ossed the bar, and was fast approaching Fort
Sumpter. Manuel had overheard enough of the conversation to awaken fears
for his own safety. Arising from the mattrass, in a manner indicating
his feeble condition, he called Tommy, and walking forward, leaned over
the rail near the fore-rigging, and inquired what the Captain and
the pilot were talking about. Observing his fears, the little fellow
endeavoured to quiet him by telling him they were talking about bad
sailors.

"I think it is me they are talking about. If they sell me for slave
in Charleston, I'll kill myself before a week," said he in his broken
English.

"What's that you say, Manuel?" inquired the first mate as he came along,
clearing up the decks with the men.

"Pilot tell Captain they sell me for slave in South Carolina. I'd jump
overboard 'fore I suffer him," said he.

"Oh, poh! don't be a fool; you a'n't among Patagonians, Manuel; you
won't have to give 'em leg for your life. They don't sell foreigners and
outlandish men like you for slaves in Carolina--it's only black folks
what can't clothe the'r words in plain English. Yer copper-colored hide
wouldn't be worth a sixpence to a nigger-trader--not even to old Norman
Gadsden, that I've heard 'em tell so much about in the Liverpool docks.
He's a regular Jonathan Wild in nigger-dealing; his name's like a fiery
dragon among the niggers all over the South; and I hearn our skipper say
once when I sailed in a liner, that niggers in Charleston were so 'fraid
of him they'd run, like young scorpions away from an old he-devil, when
they saw him coming. He sells white niggers, as they call 'em, and
black niggers--any thing that comes in his way, in the shape of saleable
folks. But he won't acknowledge the corn when he goes away from home,
and swears there's two Norman Gadsdens in Charleston; that he a'n't the
one! When a man's ashamed of his name abroad, his trade must be very bad
at home, or I'm no sailor," said the mate.

"Ah, my boys!" said the pilot in a quizzical manner, as he came to
where several of the men were getting the larboard anchor ready to let
go,--"if old Norman Gadsden gets hold of you, you're a gone sucker. A
man what's got a bad nigger has only got to say Old Gadsden to him, and
it's equal to fifty paddles. The mode of punishment most modern,
and adopted in all the workhouses and places of punishment in South
Carolina, is with the paddle, a wooden instrument in, the shape of a
baker's peel; wi