The American stood listening with his eyes half closed and a peculiarly ugly look upon his countenance, while the planter made a deprecating sign with his hands.
“I see very plainly, sir,” continued the lieutenant, “that this insolent Yankee is presuming upon your weak state of health and assuming a power that he cannot maintain. You have been placing yourself in a position in which it would be better to—”
“Now see here, stranger,” burst in the American, “I’m a man who can stand a deal, but you can go too far. You come swaggering here with a boat-load of your men and think that you’re going to frighten me, sirr—but you’re just about wrong, for if I like to call up my men they’d bundle you and your lot back into your boat—for I suppose you have got one.”
“Look here, sir,” said the lieutenant, as he caught the flashing eyes of the two middies and the fidgety movements of his men, “I am loth to treat an American with harshness, but take this as a warning; if you insult your master and me again I’ll have you put in irons.”
“What!” cried the man, with a contemptuous laugh. “You’d better!”
The lieutenant started slightly, and that movement seemed to tighten up the nerves of his men.
“Can’t you understand, sirr, that if I like to hold back you’ll get no provisions or water here?”
“Confound your supplies, sir! And look here, if I must deal with you let me tell you that I have good reason to believe that under the pretence of acting as a planter here, you are carrying on a regular trade in slaves with the vile chiefs of the West Coast of Africa.”
“I don’t care what you believe, mister,” said the American defiantly. “I am working this plantation and producing sugar, coffee and cotton—honest goods, mister, and straightforward merchandise. Who are you, I should like to know, as comes bullying and insulting me about the tools I use for my projuce!”
“You soon shall know, sir,” said the lieutenant, and he just glanced at the pale, trembling man, who had sunk into a cane chair, in which he lay back to begin wiping his streaming brow—“I am an officer of his Britannic Majesty’s sloop of war Seafowl, sent to clear the seas of the miscreants who, worse than murderers, are trading in the wretched prisoners of war who are sold to them by the African chiefs.”