the men to put manacles on the hands of each slave.”
Dunlapp gazed in astonishment at his employer. “But that’s bad for blacks, Mr. Gender. They get sick in chains, won’t eat their food. Sometimes they die.”
“I pay you well, Captain,” Gender rumbled, “but not to advise me. Listen to those heathen.”
Dunlapp listened. A moan of music wafted in to them.
“They’ve sung that cursed song about me all the way to the coast,” Gender told him. “They know I hate it—I’ve whipped them day after day—but they keep it up. No chains come off until they hush their noise.”
Dunlapp bowed acquiescence and walked out to give orders. Later, as they put out to sea, he rejoined Gender on the after deck.
“They do seem stubborn about their singing,” he observed.
“I've heard it said,” Gender replied, “that they sing together because they think many voices and hearts give power to hate, or to other feelings.” He scowled. “Pagan fantasy!”
Dunlapp stared overside, at white gulls just above the wave-tips. “There may be a tithe of truth in that belief, Mr. Gender; sometimes there is in the faith of wild people. Hark ye, I’ve seen a good fifteen hundred Mohammedans praying at once, in the Barbary countries. When they bowed down, the touch of all those heads to the ground banged like the fall of a heavy rock. And when they straightened, the motion of their garments made a swish like the gust of a gale. I couldn’t help but think that their prayer had force.”
“More heathen foolishness,” snapped Gender, and his lips drew tight.
“Well, in Christian lands we have examples, sir,” Dunlapp pursued. “For instance, a mob will grow angry and burn or hang someone. Would a single man do that? Would any single man of the mob do it? No, but together their hate and resolution becomes—”
“Not the same thing at all,” ruled Gender harshly. “Suppose we change the subject.”
On the following afternoon, a white sail crept above the horizon behind them. At the masthead gleamed a little blotch of color. Captain Dunlapp squinted through a telescope, and barked a sailorly oath.
“A British ship-of-war,” he announced, “and coming after us.”
“Well?” said Gender.
“Don’t you understand, sir? England is sworn to stamp out the slave trade. If they catch us with this cargo, it’ll be the end of us.” A little later, he groaned apprehensively, “They’re overtaking us. There’s their signal, for us to lay to and wait for them. Shall we do it, sir?”
Gender shook his head violently. “Not we! Show them our heels. Captain.”
“They’ll catch us. They are sailing three feet to our two.”
“Not before dark,” said Gender. “When dark comes, we’ll contrive to lessen our embarrassment.”
And so the slaver fled, with the Britisher in pursuit. Within an hour, the sun was at the horizon, and Gender smiled grimly in his mustache.
“It’ll be dark within minutes,” he said to Dunlapp. “As soon as you feel they can’t make out our actions by glass, get those slaves on deck.”
In the dusk the forty-nine naked prisoners stood in a line along the bulwark. For all their chained necks and wrists, they neither stood nor gazed in a servile manner. One of them began to sing and the others joined, in the song of the slave trail:
“Hailowa—Genda! Haipana—Genda!”
“Sing on,” Gender snapped briefly, and moved to the end of the line that was near the bow. Here dangled the one empty
