Note 203 — Chapter VIII

The consequence is, that white men for the most part, and black men when they dare, take their own measures at Whydah. Before my arrival a merchant shipmaster having been robbed by a mulatto clerk, put him into the hands of a Brazilian slaver. The latter hung up the culprit by the thumbs and lashed his wrists tight to a pole, pouring upon them a powdered wood like sand, which caused the flesh to swell with intolerable pain. It reminded me of the days of 1724-25, when John Gow, the pirate, would not plead. “The judge ordered that his thumbs should be squeezed by two men with a whipcord till it did break, and then it should be doubled till it did again break, and then laid threefold, and that the executioners should pull with their whole strength.”