It appeared that he relied upon
force rather than barter for the filling of his hold, for he carried
none of those showy trinkets which savages love, but the brig was fitted
with eight nine-pounder guns, and racks full of muskets and cutlasses.
The after-sailroom next the cabin was transformed into a powder
magazine, and she carried as many round shot as a well-found privateer.
Water and provisions were shipped for a long voyage.
But the preparation of his ship's company was most surprising. It made
Freeman, the manager, realise that there was truth in the rumour that
his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or
another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the
firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port--men
whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been
ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known
to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his
hideous scarlet disfigurement was put down by the fanciful as being a
red afterglow from that great crime. He was first mate, and under him
was Israel Martin, a little sun-wilted fellow who had served with Howell
Davies at the taking of Cape Coast Castle.
The crew were chosen from amongst those whom Banks had met and known in
their own infamous haunts, and his own table-steward was a haggard-faced
man, who gobbled at you when he tried to talk.
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