Page:The West Indies, and Other Poems.djvu/83

thrown overboard, and forty-two were made to be par takers of their fate on the succeeding day. In the course of three days afterwards the remaining twenty-six were brought upon deck, to complete the number of victims. The first sixteen submitted to be thrown into the sea, but the rest, with a noble resolution, would not suffer the officers to touch them, but leaped after their companions, and shared their fate.

'The plea which was set up in behalf of this atrocious and unparalleled act of wickedness was, that the captain discovered, when he made the proposal, that he had only two hundred gallons of water on board, and that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this, that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a shower of rain fell, and continued for three days, immediately after the second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might have filled many of their vessels^[1] with water, and thus have prevented all necessity for the destruction of the third.

'Mr Sharpe was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a short-hand writer to take down the facts which should come out in the course of it. These