“Ay, captain, I have drove many a bargain in my time, and sometimes I have been paid in money, and sometimes I have been paid in promises; now the last are what I call pinching food.”
“Name your price.”
“Twenty—no, damn it, it’s worth thirty dollars, if it’s worth a cent!”
“Here, then, is your money: but remember, if you tell me nothing worth knowing, I have a force that can easily deprive you of it again, and punish your insolence in the bargain.”
The fellow examined the bank-bills he received, with a jealous eye, and then pocketed them, apparently well satisfied of their being genuine.
“I like a northern note,” he said very coolly; “they have a character to lose like myself. No fear of me, captain; I am a man of honour, and I shall not tell you a word more, nor a word less than I know of my own knowledge to be true.”
“Proceed then without further delay, or I may repent, and order you to be deprived of all your gains; the silver as well as the notes.”
“Honour, if you die for it!” returned the miscreant, holding up a hand in affected horror at so treacherous a threat. “Well, captain, you must know that gentlemen don’t all live by the same calling; some keep what they’ve got, and some get what they can.”
“You have been a thief.”
“I scorn the word. I have been a humanity hunter. Do you know what that means? Ay, it has many interpretations. Some people think the woolly-heads are miserable, working on hot plantations under a broiling sun—and all such sorts of inconveniences. Well, captain, I have been, in my time, a man who has been willing to give them the pleasures of variety, at least, by changing the scene for them. You understand me?”