Not even a steersman has the "Leon." All light has gone out from her, and the "Rodeur" sheers away, leaving her to an unknown fate, for never again is she heard from.

How wonderful the fate--or the Providence--that directed that upon all the broad ocean teeming with ships, engaged in honest or in criminal trade, the two that should meet must be the two on which the hand of God was laid most heavily in retribution for the suffering and the woe which white men and professed Christians were bringing to the peaceful and innocent blacks of Africa.
It will be readily understood that the special and always menacing dangers attending the slave trade made marine insurance upon that sort of cargoes exceedingly high.

Twenty pounds in the hundred was the usual figure in the early days.

This heavy insurance led to a new form of wholesale murder committed by the captains.

The policies covered losses resulting from jettisoning, or throwing overboard the cargo; they did not insure against loss from disease.