Both Herbert and his guide were then formally arrested in the name of the king, and marched off in custody—not without some very vociferous protestations on the part of Quaco, with a long string of threats that he would some day make both constable and overseer pay for this outrage upon the person of a free Maroon.
Volume One—Chapter Thirty.
A Jamaica Justice.
Jessuron, Esquire, held court in the verandah of his dingy dwelling-house, where we have already seen him assisting at a different spectacle.
He was now seated, with a small table before him, covered with a piece of green baize, and carrying a gold snuff-box, an inkstand, pens, and some sheets of paper.
A book or two lay upon the table, one of which, by the lettering upon its cover, proclaimed its title and character—The Jamaica Justice. It was bound in black leather—a colour sufficiently emblematic of the chief subject on which it treated: for more than four-fifths of the laws and regulations it contained, related to creatures with black skins.
The Justice was in full costume, as the occasion required—that is, he wore his best blue body-coat with gilt buttons, his drab small-clothes and top-boots. The brownish beaver had been laid aside: as the sanctity of justice requires even the judge’s head to be uncovered; but the white cotton skull-cap still remained upon his cranium; justice in Jamaica not being so rigorous as to exact its removal.
With the spectacles well set upon his nose, and his thin face screwed into an expression of pompous importance, Squire Jessuron sate behind his bench, waiting till the parties to the suit should get well into their places.