“That’s right.  Have some more rum?”

“No, not a spot.”

“Why not?”

“Because I likes to keep my head pretty clear when I’m a-talkin’ to you, Muster Girdlestone.  Out o’ your office I’ll drink to further orders, but I won’t do business and muddle myself at the same time.  When d’ye want me to start?”

“When she’s unloaded and loaded up again.  Three weeks or a month yet.  I expect that Spender will have come in with the Maid of Athens by that time.”

“Unless some accident happens on the way,” said Captain Hamilton Miggs, with his old leer.  “He was at Sierra Leone when we came up the coast.  I couldn’t put in there, for the swabs have got a warrant out ag’in me for putting a charge o’ shot into a nigger.”

“That was a wicked action—­very wrong, indeed,” the merchant said gravely.  “You must consider the interests of the firm, Miggs.  We can’t afford to have a good port blocked against our ships in this fashion.  Did they serve this writ on you?”

“Another nigger brought it aboard.”

“Did you read it?”

“No; I threw it overboard.”

“And what became of the negro?”

“Well,” said Miggs with a grin, “when I threw the writ overboard he happened to be a-holdin’ on to it.  So, ye see, he went over, too.  Then I up anchor and scooted.”

“There are sharks about there?”

“A few.”

“Really, Miggs,” the merchant said, “you must restrain your sinful passions.  You have broken the fifth commandment, and closed the trade of Freetown to the Black Eagle.”

“It never was worth a rap,” the sailor answered.  “I wouldn’t give a cuss for any of the British settlements.  Give me real niggers, chaps as knows nothing of law or civilizing, or any rot of the sort.  I can pull along with them.

“I have often wondered how you managed it,” Girdlestone said curiously.  “You succeed in picking up a cargo where the steadiest and best men can’t get as much as a bag of nuts.  How do you work it?”

“There’s many would like to know that,” Miggs answered, with an expressive wink.

“It is a secret, then?”

“Well, it ain’t a secret to you, ’cause you ain’t a skipper, and it don’t matter if you knows it or not.  I don’t want to have ’em all at the same game.”

“How is it, then?”

“I’ll tell ye,” said Miggs.  He seemed to have recovered his serenity by this time, and his eyes twinkled as he spoke of his own exploits.  “I gets drunk with them.  That’s how I does it.”

“Oh, indeed.”

“Yes, that’s how it’s worked.  Lord love ye, when these fust-class certificated, second-cousin-to-an-earl merchant skippers comes out they move about among the chiefs and talks down to them as if they was tin Methuselahs on wheels.  The Almighty’s great coat wouldn’t make a waistcoat for some o’ these blokes.  Now when I gets among ’em I has ’em all