ingle feather to fly with.
Next day I saw them together,--the stranger and one of the
gamblers:
Picturesque rascal he was, with long black hair and moustaches,
Black slouch hat drawn down to his eyes from his villanous
forehead.
On together they moved, still earnestly talking in whispers,
On toward the forecastle, where sat the woman alone by the gangway.
Roused by the fall of feet, she turned, and, beholding her master,
Greeted him with a smile that was more like a wife's than
another's,
Rose to meet him fondly, and then, with the dread apprehension
Always haunting the slave, fell her eye on the face of the
gambler,--
Dark and lustful and fierce and full of merciless cunning.
Something was spoken so low that I could not hear what the words
were;
Only the woman started, and looked from one to the other,
With imploring eyes, bewildered hands, and a tremor
All through her frame: I saw her from where I was standing, she
shook so.
'Say! is it so?' she cried. On the weak, white lips of her master
Died a sickly smile, and he said, 'Louise, I have sold you.'
God is my judge! May I never see such a look of despairing,
Desolate anguish, as that which the woman cast on her master,
Griping her breast with her little hands, as if he had stabbed her,
Standing in silence a space, as fixed as the Indian woman
Carved out of wood, on the pilot-house of the old Pocahontas!
Then, with a gurgling moan, like the sound in the throat of the
dying,
Came back her voice, that, rising, fluttered, through wild
incoherence,
Into a terrible shriek that stopped my heart while she answered:--
'Sold me? sold me? sold--And you promised to give me my freedom!--
Promised me, for the sake of our little boy in Saint Louis!
What will you say to our boy, when he cries for me there in Saint
Louis?
What will you say to our God?--Ah, you have been joking! I see
it!--
No? God! God! He shall hear it,--and all of the angels in heaven,--
Even the devils in hell!--and none will believe when they hear it!
Sold me!'--Her voice died away with a wail, and in silence
Down she sank on the deck, and covered her face with her fingers."

IV.

In his story a moment the pilot paused, while we listened
To the salute of a boat, that, rounding the point of an island,
Flamed toward us with fires that seemed to burn from t