"What could he do with all those slaves if he took 'em?" asked Guert.
"What he do with 'em?" replied Coco, with some surprise. "Drown slaver, not brack fellers. Sell 'em all. Make pile o' money."
"He wouldn't do that," said Guert.
"Then go ashore in Cuba," persisted the old Ashantee. "Buy sugar plantation. Have he slaves all for nothing. That's what Coco think. He do it, quick. All African chief have plenty slave. Make 'em work, kill 'em, do what he please."
The fierce anger of the grim old African, therefore, had been aroused by a memory of his own sufferings and not by any sentimental notions concerning human rights. He saw no evil whatever in the mere owning of slaves. Very much like him in that respect, to tell the truth, were most of his Yankee friends. Slave-holding had not yet been abolished in the northern American colonies any more than in the southern. The great movement for the abolition of all property in human beings came a long time afterward. Nevertheless, even then, a strong odium was beginning to attach to the business of catching black men for the market, and the cause of this feeling was mainly the cruel and wasteful manner in which the business was carried on. The gathering of slaves in Africa for export purposes was understood to be exceedingly murderous, and too many of the captives died on shipboard from barbarous ill-treatment.
Away had swung the badly smelling Yara upon her intended course. Her polite captain had bowed as she did so, his last farewell expressing his wish that his privateer acquaintances might have good luck and make money. If he were indeed an Englishman, he had no narrow, national feeling concerning business matters.
"Sam Prentice!" exclaimed Captain Avery. "I was glad to be rid of 'em. They're only another kind of pirate, anyhow. I believe that feller'd send up the black flag any day, if it was safe,—and if he could make money by it."
"Lyme," replied his mate, "don't you know that slave catchers do fly the skull and bones every now and then, in the far seas? They're none too good to scuttle a ship and make her crew walk the plank."
"I've heard so," said the captain, "but we hadn't any duty to do by 'em, jest now. What we want to do is to sight a British flag on a craft that doesn't carry too many guns for us. Port your helm, there!"