The effect was, that with the majority of the passengers, all color distinctions were flung to the winds, and I found myself treated with every mark of respect, from the beginning to the end of the voyage, except in a single instance; and in that, I came near being mobbed, for complying with an invitation given me by the passengers, and the captain of the "Cambria," to deliver a lecture on slavery.

Our New Orleans and Georgia passengers were pleased to regard my lecture as an insult offered to them, and swore I should not speak.
They went so far as to threaten to throw me overboard, and but for the firmness of Captain Judkins,{286} probably would have (under the inspiration of _slavery_ and _brandy_) attempted to put their threats into execution.

I have no space to describe this scene, although its tragic and comic peculiarities are well worth describing.

An end was put to the _melee_, by the captain's calling the ship's company to put the salt water mobocrats in irons.

At this determined order, the gentlemen of the lash scampered, and for the rest of the voyage conducted themselves very decorously.
This incident of the voyage, in two days after landing at Liverpool, brought me at once before the British public, and that by no act of my own.