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and for the sensation of seeing a dragon; or more honestly for the right to say they had done so: a substantial number of these being gentlemen of fashion, come already from heavy drinking, whose conversation would have made the noise impenetrable in a smaller space. Those ladies and gentlemen active in the abolition movement, or evangelical causes, were easily distinguished by their markedly more sober appearance, both in dress and mien; the tracts which they were giving out were ending largely upon the ground, and being trodden into the dirt.

There were also a great many patriots, whether from real feeling or the desire to attach their names to a subscription-list with the word Trafalgar upon it, as Wilberforce had arranged it should be published in the newspapers, and not inclined to be quibbling over whether those veterans were men or dragons. The political range was thoroughly represented, therefore, and more than one heated discussion had broken out, with the lubrications of liquor and enthusiasm. One stout and red-faced gentleman, identified by Wilberforce as a member from Bristol, was declaring to a pale and fervent young lady trying to give him a tract that "it is all nonsense; the passage is perfectly healthy, for it is in the interest of the traders to preserve their goods. It is as good a thing as ever will happen to a black, to be taken to a Christian land, where he may lose his heathen religion and be converted."

"That is excellent grounds, sir, for importing the Gospel to Africa; it does less well to excuse the behavior of Christian men, in tearing away the Africans from their homes, for profit," he was answered, not by the lady, but by a black gentleman, who had been standing a little behind her, and assisting her in giving out the pamphlets. A narrow, raised scar, the thickness of a leather strap, ran down the side of his face, and the edges of ridged bands of scar tissue protruded past the ends of his sleeves, paler pink against his very dark skin.

The gentleman from Bristol perhaps had not quite that brazen character which would have permitted him to defend the trade in the face of one of its victims. He chose rather to retreat behind an expression of offended hauteur at having been addressed without introduction, and would have turned aside without reply; but Wilberforce leaned forward and said with gentle malice, "Pray, Mr. Bathurst, allow me to present you the Reverend Josiah Erasmus, lately of Jamaica." Erasmus bowed; Bathurst gave a short jerking nod, and cravenly quitted the field, with an excuse too muttered to be intelligible.

Erasmus was an evangelical minister, "And I hope a missionary, soon," he added, shaking Laurence's hand, "back to my native continent," whence he had been taken, a boy of six years of age, to suffer through that aforementioned healthy passage, chained ankles and wrists to his neighbors, in a space scarcely large enough to lie down in.

"It was not at all pleasant to be chained," Temeraire said, very low, when Erasmus had been presented him, "and I knew at least they would be taken off, when the storm had finished; anyway, I am sure I could have broken them." Those chains of which he spoke, indeed, had been for his own protection, to keep him secured to the deck through a three-days' typhoon; but the occasion had come close on the heels of his witnessing the brutal treatment of a party of slaves, at the port of Cape Coast, and had left an indelible impression.

Erasmus said simply, "So did some of our number; the fetters were not well made. But they had nowhere to go but to throw themselves on the mercy of the sharks: we had not wings to fly."

He spoke without the rancor for which he might have been pardoned, and when Temeraire had expressed, darkly, the wish that the slavers might have been thrown overboard instead, Erasmus shook his head. "Evil should not be returned for evil," he said. "Their judgment belongs to the Lord: my answer to their crimes will be to return to my fellows with the word of God. And I hope that the practice cannot long continue when we are all brothers in Christ, so that the slaver and his prey will both be saved."

Temeraire was dubious of this most Christian speech, and after Erasmus had left them muttered, "I would not give a fig for the slavers, myself; and God ought to