The slaver came up, her sails all plump, and tied up, and let fall her gangplank. And the ship’s owner, who was also the leading slave auctioneer in New Marsails—he talked so good and so fast he could sell a one-armed, one-legged, half-witted Negro for a premium price—he ambled up the gangplank. I’m told he was a spindly fellow, with no muscles whatever. He had hard-bargain-driving eyes and a nose all round and puffy and pocked like a rotten orange, and he always wore a blue old-time suit with lace at the collar, and a sort of derby of green felt. And following him, exactly three paces behind, was a Negro. Some folks said this was the auctioneer’s son by a colored woman. I don’t know that for certain, but I do know this here Negro looked, walked, and talked just like his master. He had that same build, and the same crafty eyes, and dressed just like him too—green derby and all—so that the two of them looked like a print and a negative of the same photograph, since the Negro was brown and had kinky hair. This Negro was the auctioneer’s bookkeeper and overseer and anything else you can think of. So then these two went up on deck, and while the Negro stood by, the auctioneer shook hands with the captain, who was standing on deck watching his men do their chores. You understand, they spoke different in them days, so I can’t be certain exactly what they said, but I reckon it was something like: “How do. How was the trip?”

Already some folks standing on the dock could see the captain looked kind of sick. “Fine, excepting we had one real ornery son of a bitch. Had to chain him up, alone, away by himself.”

“Let’s have a look at him,” said the auctioneer. The Negro behind him nodded, which he did every time the auctioneer spoke, so that he looked like he was a ventriloquist, and the auctioneer was his dummy, either that way or the other way around.

“Not yet. God damn! I’ll bring him up after the rest of them niggers is off the boat. Then we can all hold him down. Damn!” He put his hand up to his brow, and that’s when folks with good eyes could see the oily blue mark on his head like somebody spat axle grease on him and he hadn’t had time yet to wipe it off. “God damn!” he said again.

Well, of course folks was getting real anxious, not just out of common interest like usual, but to see this son of a bitch that was causing all the trouble.