"I don't know, captain," answered the other. "I want you to tell me a little bit of what's going on." Then, dropping his voice, he said in a sort of whisper which prevented my hearing the close of the sentence, "I hear they are going to sell up Mr.----"
"So they say," replied the captain, rather gravely, and with a sort of sigh. "I am very sorry for him, poor fellow. He was quite a gentleman; only too fond of those cursed cards. However, he has got a pretty stock in hand, and I guess they'll go high."
"Do you know what they are?" asked the other.
"I don't know them all," replied the master; "but there's some fifty of them; and five or six of them--Bill especially, and Anthony, are as good hands as ever worked in these parts."
"Well the market is not very high in Orleens," replied Mr. Lewis; "it's quite glutted, I hear; and fifty are hardly worth buying. Are there no more to be had about?"
"Why I hear Mr. Thornton wants to sell, up in Southampton county, not far from Jerusalem," was the captain's answer. "I can't tell what he's been about. He neither drinks nor gambles, nor fights cocks, nor anything; and yet he has contrived to muddle away all his money, and his plantation is mortgaged as high as it will go." The other paused upon this, and seemed to consider it with much satisfaction. In the meantime I had arrived at the conclusion that good Mr. Lewis was neither more nor less than a slave-dealer; and, taking but little interest in the subjects discussed, I walked up the companion-ladder to the deck again, to spend an hour or so beneath the stars, before I went to bed. The cabin was oppressively warm; the night sultry beyond description; and I felt sure that I could not sleep without inhaling some fresh air before I lay down. I was inclined to meditate upon many things with which it is no use troubling you, my dear sister, as they arose out of the conversation I had just heard, which deserved more calm consideration than I have yet had time to give them. I had hardly reached the deck, however, when I was joined by the first-mentioned of my fellow travellers, who, fixing at once, as usual, upon the most obvious topic, observed that it was a beautiful night. I agreed with him simply, and he then went on to say--
"It is much pleasanter up here than down below. The cabin is very hot, and that brute of a slave-dealer makes it still hotter."
"I have heard," I replied, "that you Virginian gentlemen hold these slave-dealers in great horror and contempt."
"First, let me tell you I am not a Virginian," responded he; "but I can answer as well as if I were. The slave-dealer is looked upon here, and all through the South, as a necessary nuisance. He is tolerated, and that is all; but there are very few cases in which that toleration is carried so far as to sit in the same room with him. At an ordinary, on board a ship, or in a stage coach, men are obliged to do it; and sometimes--for 'misery makes us acquainted with strange bed-fellows'--when a gentleman owes one of them a good round sum of money which he can't pay, he will not only put his legs under the mahogany with him, but drink with him across the table. Hic et ubique--it is the same thing. I have seen men drink with a money-lender in your country--which I presume is England--and I am quite certain that if a rattlesnake had a side pocket, and we could get in debt to him, and we should pull off our hats and be as civil to the reptile as possible." He ended with one of his sharp, short laughs; and, taking a cigar case out of his pocket, offered me a very delicious Havanah. The conversation went on much in the same style for some time; and at length the captain came up and joined us, telling us that Mr. Lewis had turned in.
"Well, that's satisfactory," replied my fellow passenger; "for though one must sometimes be in close companionship with a snake, one does not always like to hear him hissing. As soon as I am sure he's asleep, I'll go down and turn in too." By this time we had got so far into the bay that those beautiful sea anemonies, as they are called, or medus[ae], were flashing past the ship in every direction, looking like the lamps which the Hindoo women are said to send floating on the Ganges. I made some observation upon them to my companion, and he replied somewhat in the words of Sir Henry Wotton: