fracture his skull with the butt end of it, so that the slave died on the third day. Mercifully. Though we are left in the dark as to his sufferings before he died, but we may judge of them by the way the same men treated a boy when they arrived at their destination in the West Indies. There was a boy slave on board, says Clarkson, who was very ill and emaciated. Now the rule in slavers was that each officer of the ship was allowed one or more slaves for his own benefit, according to his rank. But the slaves were not given to them. When they were sold, the total amount brought in was added together and then divided by the number of slaves sold, and in that way each officer took his share in money. Therefore, if a slave were sold for a trifling amount, he brought down the value of the officers' slaves. The chief mate objected to this boy being sold. He would only bring down the average. His objection was allowed. It was a natural one. Therefore, the boy was kept on board, and not exposed for sale, but no provisions were allowed him, and the mate suggested he should be thrown overboard. No one would do this, however, though they could quite easily watch him starving to death before their eyes. And starve he did, and on the ninth day died, “having never been allowed any sustenance during that time.” And this in a tropical island where the fruits of the earth could be bought for the merest trifle. It seems impossible that men should have been so fiendishly cruel, but the evidence is overwhelming. The times were hard, and we know that Wilberforce, who championed so well the slave, turned a deaf ear to the sufferings of the British labourer. Still, two wrongs do not make a right, and, without doubt, the black people stolen away for slaves were treated by many with a whole-hearted callousness that is hard to believe in these times. They had all sorts of means of coercion. Clarkson found openly exposed for sale, in a shop in Liverpool, the handcuffs and the leg irons with which one slave was shackled to another, also a thumbscrew, and an instrument like a brutal pair of scissors with screws at the end instead of looped handles. This was pushed in a mouth obstinately kept shut, tearing lips and breaking teeth, then forcibly opened and kept open with a screw, so that the unfortunate who wished to end his miseries by starvation might be fed. That this was used fairly often there is no doubt. There is the testimony of Captain Frazer, accounted one of the most humane men in the trade. It had been said of him that he had held hot coals to the mouth of a recalcitrant slave to compel him to eat. He was questioned on this point but he denied it, and presently--I am telling the tale as the great abolitionist told it--the true story came out.