The slave ship
a cargo slightly differing from her usual one in that it represented
Negroes from the Zaire and Africa beyond the Camaroons, a vast back
country that Daga did not ordinarily drain. But Daga, ministering to
twenty ships, had this time thrown her net in that direction and drawn.
These Negroes were heathenish to us; from afar, very heavy and black.
The Coast tongues, north and south, and the back country tongues that
we knew did not meet their case. We handled them more like animals than
was the _Janet’s_ wont.
Daga lay three days astern.--
My Fancy in Jamaica lay to me more than a year astern. Back I had gone
to Bartram and Colley and McNaughton and the ship.
Colley had paid his debts in London, but here he was again. He had even
had a fair offer of a practise--but here he was. “You know it ruins
you, David, this life! ruins you for anything else. At last you don’t
know how to treat any other world, and it doesn’t know how to treat
you.--Well, here’s a right good company too!”
And it seemed that we did cling together, Bartram, McNaughton, Colley,
David Scott, Tom and Don, Michaelson, Llewellyn the carpenter,
Geordie, Jack Dannet and Dory and other who still lasted from the
_Janet’s_ population that autumn night when I climbed her side
from the boat of Christian Todd--and later ones too,--Wheeler the
boatswain who took Davis’s place, and others. Benjamin the steward was
dead. Black the second mate had left us for the _Sherwood Oak_.
In his place we had a big, slow Dane named Olafson. And every year saw
changes, many of them, among the seamen.
She had come into Kingston Harbor, white and trim from England, all
her sails so lovely, and strong new masts and rigging, her decks and
her hold and her cabins sweet again, her figurehead, a sea goddess,
restored, her flag and pennant new--the big and fair ship, the
_Janet_. In her hold and boxed upon her decks she carried stores
as she had carried them when first I knew her, all manner of trade
goods for Daga. She came in with a kind of music, and David Scott had a
warming of the heart to see her, the Enchantress, the good and evil one
together! She had been away a year; he had been at My Fancy a year. He
knew about when she was due, and had ridden from the north and the west
through the great island to Kingston, having resigned his manager’s
place at My Fancy, given it back to Mr. Godfrey North who was home from
England, and who would have kept him on. But David Scott was restless,
and his own unhappiness had tainted for him My Fancy. So he returned to
Kingston and North the agent, and the _Janet_ was sighted and swam
into harbor like a mountain of pearl.
That had been a successful voyage to the Coast and back. Going out, it
minded me of that first voyage from Chesapeake Bay. Returning, we had
only the best luck, weather, health and all, and landed four hundred
and ninety-two out of five hundred slaves. This time our port had been
Charlestown in South Carolina.
Said Bartram, “All in all, David, taking all my years together, East
Indiaman and Guineaman, they may call me a fortunate captain! We have
our ups and downs, but that one ghastly ribbon has been spun off the
spool!” But as he spoke he put out an arm and touched wood. When he saw
that I saw it he laughed, then drew a kind of long, sighing breath.
“Eh, man, eh, man David! Life’s a strange bird that goes across the sky
and who’ll say whence or to where? And then, you see, there’s yon net
of stars up there!”
Back at Daga and Rathbone Lace and his boat up the river, to the Oil
Palm village.
Markham the surgeon asked me about Fanny. That luckless voyage was
of course known in all detail at Daga, but such things were never
stressed. The accidents of the trade--they were the accidents of
the trade--and all trades have accidents. But I went to Markham’s
house--Colley chancing to be somewhere up the river--about a cut that
I had received upon the arm in the bush, and when he had dressed it
he asked me the question. I told him briefly. He nodded, was silent a
moment, then said, “I find it natural enough.”
“I am quite of your mind,” I answered. “I think it was so.”
“They were her people.”
“Yes.--It’s all the same, Markham, all over.--God knows how we can be
One Thing that hates and hurts itself so, and can’t give messages to
itself from itself! But so I come to feel it is. One Thing. One tragic,
pitiful, insane Thing!”
We came out upon his verandah. Daga lay in the afternoon light. All
suddenly castle and village and ivory beach and native boats and palm
trees made again the picture of that witches’ night in Edinburgh, long
ago now, long ago! It passed, and I saw with distinctness a mournful,
human Face--and whether it were Fanny, or a girl in Barbadoes, or Maria
at My Fancy, or old Melinda at Old Mill Quarter, or Eboe Sam, or Old
Hannibal, or Pickaninny, or Tom and Don, or all together--and I think
it was all together, all these and many more together--it held, it
overwhelmed and drowned me. Then it was gone.
“What is the matter?” demanded Markham.
“I don’t know.--I saw a vision.”
“Don’t do it!” said Markham. “I began it once. But I stopped them off.”
But I made a gesture and left him, going down unseeingly to the sea.
That was the first time at Daga after the _Janet’s_ refitting.
The second time, for two weeks, I was drinking and altogether for and
with Rathbone Lace, and what I did or left undone one day I may pick
up and stare at with affright. I came back into sobriety, and all of
Rathbone’s power could not make me drink. He laughed and gave it up.
“But it won’t be always so, David, it won’t be always so! No wall that
you’ve built but shall crumble! Then you’ll stay at Daga, and find rum
good every day in the year, and we’ll go forever, my boy, from Oil Palm
village to Oil Palm village!”
At times, from the first, I hated him. And then Daga again, and we
sought each other out.
This second time the _Janet_ had swung at anchor long weeks before
Daga. There were trade troubles. A war that had been expected to send
down streams of slaves, that had indeed been fomented for just that
purpose, had failed of bursting. Other chiefs were demanding more and
more and more for their villagers, and the factor had made a stand
against such exorbitancy with the result that here, too, befell a
temporary drought. Add to this that a rival British company had lately
established a factory no distance at all up the Coast and was making
glittering promises. Trade, diverted, flowed that way as well as to
Daga. And other things had happened. We had been not far from two
months at Daga when like a flood tide came traders with those Negroes
from the Zaire and beyond Camaroons.
We took them and filled the _Janet_ with them. They seemed to us
brutish, with their heaviness and unknown tongues--we handled them at
last in the piece and with no ceremony. All at last was done--the water
was in--all was ready--we should get away that night. In the harbor
about us lay the _Sharon_ of Boston, the _Waterlily_, the _Blake_ and
the little _Frances Fynes_, the _Sharon_ taking too of those southern
and inland Negroes and almost ready to sail, the others just in. When
the factor came aboard before sunset to bid Captain Bartram farewell
the captains of the _Sharon_ and the _Blake_ came with him, and all had
wine in the _Janet’s_ great cabin.
“Here’s to you, Captain Bartram!”
“Thank you, Mr. Lace. Thank you, Ross. Thank you, Jenkins!”
“The best of voyages!”
“I’m thanking you again. If it’s like the last it will be good.”
He was not convivial--“Holy Bartram.” They knew it and secretly winked
that the bottle was emptied and there would not be another. A little
further talk, and out they trooped and down into their boats and so
away--and that night about three we sailed from Daga.
Africa lay five days astern.
I came in the early morning out of Philip Smith’s cabin into the
great one to find seated at the table Bartram and Colley. The latter
was speaking in a low voice. Bartram, looking particularly tawny and
big, sat staring out of open door. The sun was just up, the sea ran
sparkling, a brisk wind filled the sails. I remember the blue and
gold and white, the humming, the thrilling salt, the cool and lift. I
made to pass through the cabin, but Bartram spoke, “Come here, David!
There’s trouble walking beside us.”
“What is it?”
“It’s sickness.”
He moved his big frame, put his hands behind his head--a way he
had--and stared through the door at what showed of his ship. “Five dead
this morning.”
I asked Colley, “What do you think it is?”
“God knows! _I_ don’t. I’ve never seen it before. We bought
it with these Negroes, and where they bought----” He described the
sickness. “It’s one of the old plagues.”
“None but the Negroes----”
“Yes. Jack Dannet’s got it.”
Bartram stood up. “We’ll do as we’ve done before--the best we can! Say
nothing of its newness or anything else. Say it will presently stop.
I’ll order an extra dram for all.”
“All” meant the _Janet’s_ officers and seamen. No one told or
could tell the freight that it was not serious and would presently stop.
Seven days out from Daga. There had been half a dozen more deaths,
and another seaman lay in the ship’s hospital. But that was not so
bad--we could weather it at this rate. Then suddenly like a tiger the
thing jumped. On a hot morning, the sails lank, we brought up and cast
into the sea fifteen bodies. At noon Dannet died, and in the evening
Jonathan Williams. Between dusk and dawn three more were smitten in the
forecastle. It settled down.
McNaughton’s opinion was that we should put back to Daga.
“What for?” asked Bartram, with reason. “The sea opens for them as
easily here. We can’t send them back into barracoon and poison all
there--and for us white men the _Janet’s_ still the best hospital.
If it’s bad, better to be bad keeping our course. If it’s an evil
that’s got a term, what’s the object in turning tail? What’s to be will
be, McNaughton, and we’ll go on our way.”
The next day panic appeared, in the black and in the white. Bartram
quelled it, shamed it, dissipated it, so that at least it came into
bounds. In both colors arrived the drawing into two camps: they who
feared and gave all way to fear, and they who feared but kept their
manhood and banded to help themselves and others.
We ceased to drive the Africans at night under the gratings. The most
of them stayed night and day on the deck and they began to die like
flies. It was fearful, their noise; and fearful their stillness. In
every throng of black men and women as in every throng of white, there
will be so many who are better, braver and wiser than the others. They
are smothered under until times like this. Then they come forth and
are seen to be tall and strong. So out of this mourning or desperately
silent mass sprang at last their own helpers. When we saw who they were
we picked them out, gave them freedom and told them as best we could
what to do, then left it to them.
When we were two weeks from Africa a third of our cargo was gone.
Seven seamen were dead. Hardly any one who was taken recovered. It was
malignant from the first.
Add that there now befell a calm. Day after day of it when we hardly
moved. And each day dead men and burials, and the sea hardly seemed to
take them away.
Bartram apparently did not sleep at all. The old lion went padding at
all hours through his ship, strengthening here, strengthening there.
Bartram, McNaughton, Olafson, Colley and young Winter his helper, David
Scott, Wheeler the boatswain, Llewellyn, Dory and Wat Allen, Geordie,
Tom and Don and some others feared, but worked.
Then Winter was taken and died, then Geordie, then Llewellyn. Three