rtain class among ourselves, who, rather than submit to a
little probing of their feelings for a few minutes, would prefer to miss
the chance of making an intelligently indignant protest against slavery,
and would allow the bodies and souls of their fellow-men to continue
writhing in agony through all time.

It was much more gratifying to the feelings of Senhor Letotti to convey
his guests to the drawing-room, and there gratify their palates with
excellent coffee, while the graceful, and now clothed, Azinte brought a
Spanish guitar to the Senhorina Maraquita, whose sweet voice soon
charmed away all thoughts of the cruel side of slavery. But duty ere
long stepped in to call the guests to other scenes.

"What a sweet girl the Senhorina is!" remarked Captain Romer, while on
his way to the beach.

"Ay, and what a pretty girl Azinte is, black though she be," observed
Lieutenant Small.

"Call her not black; she is brown--a brunette," said the captain.

"I wonder how _we_ should feel," said Lindsay, "if the tables were
turned, and _our_ women and children, with our stoutest young men, were
forcibly taken from us by thousands every year, and imported into Africa
to grind the corn and hoe the fields of the black man. Poor Azinte!"

"Do you know anything of her history?" inquired Mr Small.

"A little. I had some conversation in French with the Senhorina just
before we left--"

"Yes, I observed that," interrupted the captain, with a quiet smile.

"And," continued Lindsay, "she told me that she had discovered, through
an interpreter, that the poor girl is married, and that her home is far
away in the interior. She was caught, with many others, while out
working in the fields one day several months ago, by a party of
slave-traders, under an Arab named Yoosoof and carried off. Her husband
was absent at the time; her infant boy was with its grandmother in their
village, and she thinks may have escaped into the woods, but she has not
seen any of them again since the day of her capture."

"It is a sad case," said the captain, "and yet bad though it be, it
might be far worse, for Azinte's master and mistress are very kind,
which is more than can be said of most slave-owners in this region."

In a few minutes the captain's gig was alongside the "Firefly," and soon
afterwards that vessel quietly put to sea. Of course it was impossible
that she should depart unobserved, but her commander took the precaution
to run due sout