"May I hold your hand?"
"Aye, aye, come along afore the captain knocks us all aback."
"Who goes there," cried out a voice from the cabin stairs.
"Nobody but Rice and this 'ere little shaver," answered Rice, facing round to meet Thrasher.
"Where are you taking him?"
"Nowhere just now—he wants to take a look out."
"Very well—pass on."
Thrasher went down to the cabin again; he had seen Rice as he led the boy across the deck, and understood the opposition which was going on to his wishes. The train of thought that had seized him while examining the jewels had not entirely passed away, but with it came others appealing to his worst passions, and mingling themselves, as evil things sometimes will, with much that was tender and pure in the man's nature. He was not all bad—what human being is?—but he was a strong man, and used his evil strength without scruple to secure the love, which was, in truth, wounding him daily with its hungry cries.
Thrasher was afraid of Rice, and with him fear was an incentive to action. Jube and the boy Paul were also sources of great anxiety. They might interfere with his one great hope, and utterly destroy the brilliant future that lay so temptingly before him. All this was food for thought, and made him more than usually morose.
The sensitive nature of the boy Paul had suffered acutely by the indignity that had been put upon him, and still more by the awful scene of Jube's punishment. But there was a noble spirit in that little frame, and though he shrank from encountering his enemy, it was not from a cowardly feeling, but as a brave man may evade a wild beast that possesses a hundred-fold of his own physical powers. No amount of punishment would have induced the child to submit meanly; but he was a creature of exquisite refinement, and had, all his little life, been shielded from the first approach of sorrow. Within the last few weeks, he had been cast headlong into the boiling vortex of the most terrible scenes that ever disgraced humanity—scenes that drove many a stout man insane, and left a whole population at the mercy of savage, maddened slaves. He, a young, sensitive child, brought up in luxury, shielded from the very breath of a flower if it was not grateful to his fine sense—loved by his parents—idolized by a host of servants—had struggled through death, and horrors sharper than death, to find himself worse off a thousand times on board that brig, than any of his father's slaves had ever been.