Part 61 (2/2)
”On very easy terms for you, sir,” replied the planter; ”only that you will let a broken man die in peace.”
The captain looked at his visitor searchingly, and then turned to the doctor.
”What is your opinion of this gentleman's state?” he said.
”Most serious,” replied the doctor, after a very brief examination of the visitor.
”Humph!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the captain. ”And I understand,” he continued, ”that you are ready to give me every a.s.sistance I need to root out this plague spot, as you term it?”
”Every help I can,” replied the planter.
”Now that I do not need it, eh?”
”I beg your pardon, sir,” said the planter; ”you do need it. You have made your way to my house and plantations without help.”
”Yes; my officers soon made their way there,” said the captain.
”And it will be easy to burn and destroy there; but you will not be able to deal with the slave quarters in different parts of the island, nor with the three well-equipped slaving schooners that voyage to and from the West Coast of Africa and carry on their sickening trade with this depot and the other stations.”
”H'm!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the captain. ”Perhaps not; but I have no doubt that we shall soon find out all I require.”
The planter shook his head sadly.
”No, sir; the task will prove more difficult than you antic.i.p.ate. Your officer here has some little experience of one of your opponents.”
”Oh! There is more than one to deal with, then?” said Mr Anderson sharply.
”There are two, sir, who act as heads of the traffic--my overseer Huggins, and his twin brother.”
”Ah! I see,” said the chief officer, smiling. ”I am of opinion, then, that we have met the brother yonder upon the West Coast.”
”Most likely, sir,” said the planter feebly. ”If you have, you have encountered another of the most cunning, scheming scoundrels that ever walked the earth.”
”And these are your friends that I understand you are ready to betray to justice?” said the captain sternly.
”My friends, sir?” said the planter bitterly. ”Say, my tyrants, sir-- the men who have taken advantage of my weakness to make me a loathsome object in my own sight. Captain,” cried the trembling man, ”I must speak as I do to make you fully realise my position. I am by birth an English gentleman. My father was one of those who came out here like many others to settle upon a plantation. In the past, as you know, ideas were lax upon the question of slavery, and I inherited those ideas; but I can answer for my father, that his great idea was to lead a patriarchal life surrounded by his slaves, who in their way were well treated and happy.”
”As slaves?” said Mr Anderson sternly.
”I will _not_ enter into that, sir,” said the planter sadly, ”and I grant that the custom became a terrible abuse--a curse which has exacted its punishments. I own fully that I have been a weak man who has allowed himself to be outwitted by a couple of scheming scoundrels, who led me on and on till they had involved me in debt and hopelessly so.
In short, of late years my soul has not seemed to be my own, and by degrees I awoke to the fact that I was nominally the head of a horrible traffic, and the stalking-horse behind whose cover these twin brothers carried on their vile schemes, growing rich as merchant princes and establis.h.i.+ng at my cost this--what shall I call it?--emporium of flesh and blood--this home of horror.”
”Do I understand you to say that in this island there is a kind of centre of the slave-trade?”
”In this island and those near at hand, sir,” said the planter. ”In addition there are depots on the mainland which the slavers visit at regular intervals, and from which the plantations are supplied.”
”And you are ready to give information such as will enable me to root out a great deal of this and to capture the vessels which carry on the vile trade?”
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