“I can get a negro for that.  These white swine don’t live.  They’re not fit for the labour.”

Gardner broke into protestations of Pitt’s health, youth, and vigour.  It was not a man he was discussing; it was a beast of burden.  Pitt, a sensitive lad, stood mute and unmoving.  Only the ebb and flow of colour in his cheeks showed the inward struggle by which he maintained his self-control.

Peter Blood was nauseated by the loathsome haggle.

In the background, moving slowly away down the line of prisoners, went the lady in conversation with the Governor, who smirked and preened himself as he limped beside her.  She was unconscious of the loathly business the Colonel was transacting.  Was she, wondered Blood, indifferent to it?

Colonel Bishop swung on his heel to pass on.

“I’ll go as far as twenty pounds.  Not a penny more, and it’s twice as much as you are like to get from Crabston.”

Captain Gardner, recognizing the finality of the tone, sighed and yielded.  Already Bishop was moving down the line.  For Mr. Blood, as for a weedy youth on his left, the Colonel had no more than a glance of contempt.  But the next man, a middle-aged Colossus named Wolverstone, who had lost an eye at Sedgemoor, drew his regard, and the haggling was recommenced.

Peter Blood stood there in the brilliant sunshine and inhaled the fragrant air, which was unlike any air that he had ever breathed.  It was laden with a strange perfume, blend of logwood flower, pimento, and aromatic cedars.  He lost himself in unprofitable speculations born of that singular fragrance.  He was in no mood for conversation, nor was Pitt, who stood dumbly at his side, and who was afflicted mainly at the moment by the thought that he was at last about to be separated from this man with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder throughout all these troublous months, and whom he had come to love and depend upon for guidance and sustenance.  A sense of loneliness and misery pervaded him by contrast with which all that he had endured seemed as nothing.  To Pitt, this separation was the poignant climax of all his sufferings.

Other buyers came and stared at them, and passed on.  Blood did not heed them.  And then at the end of the line there was a movement.  Gardner was speaking in a loud voice, making an announcement to the general public of buyers that had waited until Colonel Bishop had taken his choice of that human merchandise.  As he finished, Blood, looking in his direction, noticed that the girl was speaking to Bishop, and pointing up the line with a silver-hilted riding-whip she carried.  Bishop shaded his eyes with his hand to look in the direction in which she was pointing.  Then slowly, with his ponderous, rolling gait, he approached again accompanied by Gardner, and followed by the lady and the Governor.

On they came until the Colonel was abreast of Blood.  He would have passed on, but that the lady tapped his arm with her whip.