The men were afraid to go on to the sick-list.  Nothing short of total inability to continue would have prevented them from working, such was the terror with which that man had inspired us all.  It may be said that we were a pack of cowards, who, without the courage to demand better treatment, deserved all we got.  While admitting that such a conclusion is quite a natural one at which to arrive, I must deny its truth.  There were men in that forecastle as good citizens and as brave fellows as you would wish to meet—­men who in their own sphere would have commanded and obtained respect.  But under the painful and abnormal circumstances in which they found themselves—­beaten and driven like dogs while in the throes of sea-sickness, half starved and hopeless, their spirit had been so broken, and they were so kept down to that sad level by the display of force, aided by deadly weapons aft, that no other condition could be expected for them but that of broken-hearted slaves.  My own case was many degrees better than that of the other whites, as I have before noted; but I was perfectly well aware that the slightest attempt on my part to show that I resented our common treatment would meet with the most brutal repression, and, in addition, I might look for a dreadful time of it for the rest of the voyage.

The memory of that week of misery is so strong upon me even now that my hand trembles almost to preventing me from writing about it.  Weak and feeble do the words seem as I look at them, making me wish for the fire and force of Carlyle or Macaulay to portray our unnecessary sufferings.

Like all other earthly ills, however, they came to an end, at least for a time, and I was delighted to note that we were getting to the northward again.  In making the outward passage round the Cape, it is necessary to go well south, in order to avoid the great westerly set of the Agulhas current, which for ever sweeps steadily round the southern extremity of the African continent at an average rate of three or four miles an hour.  To homeward-bound ships this is a great boon.  No matter what the weather may be—­a stark calm or a gale of wind right on end in your teeth—­that vast, silent river in the sea steadily bears you on at the same rate in the direction of home.  It is perfectly true that with a gale blowing across the set of this great current, one of the very ugliest combinations of broken waves is raised; but who cares for that, when he knows that, as long as the ship holds together, some seventy or eighty miles per day nearer home must be placed to her credit?  In like manner, it is of the deepest comfort to know that, storm or calm, fair or foul, the current of time, unhasting, unresting, bears us on to the goal that we shall surely reach—­the haven of unbroken rest.