collar, and he seized it in his hand. Bending over the bulwark, he clamped it shut upon something—the ring of a heavy spare anchor, that swung there upon a swivel-hook. Again he turned, and eyed the line of dark singers.
“Have a bath to cool your spirits,” he jeered, and spun the handle of the swivel-hook.
The anchor fell. The nearest slave jerked over with it, and the next and the next. Others saw, screamed, and tried to brace themselves against doom; but their comrades that had already gone overside were too much weight for them. Quickly, one after another, the captives whipped from the deck and splashed into the sea. Gender leaned over and watched the last of them as he sank.
“Gad, sir!” exclaimed Dunlapp hoarsely.
Gender faced him almost threateningly.
“What else to do, hmm? You yourself said that we could hope for no mercy from the British.”
The night passed by, and by the first gray light the British ship was revealed almost upon them. A megaphoned voice hailed them; then a shot hurtled across their bows. At Gender’s smug nod, Dunlapp ordered his men to lay to. A boat put out from the pursuer, and shortly a British officer and four marines swung themselves aboard.
Bowing in mock reverence. Gender bade the party search. They did so, and remounted the deck crestfallen.
“Now, sir,” Gender addressed the officer, “don’t you think that you owe me an apology?”
The Englishman turned pale. He was a lean, sharp-featured man with strong, white teeth. “I can’t pay what I owe you,” he said with deadly softness. “I find no slaves, but I smell them. They were aboard this vessel within the past twelve hours.”
“And where are they now?” teased Gender.
“We both know where they are,” was the reply. “If I could prove in a court of law what I know in my heart, you would sail back to England with me. Most of the way you would hang from my yards by your thumbs.”
“You wear out your welcome, sir,” Gender told him.
“I am going. But I have provided myself with your name and that of your home city. From here I go to Madeira, where I will cross a packet bound west for Savannah. That packet will bear with it a letter to a friend of mine in Charleston, and your neighbors shall hear what happened on this ship of yours.”
“You will stun slave-owners with a story of slaves?” inquired Gender, with what he considered silky good-humor.
“It is one thing to put men to work in cotton fields, another to tear them from their homes, crowd them chained aboard a stinking ship, and drown them to escape merited punishment.” The officer spat on the deck. “Good day, butcher. I say, all Charleston shall hear of you.”
Gender’s plantation occupied a great, bluff-rimmed island at the mouth of a river, looking out toward the Atlantic. Ordinarily that island would be called beautiful, even by those most exacting followers of Chateaubriand and Rousseau; but, on his first night at home again. Gender hated the fields, the house, the environs of fresh and salt water.
His home, on a seaward jut, resounded to his grumbled curses as he called for supper and ate heavily but without relish. Once he vowed, in a voice that quivered with rage, never to go to Charleston again.
At that, he would do well to stay away for a time. The British officer had been as good as his promise, and all the town had heard of Gender’s journey to Africa and
