“Whilst this was going on, Lieutenant Dobbs and I broke open the cabin door, which was locked, and a bar placed across it. A cry of despair came from the cabin; I rushed in, and, with inexpressible delight, beheld the two sisters locked in each other’s arms, and the two horrified black girls on their knees beside them. But a faint light entered the cabin from bulls’ eyes on the deck, the skylight having been covered over. At first the two girls, who were paralysed by the firing and the hideous uproar above, did not recognise us as deliverers, but the sound of my voice re-assured them. Starting up, they threw themselves into my arms, and embraced me as a brother, with hysterical emotion, and bursting into a flood of tears. “Pompey came rushing into the cabin, saying—‘Massa, massa, be quick; de fire de ship, and turn debbles wid drink; de turn and kill us, may be!’ The men above called out also to be quick, for the negroes were raving mad, and had set fire to the fore-cabin of the schooner. “Having assured the terrified girls that their father was alive and quite safe—I did not like to say he was in a fever—we hurried on deck. It was a scene of horror. The negroes had drunk the spirit as if it were water; some howling and yelling, leaping about the deck, others lying about stupefied. Flames were coming up from the fore-cabin, and a set of drunken negroes were dancing around it, hand in hand, screaming and yelling. “‘We must be off this instant,’ said Henry Stanhope; ‘they will surely turn upon us, if only one black rascal gives the signal. We have ropes ready to lower the females over the side.’ “In a few minutes the men flung themselves over the side, whilst Lieutenant Dobbs and I lowered the almost fainting girls, when, as Henry Stanhope expected, two or three of the drunken wretches cried out, ‘Let us kill the whites; don’t let them have the women.’ This was in their own language, which of course I did not understand, but Pompey, in his way, told us what they said. However, we all got out of the schooner safely—her fore-mast, rigging, and sails a sheet of flame. The negroes, all that could, threw themselves pell-mell over the side, for it was getting too hot for them, whilst we, supporting and partly carrying the poor girls, hurried from the place, avoiding the huts, and making the best of our way to our boat, which we reached at night-fall, thanking God that we had so fortunately succeeded in rescuing the Misses Packenham, and escaped from the drunken fury of the liberated slaves.” CHAPTER XXVI.