The Slave-Ships

by John Greenleaf Whittier

"ALL 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 cane
     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 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 in 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 warns 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.