The planter shook his head sadly.
“No, sir; the task will prove more difficult than you anticipate. Your officer here has some little experience of one of your opponents.”
“Oh! There is more than one to deal with, then?” said Mr Anderson sharply.
“There are two, sir, who act as heads of the traffic—my overseer Huggins, and his twin brother.”
“Ah! I see,” said the chief officer, smiling. “I am of opinion, then, that we have met the brother yonder upon the West Coast.”
“Most likely, sir,” said the planter feebly. “If you have, you have encountered another of the most cunning, scheming scoundrels that ever walked the earth.”
“And these are your friends that I understand you are ready to betray to justice?” said the captain sternly.
“My friends, sir?” said the planter bitterly. “Say, my tyrants, sir—the men who have taken advantage of my weakness to make me a loathsome object in my own sight. Captain,” cried the trembling man, “I must speak as I do to make you fully realise my position. I am by birth an English gentleman. My father was one of those who came out here like many others to settle upon a plantation. In the past, as you know, ideas were lax upon the question of slavery, and I inherited those ideas; but I can answer for my father, that his great idea was to lead a patriarchal life surrounded by his slaves, who in their way were well treated and happy.”
“As slaves?” said Mr Anderson sternly.
“I will not enter into that, sir,” said the planter sadly, “and I grant that the custom became a terrible abuse—a curse which has exacted its punishments. I own fully that I have been a weak man who has allowed himself to be outwitted by a couple of scheming scoundrels, who led me on and on till they had involved me in debt and hopelessly so. In short, of late years my soul has not seemed to be my own, and by degrees I awoke to the fact that I was nominally the head of a horrible traffic, and the stalking-horse behind whose cover these twin brothers carried on their vile schemes, growing rich as merchant princes and establishing at my cost this—what shall I call it?—emporium of flesh and blood—this home of horror.”