This was, of course, sound common sense, and I lost not a moment in returning to the brig and making the required alteration in the arrangement of the flags. That being done, it occurred to me that it would be a wise thing to clear the remainder of the French crew out of the vessel; and this I also did; afterwards assisting in transporting the miserable slaves across the channel to the island, and helping to arrange for their comfort and well-being during the night. They were, without exception, what the slave-dealers would doubtless have called "a prime lot"--numbering fifteen hundred and eighty-four, of whom less than two hundred were women; but they were all worn to skin and bone with the fatigue and hardship which they had been called upon to endure on the march from their own country down to the coast, and were so dead-beaten with fatigue that they appeared to have sunk into such a state of apathy that even the prospect of immediate rest, plenty of good food, and a speedy restoration to liberty seemed insufficient to lift them out of it. But after they had been made to bathe and thoroughly cleanse themselves from the dust and other impurities of the march, prior to being housed in the barracoons, they seemed to pluck up a little spirit,--a salt-water bath is a wonderful tonic,--and later on in the evening, when a plentiful meal was served out to them, they so far recovered their spirits as to begin to jabber among themselves. It was close upon sunset before the last batch had been ferried across to the island and lodged in the barracoons; and then, in accordance with an order from the skipper, I took a working-party on board the brig, and, casting her off from the buoy to which she had been moored, warped her in alongside the wharf and made her fast there.