Every line upon his swarthy face, every hair of his strong white beard, every vibration of his deep voice cried “Beware!” We complied. We told Mr Jevon Murch all that had befallen, from the meeting in Gamaliel’s tavern to our landing in this accursed island. Pomfrett ended by a fervent adjuration, imploring Mr Murch, if he could not give or sell his liberty, at least to let him go down to the ship, on his parole, and challenge Captain Dawkins to mortal combat.
Mr Murch, who had listened without a word, good or bad, treated the proposition very airily.
“My lad,” said he, “don’t you know Dawkins better than that? He does not fight except for gain. Moreover, he sails to-night—has already cut sail, in all likelihood.”
I thought Brandon would have sprung at his throat, and then I thought he would break into weeping. He glanced at the iron face of his master, and then he stood looking down, with a bitten lip. Before he had time to give way to his feelings, Murch struck a silver gong, and a brown servant appeared, by whom preceded, and followed by Mr Murch, we were conducted into a sleeping-chamber. Murch commended to us the food and wine set out on a side-table, bade us good-night, and left us, bolting the door after him.
These emergencies of life are worse in either anticipation or retrospect than in experience. We thought little, and said little, ate and drank, and slept soundly, chiefly conscious of the pleasure of being ashore, in a clean house, with fresh food. That we were sold into slavery was certainly a disaster; we were aware of it, in the abstract; but, at present, we felt it not. As for Mr Murch, he puzzled us.
But, somehow or other, during the night-watches the shadow of servitude descended upon us. We awoke at first to a vague consciousness of a nameless taint, then to a clear perception of that infamy. In the good hour of the dawn, when the world is all still, and the air scented with the smoke of wood-fires, we stood sullen at the window, gazing at the clear glory of the sky with the eyes of chained dogs. It was so Mr Murch found us, when he came briskly in, at the heels of a thundering knock, cat-footed, for all his bulk, and massively alert.
“Gentlemen, what cheer? I have brought you a little present,” quoth he, tapping a folded paper with his thick fingers. “Do me the favour to glance at this document.”
Pomfrett received the paper, and together we ran our eyes over it. It was the same I had perused the night before, signed with Dawkins’s great sprawling signature, and purporting to be the indenture delivering us to Mr Jevon Murch for a term of five years. The sum paid was one hundred and fifteen pieces of eight for Brandon Pomfrett, aged twenty-two; one hundred for Henry Winter, aged twenty-five; both being “notorious profligate evil-livers.” The schoolmaster, it appeared, was the cheaper article—why?
“You have us in a trap—we knew that last night,” said Brandon, returning the paper. “But let me tell you, that’s a shameful document,” he added, hardily.
Mr Murch, with those narrow-lidded eyes of his on Brandon, slowly tore the paper across and across. We stared at the pieces as they dropped, and up at the bronze countenance with its inscrutable hieroglyphic of fine lines.