“Heavens! How they exerted themselves; so much so that I quite shared Captain Alphonse’s admiration for them, but, unlike him, I watched them and I noticed that they and the coloured men of our crew who had been picked up at La Guayra seemed on a more friendly footing than was altogether warranted by the short time they had been on board. Captain Alphonse and the other passengers, however, would not see this.
“But, sir, I had an old negro servant on board with me, who had followed my fortunes from the States to Venezuela after the war, Louisiana then being no longer a fit place for a white man to live in. Poor old Cato; he was the most faithful soul the Almighty ever put breath into!
“Him I acquainted with my suspicions, and sent amongst the blacks, to gather what information he could of their designs, for I was confident, sirs, they had not boarded us for nothing, and were hatching some deep plot with a view, very probably, of getting possession of our ship in order the better to further the interests of the revolutionary party to which they belonged that was opposed to Salomon, the president in power.
“Whatever their object might be, however, I distrusted them in every way, believing them, indeed, actuated by other motives than such as might be prompted by their political aspirations, my suspicions being confirmed by the looks and bearing of the gang, who seemed capable of any atrocity, judging them by their villainous faces and generally hang-dog appearance, besides which they were continually whispering together amongst themselves and consorting and confabbing with the mulattoes and other coloured men belonging to the crew.
“In addition to that, Señor Applegarth, and you too, gentlemen, I noticed that our friend ‘the marquis,’ although he gave himself great airs on account of the aristocratic blood and descent to which he lay claim, pretending to think himself much superior in position to both Captain Alphonse and myself, and regarding poor Cato, my servant, as mere dirt under his feet, albeit the faithful negro was of a like colour to himself—did not esteem it beneath his high dignity to associate with the scum of the forecastle and bandy ribald obscenities, when he believed himself unobserved, with his fellow scoundrels.
“Aye, I watched my gentleman carefully, and so, too, did my poor faithful Cato!”