hers were hindered by their weight, were flung aside upon the
terrible track. Those who reached the coast alive were packed in the
hold of a slave-dhow, and, after enduring untold miseries upon the
voyage, were sold in the market of Zanzibar. No wonder that the sight of
such things as these roused the loving heart of Livingstone to a white
heat of indignation, and sent him home to infect his countrymen with his
own anger.

For some time the conscience of Christian Europe had been awakening to
the duty of putting an end to these horrors, and, as in the case of the
pirates of Algiers, it was England who first played the part of
policeman. Early in 1873, Sir Bartle Frere was sent to Zanzibar to
confer with the Sultan, Seyid Barghash, on the suppression of the
slave-trade, and, a few months later, he was followed by six English
men-of-war, reinforced by two French and one American ship. The effect
of these nine good arguments for reform was that, on June 6th, 1873, a
treaty was signed, by which the slave-traffic was abolished and the
Zanzibar market closed for ever.

For years after that, however, the Arab dealers managed from time to
time to evade the law, and to ship their cargo of miserable human
beings, kidnapped from their homes on the mainland, from Zanzibar and
Pemba. Therefore, there was plenty of work for the officers and men of
H.M.S. _London_, appointed to watch the coast for slavers, and with
authority to search suspected vessels. Many were the exciting chases and
triumphant rescues made by the English sailors; many, too, the
disappointments when the dhow proved to be empty, the slaves having been
hastily smuggled on shore and hidden among the undergrowth till the
search was over. As a rule the Arabs, though expert in tricks and
shifts, did not offer armed resistance, but now and again they showed
fight, and the rescue of their captives cost the life of more than one
brave Englishman.

In 1881 the gallant Captain Brownrigg was killed in a struggle with an
Arab slaver, owing chiefly to his own punctilious respect for the French
flag under which the dhow was sailing. Not wishing to begin hostilities,
he came alongside the Arab without arming his men, who were powerless to
make any resistance when boarded by the enemy. The Captain, who wore his
sword, kept up a gallant fight single-handed, even killing one man with
his telescope before he fell at last bleeding from twenty wounds.

Six years later a pinnace from