CHAPTER VII. Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world Do bask their spotted skins in fortune's sun JOANNA BAILLIE'S De Montford. The time was approaching when it became necessary that Captain Carlos should go to sea again. The voyages of ships were less frequent than at present, and the stay in port was more protracted. Less competition existed in the commercial world, and necessarily more sluggishness in the despatching of vessels. Fortunes were more speedily realised than in the present day. The collision of intellect, sharpened by the strongest of all stimulants, selfinterest, which we daily see putting forth its powers in every trade and profession, did not influence, to the same extent, the lethargic spirit of our fathers. They were not insensible to the claims of interest or the value of money, but they lived less fast than we de in this bustling, mechanical, go-ahead age, when the race is won by the swift and the clear sighted; when all who desire to reach the goal of independence are obliged, like travellers in the desert, to sleep as it were with one eye open, for security. The slave trade was the staple traffic of Liverpool. It was then rioting in all its rank and brutalising luxuriance. The powerful pleadings of Wilberforce, the eloquent denunciations of Clarkson, were just producing their effects on the country, and awakening the public mind insensibly to the horrors of a system which brought habitual murder and robbery in its train; which metamorphosed into an incarnate fiend the dealer in human flesh, and blighted the souls and sympathies of all engaged in it. While the country through its length and breadth was moved by the spirit-stirring appeals of the men we have named, on behalf of the humanity which the slave trade outraged, the contest between interested selfishness on the one hand, and a noble philanthropic earnestness on the other, raged in Liverpool, the head quarters of the human kidknappers, with greater virulence than elsewhere. It poisoned the gushing waters of filial affection. It soured the private intercourse of friends and neighbours. It gave rise to endless feuds and heart burnings in society: the more fierce and uncompromising from the heavy pecuniary interests which were sought to be upset by the purity of a principle that grasped every human creature made in God's image in its sublime comprehensiveness. The love of gold, which has swelled from the earliest records the dark catalogue of crime, more than all other passions combined, was too powerful to give up, without a struggle, a mine of wealth richer than those of Potosi. Sturdy denouncers of man-stealing there were in those days, whose talents were not locally circumscribed, but spread, like the rain-floods of the torrid zone, their fructifying influence, far and wide, over the land-the Roscoes, the Rathbones, the Rushtons, the Curries, id genus omne,-men whose souls still live in their sons, and give an impulse even at this distance of time, to the onward progress of the world. Opposed to these glorious and immortal spirits were the African merchants and the West India proprietors, the greatest interests then connected with the Mersey. Liverpool had distanced Bristol in the race of maritime competition, and the demon of slavery held horrid revels in the northern metropolis of England. Every day, however, was adding strength to the party of the philanthropists, and as their power increased, the feud between them and their opponents grew more angry and excited, until the bill for abolishing the British slave trade received the royal assent, in March, 1807. But the triumph was accompanied by one disgraceful drawback-the great Roscoe was branded with the displeasure of his townsmen. They ejected him from the House of Commons for accelerating the downfal of a system against which he had struggled so long and so earnestly. Mammon gloated over the punishment with delighted malignity. The girl Euphemia incessantly harassed the mind of Captain Carlos. She formed the subject of his cogitations by day and his dreams at night. The secret connected with her parentage was locked up, he had long fancied, in his own breast; the key he carried securely, with a proud consciousness that no duplicate existed. He had found himself deceived; the smuggler gave ominous symptoms of knowing too much. Thrown on his own resources, debarred from soliciting advice or taking counsel from others, even from those most near and dear to him, he was grievously perplexed and confounded. It was necessary to act with promptitude, for the clouds were gathering; they seemed charged with matter that threatened to burst on his head unless he fled the impending danger. She must be put out of the way, at length he concluded-despatched summarily, for the life of uncertainty he was leading rendered any sacrifice expedient. To leave her with his family while he made another voyage, would, he well knew, be madness: such a course must inevitably precipitate the crisis he dreaded. There was only one alternative—one way left to extricate himself-he would take her to sea! On this head his mind was made up, and come what might, he was determined that nothing should change it. This resolution once taken, the whole of his tactics towards the girl underwent an alteration. The punishment she dreaded for running away was never inflicted; Matilda had not received the promised lecture for daring to teach her to read. Soothing words, beneath which lurked dark intentions-for the tongue of the hypocrite is ever oily-were occasionally addressed by the captain to the girl, and the change in his bearing excited the surprise of the family. One evening, when he appeared unusually mild and amiable, he said to his eldest daughter, as he was leaving the house, "Bess, you must get that child's things ready for the next voyage. I shall take her out with me when I go. In the cabin she will be found useful, for I can make her do many things I want. Remember now-don't let me have to impress it upon you again !" "Take Euphemia with you, father! You astonish me. What strange whim has obtained possession of your brain? This is so very extraordinary-and so very ridiculous! You are joking, I know; are you not ?" "I repeat it," said the captain, with cool and impressive emphasis, "I will take her with me, and learn, pray, to respect my authority. I don't usually jest about matters of business ;" and so saying he descended into the street. The captain was no sooner out of the way, and knowing that his stay would be protracted, than the young lady proceeded to the transaction of a little |