“Not take her?” said Mark, half aloud in his surprise.
“Hist! No, no, sir. I didn’t mean that; I mean not die for it.”
“Oh, I see.”
“You shall take her, sir, as soon as you give the word; but, begging your pardon, sir, if I might ask a favour for me and the men—”
“Yes; what is it?”
“Don’t be too hard on us, sir, in the way of orders.”
“What do you mean? I won’t ask you to do anything I shall not try to do myself.”
“Oh, it ain’t that, Mr Vandean, sir. We know you for a fine, plucky young gent, as we’d follow anywhere. What I meant was, don’t be too stiff with the men in the way o’ stopping ’em. We don’t want to kill any of the beggars, but we should like to give it ’em as hard as we can.”
“Do, Tom,” whispered Mark, excitedly. “The beasts! the wretches! the unmanly brutes! Oh, how can those poor blacks be such pitiful, miserable cowards, and not rise up and kill the villains who seize them and treat them in such a way!”
“I’ll tell you, sir. It’s because they’ve been beaten. I don’t mean larruped with a stick, but beaten in some fight, and made prisoners up the country. Since then they’ve been chained and driven and starved and knocked about till all the man’s gone out of ’em, and made ’em so that they haven’t got a spark o’ pluck left. You take ’em and treat ’em well, and it all comes back, like it did to poor old Soup and poor old Taters. They was fast growing into good, stiff, manly sort o’ messmates, with nothing wrong in ’em but their black skins, and I don’t see as that’s anything agin a man. All a matter o’ taste, sir. Dessay the black ladies thinks they’re reg’lar han’some, and us and our white skins ugly as sin.”