It is a marvel how these poor creatures live at all under the terrible tortures and ill-treatment they endure, sometimes for months, before they reach their destination and settle down as slaves to the worst of masters—very demons, not men. The captives state that when the pirates take a vessel, they kill every one who makes any resistance, plunder and sink their boats or ships, and when those they spare are first taken on board their own prahus, they put a rattan, or black rope-halter, round their necks, beat them with a flat piece of bamboo on the elbows and knees and the muscles of the arms and legs, so that they cannot use them to swim or run away. After a while, when sufficiently tamed, they are put to the sweeps and made to row in gangs, with one of their fellow-captives as a mandore or foreman over them, who is furnished with a rattan to keep them at their work; and if he does not do this effectually, he is "krissed" and thrown overboard, and another man put in his place. If any of the rowers jump overboard, the pirates have a supply of three-pronged and barbed spears, with long bamboo handles, ready to throw at them. When hit by one of these they can neither swim nor run, and are easily recaptured. They are made to row in relays night and day, and to keep them awake they put cayenne pepper in their eyes or cut them with their knives and put pepper in their wounds. We found, on reckoning up, that we had picked up 165 people, and that 150 to 200 men had got to land from the vessels we sank near the shore. In every pirate vessel there were forty or or fifty Illanuns, fighting men, all well armed, each having a rifle or musket besides his native weapons, and from 60 to 70 captives, many of whom were killed by the pirates when they found themselves beaten; among them two women. Seven of the women and four of the children were our own Muka people[273] and it was indeed most touching to witness the joy and gratitude of them and their relations when we returned them to their friends. Of the Illanuns we captured 32, ten of them boys. Some have died since of their wounds, the remainder are in irons in the fort here. The boys have been given out by Brooke for five years to respectable people to train and bring up. Very few of the pirates live to tell the tale; some captives assured us in the boat they were in there were only two out of the forty fighting-men who had not been killed or wounded by our fire, when we gave them the stem and cut them down.