"Nothing, nothing, except that I will go and blow out his brains, unless you have done so already." "Pray, do nothing of the sort; this man, I feel convinced, brother, will prove very useful to us." "Nonsense, how so?" "Leave me to act; if we manage properly, we may draw profit even from a Spanish spy; in the meanwhile, I have had him taken on board the lugger by your engagé, and a man of my own, where he will be watched so that he cannot part company." "I trust to you for that, and thank you, brother, for having freed me from the scoundrel." While talking thus, the two men arrived at the spot where the sale of the engagés to the colonists was to take place. On the right of the square was a spacious shed, built of clumsily planed planks, and open to the wind and rain; in the centre of the shed was a table for the officials and secretaries of the company, who had to manage the sale and draw up the contracts; an easy chair had been set apart for the governor, by the side of a rather lofty platform, on which each engagé, male or female, mounted in turn, so that the purchasers might examine them at their ease. These wretches, deceived by the company's agents in Europe, had contracted engagements, whose consequences they did not at all understand, and were convinced that, on their arrival in America, with the exception of a certain tax they had to pay the company for a certain period, they would be completely free to earn their livelihood as they thought proper. The majority were carpenters, masons and bricklayers, but there were also among them ruined gentlemen and libertines who detest work and who imagined that in America, the country of gold, fortune would visit them while they slept. A company's ship had arrived a few days previously and brought one hundred and fifty engagés, among them were several young and pretty women, thoroughly vitiated, however, and who, like the Manon Lescault of the Abbé Prevost, had been picked up by the police in the streets of Paris, and shipped off without further formality. These women were also sold to the colonists, not apparently as slaves, but as wives. These unions contracted in the gipsy fashion, were only intended to last a settled time which must not exceed seven years, unless with the mutual consent of the couple, though the clause was hardly ever appealed to by them; at the end of that time they separated, and each was set at liberty to form a fresh union. The engagés had been landed two days before; these two days had been granted them, that they might slightly recover from the fatigue of a long sea voyage, walk about and breathe the reviving land breeze, of which they had so long been deprived. At the moment when the two adventurers arrived, the sale had been going on for half an hour; the shed was crowded with colonists who desired to purchase slaves, for we are compelled to use that odious term, for the poor creatures were nothing else.