on board with Pedro Montez.  The Amistad was a coaster, bound to Principe, in Cuba, distant some two or three hundred miles.  The Africans were kept in chains and fetters, and were supplied with but a small quantity of food or water.  A single banana, they say, was served out as food for a day or two, and only a small cup of water for each daily.  When any of them took a little water from the cask, they were severely flogged.  The Spaniards took Antonio, the cabin-boy and slave to Captain Ferrer, and stamped him on the shoulder with a hot iron; then put powder, palm oil, &c. upon the wound, so that they ’could know him for their slave.’  The cook, a colored Spaniard, told them that on their arrival at Principe, in three days, they would have their throats cut, be chopped in pieces, and salted down for meat for the Spaniards.  He pointed to some barrels of beef on the deck, then to an empty barrel, and by significant gestures,—­as the Mendians say, by ’talking with his fingers,’—­he made them understand that they were to be slain, &c.  At four o’clock that day, when they were called on deck to eat, Cinque found a nail, which he secreted under his arm.  In the night they held a counsel as to what was best to be done.  ‘We feel bad,’ said Kin-na, ’and we ask Cinque what we had best do.  Cinque say, “Me think, and by and by I tell you."’ He then said, ’If we do nothing, we be killed.  We may as well die in trying to be free as to be killed and eaten.’  Cinque afterwards told them what he would do.  With the aid of the nail and the assistance of Grabeau, he freed himself from the irons on his wrists and ancles, and from the chain on his neck.  He then, with his own hands, wrested the irons from the limbs and necks of his countrymen.  It is not in my power to give an adequate description of Cinque when he showed how he did this and led his comrades to the conflict and achieved their freedom.  In my younger years I saw Kemble and Siddons, and the representation of Othello, at Covent Garden, but no acting that I ever witnessed came near that to which I allude.  When delivered from their irons, the Mendians, with the exception of the children, who were asleep, about four or five o’clock in the morning, armed with cane-knives, some boxes of which they found in the hold, leaped upon the deck.  Cinque killed the cook.  The captain fought desperately.  He inflicted wounds on two of the Africans, who soon after died, and cut severely one or two of those who now survive.  Two sailors leaped over the side of the vessel.  The Mendians say ’they could not catch land—­they must have swum to the bottom of the sea,’ but Ruiz and Montez supposed they reached the island in a boat.  Cinque now took command of the vessel; placed Si-si at the helm; gave his people plenty to eat and drink.  Ruiz and Montez had fled to the hold.  They were dragged out, and Cinque ordered them to be put in irons.  They cried and begged not to be put in chains, but Cinque replied, ’You say fetters good for negro—­if