"Then all I can say, Mr. Shever, is, that you knows a lot of fools; and if any of them was to up and say such a lie in my company, I'll tell them just what I do you. I've heered a slave in the Brazils say as how he wouldn't be free if they gev him the chance, and that slavery was a thundering good thing for everybody wot hadn't got no money."
"Well, he was right. It is a fine thing for poor people. What are all the poor people at home but slaves? only they ain't called so. He was a sensible man, and spoke the truth."
"Hold hard, sir! Hear me out. Well, I kept my eye on that feller, and thought what a precious mean thing a man was when he gave up all ideas of trying to assert his rights, but the slave would every day have some chat about how comfortable it was to think he would be provided for in his old age by his indulgent master, until we got a little sick of it, particular as his old man hoisted him up one morning, and gave him a lot of lashes with a cowhide."
"Well, I suppose he deserved it?"
"Hold hard! let me finish my yarn, sir. He was flaked upon the wharf, and all of us chaps—we was in a merchant ship where the skipper daren't flog us—looked on and swore we'd pound his master if we only caught him alone. Well, would you believe it? when he was cast off, the feller actually walked to his master, knelt down, and, afore everybody, begged he would forgive him for having given him so much trouble."
"He was a sensible man."
"Werry sensible. We sailed that night; and just as I was castin' off the gangway plank down rushes the slave, and as he spoke English very well, he hails me. 'What do you want?' sez I. But afore I had hardly got the words out of my mouth he jumps aboard, and saying, 'Hide me. I've killed my master,' dived below and hid hisself."
"Do you call that sensible behaviour?"
"Rather, Mr. Shever. I held my tongue, and when we was out to sea hunted him out, and giv him some grub, when he told me that as he couldn't put up with the lash no longer, he had killed his owner, and chanced escaping in our ship, and that all his fine talk about liking to be flogged was only done to blind his master."
"Do you think that a small affair like a flogging justified him in killing his superior?"