"I have not that amount with me, but if you will give me a day or two I think I can get it. Will you keep him until I come again?"
"Unless some other turns up in the mean time equally desirous of accommodating him."
"Captain, I vill pay the money on the spot," exclaimed a voice, and wheeling about, Winslow saw a man of sporty aspect arrayed in tawdry imitation of a gentleman, and of a decidedly Hebraic cast of countenance. He was extending a handful of gold pieces, which Captain Dermer took and counted.
"It is a trade," he said. "Take him and may luck go with you."
Thus was sold, in the city of London, a free-born native American; and he was but one of many New World people who shared a similar fate both before and afterwards.
CHAPTER XX ONE FRIENDLY FACE
The man who on pretence of paying Nahma's passage-money had in reality bought him was a well-known London fur-dealer, who had visited the ship to appraise her cargo. The young fellow who had extended to our forlorn lad the hand of friendship, and who, but for lack of ready means, would have redeemed him from a threatened slavery, was a Mr. Edward Winslow. He was the youngest son of a well-to-do Devon family, who had taken a degree at Oxford and was now reading law in the Temple. He was intensely interested in America and everything pertaining to it. Thus, on hearing that a ship just arrived from the New World was in the Thames, he hastened to board her, that he might converse with those who had so recently trod the shores he longed to visit. Nahma was the first American he had ever seen, and he regarded him with a lively curiosity that was changed to pity at sight of his hopeless face. Now he turned fiercely on the Jew who by payment of a paltry sum of money had become master of the young stranger's fate.