battle was sure to be a bloody one for on either side fought desperate men—­one party following as a trade legalized piracy and violent theft of cargoes, the other employed in the violent theft of men and women, and the incitement of murder and rapine that their cargoes might be the fuller.  There would have been but scant loss to mankind in most of these conflicts had privateer and slaver both gone to the bottom.  Not infrequently the slavers themselves turned pirate or privateer for the time—­sometimes robbing a smaller craft of its load of slaves, sometimes actually running up the black flag and turning to piracy for a permanent calling.

In addition to the ordinary risks of shipwreck or capture the slavers encountered perils peculiar to their calling.  Once in a while the slaves would mutiny, though such is the gentle and almost childlike nature of the African negro that this seldom occurred.  The fear of it, however, was ever present to the captains engaged in the trade, and to guard against it the slaves—­always the men and sometimes the women as well—­were shackled together in pairs.  Sometimes they were even fastened to the floor of the dark and stifling hold in which they were immured for months at a time.  If heavy weather compelled the closing of the hatches, or if disease set in, as it too often did, the morning would find the living shackled to the dead.  In brief, to guard against insurrection the captains made the conditions of life so cruel that the slaves were fairly forced to revolt.  In 1759 a case of an uprising that was happily successful was recorded.  The slaver “Perfect,” Captain Potter, lay at anchor at Mana with one hundred slaves aboard.  The mate, second mate, the boatswain, and about half the crew were sent into the interior to buy some more slaves.  Noticing the reduced numbers of their jailors, the slaves determined to rise.  Ridding themselves of their irons, they crowded to the deck, and, all unarmed as they were, killed the captain, the surgeon, the carpenter, the cooper, and a cabin-boy.  Whereupon the remainder of the crew took to the boats and boarded a neighboring slaver, the “Spencer.”  The captain of this craft prudently declined to board the “Perfect,” and reduce the slaves to subjection again; but he had no objection to slaughtering naked blacks at long range, so he warped his craft into position and opened fire with his guns.  For about an hour this butchery was continued, and then such of the slaves as still lived, ran the schooner ashore, plundered, and burnt her.

[Illustration:  “THE ROPE WAS PUT AROUND HIS NECK”]

How such insurrections were put down was told nearly a hundred years later in an official communication to Secretary of State James Buchanan, by United States Consul George W. Gordon, the story being sworn testimony before him.  The case was that of the slaver “Kentucky,” which carried 530 slaves.  An insurrection which broke out was speedily suppressed, but fearing lest the outbreak should be repeated, the captain determined to give the wretched captives an “object lesson” by punishing the ringleaders.  This is how he did it: