the ship;
but that if they were thrown into the sea, it would fall upon the
underwriters." He selected, accordingly, one hundred and thirty-two of
the most sickly of the slaves. Fifty-four of these were immediately
thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be partakers of their fate
on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the
remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck to complete the number of
victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea; but the
rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch
them, but leaped after their companions and shared their fate.

The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled
act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the
proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and
that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this,
that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if
Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a
shower of rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the
second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might
have filled many of their vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented
all necessity for the destruction of the third.

[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]

Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a
short-hand writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the
course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated
them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as
the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as
principal minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of
these, of the information which had been thus sent them.

But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence
of the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an
account of it by Mr. Sharp, in the newspapers, made such an impression
upon others, that; new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find
Thomas Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured
Africans. He had lived to see his poem of _The Dying Negro_, which had
been published in 1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had
written a letter to a friend in America, who was the possessor of
slaves, to dissuade him by a number of arguments from