“That I’ll never do!  I’ve made up my mind to try it, and won’t be driven out of a port because the people stand in fear of a harmless man.  If they have any souls in them, they’ll regard with favor a poor sailor driven into their port in distress.  I’ve sailed nearly all over the world, and I never got among a people yet that wouldn’t treat a shipwrecked sailor with humanity.  Gracious God!  I’ve known savages to be kind to poor shipwrecked sailors, and to share their food with them.  I can’t, pilot, imagine a civilization so degraded, nor a public so lost to common humanity, as to ill treat a man in distress.  We’ve said enough about it for the present.  I’ll appeal to Mr. Grimshaw’s feelings, when I get to the city; and I know, if he’s a man, he’ll let Manuel stay on board, if I pledge my honor that he won’t leave the craft.”

“Humph!—­If you knew him as well as I do, you’d save your own feelings.  His sympathies don’t run that way,” said the pilot.

The Janson had now crossed the bar, and was fast approaching Fort Sumpter.  Manuel had overheard enough of the conversation to awaken fears for his own safety.  Arising from the mattrass, in a manner indicating his feeble condition, he called Tommy, and walking forward, leaned over the rail near the fore-rigging, and inquired what the Captain and the pilot were talking about.  Observing his fears, the little fellow endeavoured to quiet him by telling him they were talking about bad sailors.

“I think it is me they are talking about.  If they sell me for slave in Charleston, I’ll kill myself before a week,” said he in his broken English.

“What’s that you say, Manuel?” inquired the first mate as he came along, clearing up the decks with the men.

“Pilot tell Captain they sell me for slave in South Carolina.  I’d jump overboard ’fore I suffer him,” said he.

“Oh, poh! don’t be a fool; you a’n’t among Patagonians, Manuel; you won’t have to give ’em leg for your life.  They dont sell foreigners and outlandish men like you for slaves in Carolina—­it’s only black folks what can’t clothe the’r words in plain English.  Yer copper-colored hide wouldn’t be worth a sixpence to a nigger-trader—­not even to old Norman Gadsden, that I’ve heard ’em tell so much about in the Liverpool docks.  He’s a regular Jonathan Wild in nigger-dealing; his name’s like a fiery dragon among the niggers all over the South; and I hearn our skipper say once when I sailed in a liner, that niggers in Charleston were so ’fraid of him they’d run, like young scorpions away from an old he-devil, when they saw him coming.  He sells white niggers, as they call ’em, and black niggers—­any thing that comes in his way, in the shape of saleable folks.  But he won’t acknowledge the corn when he goes away from home, and swears there’s two Norman Gadsdens in Charleston; that he a’n’t the one!  When a man’s ashamed of his name abroad, his trade must be very bad at home, or I’m no sailor,” said the mate.