The slave ship
Here Lace and I abode for two days and nights. There was plenty of rum,
and there were women.
CHAPTER XIV
We began to lade the _Janet_. She was clean and stanch and as all
had always sworn, roomy. Our seamen, to whom Bartram had given just as
much shore leave and license as his name for a “good” captain obliged
him to and no more, were all home again and fairly fit. The officers
no less--McNaughton who never seemed to take a holiday, Pomeroy who
took all of it that he could hold, but who had a bull’s strength,
Colley who took with moderation. As for Captain William Bartram, his
holidays were of his own devising and within his own mind and spirit.
Tom and Don, the cooks, had been three times, I think, ashore. Once
I had encountered them on the wall, staring down into the barracoon.
Those therein had surged toward them with shouts and appeals. They had
answered back, but their tongues were not pure African and did not seem
to be understood. The barracoon had begun to laugh and to jibe, and
then it seemed to menace spiritually, seeing that it had no material
power. The two from the _Janet_ cried something back and left the
place. Again I had seen them at low tide, sitting on the beach, upon a
piece of a wrecked boat, staring into the west, where would be Jamaica.
If anywhere was home to them it was Jamaica--and the _Janet_.
If anywhere was home now to David Scott, it was the _Janet_.
Scotland was fading. A time would be when all its tint would come
again, but now it was fading.
Davis the boatswain and Llewellyn the carpenter, Hamilton that was
surgeon’s mate, Benjamin the steward and Geordie, Jack Dannet and all
his fellows, poop, midship and forecastle, we were all aboard. The sun
was shining--the hatches were open--one looked down along shafts of
light into that depth that, quite clean and airy and empty now, would
soon be not the one nor the other. Colley said that the Captain had
them up from it an hour earlier and into it an hour later than any
other that he knew. “He’s got good customs.”
McNaughton, standing by, put in, “Aye, he gaes tae kirk inside. At
times it gets into the way of complete effeeciency.”
“I don’t agree there,” said Colley. “I think he’s more efficient for
it.”
“Aweel,” answered McNaughton, “there’s room for a difference of
opeenion.--But yon’s the first boat.”
He moved to the side. William Bartram was on the poop deck. I went
to him there and watched with him the oncoming boats, two or three
between us and the shore. They were the long, native boats, made of the
greatest trees; they had many rowers and were packed with slaves. On
the white beach beyond showed a number of Daga figures, the factor and
the assistant and Rathbone Lace and others; and squads of naked slaves
were issuing from the barracoon and Daga castle, driven forth and down
to the water where waited boats. The sky was the bluest imaginable,
there was a sweet, singing air. The scene had beauty, but there was
horror too.
On the _Janet_ a certain number of our seamen were armed with
cutlass and pistols. “There’s a fear and despair at first,” said
Bartram, “that makes them dangerous.”
The foremost boat now touched the shadow of the ship. Men stood by with
rope and the long, cleated, landing board. This boat had women and
children, mostly silent, ashy with fright. They were taken aboard--the
boat pushed off--the second took its place. Again naked black women,
naked young boys and girls. In Africa many tribes wear some slight
show of clothing, some light and partial attire in a land of heat, but
Africans put upon a slave ship are put there naked--nor could it be
otherwise, the conditions given. If they felt it or did not feel it, I
do not know. There was so much else to feel. In this second boat there
was wailing and praying.
Bartram descended to the deck. He stood among those women and children
and honestly tried to comfort them. He had, as had all at Daga, a
rough and ready acquaintance with African tongues that were all, so to
speak, variants one of the others. Now I made out that it was:
“Stop greeting, you women; you’re wringing your bairns’ hearts! Nobody
wants to eat you--nobody’s going to hurt you in any way if you’re
good! Ship--this is a good ship--fine ship. Men--these are good white
men. You’re going to a good country--plenty to eat, houses, good folk.
Plenty your own kind there!--Now, here comes another boatful. See if
you can’t get up a laugh to meet them!”
The third boat--women and children still--came alongside and gave to
the deck, Pomeroy and half a dozen seamen handling the cargo. I had
followed Captain Bartram, and now in the momentary lull while the
company aboard watched those coming aboard, he spoke to me and with
feeling.
“I’m looking to you, David, to follow my ways and Mr. McNaughton’s
ways, not Pomeroy’s ways nor Rathbone Lace’s ways. I’m fain to treat
these poor souls, just as far as ’tis possible, like kindly Scots folk
torn from hame by poverty and trouble and gaeing ower seas. I’ve seen
greeting amang women at Glasgow and Leith when first they came to the
white ship that was to take them away. Not loud greeting like these
poor, naked children of the sun, but greeting. In the end greeting’s
greeting, sorrow’s sorrow, whatever the color of her claiths.” He
sighed, “There’s many a cruel necessity, David!”
From out the women from the third boat started one, taller than the
others, vigorous, with a deep and intelligent eye, with a dark fire
running well-nigh visibly through and around her.--David Scott had in
his time felt anger too deep for any shaken voice or idle movement,
and he recognized it. She spoke, and she checked attention and held
it breathless. We did not know her tongue; she seemed a Negress from
the mountains. Maybe she had been a prophetess or a queen. Beyond
doubt, by nature she was something like that. Her speech straightened
the cowering groups and for a little made it to seem that the captors
cowered. There was a strange illusion.--David Scott, at least, saw as
in a mirage a great dark figure, out of space and time, standing as
judge.
The voice of this woman thrilled through the _Janet_. She cried
upon God--presumably ours and hers alike--to show us through suffering.
We did not know her tongue, but the ship understood. Through suffering.
Then I, watching, saw and heard something strange. It came as it were
from the inner sky, out upon her visibly. The dark fire changed hue,
became rose and sapphire, then a golden flame. Her arms were lifted,
she seemed tall as a mast, her voice sang and was universal as the
wind. “Show! If it must be through suffering, then suffering, but show!
Show!” That was her saying, though I knew not the words. I do not know
if what I saw and heard was caught by any other, though Bartram beside
me shuddered slightly as though one had passed over his grave. But
David Scott heard it and felt it for the _Janet_ and all ships
upon the seas, and Africa and the rest of the earth. Show! Show!
It stayed with us a moment, that enchantment or that Truth. Then,
Bartram having nodded to him, Davis the boatswain seized the prophetess
and threw her reeling among the dark crowd. “You’ll stand watching, for
it’s you that bring about risings!” She fell to her knee, caught by one
of the women and stood up, but spoke no more. I saw her now as only a
tall negress with the air of one who held rank. Her voice sank away,
now and for this voyage. She died the third week, and we dropped her
body into the wave.
The boats that were coming now held men. The sun blazed over Daga.
The whitened castle and the many palm trees, the river mouth, the
village, the factor’s hill, the white beach and the ant procession out
of castle, out of barracoon--and again there flashed to me Edinburgh
and the Luckenbooths. A naked black man, first of his boatful, stepped
upon the _Janet’s_ deck, and for all the world he looked like
Pickaninny.
CHAPTER XV
All night and every night five hundred beings lay as close as herrings
in a cask upon the _Janet’s_ slave deck, under the _Janet’s_
grated hatches. Men were shackled, two together at the ankles. Women
and boys lay ungyved. Each and all had just enough space in which to
lie their length, or almost their length, and their breadth without
turning or spreading. Bodies touched and rubbed one another. Overhead
was scant, scant space. The hatches were kept uncovered, but still was
it suffocating down there--and fetid beyond believing. David Scott,
who knew an Edinburgh prison, yet had never dreamed of anything like
it. It steamed up through the gratings. He thought he saw it, one hot
night, as a cloud surrounding the ship. It was black in that sighing,
grunting place, black as the pit. Sounds came up all night long. Out of
five hundred always some were sleepless, always some in anguish of body
or mind, always some breaking out into wrath. They remonstrated with
each other, they seemed to curse God, or now and then to be praying.
Sometimes would come a wild and sudden cry. The watch on deck paid no
attention, unless the noise grew and a certain note came in. Then a
threat was cried down through the gratings.
In the morning, “an hour earlier than other ships”, the gratings were
lifted, and they poured up the short ladders to the light and air. The
deck became covered as a sugared board is with bees. They gasped, they
stretched themselves, some leaped up and down; they stared at sea and
sky and each other; their tongues were loosened. Water was given them
and a sufficient breakfast. Divided into companies, they sat and ate
from great platters of beans and rice. Now you might hear, out of one
group or another, a guffaw of laughter. There is something in the Negro
ineradicably cheerful. But there was never much or lasting laughter,
not even on the _Janet_ that was so “good” a ship!
The slaves stayed on deck all day long. Two hours before sunset they
had their second meal. The allowance of water was a pint and a half
in the twenty-four hours to a man, less to women and children. This
seemed great hardship and was miserably felt by these who at home drank
when they wished from a thousand springs and streams. But the Middle
Passage took long weeks, and tempest or dead calm might at any time
make it longer. Among the ghastliest stories were those of slavers
without water. The five hundred black folk were given sufficient for
some degree of health and no more. A little thirst spaced through the
voyage, said Bartram, was better than empty water barrels a hundred
leagues from land. Certainly he wished there were room for more barrels.
“If we carried fewer Negroes----”
“The Company thinks we should carry more.”
He had his rules for the day. All ships had pretty much the same. There
must be exercise, and it was best got by a kind of dancing. Fettered
men still could shuffle and sway, and the women and boys were free of
bonds. Dancing was good for the body and the spirit. Singing was good
too, so that it leaned to the jovial and not the melancholy. All were
encouraged to dance and sing. They might sprawl in the sun and sleep.
They might converse and tell stories. The surgeon came and looked them
over every morning when they emerged from the blackness, every evening
before they returned to it. If there were any truly and really ill they
were removed to a corner that was called their hospital. All wanted
as few as possible to die. A certain number might be expected to go
between Daga and the sight of Blue Mountain in Jamaica--half a dozen
out of a hundred perhaps, in a decent ship like the _Janet_. Much
more than that would mean some calamity. So soon as they were forth
in the morning, salt water enough was sluiced about the slave deck,