Paul's Opinion of Smuggling

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he had no choice. Returning to the shore he left his men, and ascended the zigzag path to visit Paul's cottage on the high cliff. The smoke was already issuing from the kitchen chimney as he arrived, and Paul Grey met him at the door.

'Ha, Joe!" he said, "you're up betimes this morning! But I don't wonder; we had but little sleep ourselves last night."

Is no one saved?" asked Joe Smart.

"Only a poor little nigger," replied Paul," and it was a wonder that we rescued him." He then narrated the entire adventure faithfully from the commencement; differing considerably from the account of Dick Stone, on board the lugger.

While the two friends were sitting together on the bench at the cottage door, Polly was preparing breakfast; in the meantime, Joe Smart took the opportunity to explain to Paul the severity of the instructions he had received, and to implore him to consider the position in which not only he, but also his wife, would be placed should detection lead to their ruin.

But Paul had his own private opinion concerning smuggling; he had persuaded himself that any tax was an act of oppression, and that the principles of free-trade should be supported to the fullest extent; thus no argument of Joe Smart's had the slightest influence upon his mode of reasoning, and he remained obstinate in his dogma that every man had a right to supply his wants from the cheapest market, and that any impost upon foreign goods that had become the private property of an Englishman was a direct robbery. He would not deny that he had dealt in contraband articles, but " Never mind me," he replied to his friend Joe Smart, "friends or not, if you ever catch the Polly, don't hesitate to seize her, if you find smuggled goods on board. I'll take my chance, Joe; you do your duty and I'll look after mine. But now come in to breakfast, and Polly'll give you such a cup of tea as you won't get every day, and, what's more, it never paid the Government a penny."

In a few minutes the party were sitting at the table.

Polly had prepared a substantial breakfast of fried soles fresh from the bay; while a huge brown loaf and masses of bright yellow butter, with a sturdy joint of cold beef, were ready for the sharp morning appetites.

There was a curious contrast in the fair waving hair and the large blue eyes of young Ned Grey and the black woolly head and the dark eyes of the negro boy, as they sat together at the table; but Tim, as the latter was called, was looking his best, and was no longer the miserable half-drowned object of the previous night; he had washed his black face with soap till it shone like a well-polished boot; he was dressed in a suit of Ned's clothes, and as he looked at the well-spread table, a grin of happiness exposed a long row of snow-white teeth, and for the moment the affectionate but hungry Tim forgot the loss of the captain of the cutter.

Tim was an abbreviation of Timbuctoo. At the time of our story, the West India Islands were the gems of our colonies, as the labour required for the plantation was supplied by negro slaves imported from the West Coast of Africa. These people were collected at various stations on the African coast by native dealers, who purchased them for beads, fire-arms, cotton cloths, etc., from the native chiefs, who brought them from the interior. As the whole of Central Africa is composed of separate tribes who are constantly at war with each other, the prisoners taken are invariably retained as slaves unless they are sacrificed as offerings to the fetish or god of the victor. A special demand for slaves naturally aggravates the existing anarchy, as every prisoner becomes of additional value; thus man-hunting, although a natural institution of Africa, has been extended by the necessities of European colonists. As the greater portion of the West Coast of Africa was the regular slave-market for the supply of the French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish American possessions, man-hunting became the allengrossing profession of every petty negro chief: razzias were carried into the very heart of the African continent for the sole purpose of kidnapping slaves, who were exchanged for the necessaries of the country, and handed

The Slave Trade

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from tribe to tribe until they reached the agents of the coast dealer, who kept them like cattle penned in certain stations until the arrival of ships that were to carry them to their various destinations across the Atlantic. The distances from which these unfortunate people were marched were almost incredible. They generally arrived in long strings, fastened by leathern thongs from neck to neck like a living chain; and, being perfectly ignorant of geography, they had no idea of the countries through. which they passed; but upon arrival, few slaves could give any description of the route beyond the simple name of their native places obscured in the wilderness of Africa. The sufferings on the march were frightful. If poor women were footsore, or broke down under the weight of some burden they were forced to carry, they were first cruelly beaten, and if too weak to proceed they were killed by the blow of a club or the thrust of a spear: children who fell ill were thrown into the thick jungle, and left to die or to be devoured by the wild beasts. It was thus that Tim had been captured when about twelve years old; and, being a well-grown and powerful boy, he had arrived with a large gang of slaves in sufficiently good condition to fetch a high price at Sierra Leone, from which port he was shipped with many others to Jamaica. In the latter colony he was purchased by a rich sugar-planter, a kind-hearted good man, who would neither have harmed an animal nor human being; but unfortunately it was poor little Tim's lot to be handed to the care of a cruel overseer.

For more than a year Tim had led a life of bitterness; not a day passed without some severe lashes of the whip, accompanied by the uncalled-for abuse of the niggerdriver. It was in vain that he did his utmost to please -he received nothing but threats and blows: he would sometimes steal away and hide among the thick sugarcanes, and think of his little village so far away in Africa, and cry till his heart nearly broke when he thought of his distant home that he should never see again, with his mother, and the flock of goats that he was minding in the forest on the day that he was stolen away. It

was too much for Tim, and he longed to die. Once he had complained to his master, who had accordingly reprimanded the overseer; but from that time his lot was even worse than before, as the natural cruelty of his tyrant turned to actual hatred. At length Tim determined to run away; he knew not where to go, but anywhere was better than his present position. He left the plantation one night, and ran and walked alternately until, at sunrise, tired out and footsore, he reached Port Royal. A man-of-war's boat was just pushing off from the shore, and Tim rushed into the water, and in a few broken words explained his distress and implored protection. The lieutenant who commanded, with a sailorlike charity, took him on board, and Tim quickly found himself on a first-class frigate which sailed that day for England. During the voyage, Tim, who had learnt to cook in the cruel overseer's service, made himself useful in the ship's galley, and soon became not only a great favourite with his master, but with the rest of the crew. A few days after quitting Jamaica, the frigate fell in with a French ship, which she captured after a severe engagement, during which Tim's master (the lieutenant) distinguished himself greatly, and was badly wounded. Tim nursed him with much devotion until their arrival in England, when the lieutenant was rewarded with an appointment to the command of a revenue cutter. From that time Tim regarded his brave and kind-hearted master with intense affection, and, having learnt a sailor's work, he formed one of the cutter's crew, of which he was now the only survivor, the gallant commander having been destroyed by the rock rolled down upon him by Mother Lee.

After breakfast was over he told this simple story of his career, which at once gained him Polly's heart, while the bright eyes of Ned sparkled at his description of his adventures, more especially at the account of the action with the French ship, when the brave lieutenant was wounded. From that time Tim became a member of Paul Grey's family; he made himself generally useful, sometimes assisting Polly Grey in the cooking, but more

frequently he attended Paul and Ned in fishing when the Polly went upon a cruise, or when the boats pushed out with the seine-net to capture a shoal of mackerel.

Tim did not forget his old master. Although happy, he had fits of gloom when his thoughts wandered back to that fatal night when he clung to the drifting mast in the raging storm, and heard those last manly words of encouragement, "Never say die! hold fast, my lads!" before he lost sight of his brave captain for ever.

CHAPTER IV

Ned Grey at School-Edith Jones and Nero-Jem StevensExpelled from School-His Fight with Ned Grey.

THE holidays were over. Ned Grey had had a happy time during the past seven weeks, that had been full of adventure; in addition to the ordinary pleasures of his home, and the occupation of fishing, he had made several voyages to the coast of France in the fast clipper Polly, and had escaped two or three French cruisers after an exciting chase; his holidays had wound up with the wreck of the cutter and the rescue of "Nigger Tim," as he was now called in Sandy Cove.

Ned Grey excelled in all manly pursuits—there was no better swimmer in the Cove, neither was there a more active sailor, or better fisherman; at the same time he ranked as high at school in the more serious branches of education. No mother could have surpassed the fondness of Polly Grey for her adopted child, and she was now well repaid for her care, not only in the physical perfection of the boy, but in the filial affection that he returned. She had taught him herself until he was nine years old, by which time he could read and write fluently, although it must be confessed that his juvenile industry was less visible on his slate and copy-book than in his untiring energy and resources in setting lines for fish, making crabnets and lobster-pots, and in catching the said crabs and