“Nary objection, stranger. Look at ’em and welcome,” was the reply. “I guess I’ll have to trouble you to come below, though.”
With this he led the way down the companion-ladder, and we followed; eventually bringing-up on the comfortably-cushioned lockers of a fine spacious airy cabin very nicely fitted up.
Seating himself opposite us, the skipper struck a hand-bell which stood on the cabin table; in response to which summons a black steward, clad, like his master, in dingy white, made his appearance from the neighbouring pantry. Our host thereupon formed his right hand into the shape of a cup and raised it to his mouth, at the same time exhibiting three fingers of his left hand; and the steward, nodding and grinning his comprehension of the mute order, withdrew, to reappear next moment with a case-bottle of rum, three glasses, and a water-monkey, or porous earthen jar, full of what proved, on our pouring it out, to be a very doubtful-looking liquid.
“Help yourselves, gentlemen,” said our host, pushing the rum-bottle and water-monkey towards us. “I ain’t got no wine aboard to offer you, but the liquor is real old Jamaica, and the water is genuine Mississippi; they make a first-grade mixture. But perhaps you prefer to take your liquor ‘straight;’ I always do.”
And he forthwith practically illustrated the process of taking liquor “straight” by half-filling his tumbler with neat rum, which he swallowed at a single gulp. He then rose and retired to his state-room in search of his papers; leaving us to sip our five-water grog meanwhile.
The papers were produced, examined, and found to be perfectly correct; after which Smellie set himself to the task of “pumping” our new acquaintance; without much result, though we certainly managed to obtain one bit of valuable information from him.
“Whether there’s slavers or no in this rivulet, I’ll just leave you to find out, stranger,” he remarked, in answer to a question of Smellie’s; “I’m here about my own business, and you’re here about yourn; you can’t interfere with me; and I won’t interfere with you. But I don’t mind tellin’ you that if you’d been here five days ago you’d have had a chance of nabbin’ the Black Venus, the smartest slaver, I guess, that’s ever visited this section of our sublunary sphere.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Smellie eagerly. “What sort of a craft is she? What is she like?”
“She is a brig,”—I pricked up my ears at this, and so, too, I could see, did Smellie—“of about three hundred tons register; long, and low in the water; mounts fourteen guns, seven of a side, and a long 32-pounder on her forecastle. Has very tall sticks, with a rake aft; and a tremendous spread of ‘caliker.’ And she’s the fastest craft in all creation. Your ship looks as if she could travel; but I ’low she ain’t a carcumstance to the Black Venus.”
“How is she painted?” asked Smellie. “Is she all black, or does she sometimes sport a white riband?”