He gave me a melancholy confirmation of all the
three cases. He told me also that one Joseph Cunningham had been a severe
sufferer, and that there was reason to fear that Charles Horseler, another
of the crew, had been so severely beaten over the breast with a knotted end
of a rope (which end was of the size of a large ball, and had been made on
purpose) that he died of it. To this he added, that it was now a notorious
fact, that the captain of the Alfred, when mate of a slave-ship, had been
tried at Barbadoes for the murder of one of the crew, with whom he had
sailed, but that he escaped by bribing the principal witness to
disappear[A].
[Footnote A: Mr. Sampson, who was surgeon's mate of the ship, in which the
captain had thus served as a mate, confirmed to me afterwards this
assertion, having often heard him boast in the cabin, "how he had tricked
the law on that occasion."]
The reader will see, the further I went into the history of this voyage,
the more dismal it became. One miserable account, when examined, only
brought up another.
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