THE SLAVE-SHIPS
by: John Greenleaf Whittier
(1807-1892)
- "LL
ready?" cried the captain;
- "Ay, ay!" the seamen said;
- "Heave up the worthless lubbers,--
- The dying and the dead."
- Up from the slave-ship's prison
- Fierce, bearded heads were thrust:
- "Now let the sharks look to it,--
- Toss up the dead ones first!"
-
- Corpse after corpse came up,--
- Death had been busy there;
- Where every blow is mercy,
- Why should the spoiler spare?
- Corpse after corpse they cast
- Sullenly from the ship,
- Yet bloody with the traces
- Of fetter-link and whip.
-
- Gloomily stood the captain,
- With his arms upon his breast,
- With his cold brow sternly knotted
- And his iron lip compressed.
- "Are all the dead dogs over?"
- Growled through that matted lip;
- "The blind ones are no better,
- Let's lighten the good ship."
-
- Hark from the ship's dark bosom,
- The very sounds of hell!
- The ringing clank of iron,
- The maniac's short, sharp yell!
- The hoarse, low curse, throat-stifled;
- The starving infant's moan,
- The horror of a breaking heart
- Poured through a mother's groan.
-
- Up from that loathsome prison
- The stricken blind ones came;
- Below, had all been darkness,
- Above, was still the same.
- Yet the holy breath of heaven
- Was sweetly breathing there,
- And the heated brow of fever
- Cooled in the soft sea air.
-
- "Overboard with them, shipmates!"
- Cutlass and dirk were plied;
- Fettered and blind, one after one,
- Plunged down from the vessel's side.
- The sabre smote above,
- Beneath, the lean shark lay,
- Waiting with wide and bloody jaw
- His quick and human prey.
-
- God of the earth! what cries
- Rang upward unto thee?
- Voices of agony and blood,
- From ship-deck and from sea.
- The last dull plunge was heard,
- The last wave caught its stain,
- And the unsated shark looked up
- For human hearts in vain.
-
- * * *
-
- Red glowed the western waters,
- The setting sun was there,
- Scattering alike on wave and cloud
- His fiery mesh of hair.
- Amidst a group of blindness,
- A solitary eye
- Gazed from the burdened slaver's deck,
- Into that burning sky.
-
- "A storm," spoke out the gazer,
- "Is gathering and at hand;
- Curse on 't, I'd give my other eye
- For one firm rood of land."
- And then he laughed, but only
- His echoed laugh replied,
- For the blinded and the suffering
- Alone were at his side.
-
- Night settled on the waters,
- And on a stormy heaven,
- While fiercely on that lone ship's track
- The thunder-gust was driven.
- "A sail!--thank God, a sail!"
- And as the helmsman spoke,
- Up through the stormy murmur
- A shout of gladness broke.
-
- Down came the stranger vessel,
- Unheeding on her way,
- So near that on the slaver's deck
- Fell off her driven spray.
- "Ho! for the love of mercy,
- We're perishing and blind!"
- A wail of utter agony
- Came back upon the wind:
-
- "Help us! for we are stricken
- With blindness every one;
- Ten days we've floated fearfully,
- Unnoting star or sun.
- Our ship's the slaver Leon,--
- We've but a score on board;
- Our slaves are all gone over,--
- Help, for the love of God!"
-
- On livid brows of agony
- The broad red lightning shone;
- But the roar of wind and thunder
- Stifled the answering groan;
- Wailed from the broken waters
- A last despairing cry,
- As, kindling in the stormy light,
- The stranger ship went by.
-
- * * *
-
- In the sunny Guadaloupe
- A dark-hulled vessel lay,
- With a crew who noted never
- The nightfall or the day.
- The blossom of the orange
- Was white by every stream,
- And tropic leaf, and flower, and bird
- Were in the warm sunbeam.
-
- And the sky was bright as ever,
- And the moonlight slept as well,
- On the palm-trees by the hillside,
- And the streamlet of the dell:
- And the glances of the Creole
- Were still as archly deep,
- And her smiles as full as ever
- Of passion and of sleep.
-
- But vain were bird and blossom,
- The green earth and the sky,
- And the smile of human faces,
- To the slaver's darkened eye;
- At the breaking of the morning,
- At the star-lit evening time,
- O'er a world of light and beauty
- Fell the blackness of his crime.
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