r
merchantable tobacco. Here, you Cappy," he said to one of the older
convicts. "Look here! Don't you tell anybody to-day that you're a
seaman. They'll swear you are a pirate, and that you'll be off with one
of their country sloops, and go a-blackbearding it down the coast.
You're to be a schoolmaster to-day."

"I can't read much, and I can't hardly write a word," said the man, a
burly fellow of about sixty, whose heavy jaws and low brows would look
brutal in spite of the brand-new periwig put on him that very morning
to make him salable.

"That don't matter," said the captain. "You're schoolmaster enough for
a tobacco country. You can navigate a ship by the sun and compass, and
that's education enough. If you go and let it out that you're a sailor,
I'll--well, you've been a captain or mate, and you know devilish well
what I'll do with you. I'll serve you as you have served many a poor
devil in your time."

Then, catching sound of a quarrel between two of the women, the captain
called the mate, and said: "Give both of the wenches a touch off with
your rope's end. Don't black their eyes or hit 'em about the face, but
let 'em just taste the knot once over the shoulders to keep 'em
peaceable. Be in haste, or they'll scratch one another's eyes."

The mate proceeded to salute the two women with a sharp blow apiece of
the knotted rope, and thus changed their rising fury into sullenness.

Planters came and went during the forenoon, and cross-questioned the
convicts, threatening to make it hard for them if they did not tell the
truth. The visitors drank the captain's bumbo, but the convicts were
slow of sale. Some of the planters announced their intention not to buy
any more convicts, meaning for the future to purchase only freewillers,
or bond servants voluntarily selling themselves, and some had made up
their minds not to buy any more Christian servants at all, but to stock
their places with blacks.

It was mid-afternoon when Sanford Browne arrived in his dugout,
propelled against a head wind and heavy seas by Bob, the white
redemptioner, and Jocko, the negro boy. The planter himself sat astern
steering, with little Sanford crouched between his knees. Leaving the
two servants in the canoe, the planter and his son went aboard the
ship, while the convicts crowded against the guard rail to get a look
at the naked figure of Jocko, his black skin being a novel sight to
their English eyes.

There was recognition between th