A picturesque story was told in testimony before the English House of Commons.  To a certain slaver lying off the Windward coast a girl was brought in a canoe by a well-known black trader, who took his pay and paddled off.  A few moments later another canoe with two blacks came alongside and inquired for the girl.  They were permitted to see her and declared she had been kidnapped; but the slaver, not at all put out by that fact, refused to give her up.  Thereupon the blacks paddled swiftly off after her seller, overtook, and captured him.  Presently they brought him back to the deck of the ship—­an article of merchandise, where he had shortly before been a merchant.

“You won’t buy me,” cried the captive.  “I a grand trading man!  I bring you slaves.”

But no scruples entered the mind of the captain of the slaver.  “If they will sell you I certainly will buy you,” he answered, and soon the kidnapped kidnapper was in irons and thrust below in the noisome hold with the unhappy being he had sent there.  A multitude of cases of negro slave-dealers being seized in this way, after disposing of their human cattle, are recorded.

It is small wonder that torn thus from home and relatives, immured in filthy and crowded holds, ill fed, denied the two great gifts of God to man—­air and water—­subjected to the brutality of merciless men, and wholly ignorant of the fate in store for them, many of the slaves should kill themselves.  As they had a salable value the captains employed every possible device to defeat this end—­every device, that is, except kind treatment, which was beyond the comprehension of the average slaver.  Sometimes the slaves would try to starve themselves to death.  This the captains met by torture with the cat and thumbscrews.  There is a horrible story in the testimony before the English House of Commons about a captain who actually whipped a nine-months-old child to death trying to force it to eat, and then brutally compelled the mother to throw the lacerated little body overboard.  Another captain found that his captives were killing themselves, in the belief that their spirits would return to their old home.  By way of meeting this superstition, he announced that all who died in this way should have their heads cut off, so that if they did return to their African homes, it would be as headless spirits.  The outcome of this threat was very different from what the captain had anticipated.  When a number of the slaves were brought on deck to witness the beheading of the body of one of their comrades, they seized the occasion to leap overboard and were drowned.  Many sought death in this way, and as they were usually good swimmers, they actually forced themselves to drown, some persistently holding their heads under water, others raising their arms high above their heads, and in one case two who died together clung to each other so that neither could swim.  Every imaginable way in which death could be sought was employed by these hopeless blacks, though, indeed, the hardships of the voyage were such as to bring it often enough unsought.