country, in name at least, with the counterparts of the philosophers,
heroes, poets, and princes of Rome. To him it was a matter of small
moment, whether the vessel lay in the offing or in the port; and, without
discontinuing his childish amusement, he manifested the same, by replying,
with great indifference of manner,--

"I s'pose he t'ink all the water inside lie on a top."

"I tell you, Guinea," returned the other, in a harsh, positive tone, "the
fellow is a know-nothing! Would any man, who understands the behaviour of
a ship, keep his craft in a roadstead, when he might tie her, head and
stern, in a basin like this?"

"What he call roadstead?" interrupted the negro, seizing at once, with the
avidity of ignorance, on the little oversight of his adversary, in
confounding the outer harbour of Newport with the wilder anchorage below,
and with the usual indifference of all similar people to the more material
matter of whether the objection was at all germain to the point in
controversy; "I never hear 'em call anchoring ground, with land around it,
roadstead afore!"

"Hark ye, mister Gold-coast," muttered the white, bending his head aside
in a threatening manner, though he still disdained to turn his eyes on his
humble adversary, "if you've no wish to wear your shins parcelled for the
next month, gather in the slack of your wit, and have an eye to the manner
in which you let it run again. Just tell me this; isn't a port a port? and
isn't an offing an offing?"

As these were two propositions to which even the ingenuity of Scipio could
raise no objection, he wisely declined touching on either, contenting