One cabin passenger was treated as a pariah by all. Mrs. Campbell asking her husband about him was told: “O that Spaniard, Carlo Sebastian! ‘He’s a spirit,’ that is, one who lives in a seaport town and lures young people to his tavern, where they are kidnapped and held prisoners until they can be sold and transported to the colonies as indentured servants. He started in that way and still continues the practice, though his business has grown until now he contracts with the government and buys at first hand political prisoners and criminals. Under the English code there are three hundred offences punishable with death; sometimes the judge trying the case deems this too severe; and having the option, sentences such prisoners to transportation. Sebastian buys and resells them to the planters. He has a third source of supply from rural or peasant laborers who find conditions of life almost impossible at home and yet have no means of getting away. Under the law, such can only labor in the fields of their own parish. When they find it impossible to subsist on the very small wage they earn at home they indenture themselves to him, willing to pay five years of service for transportation to the Colony; where labor is the only thing that is high. At the end of their bondage, they emigrate to the frontier, take out a patent for land and start in for themselves as landed proprietors, usually becoming substantial citizens. “Yesterday, telling him that I expected to buy a slave or two, he showed me his stock. He has seven men, three grown women, a girl of fourteen and three boys about Richard’s age, all of whom are indentured. He also has four black slaves, three men and a clean looking young negro wench. He holds the indentured servants at prices ranging from twelve to eighteen guineas delivered at Norfolk and the slaves at twenty-five to thirty-five guineas. The young white girl seems quite frail, but is refined looking. I believe she will die during the voyage, confined in the foul air of her quarters and with such food as Sebastian provides. We better buy the negro wench at twenty-five guineas to help you; and if he will shave his price to thirty-three guineas, I will pay that for my choice of the negro men. Father says the slaves are better investments than the indentured servants; they stand the climate of the lowlands and are your absolute property; by the time the indentured servants are broken in and acclimated they have formed, and are only interested in, their own plans; and it is almost impossible to hire them after they are freed.” “Oh, Archibald! We must not buy any slaves. It is wrong. One person should not be sold to another as a cow or a horse. It is bad enough to own the right to the services of another for a term of years, even though he voluntarily sells himself, or is so punished by the law. I should like to talk with the poor women and the sick girl. Can we not go down and see them?” “Not unless Sebastian asks us to do so.”