“We’ll get a good observation at meridian, and then we shall shape our course for Charleston, South Carolina.  We’ll be more likely to reach it than any other southern port,” said the captain to his mate.  “That steward, Manuel, is worth his weight in gold.  If we have to abandon the old craft, I’ll take him home; the owners respect him just as much as a white man; his politeness and affability could not but command such esteem, with a man that a’n’t a fool.  I never believed in making equals of negroes, but if Manuel was to be classed with niggers for all the nigger blood that’s in him, seven-tenths of the inhabitants of the earth would go with him.  I never saw such an attachment between brothers, as exists between him and Tommy.  I verily believe that one couldn’t go to sleep without the other.  I should think they were brothers, if the lad wasn’t English, and Manuel a Portuguese.  But Manuel is as much an Englishman at heart as the lad, and has sailed so long under the flag that he seems to have a reverence for the old jack when he sees the bunting go up.  He likes to tell that story about the Patagonians chasing him.  I have overheard him several times, as much amused in his own recital as if he was listening to the quaint jokes of an old tar.  But he swears the Patagonians will never catch him on their shores again, for he says he doesn’t believe in making ’drum-head of man-skin,’” said the Captain, evidently with the intention of affecting the mate’s feelings, and drawing his mind from its dark forebodings.

“Well, Skipper, I pray for a happy deliverance,” said the mate, “but if we make Charleston with her, it’ll be a luck that man nor mermaid ever thought of.  I hearn a good deal o’ tell about Charleston, and the Keys.  That isn’t one of the places our stewards are so ’fraid of, and where owners don’t like to send their ships when they can find freight in other ports?”

“I expect it is, sir; but I apprehend no such trouble with any of my crew,” answered the Captain promptly.  “I sail under the faith of my nation’s honor and prowess, the same as the Americans do under theirs.  We’re both respected wherever we go, and if one little State in the Union violates the responsibility of a great nation like that, I’m mistaken.  Certainly, no nation in Christendom could be found, that wouldn’t open their hearts to a shipwrecked sailor.  I have too much faith in what I have heard of the hospitality of Southerners, to believe any thing of that kind.”

“Talk’s all very well, Skipper,” said the mate; “but my word for it, I know’d several ships lying in the Mersey, about three years ago, bound to Southern ports for cotton.  White stewards worth any thing couldn’t be had for love nor money, and the colored ones wouldn’t ship for ports in Slaves States.  The Thebis got a colored man, but the owners had to pay him an enormous advance, and this, too, with the knowledge of his being locked up the whole time he was in port; thus