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There was recognition between the captain of the Nancy Jane, who had sailed to the Potomac for many years, and Sanford Browne. While the two stood in conversation by the bowl of strong rum punch, little Sanford strolled about the deck, shyly scrutinizing the faces of the convicts and being scrutinized by them. The women tried to talk with him, but their rather battered countenances frightened the boy, and he slipped away. At last he planted himself before old Cappy, whose bronzed face under a new powdered wig produced a curious effect.

“Where did you come from?” demanded the child, with awakened curiosity.

The would-be schoolmaster started at this question, gazed a moment at the child, and said, “God!” between his teeth.

“Lawr! ‘e’s one uv yer scholars, Cappy,” said one of the women, in derision. “Ye’ll be a-l’arnin’ ‘im lots uv words ‘e ain’t never ‘eerd uv afore. Yer givin’ the young un a prime lesson in swearin’ to begin.”

But Cappy made no reply. He only looked more eagerly at the child, and wiped his brow with his sleeve, disarranging his periwig in doing so. Then, changing the form of his exclamation but not its meaning, he muttered, “The devil!”

“W’atever’s the matter?” said the woman. “You’re fetching in God an’ the devil both. Is the young un one uv yer long-lost brothers, Cappy?”

“What’s your name?” demanded Cappy of the boy, without heeding the woman’s gabble.

“Sanford Browne.”

The perspiration stood in beads on the man’s forehead, and the veins were visibly distended. “Looks like as if he hadn’t got any bigger in more’n twenty years,” he soliloquized. Then he said to the boy in an eager whisper, for his voice was dry and husky, “What’s yer pappy’s name, lad?”

“He’s Sanford Browne, too. That’s him a-talking to Captain Jackson at t’other end of the ship. He was stole when he was a little boy by a mean old captain, and brought over here and sold, just like you folks,” and the lad made the remark general by looking around him. “He’s got rich now, and he’s got more’n a thousand acres of land,” said the little Sanford, boastfully, thinking perhaps that his father’s success might encourage the woe-begone set before him. “But I reckon that mean old captain’ll ketch it if pappy ever sets eyes on to him,” he added.

“Lawr! now w’atever’s the matter uv you, Cappy?” put in the woman again. “A body’d think you must ‘a’ been that very cap’n yer own self.”

The man turned fiercely upon the garrulous woman and seized her throat with his left hand, while he threatened her with a clenched fist and growled like a wild beast. “Another word of that, Poll, and I’ll knock the life out of you.”

Poll gave a little shriek, which brought the mate on the scene with his threatening rope’s end, and restored Cappy to a sort of self-control, though with a strange eagerness of terror his eyes followed the frightened lad as he retreated toward his father.

The planter, after discussing with Captain Jackson the death of the Prince of Wales in the preceding March, was explaining to the captain that he did not mean to buy any more white servants. The blacks were better, and were good property, while the black children added to a planter’s estate. White servants gave you trouble, and in four or seven years at most their time expired, and you had to break in new ones. But still, if he could pick up a fellow that would know how to sail his sloop in a pinch, he might buy.

“There’s one, now,” said Captain Jackson; “that chap leaning on the capstan; he’s been a captain, I believe.”

“How’d they come to convict a captain?” demanded the planter, laughing. “We planters have always thought that all captains were allowed to steal a little.”

“They mustn’t steal from their owners,” said Captain Jackson good-naturedly. “Passengers and shippers we do clip a little when we can, but that old fool must have tried to get something out of the owners of the ship. He’s too old to run away now, or cut up any more deviltry. Go and talk with him.”