One day as I was standing beside the captain, looking down upon the lower deck, he asked me if I noticed a man walking there. Said he, “I doubt if you can imagine what his business is.” I replied that I had no idea of it. He said, “It is marrying and selling his wives.” I expressed surprise at that kind of a trade new to me. He continued, “He and a number of men like him go to Europe, get acquainted with some innocent, pretty peasant girl, makes love to her, marries her, and then takes her to Bombay as his wife, where he goes with her to what he calls a hotel, and after getting a big fee from the landlord, deserts her and goes back to marry again and bring out another wife to sell. This is their sole business.” “But,” I inquired, “why don’t you or your company do something to prevent this fraud and crime?” “What can I do?” he replied. “This man buys tickets for himself and wife as passengers, and he returns alone as a passenger. They conduct themselves very properly, so how can I interfere?” “But,” said I, “why don’t the English government in India prevent such outrages on innocent women and punish these degraded wretches of men?” He turned quickly towards me with an inquisitive look, as if he thought me a simpleton, and asked, “Were you born yesterday? Hadn’t you better go home to your mother?” These questions were so abrupt that they nearly knocked me off my pins, and I could only wait in silence for his explanation. He asked, “For whom are these brought out? Not for natives, but for Europeans. Who are the Europeans? Mostly officers of government. Do you suppose they are going to interfere and break up a business that is for their sole pleasure?” The captain was an old, grey-headed man, and knew the ways of the world and of wicked men, and well acquainted with the seamy sides of life, while I was fresh, very fresh, on my first voyage away from home. I could say nothing, and beside was afraid that he might again suggest that I go back to my mother. I kept silent, except to utter a few denunciative adjectives. I several times noticed the betrayer of innocence and wife-seller along with his companions, from my place on the upper deck. Did I not recall the infamous betrayer of the governess, and did not I remember how I felt when I found that she was mine and not somebody else’s sister, and alas, seduced by my father and by her father? Yet these betrayed innocent women are some mother’s daughters, and may be some one’s sisters. Ye gods! How I hated those men and wished that in some way they could be thrown into the sea, and thus their despicable, villainous traffic be ended with their corrupt lives.