As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had mounted in desperation, and said:—­

“For God’s love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand something?  The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them.  I knocked that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him.  And then I talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I’ll be hanged if they understood that as well as they understood the English.”

Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.

“Tell them they are free,” said Vaughan; “and tell them that these rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough.”

Nolan “put that into Spanish,”—­that is, he explained it in such Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of the negroes as could understand them.  Then there was such a yell of delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan’s feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous worship of Vaughan, as the deus ex machina of the occasion.

“Tell them,” said Vaughan, well pleased, “that I will take them all to Cape Palmas.”

This did not answer so well.  Cape Palmas was practically as far from the homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they would be eternally separated from home there.  And their interpreters, as we could understand, instantly said, “Ah, non Palmas,” and began to propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language.  Vaughan was rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan eagerly what they said.  The drops stood on poor Nolan’s white forehead, as he hushed the men down, and said:—­

“He says, ‘Not Palmas.’  He says, ’Take us home, take us to our own country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and our own women.’  He says he has an old father and mother who will die if they do not see him.  And this one says he left his people all sick, and paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them, and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and that he has never seen anybody from home since then.  And this one says,” choked out Nolan, “that he has not heard a word from his home in six months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon.”

Vaughan always said he grew gray himself while Nolan struggled through this interpretation:  I, who did not understand anything of the passion involved in it, saw that the very elements were melting with fervent heat, and that something was to pay somewhere.  Even the negroes themselves stopped howling, as they saw Nolan’s agony, and Vaughan’s almost equal agony of sympathy.  As quick as he could get words, he said:—­

“Tell them yes, yes, yes; tell them they shall go to the Mountains of the Moon, if they will.  If I sail the schooner through the Great White Desert, they shall go home!”