“Finally, arter a long stay, we hauled up anchor for Port Antonio. One day a man aloft cries out ‘ship ahoy.’ The captain looks through his big glass and says, ‘bear down on her helmsman;’ and when we got nigh ’nough, the captain hails her; ‘what ship?’
“So he bears down and lays too, and I, ‘mong the rest, went aboard. The captain treats us very genteel; and when they’d finished drinkin’ Captain Trumbull orders the hatch open, and I looked down, and to my sad surprise I see ’twas crowded with slaves. The first thing I see was a colored female, as naked as she was born into the world, and she looked up at me with a pitiful look; and an iron band went round her leg, and then she was locked to an iron bolt that went from one end of the ship to the other; and _there was five hundred slaves down in that hole_; men, women, and children, all chained down there, and among ’em all not one had a rag of clothes on,—and not a bit of daylight entered, only that hatch-way, and then only when they opened it to throw out the dead ones, or else feed ’em; and when I put my head over the hole, a steam come out strong ’nough to knock down a horse, for there they was in their own filth, and oh! how they did smell. There was several women that had jist had children, and a good many sick, and there they was, and oh! what a sight,—some on ’em was cryin’ and talkin’ among themselves, but I couldn’t understand a word they said; and there was a parcel of leetle fellers, that was from two to ten years old, a runnin’ round ‘mong ’em, and some on ’em was _dead_, and you could hear the _dyin’ groans of others_. Oh! I never did think a body of folks could suffer so and _live_. Why, how do you think they sat? They all sat down with their legs straddled out right up close agin’ one another, and they couldn’t stir only one arm and hand, _for all else was chained_.
“I felt worse, I ‘spose, and it was entirely more heart-rendin’ to me, because they was my own species; they warn’t only human bein’s but _Africans_. ☜ Oh! if I didn’t hate slavery arter this worse than ever; why! it seemed to me a thousand times worse than it ever did afore, when I was a slave myself.
“Well, the captain said he started with eight hundred, and three hundred had died on the v’yge! ☜ and he’d only been out ten days, and that’s mor’n one an hour; and that he had to keep one hand in there nigh upon half the time, to knock off the chains from the dead ones, and pitch ’em upon deck; and, says he, I have left a wake of blood fifteen hundred miles; for, no sooner than I fling one out than a shark flies at him and colors all the water with blood in less than one minute; why, says he, ‘a shoal of sharks follows our slave ships clear from Africa to America!!’ _Oh! my soul, if there is one kind of wickedness greater, and worser, and viler, and more devilish and cusseder than any other, it is sich business._ ☜