tain Ralph. I--a pirate--so I
might have been called--I was but a lad--I consented to no deed of
blood--It cannot be brought against me--Well, I know--I know--I
acknowledge my debt to you.--You exact it to the uttermost--I'll obey
you--The merchants deem me an honest trader--What would they say if they
heard me called pirate?--Ha, ha, ha?" He laughed long and bitterly.

I was very glad that no one else was in the room to hear what the
captain was saying. A stranger would certainly have thought much worse
of him than he deserved. I had now been so long with him that I was
confident, whatever he might have done in his youth, that he was now an
honest and well-intentioned man. At the same time I could no longer
have any doubts that Peter's surmises about him were correct, "That old
gentleman aboard the felucca is Captain Ralph, then," I thought to
myself, "If I ever fall in with him, I shall know how to address him, at
all events." At length the captain awoke; and after an early breakfast,
the owner took him round the plantation, and I was allowed to follow
them.

The sugar-cane grows about six feet high, and has several stalks on one
root. It is full of joints, three or four inches apart. The leaves are
light green; the stalk yellow when ripe. The mode of cultivation is
interesting. A trench is dug from one end of the field to the other,
and in it longways are laid two rows of cane. From each joint of these
canes spring a root and several sprouts. They come up soon after they
are planted, and in twelve weeks are two feet high. If they come up
irregularly, the field is set on fire from the outside, which drives the
rats, the great destroyers of the cane, to the centre, where they are
killed. The ashes of the stalks and weeds serve to manure the field,
which often produces a better crop than before. The canes are cut with
a billhook, one at a time; and being fastened together in faggots, are
sent off to the crushing-mill on mules' backs or in carts. Windmills
are much in use. The canes are crushed by rollers and as the juice is
pressed out, it runs into a cistern near the boiling-house. There it
remains a day, and is then drawn off into a succession of boilers, where
all the refuse is skimmed off. To turn it into grains, lime-water is
poured into it; and when this makes it ferment, a small piece of tallow,
the size of a nut, is thrown in. It is next drawn into pots to cool,
with holes in the bottom thro