distance, with a most hideous noise: when, horrid to think and
painful to repeat, I perceived a negro, suspended in the cage, and
left there to expire! I shudder when I recollect that the birds had
already picked out his eyes, his cheek bones were bare; his arms had
been attacked in several places, and his body seemed covered with a
multitude of wounds. From the edges of the hollow sockets and from
the lacerations with which he was disfigured, the blood slowly
dropped, and tinged the ground beneath. No sooner were the birds
flown, than swarms of insects covered the whole body of this
unfortunate wretch, eager to feed on his mangled flesh and to drink
his blood. I found myself suddenly arrested by the power of affright
and terror; my nerves were convoked; I trembled, I stood motionless,
involuntarily contemplating the fate of this negro, in all its
dismal latitude. The living spectre, though deprived of his eyes,
could still distinctly hear, and in his uncouth dialect begged me to
give him some water to allay his thirst. Humanity herself would have
recoiled back with horror; she would have balanced whether to lessen
such reliefless distress, or mercifully with one blow to end this
dreadful scene of agonising torture! Had I had a ball in my gun, I
certainly should have despatched him; but finding myself unable to
perform so kind an office, I sought, though trembling, to relieve
him as well as I could. A shell ready fixed to a pole, which had
been used by some negroes, presented itself to me; filled it with
water, and with trembling hands I guided it to the quivering lips of
the wretched sufferer. Urged by the irresistible power of thirst, he
endeavoured to meet it, as he instinctively guessed its approach by
the noise it made in passing through the bars of the cage. "Tanke,
you white man, tanke you, pute some poison and give me." "How long
have you been hanging there?" I asked him. "Two days, and me no die;
the birds, the birds; aaah me!" Oppressed with the reflections which