The slave ship
threatened mutiny, but Olafson and Michaelson and others stood by me,
and it was so. Each soul upon the _Janet_ had each day enough
water just to do with and no more.
Again the _Janet_ was pinned to the moveless sea.
The calm lasted--so hot, so still--with little to do for the ship. Dead
distaste, dead weariness, bodings, and at last with us all nerve and
temper a frayed and giving thing.
The fifth night of it I entered the captain’s cabin--it was Olafson’s
watch--and lay down. There were the arms, there the books, stars
glimmered in the window. There formed in me the words, “It’s time!” I
smelled rum. In one moment lust for it had me by the throat. It was
more than that; it clutched in every member of the will as well as the
body. I sat up. Already the delusion flowed about me--the delusion that
everything and all was best served by my taking the key of the spirit
room, going there softly, and returning with a great jug of rum. I
arose and took it, and went barefoot and returned unseen with my store.
I put it down, a cup stood by me. I sat upon the bed. A voice spoke in
me--another voice, I thought then, than my own. “If you taste that cup
you are damned.”
At the same moment I was pervaded by a light that was not starlight,
moonlight or sunlight. In it I saw the _Janet_ with a drunken, mad
captain, and saw disaster to her and to six-score human beings. I saw
widely, intensely, with minuteness, many-formed disaster. The light
went, the voice was silent, but a rod was lifted over my soul.
My fingers unclasped from the cup. I pushed it a little from me on the
shelf by the bed, then motionless in the dark I began to wrestle.
All the rest of the night.--Toward dawn I got up and took the jug and
restored it to the spirit room. But I kept the key. I could get it
again.
The cold, the forlorn dawn streaked the sky. The demon and I still were
locked. The bell struck. I must go on deck and send Olafson to rest. I
went, and he exclaimed, “Are you ill, sir?”
“No. I could not sleep.”
He and his men went to eat, to have a small measure of water and to
sleep. Mine came wearily out of forecastle. On the deck the Negroes
were still sleeping. A deathlike purple hung in the east.
I moved about the ship as was needed, or sat in my place upon the poop
deck and I fought until I was spent. “I will not take it to-day, but as
soon as it is night----” When noon was passed Olafson relieved me, but
I would not go to Bartram’s cabin. I lay solitary upon the deck in the
shadow with the dead mirror of the sea around and fought. Once I fell
asleep but I met a terrible dream and woke trembling, with sweat upon
me. The sun sank and I must take charge while the others rested and
sweetly slept. Somehow the hours passed till midnight. Olafson took the
ship. I left the deck and sat upon my bed in the cabin, waiting just
for a little when I should go barefoot, unlock the door of the spirit
room and bring the jug back. Again said the voice, “If you do it you
are damned.”
Oh, what lion, what tiger, what army, is like this to fight? Oh,
help--help to break a slave’s chain!
Once I went outside the door and halfway to that place of storage that
was to me Heaven. But I saw in mid-air before me a mournful face, and I
turned back and sat again, shivering, upon my bed.
And again dawn----
All day--all day----
It was sunset. The sun went down a ball of fire, and there were no
clouds. The west flared carnation then ebbed to purple and the sea
likewise turned to clear purple glass. I stood by the side with the
moveless sails in mountains above me. The ship had its sounds enough
but there fell to my senses a silence like a night in space. I seemed
to stand alone in a quiet place. It was like a battlefield a year
after the battle. I stood as one foredone, and yet I knew there was a
victory. But who won it I hardly knew, whether it was I or another.
That raging desire in me died or fell asleep. I came quietly, stilly
back to David Scott before or after his two weeks. And yet not to that
David Scott either--seeing that on my part or on Another’s part there
had been a victory.
CHAPTER XXV
The next day upsprang the wind and did not again fail us. Three days
thereafter we met the _Edina_ of Baltimore bound for Whidah. We
hailed her; she lay to and the _Janet_ near her. I went to her
in our boat and spoke from it to her Captain, Weymarch, whom Bartram
knew. Could they give us water? We would thankfully take no matter
how little. They had had a quick and prosperous voyage, with but
forty aboard. Weymarch knew the _Janet_, was sorry for Bartram’s
death. He offered three casks and when we had these shipped cried that
he thought he could give another and did. It was our saving, and we
blessed the _Edina_ for kindness.
She dwindled toward Africa while we ran into the west. We were careful
indeed with water, but thirst no longer tormented us, neither the white
nor the black. We would stop at the first of the Bahamas and fill our
casks before we took the Windward Passage downward to Jamaica.
Olafson, Wheeler, Michaelson and the rest of our seamen did well. I was
used to them and they to me. I knew the _Janet_, the _Janet_
knew me. The Africans, with that big black man their teacher, made no
trouble that might not be argued or soothed away.
Michaelson said to me, “You’ll be a Captain, sir, after the heart of
Captain Bartram, rest his soul!”
And Olafson said, “The Company will confirm you Captain, doubtless,
sir. I’d like to keep on the _Janet_ with you.”
But I was unhappy.
There broke a day that showed us the Blue Mountains. The anchor rattled
down in Kingston Harbor. North the agent came alongside in a boat.
“What’s wrong?”
I delivered to him the hundred and two Negroes. The next day I saw them
in the barracoon, and the big, black man still led and comforted them.
David Scott came and went, Kingston waterside and Kingston Harbor,
keeping Bartram’s cabin and watch upon the _Janet_ that was being
holystoned and painted and made all clean again. There was sympathy
among the world of ships and men of the sea and dealers in black men.
“Holy Bartram” had been much liked despite his queernesses. North
sincerely missed him. “If there were more like him the trade wouldn’t
get the name it has!”
“Has it a name?”
“The world is getting finicky,” he answered. “It wasn’t always so!”
He had been long with the Company, was esteemed and had power to
give a captain to a ship lacking one. Like a good agent he pondered
it, he talked with Olafson and the _Janet’s_ men, and he weighed
the claims of two or three in Kingston who had had ships, had them
not now, and wished them again. Then he offered the _Janet_ to
me--Bartram’s pay and all.
I thanked him and said I must think of it.
“There’s just one thing that made me hesitate,” he said. We were alone
in his quiet house behind the vines. “But I assert that Bartram never
told me you had a cloud over you in Virginia. If it ever comes out--and
with common prudence, now after ten years, it never need--why, I simply
knew and know nothing about it!”
“I understand.”
“Lord!” he said. “The high seas and the land are different things, and
Scotland and Africa are different things! Six out of ten men bound for
Guinea have strange stories.”
“Mr. North,” I asked, “when is the trade going to stop?”
He stared. “Why, when slavery stops, I presume. There’s no particular
sign of that!”
“The factories and the slave ships might cease and leave all the
Negroes in America slaves--till the world grows finicky again.”
“There’s finickiness and finickiness,” he said. “The Royal African
Company don’t see it to that extent.” He laughed. “Bartram used at
first to have those fits. But we’ve got to live--and he came round to
his bread and butter. What’s the use in being better than your time and
your work? But it made him a humane captain and that’s a good thing in
any trade! Follow him, and you’ll do all right.”
“I’ll have to think.”
He pursed his lips, then spoke, “There’s just this other thing,
Scott, that I’m not supposed to know about and yet _do_ know
about--except when somebody asks that’s got no proper or convenient
right to know. God knows there’s drinking enough in the African
trade--as there is for that matter everywhere--but I understand that
just at times you are as far as may be from Bartram’s way there. Now if
you have the right mates it’s possible----”
“It’s my belief that I’ve quit drinking.”
“For good?”
“If I take the _Janet_ I won’t drink while I am upon her.”
After a moment he said, “I’ll take your word, David.--Well, then, the
Company offers you the _Janet_, Captain Scott.”
I said again, “I’ll have to think.”
Returning to the _Janet_, I tried to think--but I loved the
_Janet_.
Next day I got a horse and rode out to the Blue Mountains. But from
every height I saw the passionate blue sea and the _Janet_ and I
loved them both.
It was to my advantage to go with her. I could not now find new things.
Bartram and Colley and McNaughton were in some sense there, there upon
her still.--Bartram’s cabin and the books and the long, clean voyages
out.--Daga--I would turn the new leaf at Daga. David Scott, world
flotsam with an easy job, and the Captain of the _Janet_ were two
things. If I took the _Janet_ I would be true to her.
The voyages out--but the voyages back?
Cargoes of slaves. Distaste, heat, stench, fatigue, close watch and
ward, barbarity and danger--all the deterrents that made men of the
sea draw back at the word “Guineaman,” that gave to the trade mostly
hardened and reckless men. Well, was I not hardened and reckless?
I was used to it all. There was even a crude excitement in seeing each
time if it could be done. Captains of slavers rarely at last left the
slavers, died in the trade unless it threw them out, broken and useless
hulls, decaying forever in some little port town.
I saw it, but I had known no human trade without distaste. Distaste in
soldiering, distaste on Virginia plantations, distaste at My Fancy. I
was used to the _Janet_--I was the slaver--there were reliefs.
Slavery. The hunting and trapping of black men and sailing with them,
against their will, over the seas and selling them for life, them and
their unborn children, the generations to come.
I got down from my horse and sat upon a stone, but between bough and
branch I saw the extreme blue sea and the ships in harbor and the
_Janet_.
Once, for five years, I had been almost as much a slave as if I were
born in Africa. I knew the taste of the cup. In much it tasted the
same, if you were white or if you were black.
Captain of the _Janet_. David Scott, Captain of the _Janet_.
If planters and merchants and others the world over did wrong in
enslaving--and according to that Quaker they did--_what of me?_
Captain of the _Janet_--Captain of the _Janet_.
As I sat there the _Janet_ seemed to come near. I saw her stem
to stern, every mast and boom and spar and rope, her sails, her decks
and her cabins. She seemed as she was when I climbed out of Christian
Todd’s boat upon her, but seemed more, with a thousand memories as of
home and things endured and enjoyed. I saw the great cabin and the
lanterns and the table and stacked in fairy columns the gold that would
be my pay; and Bartram and Colley and McNaughton seemed with me there
and approving. The sea flowed midnight purple, and the _Janet_ had
every sail spread, and the Trade Wing sang.
Somebody must do it--somebody must run the slave ships. Better the
decent, the humane-as-might-be, than Garth and McKenzie and their
kind! Better Bartram’s kind on the _Janet_ than some one who sneered
at “Holy Bartram,” and was himself a terror to white seaman and black