captain
of the _Queen Charlotte_.

The proud pirate chief did not move a muscle of his pale face, or bend
his head while these terms were read to him; nevertheless, he agreed to
them all. The consul and others were called into the hall and delivered
up; the three guns were fired, and thereafter Lord Exmouth directed
that, on the Sunday following, "a public thanksgiving should be offered
up to Almighty God for the signal interposition of his Providence during
the conflict which took place on the 27th between his Majesty's fleet
and the ferocious enemies of mankind." In accordance with these terms
of peace, all the Christian slaves were collected next day and delivered
up.

Sixteen hundred and forty-two were freed on this occasion, and sent on
board the fleet. Counting those freed but a short time before, through
Lord Exmouth's influence along the Barbary coasts, the total number
delivered amounted to above 3000.

The assembling on the decks of the ships of war of these victims of
barbaric cruelty, ignorance, and superstition, was a sight that raised
powerful and conflicting feelings in the breasts of those who witnessed
it. The varied feelings of the slaves were, to some extent, expressed
by their actions and in their faces. Old and young were there, of
almost every nation; gentle and simple, robust and feeble; men, women,
and children. Some, on coming on board, cheered with joy, but these
were few, and consisted chiefly of men who had not been long enslaved,
and had not suffered much. Others wept with delight, fell on their
knees and kissed the decks, or returned thanks to God for deliverance.
Some were carried on board, being too ill, or too broken down, to walk.
Many appeared to regard the whole affair as a dream, too good to be
true, from which they must soon awake--as they had often awaked before--
after their uneasy slumbers in the dreadful Bagnio. But the saddest
sights of all were the men and women, here and there among the crowd,
whose prolonged condition of slavery--in many cases ten, twenty, even
thirty years--had rendered them callous as well to joy as to sorrow.
Taken in youth, they were now old. What was freedom to them? It did
indeed deliver them from the lash and from constant toil, but it could
not return to them the years that were gone; it could not recall the
beloved dead, who had, perchance, found their graves, sooner than might
otherwise have been, in consequence of the misery of hope l