164 
MADAGASCAR. 
sent down to secure the hardiest and most likely 
bargains. 
Many exciting scenes have been witnessed 
from time to time in the channel of the Mozam¬ 
bique, when a band of these sea-brigands have 
been perhaps surprised suddenly in some quiet 
bay by a detachment of blue-jackets (anxious 
for some relief to the usual monotony of naval 
life on the Zanzibar station), before the human 
cargo could either be thrown into the sea or hidden 
in the recesses of the forest. The Arabs seldom 
showed any disposition to fight or resist autho¬ 
rity ; but usually either tried to escape, or if 
actually secured, to incriminate one another and 
to prove that any one but themselves was the 
originator of the slave-hunt and the owner of the 
slaves. The calm, placid self-assurance of these 
sons of the desert, however, generally gave way 
at the sight of the ominous rope suspended from 
the yard-arm, which was the inevitable fate of 
all those caught red-handed and with slaves 
actually in their possession. Cruel and rapacious 
by nature, and in their dealings with the weak 
and dispirited and unhappy beings who fell into 
their power, though they were, they themselves 
could not face certain death, and to be hung by 
the neck was to them the most frightful of all 
the visitations of their dreaded Azrael. 
The condition in which the slave cargoes were 
