negro with
a few followers coming along the causeway. When I saw what the captain
had done, remembering also that my bonds could be easily slackened, I
cast them off, and sprang after him; and so sudden were my movements,
that before any of the astonished blacks could stop me, I had clung to
the legs of the black chief as tightly as I ever clung to a
top-gallant-yard in a gale of wind. The chief and his followers were so
much taken by surprise, that no one knew what to say or how to act. The
awe with which the captain had inspired them, and the supernatural mode,
as it seemed, by which he had freed himself from his bonds, and freed me
also, made them afraid of approaching lest he should destroy them or the
chief.

The captain saw his advantage, and was not a man to lose it. His life
depended on his resolution. The horror he must have felt at the scene
just enacted made him resolve not to throw a chance away. As he held
the chief in his vice-like grasp, with his arms pinioned down, he looked
him fully in the face and laughed long and loudly.

"You thought to kill me, did you?" he exclaimed--"you thought that you
could deprive me of life as easily as you did those miserable men you
have just destroyed--me, a man who never injured you or yours; who has
never wronged one of the sons of Africa. Ay, I can say that with a
clear conscience. Often have I benefited them, often have I saved them
from injury; and perhaps even here there are some who know me, and know
that I speak the truth."

"One is here who can prove all he says to be true," exclaimed a tall
negro, stepping forward from among the crowd. He was the very man I had
remarked approaching the spot along the causeway.

"My friends, hear me," he exclaimed. "We have already satisfied our
just vengeance, and do not let us destroy the innocent with the guilty.
Some years ago a ship from Africa, laden with the children of her
fruitful soil torn cruelly from their homes, struck on a coral-reef. A
heavy sea dashed over the devoted vessel. Land was in sight, but yet
far-off, blue and indistinct. The white crew had many boats. They
launched them and pulled away with heartless indifference, leaving three
hundred human beings, men, women, and helpless children, to almost
certain destruction. Night came on. Oh, what a night of horrors! Many
died, some from terror; many were drowned, manacled as they lay in the
noisome hold. When the morning broke a sail appear