I might also say armed--for
although there were no cannon, I observed a large number of muskets,
cutlasses, and pistols, that had been brought upon the deck from some
secret hiding-place, and distributed to the men to be cleaned and put in
order. From all this it was plain that the _Pandora_ was bent upon some
desperate enterprise, and although she might not sustain a combat with
the smallest vessel of war, she was determined that no mere boat's crew
should capture and rob her of her human freight. But it was to her
sails more than to her armour that the _Pandora_ trusted for success;
and, indeed, built and rigged as she was, few ships of war could have
overhauled her in open water, and with a fair wind.

I say that I no longer doubted of her true character. Indeed the people
on board no longer made a secret of it. On the contrary, they appeared
to glory in the occupation, regarding it in the light of achievement and
enterprise. Over their cups they sang songs in which the "bold slaver"
and his "jolly crew" were made to play the heroic, and many a coarse
jest was uttered relating to the "black-skinned cargo."

We had now passed to the southward of Gibraltar Straits, and were
sailing in a track where there would be less likelihood of falling in
with English men-of-war. The cruisers, whose sole business it is to
look after the slave-trade, would be found much farther south, and along
the coasts where slaves are usually shipped; and as there was no fear of
meeting with them for some days to come, the _Pandora's_ crew had little
else to do than enjoy themselves. A constant carousal, therefore, was
kept up, and drinking, singing, dancing, and "skylarking" were practised
from morning to night.

You may be surprised to know that a ship so evidently fitted out for
slave-traffic could have thus openly and directly sailed out of a
British port. But it is to be remembered that the period of which I am
writing was many years ago; although so far as that goes, it would be no
anachronism to lay the scene of my narrative in the year 1857. Many a
slave-ship has sailed from British ports in this very year, and with all
our boasted efforts to check the slave-trade it will be found that as
large a proportion of British subjects are at present engaged in this
nefarious traffic as of any other nation.

The attempt to put down the African slave-trade has been neither more or
less than a gigantic sham. Not one of the governments