First mate Jack Paul mechanically fills himself a moderate glass, while Captain Denbigh does himself more generous credit with a brimmer from the rum bottle.
“Here’s to the good ship John O’ Gaunt,” cries Captain Denbigh, tossing the rum down his capacious throat. “May it live to carry niggers a hundred years!”
There is no response to this sentiment; but Captain Denbigh doesn’t feel at all slighted, and sits down comfortably to the floor-fast table, the rum at his elbow. Being thus disposed, he glances at his moody companion.
There is much that is handsome in a rough, saltwater way about Captain Denbigh. He is short, stout, with a brown pillar of a throat, and shoulders as square as his yardarms. His thick hair is clubbed into a cue; there are gold rings in his ears, and his gray eyes laugh as he looks at you.
“An’ now, mate Jack,” says Captain Denbigh, cheerfully, “with our three hundred niggers stowed snug, an’ we out’ard bound for Jamaica, let you an’ me have a bit of talk. Not as cap ‘in an’ mate, mind you, but as owners. To begin with, then, you don’t like the black trade?”
First mate Jack Paul looks up; the brown eyes show trouble and resolve.
“Captain,” he says, “it goes against my soul!” Then, he continues apologetically: “Not that I say aught against slavery, which I’ve heard chaplains and parsons prove to be right and pious by Bible text. Ay! I’ve heard them when I’ve been to church ashore, with my brother William by the Rappahannock. My kinsman Jones owns slaves; and I can see, too, that they have safer, happier lives with him than could fall to their lot had they remained savages in the wild Guinea woods. But owning slaves by the Rappahannock, where you can give them kindness and make them happy, is one thing. This carrying the tortured creatures —chained, and mad with grief!—to Jamaica is another.”
Captain Denbigh refreshes himself with more rum.
“It wards off the heat,” he vouchsafes, in extenuation of his partiality for the rum. Having set himself right touching rum, he takes, up the main question: “What can we do?” he asks. “You know we’re chartered for ten v’yages?”
“I’m no one to argue with my captain,” responds first mate Jack Paul. “Still less do I talk of breaking charters. All I say is, it makes me heart-sore.”