Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/85

 by any such nonsense; and immediately rose fifty dollars on the last bid. This was more than the Virginian could afford to sacrifice to a fit of good nature, and piqued and chagrined, he yielded up the contest. The auctioneer knocked off the purchase; and the man, more dead than alive, was delivered into the hands of the slave-trader's attendants, who received orders to give him twenty lashes on the spot, for his "cursed ill-manneredly Virginian insolence."

The sneering emphasis, with which this was spoken, created no little sensation among the by-standers; but as the slave-trader strutted about with his hand on his dirk handle, and as two pistols might plainly be seen sticking out of his pockets, nobody saw fit to question this provoking exercise of ‘his sacred right of property,' and the sale proceeded as before.

At length came my turn. I was stripped half naked, the better to show my joints and muscles, and placed upon' the table or platform, on which the subject of the sale was exposed to the examination of the purchasers. I was whirled about, my limbs were felt, and my capabilities discussed, in a slang much like that of a company of horsejockeys. Various were the remarks that were made upon me. One fellow declared that I had "a savage sullen look;"? another swore that my eye was "devilish malicious;" a third remarked that these light-colored fellows were all rascals; — to which the auctioneer replied, that he never knew a slave of any smartness who was not a rogue.

Abundance of questions were put me, as to where I was raised, ‘why I was sold, and what I was fit for. To all these inquiries I made the shortest and most indefinite answers. I was not in a humor to gratify this curiosity; and I had none of that ambition to bring a high price, so common among slaves, the last and lowest form in which is displayed that love of superiority, which exercises so principal an influence over the feelings and the actions of men.

Mr Stubbs kept in the back ground, and said nothing. He had his own reasons, I suppose, for this reserve. The auctioneer did his best. According to his account, there was not a stronger, more laborious, docile and obedient servant