I took the earliest opportunity to apprise Don Pedro Blanco of the mishap that had befallen his factor’s limb, so that I might receive the prompt aid of an additional clerk to attend the more active part of our business. Don Pedro’s answer was extremely characteristic. The letter opened with a draft for five hundred dollars, which he authorized me to bestow on the widow and orphans of Governor Findley, if he left a family. The slaver of Gallinas then proceeded to comment upon my Quixotic expedition; and, in gentle terms, intimated a decided censure for my immature attempt to chastise the negroes. He did not disapprove my motives; but considered any revengeful assault on the natives unwise, unless every precaution had previously been taken to insure complete success. Don Pedro hoped that, henceforth, I would take things more coolly, so as not to hazard either my life or his property; and concluded the epistle by superscribing it:

“To
“SeÑor Powder,
“at his Magazine,
“New Sestros.”

The slug that struck the upper part of my foot, near the ankle joint, tore my flesh and tendons with a painfully dangerous wound, which, for nine months, kept me a prisoner on crutches. During the long and wearying confinement which almost broke my restless heart, I had little to do save to superintend the general fortunes of our factory. Now and then, an incident occurred to relieve the monotony of my sick chair, and make me forget, for a moment, the pangs of my crippled limb. One of these events flashes across my memory as I write, in the shape of a letter which was mysteriously delivered at my landing by a coaster, and came from poor Joseph, my ancient partner on the Rio Pongo. Coomba’s spouse was in trouble! and the ungrateful scamp, though forgetful of my own appeals from the Chateau of Brest, did not hesitate to claim my brotherly aid. Captured in a Spanish slaver, and compromised beyond salvation, Joseph had been taken into Sierra Leone, where he was now under sentence of transportation. The letter hinted that a liberal sum might purchase his escape, even from the tenacious jaws of the British lion; and when I thought of old times, the laughable marriage ceremony, and the merry hours we enjoyed at Kambia, I forgave his neglect. A draft on Don Pedro was readily cashed at Sierra Leone, notwithstanding the paymaster was a slaver and the jurisdiction that of St. George and his Cross. The transaction, of course, was “purely commercial,” and, therefore, sinless; so that, in less than a month, Joseph and the bribed turnkey were on their way to the Rio Pongo.

By this time the sub-factory of New Sestros was somewhat renowned in Cuba and Porto Rico. Our dealings with commanders, the character of my cargoes, and the rapidity with which I despatched a customer and his craft were proverbial in the islands. Indeed, the third year of my lodgment had not rolled over, before the slave-demand was so great, that in spite of rum, cottons, muskets, powder, kidnapping and Prince Freeman’s wars, the country could not supply our demand.

To aid New Sestros, I had established several nurseries, or junior factories, at Little Bassa and Digby; points a few miles from the limits of Liberia. These “chapels of ease” furnished my parent barracoons with young and small negroes, mostly kidnapped, I suppose, in the neighborhood of the beach. When I was perfectly cured of the injury I sustained in my first philanthropic fight, I loaded my spacious cutter with a choice collection of trade-goods, and set sail one fine morning for this outpost at Digby. I designed, also, if advisable, to erect another receiving barracoon under the lee of Cape Mount.

But my call at Digby was unsatisfactory. The pens were vacant, and our merchandise squandered on credit. This put me in a very uncomfortable passion, which would have rendered an interview between “Mr. Powder” and his agent any thing but pleasant or profitable, had that personage been at his post. Fortunately, however, for both of us, he was abroad carousing with “a king;” so that I refused landing a single yard of merchandise, and hoisted sail for the next village.

There I transacted business in regular “ship-shape.” Our rum was plenteously distributed and established an entente cordiale which would have charmed a diplomatist at his first dinner in a new capital. The naked blackguards flocked round me like crows, and I clothed their loins in parti-colored calicoes that enriched them with a plumage worthy of parrots. I was the prince of good fellows in “every body’s” opinion; and, in five days, nineteen newly-“conveyed” darkies were exchanged for London muskets, Yankee grog, and Manchester cottons!

My cutter, though but twenty-seven feet long, was large enough to stow my gang, considering that the voyage was short, and the slaves but boys and girls; so I turned my prow homeward with contented spirit and promising skies. Yet, before night, all was changed. Wind and sea rose together. The sun sank in a long streak of blood. After a while, it rained in terrible squalls; till, finally, darkness caught me in a perfect gale. So high was the surf and so shelterless the coast, that it became utterly impossible to make a lee of any headland where we might ride out the storm in safety. Our best hope was in the cutter’s ability to keep the open sea without swamping; and, accordingly, under the merest patch of sail, I coasted the perilous breakers, guided by their roar, till day-dawn. But, when the sun lifted over the horizon,—peering for an instant through a rent in the storm-cloud, and then disappearing behind the gray vapor,—I saw at once that the coast offered no chance of landing our blacks at some friendly town. Every where the bellowing shore was lashed by surf, impracticable even for the boats and skill of Kroomen. On I dashed, therefore, driving and almost burying the cutter, with loosened reef, till we came opposite Monrovia; where, safe in the absence of cruisers, I crept at dark under the lee of the cape, veiling my cargo with our useless sails.

Sunset “killed the wind,” enabling us to be off again at dawn; yet hardly were we clear of the cape, when both gale and current freshened from the old quarter, holding us completely in check. Nevertheless, I kept at sea till evening, and then sneaked back to my protecting anchorage.

By this time, my people and slaves were well-nigh famished, for their sole food had been a scant allowance of raw cassava. Anxiety, toil, rain, and drenching spray, broke their spirits. The blacks, from the hot interior, and now for the first time off their mother earth, suffered not only from the inclement weather, but groaned with the terrible pangs of sea-sickness. I resolved, therefore, if possible, to refresh the drooping gang by a hot meal; and, beneath the shelter of a tarpaulin, contrived to cook a mess of rice. Warm food comforted us astonishingly; but, alas! the next day was a picture of the past! A slave—cramped and smothered amid the crowd that soaked so long in the salt water at our boat’s bottom—died during the darkness. Next morning, the same low, leaden, coffin-lid sky, hung like a pall over sea and shore. Wind in terrific blasts, and rain in deluging squalls, howled and beat on us. Come what might, I resolved not to stir! All day I kept my people beneath the sails, with orders to move their limbs as much as possible, in order to overcome the benumbing effect of moisture and packed confinement. The incessant drenching from sea and sky to which they had been so long subjected, chilled their slackened circulation to such a degree, that death from torpor seemed rapidly supervening. Motion, motion, motion, was my constant command; but I hoarded my alcohol for the last resource.

I saw that no time was to be lost, and that nothing but a bold encounter of hazard would save either lives or property. Before dark my mind was made up as to the enterprise. I would land in the neighborhood of the colony, and cross its territory during the shadow of night!

I do not suppose that the process by which I threw my stiffened crew on the beach, and revived them with copious draughts of brandy, would interest the reader; but midnight did not strike before my cargo, under the escort of Kroo guides, was boldly marched through the colonial town, and safe on its way to New Sestros! Fortunately for my dare-devil adventure, the tropical rain poured down in ceaseless torrents, compelling the unsuspicious colonists to keep beneath their roofs. Indeed, no one dreamed of a forced march by human beings on that dreadful night of tempest, else it might have gone hard had I been detected in the desecration of colonial soil. Still I was prepared for all emergencies. I never went abroad without the two great keys of Africa—gold and fire-arms; and had it been my lot to encounter a colonist, he would either have learned the value of silence, or have been carried along, under the muzzle of a pistol, till the gang was in safety.

While it was still dark, I left the caravan advancing by an interior path to Little Bassa, where one of my branches could furnish it with necessaries to cross the other colony of Bassa San Juan, so as to reach my homestead in the course of three days. Meanwhile I retraced my way to Monrovia, and, reaching it by sunrise, satisfied the amiable colonists that I had just taken shelter in their harbor, and was fresh from my dripping cutter. It is very likely that no one in the colony to the present day knows the true story of this adventure, or would believe it unless confessed by me.

It was often my fate in Africa, and elsewhere, to hear gossips declare that colonists were no better than others who dwelt amid coast temptations, and that they were sometimes even willing to back a certain Don Theodore Canot, if not absolutely to share his slave-trade! I never thought it prudent to exculpate those honorable emigrants who were consolidating the first colonial lodgments from the United States; for I believed that my denial would only add sarcastic venom to the scandal of vilifiers. But now that my African career is over, and the slave-trade a mere tradition in the neighborhood of Liberia, I may assure the friends of colonization, that, in all my negro traffic, no American settler gave assistance or furnished merchandise which I could not have obtained at the most loyal establishments of Britain or France. I think it will be granted by unprejudiced people, that the colonist who sold me a few pieces of cloth, lodged me in travelling, or gave me his labor for my flesh-colored gold, participated no more in the African slave-trade than the European or American supercargo who sold assorted cargoes, selected with the most deliberate judgment in London, Paris, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, expressly to suit the well-known cupidity of my warriors, kidnappers, and slave merchants.

Commerce is sometimes an adroit metaphysican—but a bad moralist!