These last, as they tramped to and fro over the deck, might be heard at intervals giving utterance to profane oaths—as often laying violent hands upon one or other of their unfortunate captives—apparently out of the sheer wantonness of cruelty!
Immediately after the anchor had been dropped, and the ropes belayed and coiled in their places, a new scene of this disgusting drama was entered upon. The living “bales,” hitherto restrained below, were now ordered, or rather driven, upon deck—not all at once, but in lots of three or four at a time. Each individual, as he came up the hatchway, was rudely seized by a sailor, who stood by with a soft brush in his hand and a pail at his feet; the latter containing a black composition of gunpowder, lemon-juice, and palm-oil. Of this mixture the unresisting captive received a coating; which, by the hand of another sailor, was rubbed into the skin, and then polished with a “dandybrush,” until the sable epidermis glistened like a newly-blacked boot.
A strange operation it might have appeared to those who saw it, had they not been initiated into its object and meaning. But to the spectators there present it was no uncommon sight. It was not the first time those unfeeling men had assisted at the spectacle of black bales being made ready for the market!
One after another were the dark-skinned victims of human cupidity brought from below, and submitted to this demoniac anointment—to which one and all yielded with an appearance of patient resignation, like sheep under the hands of the shearer.
In the looks of many of them could be detected the traces of that apprehension felt in the first hours of their captivity, and which had not yet forsaken them. Might not this process be a prelude to some fearful sacrifice?
Even the females were not exempted from this disgusting desecration of God’s image; and they too, one after another, were passed through the hands of the rough operators, with an accompaniment of brutal jests, and peals of ribald laughter!