I understood not until afterwards that the buying and selling of such a person as I appeared to be is a kind of gambling. That is to say, the buyer hopes to get his profit, not by any work that his servant should do, but by the ransom that his friends at home should offer. And so they began to bid, with jokes rude and unseemly, and much laughter, while I stood before them still bareheaded. 'Ten pounds,' one began; 'Twelve,' cried another; 'Fifteen,' said a third; and so on, the price continually rising, and the salesman with honeyed tongue continually declaring that my friends (as he very well knew) would consent to give any ransom--any--so only that I was set free from servitude: until, for sixty pounds, no one offering a higher price, I was sold to one whose appearance I liked the least of any. He was a gross, fat man, with puffed cheeks and short neck, who had bought already about twenty of the servants. 'Be easy,' he said, to one who asked him how he looked to get his money back. 'It is not for twice sixty pounds that I will consent to let her go. What is twice sixty pounds for a lovely piece like this?' Then the Captain, who had stood beside me, saying nothing, interfered. 'Madam,' he said, 'you can put up your hood again. And harkee, Sir,' he spoke to the planter, 'remember that this is a pious and virtuous gentlewoman, and'--here he swore a round oath--'if I hear when I make this port again that you have offered her the least freedom--you shall answer to me for it. Gentlemen all,' he went on, 'I verily believe that you will shortly have the greatest windfall that hath ever happened to you, compared with which the Salisbury Rising was but a flea-bite. For the trials of the Monmouth rebels were already begun when I left the port of Bristol, and, though the Judges are sentencing all alike to death, they cannot hang them all--therefore his Majesty's Plantations, and Barbadoes in particular, will not only have whole cargoes of stout and able-bodied servants, compared with whom these poor rogues are like so many worthless weeds; but there will also be many gentlemen, and perhaps gentlewomen--like Madam here--whose freedom will be bought of you. So that I earnestly advise and entreat you not to treat them cruelly, but with gentleness and forbearance, whereby you will be the gainers in the end, and will make their friends the readier to find the price of ransom. Moreover, you must remember that though gentlemen may be flogged at whipping-posts, and beat over the head with canes, as is your habit with servants both black and white, when the time of their deliverance arrives they will be no longer slaves but gentlemen again, and able once more to stand upon the point of honour and to run you through the body, as you will richly deserve, for your barbarity. And in the same way any gentlewomen who may be sent here have brothers and cousins who will be ready to perform the same act of kindness on their behalf. Remember that very