It will be readily understood that the saucy-wood beverage, like any other, may be prepared in various degrees of strength, so that the operator has entire control of its noxious qualities. If the accused has friends, either to pay or tamper with the medicator, the draft is commonly made weak enough to insure its harmless rejection from the culprit’s stomach; but when the victim is friendless, time is allowed for the entire venom to exude, and the drinker dies ere he can drink the second bowl.
Very soon after the offer of my barracoon as a prison for the accused, a Krooman was brought to it, accused of causing his nephew’s death by fatal incantations. The juju had been consulted and confirmed the suspicion; whereupon the luckless negro was seized, ironed, and delivered to my custody.
Next day early the juju-man ground his bark, mixed it with water, and simmered the potion over a slow fire to extract the poison’s strength. As I had reason to believe that especial enmity was entertained against the imprisoned uncle, I called at the juju’s hovel while the medication was proceeding, and, with the bribe of a bottle, requested him to impart triple power to the noxious draught. My own juju, I said, had nullified his by pronouncing the accused innocent, and I was exceedingly anxious to test the relative truth of our soothsayers.
The rascal promised implicit compliance, and I hastened back to the barracoon to await the fatal hour. Up to the very moment of the draught’s administration, I remained alone with the culprit, and administering a double dose of tartar-emetic just before the gate was opened, I led him forth loaded with irons. The daring negro, strong in his truth, and confident of the white man’s superior witchcraft, swallowed the draught without a wink, and in less than a minute, the rejected venom established his innocence, and covered the African wizard with confusion.
This important trial and its results were of course noised abroad throughout so superstitious and credulous a community. The released Krooman told his companions of the “white-man-saucy-wood,” administered by me in the barracoon; and, ever afterwards, the accused were brought to my sanctuary where the conflicting charm of my emetic soon conquered the native poison and saved many a useful life. In a short time the malicious practice was discontinued altogether.
During the favorable season, I had been deprived of three vessels by British cruisers, and, for as many months, had not shipped a single slave,—five hundred of whom were now crowded in my barracoons, and demanded our utmost vigilance for safe keeping. In the gang, I found a family consisting of a man, his wife, three children and a sister, all sold under an express obligation of exile and slavery among Christians. The luckless father was captured by my blackguard friend Prince Freeman in person, and the family had been secured when the parents’ village was subsequently stormed. Barrah was an outlaw and an especial offender in the eyes of an African, though his faults were hardly greater than the deeds that bestowed honor and knighthood in the palmy days of our ancestral feudalism. Barrah was the discarded son of a chief in the interior, and had presumed to blockade the public path towards the beach, and collect duties from transient passengers or caravans. This interfered with Freeman and his revenues; but, in addition to the pecuniary damage, the alleged robber ventured on several occasions to defeat and plunder the prince’s vagabonds, so that, in time, he became rich and strong enough to build a town and fortify it with a regular stockade, directly on the highway! All these offences were so heinous in the sight of my beach prince, that no foot was suffered to cool till Barrah was captured. Once within his power, Freeman would not have hesitated to kill his implacable enemy as soon as delivered at New Sestros; but the interference of friends, and, perhaps, the laudable conviction that a live negro was worth more than a dead one, induced his highness to sell him under pledge of Cuban banishment.
Barrah made several ineffectual attempts to break my barracoon and elude the watchfulness of my guards, so that they were frequently obliged to restrict his liberty, deprive him of comforts, or add to his shackles. In fact, he was one of the most formidable savages I ever encountered, even among the thousands who passed in terrible procession before me in Africa. One day he set fire to the bamboo-matting with which a portion of the barracoon was sheltered from the sun, for which he was severely lashed; but next day, when allowed, under pretence of ague, to crawl with his heavy irons to the kitchen fire, he suddenly dashed a brand into the thatch, and, seizing another, sprang towards the powder-house, which his heavy shackles did not allow him to reach before he was felled to the earth.
Freeman visited me soon afterwards, and, in spite of profit and liquor, insisted on taking the brutal savage back; but, in the mean time, the Bassa chief, to whom my prince was subordinate, heard of Barrah’s attempt on my magazine, and demanded the felon to expiate his crime, according to the law of his country, at the stake. No argument could appease the infuriate judges, who declared that a cruel death would alone satisfy the people whose lives had been endangered by the robber. Nevertheless, I declined delivering the victim for such a fate, so that, in the end, we compromised the sentence by shooting Barrah in the presence of all the slaves and townsfolk,—the most unconcerned spectators among whom were his wife and sister!