the
trader's eyes, "when I last saw yer ugly face, I vowed that if ever I
seed it again I'd leave my mark on it pretty deep, I did; and now I does
see it again, but I haven't the moral courage to touch sitch a poor,
pitiful, shrivelled-up package o' bones an' half-tanned leather.
Moreover, I'm goin' to be indebted to 'ee! Ha! ha!" (he laughed
bitterly, and with a dash of wild humour in the tone), "to travel under
yer care, an' eat yer accursed bread, and--and--oh! there ain't no sitch
thing as shame left in my corpus. I'm a low mean-spirited boastful
idiot, that's wot _I_ am, an' I don't care the fag-end of a hunk o'
gingerbread who knows it."

After this explosion the sorely tried mariner brought his right hand
down on his thigh with a tremendous crack, turned about and walked away
to cool himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

PROGRESS OF THE SLAVE-RUN--THE DEADLY SWAMP, AND THE UNEXPECTED RESCUE.

We will now leap over a short period of time--about two or three weeks--
during which the sable procession had been winding its weary way over
hill and dale, plain and swamp.

During that comparatively brief period, Harold and Disco had seen so
much cruelty and suffering that they both felt a strange tendency to
believe that the whole must be the wild imaginings of a horrible dream.
Perhaps weakness, resulting from illness, might have had something to do
with this peculiar feeling of unbelief, for both had been subject to a
second, though slight, attack of fever. Nevertheless, coupled with
their scepticism was a contradictory and dreadful certainty that they
were not dreaming, but that what they witnessed was absolute verity.

It is probable that if they had been in their ordinary health and vigour
they would have made a violent attempt to rescue the slaves, even at the
cost of their own lives. But severe and prolonged illness often
unhinges the mind as well as the body, and renders the spirit all but
impotent.

One sultry evening the sad procession came to a long stretch of swamp,
and prepared to cross it. Although already thinned by death, the
slave-gang was large. It numbered several hundreds, and was led by
Marizano; Yoosoof having started some days in advance in charge of a
similar gang.

Harold and Disco were by that time in the habit of walking together in
front of the gang, chiefly for the purpose of avoiding the sight of
cruelties and woes which they were powerless to prevent or assuage. On
reaching