There were still about thirty slaves--children, old men, or infirm women. But there was no more room on board. Tamango, not knowing what to do with this refuse, offered to sell them to the captain at the rate of a bottle of brandy a head. The offer was a tempting one. Ledoux remembered a performance of the _Sicilian Vespers_, at Nantes, at which he had noticed that a considerable number of sturdy and well-furnished people had managed to push their way into the pit which was already full, and ultimately find seats, thanks to the compressibility of human bodies. He agreed to take the twenty slimmest of the thirty slaves. Tamango then offered to dispose of the ten remaining for a glass of brandy a head. The fact that children go half-price and take up half-room in railway carriages crossed the captain's mind. So he accepted three children, but said he would not take one more. Tamango, seeing himself left still with seven slaves on his hands, seized his rifle and took aim at the nearest woman. She was the mother of the three children. "Buy her," he said to the white man, "or I'll fire. Half a glass of brandy, or she dies." "But what the deuce am I to do with her?" asked Ledoux. Tamango fired, and the slave fell down dead. "Now for another!" cried Tamango, taking aim at a decrepit old man. "A glass of brandy, or----" The bullet went off at random, for one of his wives had suddenly seized his arm. She had happened to recognise in the old man whom her husband was about to kill a _guiriot_, or magician, who had prophesied that she would be queen. Tamango, excited by all the brandy he had consumed, lost control of himself when he found himself thus thwarted. He struck his wife roughly with the butt end of his gun, and turned towards the captain. "Take her," he said; "I'll make you a present of this woman." "I shall be able to find room for you," said Ledoux, as he took her by the hand, and he smiled when he saw how beautiful she was. The interpreter--a charitable man--asked Tamango for the remaining six slaves in exchange for a cardboard snuff-box. He took off their yokes and told them to go whither they would. They hurried away in different directions, at a loss to know how to reach their homes, two hundred leagues from the coast. In the meantime the captain had said good-bye to Tamango and was hard at work getting his cargo on board. He did not think it safe to remain longer in the river, for fear of the cruisers which might return at any moment. So he made up his mind to set sail on the morrow. Tamango could not do anything but lie down on the grass in the shade, and sleep away the effects of the brandy.