580 WE DELIVER UP THE PIONEER. Chap. XXVIII. 



of means shown in cutting the hawser off the screw nine feet 

 under water with long chisels made for the occasion ; a task 

 which it took three days to accomplish. Captain Chapman 

 very kindly invited us on board the Ariel, and we accepted 

 his hospitality after the weather had moderated. 



The little vessel was hauled through and against the huge 

 seas with such force that two hawsers measuring eleven inches 

 each in circumference parted. Many of the blows we 

 received from the billows made every plate quiver from stem 

 to stern, and the motion was so quick that we had to hold 

 on continually to avoid being tossed from one side to the other 

 or into the sea. Ten of the late Bishop's flock whom we had 

 on board became so sick and helpless that do what we could 

 to aid them they were so very much in the way that the 

 idea broke in upon us, that the close packing resorted to by 

 slavers is one of the necessities of the traffic. If this is so, it 

 would account for the fact that even when the trade was legal 

 the same injurious custom was common, if not universal. If, 

 instead of ten such passengers, we had been carrying two 

 hundred, with the wind driving the rain and spray, as by night 

 it did, nearly as hard as hail against our faces, and nothing 

 whatever to be seen to windward but the occasional gleam of 

 the crest of a wave, and no sound heard save the whistling 

 of the storm through the rigging, it would have been abso- 

 lutely necessary for the working of the ship and safety of 

 the whole that the live cargo should all have been stowed 

 down below, whatever might have been the consequences. 



Having delivered the Pioneer over to the Navy, she was 

 towed down to the Cape by Captain Forsyth of the Valorous, 

 and after examination it was declared that with repairs to the 

 amount of 3001. she would be as serviceable as ever. Those 

 of the Bishop's flock whom we had on board were kindly 

 allowed a passage to the Cape. The boys went in the Orestes, 



