the sea, so that the king’s people might be rich. First, we trusted in our fetishes, but they did not help us; and the king said: “Once go ashore, and me catch the Obi man, and send the tum-tum drum through the wood, and the people come, and me burn the Obi man for a sacrifice; me burn him with fire, and torment him till he die.” But we did not go ashore—we were slaves. Then other slaves come, men and women, and lay down in the dark with us. The white men were there with whips and sticks, and they tormented us, until we lay so that we were one great lump of human flesh. All through the ship, oh! there was the heat, and the stench, and the sweat, and the roarings! There was no light but from two little hatchways with gratings, and square bits of light came down there; but I was far from them, and the air I breathed was more foul than the mist fever that comes up out of the swamp with the smell of the rotten mud.’ The poor devil told this part of his strange tale with a visible shudder. He went on. ‘The ship sailed away, and there were waves very rough, and the slaves lay sick, rolling over each other, roaring and fighting to get near the hatchways. But white men, with iron bars, struck them, and drove them back. The white men struggled backwards and forwards, and beat and slashed the slaves with iron bars and knives. They carried lanterns at first, but the fire went out in the bad air and the stench. The place was only as high as half a man; there were hundreds and hundreds driven into it. The smoke of our bodies rose out of the hatchways. We struggled and tore each other with hands and teeth, because of the agony of sickness and smothering. We coughed, and gasped, and panted, and dashed ourselves here and there in our chains. Soon many died. The white men dragged out the corpses and took them away. In our struggles, we kicked the dying beneath our feet. Sometimes they clasped our legs, and tried to scratch or bite. The corpses were cold and soft beneath us, and all around was slime, and dirt, and air that was rotten, and one stench of corruption and of death.