at-steerer, and I was appointed to this. There was one thing more; to
hunt men, the merriest of all. This was adventure worth engaging in,
this man-hunting: here was a new excitement, a novel attraction. We
sailed for Madagascar through many perils. We caught men and bought
men; boldness and cunning were called into activity, and the business
pleased me. Great risk, great profits. In Louisiana, where the great
sugar plantations have each three, four, and five thousand slaves, and
in Charleston, South Carolina, are the chief slave-markets; for the
most part, boys are carried there, and no elderly men. You will
consider it contemptible; but it does appear to me a triumph of human
freedom and power for one man to steal and sell another. No animal
can so seize and serve his kind, always supposing, though by no
means granting the fact, that negroes are men. Yes, I have been a
slave-trader: they called me the sea-eagle. That bird has the sharpest
scent, he flies off, and cannot be caught. It was a bold and beautiful
pastime. I have even stolen the chief who was selling me his subjects.
These talking black beasts are equal to their so-called fellow-men in
one respect, perhaps,--I say perhaps,--they can play the hypocrite like
white men. No beast can dissemble, and, if dissembling can give a title
to human rights, then the blacks deserve that title. After the first
burst of rage, the chief was very tractable; but one day I was pursued,
with my cargo on board, by an English ship, and had to pitch the whole
human dust-heap into the sea. This gave food to the sharks. Look here,
this is the finger which the chief tried to bite off: you know how he
has made his appearance in these days. From that time I left off going
to sea, and carried on the business through others; finally I gave it
up altogether. I had enough, I had large plantations, and the child of
the boat-steerer, who had died in the whale-fishery, had been brought
up by me, and I married her. Such a being, only half-awake, prattling
like a child in every thought, or, rather, with no thought at all, was
pleasing to me. I had at that time no idea that there were women with
great, heroic, world-conquering souls."

Sonnenkamp spoke these last words in a very loud tone. After a short
pause, he continued,--

"I was living in quiet retirement when the insane party of the North
arose, whose object was to abolish slavery. And when my own countrymen
entered into the front ranks a