The slave ship
McNaughton called, “Mr. Black!”
“Aye, sir!” and the second mate and steward departed that quarter.
It was true that there was at Daga Fanny. I bought her to make her
safe while I was from Africa. She was Fullah, that is, mixed Negro and
Moor, from the country where the caravans over the great desert change
sand for forest and where the Negro villages grow Mohammedan. She said
“Allah” as often as she said “God”, but when she was really moved she
used the Negro word for the same Being.
Fanny!
CHAPTER XX
When I was away from Daga she lived with an old woman in Daga village;
when I returned she came to the small house among the heavy trees.
She was slender, quick, with beautiful black eyes and features rather
Moorish than Negro. She could sing richly and sweetly, and I loved to
hear her sing. She was merciful to small lives about her and would go
out of her way to do a kindness. Once I found her passionately crying
and learned that she had been down the hill and upon the beach and had
watched two hundred men and women driven from the barracoon to the
boats of the _Sharon_, a Boston-owned brigantine.
“Do you care, Fanny?”
“Do you think I am devil?”
“So many of you don’t seem to care.”
“How do you know? How do you know? How do you know?”
I did not entirely know, though I thought that I knew it of some.
The great trouble in this matter is that we say at once, “They are
different!” and so leave ourselves no way of seeing how like they are.
Fanny rose from the ground and went off into the shadow of the tree
and I did not again see her cry for the filling or the emptying of
the barracoon. Yet she may have done so many a time, or cried in her
heart where it could not be seen. Her name was Aja before the factor’s
hill at Daga named her Fanny. She might be twenty when I bought her.
Three years before, being in a boat with others on a river in her
own country, slave hunters set upon them and took all. She received
some hurt and when at last after long travel and change from hand to
hand she came to Daga, it was seen that the factor would reject her.
There were always a certain number thrown back upon the hunters’ and
traders’ hands. These were sold for little or nothing where they might
be, or if no one wanted them and they could not even travel if they
were set free, then they were taken into the bush and quietly killed.
So it might have been with Fanny, had not Markham the surgeon observed
her and thought he could cure her, and undoubtedly felt compassion.
In this trade, vast through time and space, over and over again occur
individual emotions and acts of compassion. But they do not stop the
trade. Markham bought her for a trifle from the trader, put her in Daga
village with old Bembe and in a year she was as strong as a young palm
tree. Markham left her in the village where she cooked and wove with
Bembe, but not long afterwards, taking the fever and believing that
he would die, sold her for her own protection to the factor. He might
have freed her, but at Daga she would have been little better off
for that. He stipulated good treatment and that she should not depart
Africa against her will. I bought her on the same terms from the factor
my second time at Daga.
She was a young, barbarian woman, comely, clean, at times affectionate,
at times deeply sullen. She had a quick apprehension, a kind of deep
tact. There was much in her that I never fathomed, much that I fathomed
only afterwards. Each time I came to Daga I found her at the small
house.
So it was all around me. Only Bartram, when he came to Daga, paid no
visit to Daga village, or to a further village in the bush, or to Oil
Palm village up the river; took no woman from one or all of these or
from the barracoon. Upon the slave ships, the anchor weighed, any and
all intercourse in this sort was straitly forbidden. Between Africa
and America, on the broad blue sea, by written and unwritten law, the
women of the cargo were cargo only. But in Africa, with Spaniard and
Portuguese and French and American and Briton far from home, it was
otherwise.
Once, twice, thrice, four times, five times. I saw from the blue
Atlantic below the Line the foaming bar, the gleaming beach, the palms,
the castle and the flag that I had twice seen with an inner eye before
ever I saw the _Janet_.--Daga met that which was evil in me, and
the two intertwined. There was a side of me that cohered with Rathbone
Lace.
I seemed to rush forth to myself in Africa and to cry “Hail fellow,
well met!” I laughed and I caroused, but I was not happy. Markham, that
dour and acid man, once told me as much. “Unhappy--I seem to recognize
in you an unhappy man. I’m not myself a happy man and like knows like.”
“For why?”
“For why aren’t we happy men? Ah, that’s a question that goes far back
on the road!”
We were seated at sunset on his verandah. I was waiting for the boat
from the _Janet_. In the east hung a great moon. “You do not see
me carol and bubble with joy,” said Markham. “I do not feel joy and
years ago I gave up the empty carolling and bubbling. But you still
whistle and joke and stride along, outfacing yourself.”
“Outfacing myself?”
“I suppose so,” said Markham wearily. “Yourself or Justice or
Something.”
I sat with my eyes upon the round and golden moon. Presently I said,
“Markham, have you ever known any one improve in this trade?”
He considered. “No, I am fair to say I haven’t.”
I thought to myself, “Even Bartram, McNaughton, Colley and David Scott.
Even Bartram, McNaughton, Colley and David Scott.”
He had been smoking. Now he laid down his pipe and locked his long,
thin, parchment-hued hands. “It is not only this trade--this trade is
just a part of it. It is not only African slavery--African slavery is
just a part of it. There is something that is needed, for and in you
and me and others. I don’t know what it is; it is, perhaps, something
like light and something like a command. I can see that they ought to
come to me, but they don’t come to me. Maybe they will to you, maybe
not. I only know that to lack them is to know hunger and thirst and
nighttime and purposelessness. I have that knowledge of myself that
I am an unhappy man, and I have the like knowledge of you. That is
all.--There is the boat.”
The moon shone upon us so, the boat was picked out by it so, the fifth
time at Daga. The _Janet_ would presently be sailing with a fine
lot of Coromantins, Mandingoes, Fullahs, Ashantis, Whidahs, Eboes and
Dualas. The cargo delivered at Kingston, she was for home, for England.
It might be a year and more before she came again to Daga. And as yet
I did not know if I should go with her to Bristol, or if I should stop
in Jamaica. And if I did the latter I was not sure--I might never again
come upon the slave ship--not, that is, to sail with her and be part of
her. It might be true farewell to Daga.
There was Fanny. I spoke to Bartram. “She is mine--I am fond of her.
If I should stay in Jamaica, I could keep her there. I do not want to
leave her here where any and everything can happen. Does it matter to
you if I carry her with me to Jamaica?”
“That’s against the rules, David. I might have McNaughton or Colley or
any one speaking for such a permission. It’s been over and over proven
that it does not do.”
“I know it’s a general rule,” I answered, and proceeded to argue for
an exception, showing how it could be managed and she be reckoned both
with and not with the _Janet’s_ lading. He listened, pondering,
and at last, though with distaste, he agreed that I might take with me
my slave. There would have been no difficulty had I been willing for
her to be shipped simply with and like the five hundred, no difference
made from Daga to Kingston, and only there, in the unlading, pointed
out as my property. But I was not willing; I had rather leave her at
Daga.
He agreed, but when he had done so and we had turned toward the
factor’s hill--we had been walking upon the beach--he stood still
and looked at the _Janet_. “Something came athwart me then,
David!--Did you ever think how the stars are always there, behind the
day?”
Eight days later we sailed.
Fanny made no objection to going to Jamaica. When I told her what I
thought of and why, she looked at the sea and at the palms and to the
northwest where, far away, was her country, then squarely at Daga
castle and barracoon. She waved her hand. “I go like them?”
“No, more comfortably, Fanny.” I described how it would be, and that
the sea was only six to eight weeks wide, and then I spoke a little of
Jamaica, where was sea and white beaches and mountains, and trees and
weather much like trees and weather here and where were great numbers
of her people. “Those that have gone away in the ships. Mandingoes and
Fullahs and others.”
“I think that a lie. All of us think that a lie. Why do you never bring
any of them back? They say in my country white men’s ships all go to a
place where they sacrifice dark men and women to their gods. White men
have just one god, and he says, ‘Give me dark men that I may eat them!
More dark people, and more and more!’”
As she looked at me with large eyes, her years at Daga where she heard
all manner of other statement than this appeared to roll from her.
She was back in her old village, in the forest where it touched the
desert, a young barbarian, believing all things so that they were
fearful enough. Her eyes widened, she shivered, her hands went up,
palm out. I laughed at her and took pains to tell her many things that
might alter her opinion. At last she laughed too, and an hour later I
heard her singing over her work. But if her mind altered or not--or
if it altered and acceded only to alter again and hold to the forest
opinion--I do not know.--Or rather I _do_ know. I know that it did.
When I bade Rathbone Lace farewell, he said, “Come back--come back
next year, David Scott! I’ll miss you to-morrow, going up to Oil Palm
village--the rum in the boat and you not there! Good-by and Good Luck!”
Bartram heard him. I caught his muttered, “It’s a strange, sad thing,
I’m thinking, Rathbone my man, your full definition of Good Luck!”
The _Janet_ sailed. Slave ships sail at night, so that all the
slaves may be below. If they are above hatches they grow frantic,
seeing the African shore stand back from them. So many may be trusted
to leap overboard.
At sunset our five hundred were induced, urged, thrust, beaten, naked
and the men shackled, down upon the slave deck, where they must lie
rubbing sides, the feet of one row touching the heads of another, and
above small space of heavy darkness between them and the platforms on
which others lay, or between the platforms and the deck. Began the
continuous sound of the night coming up through the gratings, and
presently the reek. It is hot, hot, in Daga harbor, before the wings
unfold, before one beats out from the shadow of the land. The multitude
below hear the seamen’s running feet, the making of sails and weighing
of anchor, the shouts they do not understand. The swell rocks the
ship; sickness seizes them who have never been to sea, many whom, a
little while ago, had never seen the sea. They do not know where they
are going or to what fate, except that if it is in the middle and in
the end as it is in the beginning, it must be terrible. Their prison
becomes a cavern of mere terror and pain and misery. Night passes, that
is as long as a year. Gray light filters down. White men appear at the
gratings, the gratings are opened.
“Out with you now!--Nearest first--So!”
They come thick up upon deck between poop and forecastle. Overhead are
the spread sails, around is the empty blue sea, astern are distant
mountains that may be Africa.--Even then there will be attempts to
leave the ship.