"Take care," said a bystander, "there's a good many Southerners on
board."
"I don't care if every slaveholder in the South was on board,
holding a knife at my throat; I'm on the broad ocean, where God
spreads the breezes of freedom that man cannot enslave," said he,
sitting down beside Manuel, and getting him to recount the details
of his shipwreck and imprisonment. The number increased around him,
and all listened with attention until he had concluded. One of the
spectators asked him if he would have something good to eat? but he
declined, pulling out the little box that the consul had sent him,
and, opening it before them, showed it to be well-stored with little
delicacies.
The Philadelphian motioned that they take up a subscription for him,
and almost simultaneously took his hat off and began to pass it
around; but Manuel, mistaking the motive, told them that he never
yet sought charity-that the consul had paid him his wages, and he
had money enough to get home. But if he did not accept their
contributions, he had their sympathies and their good wishes, which
were more prized by him, because they were contrasted with the cold
hospitality he had suffered in Charleston.
On the morning of the twentieth he arrived in New York. Here things
wore a different aspect. There were no constables fettering him with
irons, aggravating his feelings, and dragging him to a miseerable
cell overrun with vermin.
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