"Oh! And Anne--Bufton. Damn you! Why call her that? Why----"
"You say your wedding is unbreakable. Therefore she is--Anne Bufton."
"How do you know all this? Do not play with me. Answer me truthfully, in God's name!"
"I know it well. Barry has been with me, trying to get men for the fleets. But," and now the clear tones in which he always spoke became, if possible, more distinct than ordinary, more--if the term may be used--metallic, "I have a better market than supplying the fleets with men. There is a Dutch schooner--the Nederland--lying further down the river, whose skipper pays me higher. She is in truth a--well! a kidnapper. Those who get on board of her, men and--and--yes!--and women--she takes women too!--think that they are going out to become planters, farmers, people to whom land is granted. That is, the men think so, while the women--oh! it is in truth cruel----"
"The women. Yes, the women! What of them?"
"They think they will find husbands. But they, too, are sold. All are sold to the plantations, or as good as sold; they are indented for a term of years. They are, in solemn fact, slaves--slaves herding with those whose death-warrants have been commuted, with the scum and offal of the old world. The women die fast, the labour is terrible. Their hearts are broken."
"But how do you, how does the Dutch skipper get such?" Bufton asked, his eyes glistening. Already there was a hideous idea dawning in his mind, accompanied by a horrible vision of "women dying fast, their hearts broken," in the slavery of the colonies.
"It is not hard to do," Granger said, still speaking slowly and very calmly. "Some are enticed with flowery promises, some are made drunk, while some--poor rustics these--going along lonely ways near the river, have been set upon and carried, gagged, to a boat, and sent off to the Nederland. You scorn me," he said, with an appearance of frankness as well as of self-depreciation, "for being concerned in such a trade as this! Yet, remember, I am a ruined, degraded man. Remember also by whom, and so forgive and pity me."
"I do! I do!" Bufton exclaimed with heartiness, thinking, even as he did thus exclaim, what a fool this old tool and creature of his was to so expose his method of business. Yet he had something else to think about now besides Granger's simplicity--something of far more vital importance than that to meditate upon.
"How," he asked, "did you tell me it was done? How? With, let us say, the women. Will the master of this ship receive any taken to him? And--and--is he not in danger of being overhauled? How can he slip away to sea past the guns of Woolwich and Tilbury?"