In this case, the slavers did not escape conviction, though the only penalty inflicted was the seizure of their vessels. The pursuers rescued some of the drowning negroes, who were able to testify that they had been on the suspected ship, and condemnation followed. The captain of the slaver "Brillante" took no chance of such a disaster. Caught by four cruisers in a dead calm, hidden from his enemy by the night, but with no chance of escaping before dawn, this man-stealer set about planning murder on a plan so large and with such system as perhaps has not been equaled since Caligula. First he had his heaviest anchor so swung that cutting a rope would drop it. Then the chain cable was stretched about the ship, outside the rail, and held up by light bits of rope, that would give way at any stout pull. Then the slaves--600 in all--were brought up from below, open-eyed, whispering, wondering what new act in the pitiful drama of their lives this midnight summons portended. With blows and curses the sailors ranged them along the rail and bound them to the chain cable. The anchor was cut loose, plunging into the sea it carried the cable and the shackled slaves with it to the bottom. The men on the approaching man-of-war's boats, heard a great wail of many voices, a rumble, a splash, then silence, and when they reached the ship its captain politely showed them that there were no slaves aboard, and laughed at their comments on the obvious signs of the recent presence of the blacks. [Illustration: "BOUND THEM TO THE CHAIN CABLE"] A favorite trick of the slaver, fleeing from a man-of-war, was to throw over slaves a few at a time in the hope that the humanity of the pursuers would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out their children as ransom to pursuing wolves, were furnished with spars or barrels to keep them afloat until the pursuer should come up; and occasionally they were even set adrift by boat-loads. It was hard on the men of the navy to steel their hearts to the cries of these castaways as the ship sped by them; but if the great evil was to be broken up it could not be by rescuing here and there a slave, but by capturing and punishing the traders. Many officers of our navy have left on record their abhorrence of the service they were thus engaged in, but at the same time expressed their conviction that it was doing the work of humanity. They were obliged to witness such human suffering as might well move the stoutest human heart. At times they were even forced to seem as merciless to the blacks as the slave-traders themselves; but in the end their work, like the merciful cruelty of the surgeon, made for good.