“Oh,” said the lieutenant quietly; “you have a plantation, have you, for the production of rubber, and you work that with slaves?”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” laughed the American, showing a set of very yellow teeth. “That’s what you’re after, then? I see through you now, cyaptain. You’re after slave-traders.”
“Perhaps so; and you confess yourself to be one,” said the lieutenant.
“Me?” said the American, laughing boisterously again. “Hev another try, cyaptain. Yew’re out this time. Ketch me trying to work a plantation with West Coast niggers! See those boys o’ mine?”
“Yes; I see your men,” replied the lieutenant.
“Them’s the stuff I work with. Pay ’em well and they work well. No work, no pay. Why, one of those fellows’d do more work for me in a day than one of the blacks they come here to buy up could do in a week.”
“Then slave-traders come here to buy, eh?”
“Yes, they do,” replied the man, “but ’tain’t none of my business. They don’t interfere with me, and I don’t interfere with them. Plenty of room here for both. Yew’re after them, then?”
“Yes,” said the lieutenant frankly.
“Phew!” whistled the man, giving his knees a slap. “Why, you’ll be after the schooner that came into this river this morning?”