amusement, he manifested the same, by replying,
with great indifference of manner,--

"I s'pose he t'ink all the water inside lie on a top."

"I tell you, Guinea," returned the other, in a harsh, positive tone, "the
fellow is a know-nothing! Would any man, who understands the behaviour of
a ship, keep his craft in a roadstead, when he might tie her, head and
stern, in a basin like this?"

"What he call roadstead?" interrupted the negro, seizing at once, with the
avidity of ignorance, on the little oversight of his adversary, in
confounding the outer harbour of Newport with the wilder anchorage below,
and with the usual indifference of all similar people to the more material
matter of whether the objection was at all germain to the point in
controversy; "I never hear 'em call anchoring ground, with land around it,
roadstead afore!"

"Hark ye, mister Gold-coast," muttered the white, bending his head aside
in a threatening manner, though he still disdained to turn his eyes on his
humble adversary, "if you've no wish to wear your shins parcelled for the
next month, gather in the slack of your wit, and have an eye to the manner
in which you let it run again. Just tell me this; isn't a port a port? and
isn't an offing an offing?"

As these were two propositions to which even the ingenuity of Scipio could
raise no objection, he wisely declined touching on either, contenting
himself with shaking his head in great self-complacency, and laughing as
heartily, at his imaginary triumph over his companion, as though he had
never known care, nor been the subject of wrong and humiliation, so long
and so patiently endured.

"Ay, ay," grumbled the white, re-adjusting his person in its former
composed attitude, and again crossing the arms, which had been a little
separated, to give force to the menace against the tender member of the
black, "now you are piping the wind out of your throat like a flock of
long-shore crows, you think you've got the best of the matter. The Lord
made a nigger an unrational animal; and an experienced seaman, who has
doubled both Capes, and made all the head-lands atween Fundy and Horn, has
no right to waste his breath in teaching any of the breed! I tell you,
Scipio, since Scipio is your name on the ship's books, though I'll wager a
month's pay against a wooden boat-hook that your father was known at home
as Quashee, and your mother as Quasheeba--therefore do I tell you, Scipio
Africa--which is a name fo