that he had missed his port. It was proved, however, in answer to this,
that no one had been put upon short allowance; and that, as if
Providence had determined to afford an unequivocal proof of the guilt, a
shower of rain fell and continued for three days immediately after the
second lot of slaves had been destroyed, by means of which they might
have filled many of their vessels[A] with water, and thus have prevented
all necessity for the destruction of the third.

[Footnote A: It appeared that they filled six.]

Mr. Sharp was present at this trial, and procured the attendance of a
short-hand writer to take down the facts, which should come out in the
course of it. These he gave to the public afterwards. He communicated
them also, with a copy of the trial, to the Lords of the Admiralty, as
the guardians of justice upon the seas, and to the Duke of Portland, as
principal minister of state. No notice, however, was taken by any of
these, of the information which had been thus sent them.

But though nothing was done by the persons then in power, in consequence
of the murder of so many innocent individuals, yet the publication of an
account of it by Mr. Sharp, in the newspapers, made such an impression
upon others, that; new coadjutors rose up. For, soon after this, we find
Thomas Day entering the lists again as the champion of the injured
Africans. He had lived to see his poem of _The Dying Negro_, which had
been published in 1773, make a considerable impression. In 1776, he had
written a letter to a friend in America, who was the possessor of
slaves, to dissuade him by a number of arguments from holding such
property; and now, when the knowledge of the case of the ship Zong was
spreading, he published that letter under the title of Fragment of an
Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes.