“Suppose it should be the West Coast and the old trade?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but even so I go.”

“And leave all that good life you love so at the Manor?”

On his face was still the stern look.  I could not stand it longer and I stepped closer to him.  “You have not turned against me, sir?”

He softened at once.  “Guy, Guy, don’t mind me.  I meant well.  I thought you might prefer the shore to living on the sea.”

“I do, sir, but when you are at sea it’s at sea I’d rather be too, sir.”

“Ah-h—­” and when he looked at me like that it mattered not about his law-breaking—­he was the bravest, finest man that ever sailed the trades.  “Guy, my boy, if you’ll have it so, why come along.  And once more we’ll cruise together; but you won’t judge your commander too harshly, will you, Guy?”

We took the ebb down the river.  Our papers read for a West India trading voyage, but we lingered not among the West Indies.  Four weeks later we raised the Cape Verdes, and an islet rose like a castle from out of the mists.  Abreast of a pebbled beach we came to anchor and waited.

II

A boat scraped alongside, and the agent Rimmle came aboard.  He came out to have a chat for old time’s sake; and yet not so old either, he corrected, and would Captain Blaise come ashore and have a drink or two of good liquor?  And Captain Blaise replied that he carried as good liquor in his locker as ever graced any sideboard ashore.  And they dropped into the cabin, where I happened to be, and had a glass of wine and a word or two, and another glass and a few more words; and at last Rimmle put the question:  Would Captain Blaise run one more draft?

Long ago, Captain Blaise promised me that there was to be no more slave-running, and as he never lied to me, I wondered now why he paused and pondered as if debating with himself.  At last he looked up.  “It doesn’t pay any more, Rimmle.”

“Well, in these days,” observed Rimmle, “I don’t blame you, with the bull-dogs of men-o’-war making it so hot.”

We all had to smile at that, and Rimmle, seeing that Captain Blaise was not to be shamed into it, went on.  “But suppose there was larger head-money than ever was paid before, Captain?  And if half the head-money and the crew’s pay were laid down in advance?  For it is hard, as you have often said, Captain, that anything should happen to brave and willing men on such a cruise and they have neither profit nor safety of it.”  It was the old talk all over again, the agent urging him once more to take to slave-running, except that in other days Captain Blaise had displayed less patience.

The wineglasses had already been filled too frequently for me, and, pleading business, I had spread out a coast chart on the other end of the cabin table and was studying it, this by way of removing myself from a conversation which I saw was not to end with trading or slave-running.