s tossed out of
the window."

"I thought you would not want me drunk beside you all night, sir, and
then I might enjoy your company. I don't want to drink no more liquor."

"You like my company?"

"Yes, sir."

The Captain blushed, and asked,

"Why do you like me?"

"Not fur nothin' you do, sir. I like you fur somethin' in your ways; I
reckon you're a smart man."

"_Si, senor_, that I am. I have gained the whole world and lost two."

"Two worlds, sir?"

"Yes, two immortal worlds; that is to say, two unaccountable worlds. I
am no Christian."

"Maybe you're Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 'spect everybody's got a
religion."

"I was a Mahometan for business ends," Van Dorn said. "Having become a
slaver, it was nothing to be a renegade. Stealing a man's soul every
day, I put no value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God: so are
you."

"You have been in Afrikey, I 'spect," suggested Levin.

"A few years only, but long enough to be rich and to be ruined. I know
the negro coast from the Gambia to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I
have had an African queen and the African fever: I went to conquer
Africa and became a slave."

"In Africa, I 'spect, Captain," Levin remarked, without inference, "a
nigger-trader is respectable."

Van Dorn shook his head.

"I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this globe, unless it
be _here_. No, I will say for these people, too, that while they do it
low lip homage, they look down on it. I was once the greatest guest in
Timbo, housed with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking
like an ambassador, and he called me 'his son' and drew me to his
breast. Proclamations were made that I should be respected as such, yet
every human object fled before me. As I rode out alone to see the
gardens and cassava fields, the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich
mountain prospects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks,
the cry went round, 'Flesh-buyer is coming,' and huts were deserted,
fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the little children ran, and I
was left alone with the dumb animals, despised, abhorred."

"Don't they have slavery thair, sir?"

"Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no more respectable
than the procurer. The coin of Africa, its only medium, was the slave.
He paid the debt of war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of
man, in the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with it,
and points to br