Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1908-08-15
THE LAST OF
 THE SLAVERS.
IOrisinal.l ]

[Orisinal.l
 s,st mate of the Mary Good win of Philadelphia when tne stfa"Ses' thing in all my seafarins lie happen ad We were on the banks or New ronndlond the home of the fog king. .nd tho mist had come down on us .,.;o,,ar than 1 had ever seen it. It ,astod so lon. without lifting that tue ..+o;n lost all traces of reckoning. WA were off Halifax, Cape Race or C.no Rreton. we didn't know which. T;na,,v he concluded to drop an anchor and wait. , .nc beneath us. but of course no wind. T,,o+ would have blown away the fog. one night the watch heard the sound sf . distant bell. For an hour 1t tolled eo;n+lv then very slowly became more d;stinct It was evidently coming to. ward us. It must be drifting, for there was no wind to fill sails, and we could hear no sound of steam. At last the hell tolled dismally within cables length of us.
 We began to be anxious and rang our ovn bell to let the stranger know that 1va were in her course. There was lit fla chance of her crew being able to turn her, for there was no wind, but they might anchor. She was coming so slowly as not to hurt us much from fonling except for the waves. If we should be rolled together in the trough of the sea or one should be let down on the other, there might be q terrible crash.
 Our signal excited no reply, except the tolling of the bell, which continued constantly. Fearing those on the ap- preaching vessel had not heard us, we fired a gun But this elicited nothing. Presently we could hear the bell toll ing right beside us, and now and then something black would appear not twenty feet from us, hover there for q few minutes. then disappear. Once it came near enough for us to distinguish the side of ship.
 We were on terrible strain for awhile. fearing that we would clash with the stranger: then we caught q glimpse of her stern under our bow spirit. SLe had evidently passed us. After waiting some time longer with no view of her we concluded we were out of Cangor.
 At eight bells the next morning the fo.: lifted. There was no sign of land, hut on our starl,oaru quarter was q .,ai!sentine without sails. her fOremast gone, rolling with tho waves. A wind ;,.;, toward her. When We came near her the captain sent d boats crew to inves- tigate.
 We found derelict that had evident ly been floating long while. The on!.s thing aboard that had ever had life in 1t was the body of q woman, and We had to stave in the door of thr cap tain's cabin to find that \ Has l. ;n- in berth, and, notwithstanding u. many tossings the vessel had racei'e: it had not rolled out. We boxed ea the log book for the last entry. II v':?s dated eighteen months agone. Nov. 10. 1S54
 We read the entry and went bac.. further for an explanation. Na part Of the log made mention of anything ,::,- usual transpiring aboard. Nevertheless we traced what must have been some thing of the story. X bundle of love letters from a woman to the captain. the last dated not long before the log began, told us that he and his wife must have made the voyage wedding trip. The last observation showed lati- tude g degrees 3o minutes north. longi- tude 1920 east, or about 900 miles south of the Canary islands and off the coast of Africa The ships boats were gone, which led US to believe that ey- cry one on board except the woman had left the vessel and made for the land
 The period, 1So4, was when the slavers were running the last caryoes of negroes from the African coast to the United States. In the forecastle we found scrap of paper on which was written. ''The old man won't con, sent; do the job" We interpreted this to mean that the men wished to force the captain to take the crew ashore to secure cargo of slaves. He declined, and they were to kill him. All this accounts for the captains wife being locked in his cabin. The port anchor was gone. This indicated that sthe ship was at anchor when the crew left her. We found no evidence to show whether the captain was killed or went with them. The cable had evi- dently parted and was blown offshore Probably while the men were ashore after negroes storm came up and broke the cable. Likely the captain was killed on the ship, and during the melee his wife went to the cabin and locked herself in. Possibly she may nave lain on the berth, faint from fright, and died there.
 And so it was that this .woman's bier noated no one knew where. Likely it Orlftod SOuthwaSfword ovoptuolIv