Sept.] SHAW'S SUFFERINGS. 445 



in cries of such searching misery as to reach even a cannibal's heart 

 — the humble privilege of being suffered to perform that exquisite act 

 of torture myself. And at length it was decreed that mercy so far 

 should be shown me. I wore, at the time I was taken, a very large 

 pair of whiskers, — long, full, and bushy ; and my beard had grown to 

 a great length, as I had not shaved since I left the vessel. Every 

 hair of both these I coolly sat down to extract with my own hands and 

 a pair of pearl-shells, used as tweezers, rather than submit to the out- 

 rageous method in which my unhallowed persecutors had sought to 

 divest me of them. Every twitch with the tweezers drew tears from 

 my eyes ; and when the reader recollects the situation I was in, he will 

 readily imagine that the blood flowed freely as I followed the opera- 

 tion. Every pull sent a thrill through my frame like the application 

 of a shower of needles ; and while my eyes were streaming with tears, 

 thus cruelly wrung from them, my cheeks, and chin, and lips were 

 clotted with blood. This torture, which I was compelled to inflict 

 upon myself, or suffer it to be more harshly performed by others, oc- 

 cupied four days ; and the single act of itself, independent of all my 

 other sufferings, was sufficient to make me curse the hour in which I 

 was born ; and as I sat there in my misery, the most pitiable object 

 upon which the sun ever shone, I wept in deepest grief my forlorn 

 condition, as I prayed again and again to a merciful God to take me 

 from such monsters to himself. 



" But while all this accumulation of monstrosities was heaping upon 

 me, another, not less barbarous, rendered their effect still more severe. 

 This was hunger I I lived only upon the gills, and fins, and bones of 

 fish, after they had passed the table of Henneen^ the chief whose slave 

 I was ; and my allowance of these being insufficient for subsistence, I 

 had pined away to a mere skeleton. Ascertaining that the rats upon 

 the island were feasted and fattened upon the very offals which were 

 denied to me, for the especial benefit of the chieftains, I set to work 

 devising a plan to entrap some of these stall-fed luxuries. I had been 

 given to understand it as a high crime to kill one of them ; neverthe- 

 less my fortunes were desperate, and I had no hesitation in risking 

 my life one way to save it another. In the darkness of night I en- 

 trapped many a fat fellow, and feasted upon him in the silence of 

 my seclusion with more true joy and a sweeter relish than the proudest 

 monarch ever knew, surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of 

 royalty, when banqueting upon the choicest viands of the world. The 

 rats alone saved me from death by starvation : and as an expression 

 of my gratitude, I freely confess that I have revolted from that portion 

 of the human family who have declared a war of extermination against 

 their degraded race. I testify to the virtues of the species — I have 

 tasted it. 



" During my captivity, and amid all my distresses, I was subjected 

 to perform the offices of the most degraded slave. I was a mere 

 * hewer of wood and drawer of water' to the meanest of their clan, and 

 a standing mark for the ridicule and ribaldry of all around me. And 

 it was under these circumstances that I employed every hour of leisure 

 I could steal in cleansing my sorry wound of the sand with which it 



