L. Meade - Mou-Setsé - A Negro Hero; The Orphans' Pilgimage - A Story of Trust in God

At last the canoe reached a place called Ikho. Little Mou-Setsé was again sold, and this time was sent to the fold, or the spot where purchased slaves are kept till there is an opportunity to send them off in vessels to other countries.

Mou-Setsé found life in the fold very dreadful. He had a coarse rope put around his neck, the ends of which were fastened round the necks of other slaves, so that a long row of them were secured together, and one could not move without dragging all the others with him. The boys were thus roped together, and the men chained in fifties.

In this terrible place – treated with cruelty, cold, half-naked – Mou-Setsé spent two months.

But a greater evil was to come. This poor little African boy was to pass through a black and heavy cloud into God’s glorious light.

For let no one suppose that God had forgotten this little child whom He had made. Every hair of that little woolly head was numbered by God; every sigh he sighed, every groan he uttered, was heard and regarded by that great and good God, who loved him just as well with his black skin as He loved the fairest and most lovely English child.

But Mou-Setsé had a dreadful time before him, for God teaches His lessons in the storm as well as the sunshine.

This suffering was to take place on board the Portuguese slave-ship to which he was shortly removed. No one can understand who has not witnessed it the miseries of a slave vessel. The negroes are placed on their backs, or fixed in a sitting position, on ranges of shelves, one above the other, and in dark, close places, where hardly any air and no light are allowed to enter.

Here they are chained so close together that the space which each is allowed is scarcely so much as he would have in his coffin. Thus they lie for weeks and months, sometimes brought up on deck to jump about in their chains for exercise, exposed to sea-sickness, disease, and to the rubbing of the rough boards on their naked bodies. Many die, and those who live are, on landing, wretched objects. In the vessel in which Mou-Setsé was, the men were packed away below deck, but the women and children were allowed to remain above. Sad, sad were their hearts as they thought of their dear native country, and of those little children and fathers and mothers from whom they were severed. Their bodily sufferings were also very hard to bear… But God had not forgotten them. Belief was at hand.

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