blackbirder, right enough, mate. Perish the fiends! But what fools they were to leave their ship!”
“As a rule,” said the mate, “the cruel are cowards.”
“Well, mate, I don’t hold with you altogether there. I have known fiends in human form who were very far indeed from being cowards. But come now, mate, we’ll go on deck, and begin making the ship as snug as ever we can.”