“Don’t flatter yourself. I shall do no such thing.”
“But, Commodore, I came out in pursuit of an unfaithful agent, who was running off with my property.”
“Hark you, sir, when you speak in those terms of Simon Winslow, you lie, and deserve the cat.”
Ratcliff grew purple in the struggle to suppress an outburst of wrath. But, after nearly a minute of silence, he said: “Commodore, my wife died only a few hours ago. Her unburied remains lie in my house. Surely you’ll let me return to attend her funeral. You’ll not be so cruel as to refuse me.”
“Pah! Does your dead wife need your care any more than my live wife needs mine? ’T is your infernal treason keeps me here. Can you count the broken hearts and ruined constitutions you have already made,—the thousands you have sent to untimely graves,—in this attempt to carry out your beastly nigger-breeding, slavery-spreading speculation? And now you presume to whine because I’ll not let you slip back to hatch more treason, under the pretence that you want to go to a funeral! As if you hadn’t made funerals enough already in the land! Curse your impudence, sir! Be thankful I don’t string you up to the yard-arm. Here, Mr. Buttons, see that this fellow is placed among the prisoners and strictly guarded. I hold you responsible for him, sir!”
The Commodore turned on his heel and left Ratcliff panting with an intolerable fury that he dared not vent. Big drops of perspiration came out on his face. The Midshipman, playfully addressed as Mr. Buttons, was a very stern-looking gentleman, of the name of Adams, who wore on his coat a very conspicuous row of buttons, and whose fourteenth birthday had been celebrated one week before. Motioning to Ratcliff, and frowning imperiously, he stamped his foot and exclaimed, “Follow me!” The slave-lord, with an internal half-smothered groan of rage and despair, saw that there was no help, and obeyed.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE OCCUPANT OF THE WHITE HOUSE.
“They forbore to break the chain
Which bound the dusky tribe,
Checked by the owner’s fierce disdain,