“Oh, yes,” said Redman; “you can have them, but if you bring them here, they’ll not be worth anything when you leave; and the prisoners upon this floor are so starved and destitute, that necessity forces them to steal whatever comes in their way; and the assistants are as much implicated as the prisoners.  You’ll fare hard; but just do as we do in a calm, wait for the wind to blow, and pray for the best.  If you say any thing, or grumble about it, the sheriff will order you locked, up on the third story, and that’s worse than death itself.  The first thing you do, make preparations for something to eat.  We pay for it here, but don’t get it; and you’d starve afore you’d eat what they give them poor white prisoners.  They suffer worse than we do, only they have cleaner rooms.”

“I pray for my deliverance from such a place as this.”

His manners and appearance at once enlisted the respect of those present, and they immediately set to work, with all the means at hand, to make him comfortable.  Joseph Jociquei, a young man who had been taken from a vessel just arrived from Rio, and was more fortunate than the rest, in having a mattrass, seeing Manuel’s weak condition, immediately removed it from its place, and spreading it upon the floor, invited him to lay down.  The invitation was as acceptable as it was kind on the part of Jociquei, and the poor fellow laid his weary limbs upon it, and almost simultaneously fell into a profound sleep.  Manuel continued to sleep.  His face and head were scarred in several places; which were dressed and covered with pieces of plaster that the jailer had supplied.  His companions, for such we shall call those who were confined with him, sat around him, discussing the circumstances that brought him there, and the manner in which they could best relieve his suffering.  “It’s just as I was sarved,” said Redman.  “And I’ll bet that red-headed constable, Dunn, brought him up:  and abused him in all them Dutch shops.  I didn’t know the law, and he made me give him three dollars not to put the handcuffs upon me, and then I had to treat him in every grog-shop we came to.  Yes, and the last shop we were in, he throw’d liquor in me face, cursed the Dutchman that kept the shop, kick’d me, and tried every way in the world to raise a fuss.  If I hadn’t know’d the law here too well, I’d whipt him sure.  I have suffered the want of that three dollars since I bin here.  ’Twould sarved me for coffee.  We have neither coffee nor bread to-night, for we gave our allowance of bad bread to the white prisoners, but we must do something to make the poor fellow comfortable.  I know the constable has kept him all day coming up, and he’ll be hungry as soon as he awakes.”

“Won’t he receive his allowance to-day like another prisoner?” inquired Copeland, a thick-set, well made, dark-skinned negro steward, who had formerly conducted a barber shop in Fleet street, Boston, but was now attached to the schooner Oscar Jones, Kellogg, master.