"What for?"
"I'm sure I don't know, except because everybody else liked him. He was the best cook I ever see on board a vessel, and the best seaman; always ready to lend a hand, night or day; knew his place, and kept it."
"You've told the truth there, Percival."
"I intend to tell the truth all the way through. There was a good deal of hard feeling. The cap'n was overbearing. The men wouldn't stand it, because there was no occasion for it. He came near having a row with Eaton, but thought better of it, and one day he picked a quarrel with the nigger."
"And how did he come out with that?"
"Out of the little end of the horn, as they say. Peterson said some pretty hard things about him and his folks, which the men said afterwards was all true, and set out to fling him overboard. He run aft, scared half to death."
"I wish he had. He would have been no more in James Peterson's hands than a peck of wheat bran."
"Well, Aldrich was a very proud man, and it gravelled him terribly to be put down by a nigger, and he was out with me, because I wouldn't take his part. He laid it up. I heard him swear a hundred times that he would be square with that nigger before he left Martinique, and he was as good as his word."
"He murdered him?"
"No, he sold him."