His profligate extravagance,
his love of sybarite luxury, required a larger resource than the petty
schemes which enrich smaller men. A slave ship, which could earn nearly
twenty thousand pounds on every voyage, and which could make two runs in
a year--that was the trade for Don Gomez de Montesma, and he carried it
on merrily for six or seven years, till the British cruisers got too
keen for him, and the good old game was played out. You see that scar
upon the hilalgo's forehead, Lesbia--a token of knightly prowess, you
think, perhaps. No, my girl, that is the mark of an English cutlass in a
scuffle on board a slaver. A merry trade, Lesbia--the living cargo
stowed close under hatches have rather a bad time of it now and
then--short rations of food and water, yellow Jack. They die like rotten
sheep sometimes--bad then for the dealer. But if he can land the bulk of
his human wares safe and sound the profits are enormous. The
Captain-General takes his capitation fee, the blackies are drafted off
to the sugar plantations, and everybody is satisfied; but I think,
Lesbia, that your British prejudices would go against marriage with a
slave-trader, were he ever so free to make you his wife, which this
particular dealer in blackamoors is not.
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