“‘Where bound?’
“‘America.’
“‘Can I come on board you?’
“‘Yes.’
“So he bears down and lays too, and I, ‘mong the rest, went aboard. The captain treats us very genteel; and when they’d finished drinkin’ Captain Trumbull orders the hatch open, and I looked down, and to my sad surprise I see ’twas crowded with slaves. The first thing I see was a colored female, as naked as she was born into the world, and she looked up at me with a pitiful look; and an iron band went round her leg, and then she was locked to an iron bolt that went from one end of the ship to the other; and there was five hundred slaves down in that hole; men, women, and children, all chained down there, and among ’em all not one had a rag of clothes on,—and not a bit of daylight entered, only that hatch-way, and then only when they opened it to throw out the dead ones, or else feed ’em; and when I put my head over the hole, a steam come out strong ’nough to knock down a horse, for there they was in their own filth, and oh! how they did smell. There was several women that had jist had children, and a good many sick, and there they was, and oh! what a sight,—some on ’em was cryin’ and talkin’ among themselves, but I couldn’t understand a word they said; and there was a parcel of leetle fellers, that was from two to ten years old, a runnin’ round ‘mong ’em, and some on ’em was dead, and you could hear the dyin’ groans of others. Oh! I never did think a body of folks could suffer so and live. Why, how do you think they sat? They all sat down with their legs straddled out right up close agin’ one another, and they couldn’t stir only one arm and hand, for all else was chained.
“I felt worse, I ‘spose, and it was entirely more heart-rendin’ to me, because they was my own species; they warn’t only human bein’s but Africans. ☜ Oh! if I didn’t hate slavery arter this worse than ever; why! it seemed to me a thousand times worse than it ever did afore, when I was a slave myself.
“Well, the captain said he started with eight hundred, and three hundred had died on the v’yge! ☜ and he’d only been out ten days, and that’s mor’n one an hour; and that he had to keep one hand in there nigh upon half the time, to knock off the chains from the dead ones, and pitch ’em upon deck; and, says he, I have left a wake of blood fifteen hundred miles; for, no sooner than I fling one out than a shark flies at him and colors all the water with blood in less than one minute; why, says he, ‘a shoal of sharks follows our slave ships clear from Africa to America!!’ Oh! my soul, if there is one kind of wickedness greater, and worser, and viler, and more devilish and cusseder than any other, it is sich business. ☜
“The slave captain asked our captain if he thought he could git into America? He told him he didn’t think he could. ‘How long do you calculate to be in that business?’ says Captain Bainbridge.
“‘I can’t tell, Sir.’
“‘Well, Sir,’ says our captain, as he left the ship, ‘I advise you to clear up your ship when you git into port, and quit that cussed traffic, and go aboard a merchantman, and be a gentleman.’[[13]] And he didn’t like it nother’![[14]] Well, we left, and boarded our own ship; but that scene of blood I couldn’t forgit! I could see them poor crutters, for a good many days, in my thoughts and dreams; and sometimes I could see ’em jist as fresh and sorrowful as ever. Hundreds and hundreds of poor slaves, now at the South, are their descendants; and, like enough, you see some on ’em Mr. L.——, when you was at the South; and I know how to pity the descendants of them that’s fetched over in slave ships, for one of my grandfathers was fetched out in one, as I told you in the beginnin’ on my story.