He pointed to the Portuguese slave-dealer as he spoke.
Seeing himself thus referred to, the slave-dealer came forward, hat in hand, and made a polite bow. He was a man of extremely forbidding aspect. A long dark visage, which terminated in a black peaked beard, and was surmounted by a tall-crowned broad-brimmed straw hat, stood on the top of a long, raw-boned, thin, sinewy, shrivelled, but powerful frame, that had battled with and defeated all the fevers and other diseases peculiar to the equatorial regions of Africa. He wore a short light-coloured cotton jacket and pantaloons—the latter much too short for his limbs, but the deficiency was more than made up by a pair of Wellington boots. His natural look was a scowl. His assumed smile of politeness was so unnatural, that Tim Rokens thought, as he gazed at him, he would have preferred greatly to have been frowned at by him. Even Ailie, who did not naturally think ill of any one, shrank back as he approached and grasped Glynn’s hand more firmly than usual.
“Goot morning, gentl’m’n. You was vish for git nigger, I suppose.”
“Well, we wos,” replied Tim, with a faint touch of sarcasm in his tone. “Can you get un for us?”
“Yees, sare, as many you please,” replied the slave-dealer, with a wink that an ogre might have envied. “Have great many ob ’em stay vid me always.”
“Ah! then, they must be fond o’ bad company,” remarked Briant, in an undertone, “to live along wid such a alligator.”
“Well, then,” said Tim Rokens, who had completed the filling of his pipe, and was now in the full enjoyment of it; “let’s see the feller, an’ I’ll strike a bargain with him, if he seems a likely chap.”
“You will have strike de bargin vid me,” said the dealer. “I vill charge you ver’ leetle, suppose you take full cargo.”
The whole party, who were ignorant of the man’s profession, started at this remark, and looked at the dealer in surprise.
“Wot!” exclaimed Tim Rokens, withdrawing his pipe from his lips; “do you sell niggers?”