acoon, where
the slaves were collected and kept for shipment, and where they were
plentifully supplied with rice and vegetables, with salt meats, and the
means of doing their own cooking. All these things the new corners noted
at once, and indeed were very curious in fully understanding. There
seemed to be little restraint exercised about the place; the slaves were
looked at in the light of prisoners of war, and did not attempt escape.
They seemed to be quite indifferent themselves as to their fate, and
were very happy, with good food to eat, and a plenty of it.

One thing that both Mrs. Huntington and her daughter marked well was the
fact that Don Leonardo greeted Capt. Ratlin as one whom he had met
before, and that Maud, his daughter, also sprang forward to meet him
with unmistakable tokens of delight. On his part, both were cordially
greeted, and they spoke together like people whose time was precious and
whose business required despatch. Mrs. Huntington gathered enough from
their open and undisguised talk to learn, that as there was not a
sufficient number of negroes at the present moment on hand, that the
"Sea Witch," with her light draft of water, must be run up a neighboring
river and be there moored away from the prying eyes of the cruisers on
the coast, until the proper hour should arrive for shipping her freight.
Therefore when Captain Ratlin left them, it was with a promise to return
and join them again within a few hours. He resolved to moor his vessel
under the shelter of the present favoring darkness, to which end he at
once repaired on board.

The two English ladies, both mother and daughter, found much to interest
them in Maud Leonardo. She seemed to be a strange girl, a rough diamond,
with all the tact and ready invention of her mulatto mother, and all
the fire of her Spanish father. They soon learned that this was not
Captain Ratlin's first visit to the coast, and that her father, as well
as herself, considered him the finest seaman and gentleman in the coast
trade. It was impossible not to see with what feeling Maud the Quadroon
dwelt upon the good qualities of him she referred to, declaring that he
was a father to all the people he took away in his ship, and how kind he
was to them; that he always knocked off their shackles at once and made
friends of them by real kindness.

Mrs. Huntington, to say nothing of her daughter, saw something more than
mere honest admiration in the enthusiastic girl's re