We can see daylight all round her bow under deck." But he was not in any unusual plight.

And not only the perils of the deep had to be encountered, but other perils, some bred of man's savagery, then more freely exhibited than now, others necessary to the execrable traffic in peaceful blacks.

It as a time of constant wars and the seas swarmed with French privateers alert for fat prizes.

When a slaver met a privateer the battle was sure to be a bloody one for on either side fought desperate men--one party following as a trade legalized piracy and violent theft of cargoes, the other employed in the violent theft of men and women, and the incitement of murder and rapine that their cargoes might be the fuller.

There would have been but scant loss to mankind in most of these conflicts had privateer and slaver both gone to the bottom.