“Ah, my boys!” said the pilot in a quizzical manner, as he came to where several of the men were getting the larboard anchor ready to let go,—­“if old Norman Gadsden gets hold of you, you’re a gone sucker.  A man what’s got a bad nigger has only got to say Old Gadsden to him, and it’s equal to fifty paddles.  The mode of punishment most modern, and adopted in all the workhouses and places of punishment in South Carolina, is with the paddle, a wooden instrument in, the shape of a baker’s peel; with a blade from three to five inches wide, and from eight to ten long.  This is laid on the posteriors—­generally by constables or officers connected with the police.  Holes are frequently bored in the blade, which gives the application a sort of percussive effect; The pain is much more acute than with the cowhide; and several instances are known where a master ordered an amount of strokes beyond the endurance of the slave, and it proved fatal. at the workhouse.  They tell a pretty good story about the old fellow.  I don’t know if it’s true, but the old fellow’s rich now, and he does just what he pleases.  It was that somebody found one of those little occasional droppings of the aristocracy, very well known among the secrets of the chivalry, and called foundlings, nicely fixed up in a basket.—­It’s among the secrets though, and mustn’t be told abroad.—­The finders labelled it, ‘Please sell to the highest bidder,’ and left it at his door.  There was a fund of ominous meaning in the label; but Norman very coolly took the little helpless pledge under his charge, and, with the good nursing of old Bina, made him tell to the tune of two hundred and thirty, cash, ’fore he was two year old.  He went by the name of Thomas Norman, the Christian division of his foster-father’s, according to custom.  The old fellow laughs at the joke, as he calls it, and tells ’em, when they stick it to him, they don’t understand the practice of making money.  You must keep a bright look out for him, Manuel—­you’ll know him by the niggers running when they see him coming.”

The pilot now returned to the quarter, and commenced dilating upon the beauty of Charleston harbor and its tributaries, the Astley and Cooper Rivers—­then upon the prospects of fortifications to beat the United States in the event of South Carolina’s seceding and raising an independent sovereignty, composed of her best blood.  The Captain listened to his unsolicited and uninteresting exposition of South Carolina’s prowess in silence, now and then looking up at the pilot and nodding assent.  He saw that the pilot was intent upon astonishing him with his wonderful advancement in the theory of government, and the important position of South Carolina.  Again he looked dumbfounded, as much as to acknowledge the pilot’s profundity, and exclaimed, “Well!  South Carolina must be a devil of a State:  every thing seems captivated with its greatness:  I’d like to live in Carolina if I didn’t get licked.”