It was a dark-grey cloudy forenoon when we “up anchor” and sailed from Simon’s Bay. Frequent squalls whitened the water, and there was every indication of our being about to have dirty weather; and the tokens told no lies. To our little craft, however, the foul weather that followed seemed to be a matter of very little moment; for, when the wind or waves were in any way high, she kept snugly below water, evidently thinking more of her own convenience than our comfort, for such a procedure on her part necessitated our leading a sort of amphibious existence, better suited to the tastes of frogs than human beings. Our beds too, or matresses, became converted into gigantic poultices, in which we nightly steamed, like as many porkers newly shaven. Judging from the amount of salt which got encrusted on our skins, there was little need to fear danger, we were well preserved—so much so indeed, that, but for the constant use of the matutinal freshwater bath, we would doubtless have shared the fate of Lot’s wife and been turned into pillars of salt.
After being a few days at sea the wind began to moderate, and finally died away; and instead thereof we had thunderstorms and waves, which, if not so big as mountains, would certainly have made pretty large hills.
Many a night did we linger on deck till well nigh morning, entranced by the sublime beauty and terrible grandeur of those thunderstorms. The roar and rattle of heaven’s artillery; the incessant floods of lightning—crimson, blue, or white; our little craft hanging by the bows to the crest of each huge inky billow, or next moment buried in the valley of the waves, with a wall of black waters on every side; the wet deck, the slippery shrouds, and the faces of the men holding on to the ropes and appearing so strangely pale in the electric light; I see the whole picture even now as I write—a picture, indeed, that can never, never fade from my memory.
Our cruising “ground” lay between the island and town of Mozambique in the south, to about Magadoxa, some seven or eight degrees north of the Equator.
Nearly the whole of the slave-trade is carried on by the Arabs, one or two Spaniards sometimes engaging in it likewise. The slaves are brought from the far interior of South Africa, where they can be purchased for a small bag of rice each. They are taken down in chained gangs to the coast, and there in some secluded bay the dhows lie, waiting to take them on board and convey them to the slave-mart at Zanzibar, to which place Arab merchants come from the most distant parts of Arabia and Persia to buy them. Dhows are vessels with one or two masts, and a corresponding number of large sails, and of a very peculiar construction, being shaped somewhat like a short or Blucher boot, the high part of the boot representing the poop. They have a thatched roof over the deck, the projecting eaves of which render boarding exceedingly difficult to an enemy.
Sometimes, on rounding the corner of a lagoon island, we would quietly and unexpectedly steam into the midst of a fleet of thirty to forty of these queer-looking vessels, very much to our own satisfaction, and their intense consternation. Imagine a cat popping down among as many mice, and you will be able to form some idea of the scramble that followed. However, by dint of steaming here and there, and expending a great deal of shot and shell, we generally managed to keep them together as a dog would a flock of sheep, until we examined all their papers with the aid of our interpreter, and probably picked out a prize.
I wish I could say the prizes were anything like numerous; for perhaps one-half of all the vessels we board are illicit slaveholders, and yet we cannot lay a finger on them. One may well ask why? It has been said, and it is generally believed in England, that our cruisers are sweeping the Indian Ocean of slavers, and stamping out the curse. But the truth is very different, and all that we are doing, or able at present to do, is but to pull an occasional hair from the hoary locks of the fiend Slavery. This can be proved from the return-sheets, which every cruiser sends home, of the number of vessels boarded, generally averaging one thousand yearly to each man-o’-war, of which the half at least have slaves or slave-irons on board; but only two, or at most three, of these will become prizes. The reason of this will easily be understood, when the reader is informed, that the Sultan of Zanzibar has liberty to take any number of slaves from any one portion of his dominions to another: these are called household slaves; and, as his dominions stretch nearly all along the eastern shores of Africa, it is only necessary for the slave-dealer to get his sanction and seal to his papers in order to steer clear of British law. This, in almost every case, can be accomplished by means of a bribe. So slavery flourishes, the Sultan draws a good fat revenue from it, and the Portuguese—no great friends to us at any time—laugh and wink to see John Bull paying his thousands yearly for next to nothing. Supposing we liberate even two thousand slaves a year, which I am not sure we do however, there are on the lowest estimate six hundred slaves bought and sold daily in Zanzibar mart; two hundred and nineteen thousand in a twelvemonth; and, of our two thousand that are set free in Zanzibar, most, if not all, by-and-bye, become bondsmen again.
I am not an advocate for slavery, and would like to see a wholesale raid made against it, but I do not believe in the retail system; selling freedom in pennyworths, and spending millions in doing it, is very like burning a penny candle in seeking for a cent. Yet I sincerely believe, that there is more good done to the spread of civilisation and religion in one year, by the slave-traffic, than all our missionaries can do in a hundred. Don’t open your eyes and smile incredulously, intelligent reader; we live in an age when every question is looked at on both sides, and why should not this? What becomes of the hundreds of thousands of slaves that are taken from Africa? They are sold to the Arabs—that wonderful race, who have been second only to Christians in the good they have done to civilisation; they are taken from a state of degradation, bestiality, and wretchedness, worse by far than that of the wild beasts, and from a part of the country too that is almost unfit to live in, and carried to more favoured lands, spread over the sunny shores of fertile Persia and Arabia, fed and clothed and cared for; after a few years of faithful service they are even called sons and feed at their master’s table—taught all the trades and useful arts, besides the Mahommedan religion, which is certainly better than none—and, above all, have a better chance given them of one day hearing and learning the beautiful tenets of Christianity, the religion of love.
I have met with few slaves who after a few years did not say, “Praised be Allah for the good day I was take from me coontry!” and whose only wish to return was, that they might bring away some aged parent, or beloved sister, from the dark cheerless home of their infancy.
Means and measures much more energetic must be brought into action if the stronghold of slavedom is to be stormed, and, if not, it were better to leave it alone. “If the work be of God ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found to fight even against God.”