Judging from the conversation of his companions, he was not now on the road to fortune.

The Tom Jones set sail for Valparaiso, but certainly went in a roundabout way to reach her destination.

The real fact was, that Captain Warth proposed visiting the Gulf of Guinea.

A friend of his, the “Black Prince,” he said, with a loud laugh, was waiting for him at Badagri, to exchange a cargo of “ebony” for some pipes of rum, and a hundred flint-lock muskets which were on board the Tom Jones.

Gaston soon saw that he was serving his apprenticeship on a slaver, one of the many ships sent yearly by the free and philanthropic Americans, who made immense fortunes by carrying on the slave-trade.

Although this discovery filled Gaston with indignation and shame, he was prudent enough to conceal his impressions.

His remonstrances, no matter how eloquent, would have made no change in the opinions of Captain Warth regarding a traffic which brought him in more than a hundred per cent, in spite of the French and English cruisers, the damages, sometimes entire loss of cargoes, and many other risks.

The crew admired Gaston when they learned that he had cut two men into mince-meat when they were insolent to him; this was the account of Gaston’s affair, as reported to the captain by old Menoul.

Gaston wisely determined to keep on friendly terms with the villains, as long as he was in their power.  To express disapproval of their conduct would have incurred the enmity of the whole crew, without bettering his own situation.

He therefore kept quiet, but swore mentally that he would desert on the first opportunity.

This opportunity, like everything impatiently longed for, came not.

By the end of three months, Gaston had become so useful and popular that Captain Warth found him indispensable.

Seeing him so intelligent and agreeable, he liked to have him at his own table, and would spend hours at cards with him or consulting about his business matters.  The mate of the ship dying, Gaston was chosen to replace him.  In this capacity he made two successful voyages to Guinea, bringing back a thousand blacks, whom he superintended during a trip of fifteen hundred leagues, and finally landed them on the coast of Brazil.

When Gaston had been with Captain Warth about three years, the Tom Jones stopped at Rio Janeiro for a month, to lay in supplies.  He now decided to leave the ship, although he had become somewhat attached to the friendly captain, who was after all a worthy man, and never would have engaged in the diabolical traffic of human beings, but for his little angel daughter’s sake.  He said that his child was so good and beautiful, that she deserved a large fortune.  Each time that he sold a black, he would quiet any faint qualms of conscience by saying, “It is for little Mary’s good.”

Gaston possessed twelve thousand francs, as his share of the profits, when he landed at Brazil.