The slave ship
and a tobacco field for one who loved the high glen and Mysie Johnston!
Back came the Captain. Weighing anchor, the _King William_ stood
into the River James that measured seven miles from shore to shore.
The cargo had never seen such a river. Presently we passed a rude town
named Norfolk with no little shipping lying in the roads before it.
By sunset we were a score of miles up stream, into the land. The land
was always low, and here stretched forest and here showed clearings
and brown fields and solitary good-sized houses with clusters of small
houses a-near, and running far into the stream thin, gray “landings”
like skeleton fingers. So broad was the river, we keeping in midstream,
that we missed the life of fields and road and wharf. All to us had
a melancholy spareness,--vast distances and the much forest and the
yellow, enormous river. The clearings were chiefly upon the northern
shore. There were a few ships upon the river or anchored about the
landings, and we saw cockle boats with gray handsbreadths of sail
and oared craft. But taken all together, to us, bondsmen and from
an ancient country, for all the beauty of the air and beauty of the
colored trees, loneliness and a melancholy spareness! The sun went down
behind long, long bars of purple cloud. The _King William_ came
to anchor for the night, and the ship’s lanterns made other lanterns
in the water, and the slow-marching stars, for all they kept the old
formation, seemed an alien host from them at home.
With sunrise rose another mood. Sick, sick, we were heartily sick
of the ship! Any land that we might come to still was earth, and
adventures might be predicated. In short, as the sails were made,
as the sailors with their chantey raised the anchor, as the river
turned red-gold, as the fresh wind filled our nostrils and the gulls
screamed about the ship, as the cook served us a far better breakfast
than usual, and the Captain sent forward with his compliments a small
measure of rum for each man, we became the courageous soldiers of
Novelty. When a canoe with Indians passed us we crowded to the side and
exclaimed at the raree show.
Now a good wind took us farther up that wide river, and still in the
early, gay morning, we sighted Jamestown that was our destination.
We six Jacobites stood together.
Our lot seemed the hardest upon that ship. The others had determined
periods. Five years, even seven years, pass! But for all we knew we
might never be our own men again, opposite us standing an infuriated
Monarch and Party that might reign, if not forever, still until earth
covered us. We wore irons, were marked “dangerous” as though we were
powder flasks beside a fire. The comfort of company, alikes together,
was going from us. Those around us seemed better off.
But David Scott, looking at those youths peaked and early wizened, or
dull, sodden, branded by ceaseless, hopeless labor, or fever-bitten,
restless and weakly turbulent, felt a sudden pride and glory in “big
David Scott.” So perhaps did Angus Ross in Angus Ross and MacLean in
MacLean and MacLeod in MacLeod. Pride and glory of the body!
That Jamestown enlarged before us, and it seemed but three or four
brick houses and a bit tower as of a church, and a landing, and around
this sloops and small boats. It seemed, at tide at least, an island,
and it was shady with great trees, green and yellow and crimson.
Morrison stood beside me.
“Here beginneth a new chapter. Rather a pretty place! Well, English
made it and here come English to it--English and Scots. As to
indentures and seven years’ service and so forth, we’ve known all that
since Father Jacob served Laban. Earlier still, I make no doubt! It’s
venerable--can be defended. As to you six, mercy has been shown you.
Mercy is venerable too.”
“There’s something in a book I once read about ‘the tender mercies of
the wicked.’--The wicked! Well, I’m that and will be that too!”
“Is that what you Scots name second sight?”
“I dinna ken----”
“It’s a pity,” said Morrison. “I have ‘kenned’ it as you say, also.
Kenned wickedness. It doesn’t pay. It’s never paid.--But I’m no
preacher. I’m only a ‘sair’ piece of shipwreck that says, ‘Look out!’”
As though he were echoed, the mate cried “Look out!” and the anchor,
rattling down, clutched the bed of the River James. The bare masts
and spars and rigging of the _King William_ gently rose and fell
against a bluebell sky. We were riding close to the landing that was
crowded with folk, and boats were putting off to us.
“Those are gentlemen of the country,” explained Mr. Ransom, “coming off
to buy you lusty fellows! Range yourselves, and remember that the worst
thing that can happen to you is not to be liked! Look at yourselves
when five and seven years are over and be smiling and brisk!”
A good big boat was speeding toward us. Negroes rowed her and the cargo
of the _King William_ who had never seen such before stared as at
a dark miracle. “Negroes! Why did God make them black? Have they got
souls?”
“Black men and red men and yellow men and white men, that’s the way
they mount in importance----”
“The saints and the angels are white. All the ruling people in heaven
are white. There couldn’t be yellow or red or brown or black angels----”
“Maybe they have half-souls. Dogs and horses have quarter-souls. Look
at that big one laughing!”
The boat came closer and there were three white men seated in the
stern. One, the tallest and biggest, had a gold-braided hat and a fine
coat.
“That’s one of the first gentry,” quoth Mr. Ransom, “and probably a
heavy purchaser. That’s Colonel Amory.”
“Indeed!” said Morrison. “Then I’m to keep his books. Well, he looks
polite enough! Hardly an ogre.”
So far from that was he that one and all preferred to be bought by
him. Even when other boats arrived and other planters, most of them
well enough looking, much like English squires and Scots lairds.
But he bought only three men beside Morrison who was already his
consignment,--that quite young boy who had said that the world was both
so and not so, a ditcher and woodchopper named Dick Merry, and that
Culloden man, David Scott.
CHAPTER IV
He had a handsome, cheerful countenance--Colonel Amory--and a genial
voice. He talked a deal and talked well, was a three-bottle man and
gallant with women, a hunter, a dead shot, admirable with a horse and
a dog and an obedient Negro, an out-of-doors man, yet with a taste
for politics, a vestryman, a member of the Governor’s Council, and a
possessor of books which sometimes he read and sometimes only talked
of reading. A part of all this David Scott had opportunities for
observing, and another part was told him by others.
Axeman during the winter, clearing land for tobacco; man of the tobacco
fields so soon as spring set in; in the fields the hot, hot summer
long, roused at dawn, worked till eve, dead with sleep before the
evening star had sunk--as little as any laborer at home did I have
touch around the circle of Colonel Amory’s life. But since I had had
some knowledge of laird’s life, squire’s life, lord of the manor’s
life, across the sea, I reckoned well enough how this southern, new
land, life of easy business, ran straight or meandered through the
year. It had a fairness and ease and a good nature, and the good nature
was for all so long as all swung to the commanded music; and the ease
was the hunter’s ease with good dogs around; and as for the fairness,
in small matters it tripped forward, but in large it always curtseyed
to the heathenish law. But almost every one thought him--and he thought
himself--a kind master, not seeing that to be master at all was the
trouble.
Big David Scott cut down trees for Colonel Amory, to clear Colonel
Amory’s land, to plant Colonel Amory’s tobacco that would freight the
_King William_ and other ships to England, that would be sold,
that would buy more young men to clear more land for Colonel Amory. The
years pass slow when one is young.
Up the river, a few miles from Williamsburg, lay Amory Hall. Land
and land, some thousands of acres, the “great house”, the various
“quarters”--Pine Tree quarter, Big Spring quarter, Indian quarter, Old
Mill quarter--the barns and tobacco houses and offices of kinds, the
two overseers’ houses, the mill and smithy and other workshops, the
store, the creek landing, the river landing--that was Amory Hall. The
fields were tobacco and maize and a small amount of wheat and other
grains, but tobacco, tobacco, tobacco overtopped and overspread. The
great house stood two miles from my quarter, Old Mill quarter. I rarely
saw it close at hand--a good-sized brick house, like many in England,
with trees and shrubs and flowers about it. All day, all those blazing
summer days in shadeless fields, the trees looked so good!
At Old Mill were twenty men. Much the smallest quarter and remotest
from the great house, it touched on one side a forest uncut since time
began, and on the other tobacco. In the winter we felled the first, in
the summer we worked that tobacco.
The twenty men were not always the same. They were changed, drafted
in and drafted out. Nineteen of the twenty. But David Scott, who was
“political”, rested at Old Mill for three long years. They seemed to
have said that they would never change him.
Five of the men were white, the rest black. It was the penal quarter
for refractory or erring white servants or for any who for reasons were
not to be indulged. They came and stayed and went, but I stayed. Small
cabins, two or three men to a cabin, and one larger building where we
ate, the white at one end, the black at the other, a black man cooking
for all. And at a little distance the house of Barget--Mr. Barget--who
oversaw us. A ragged, dreamy place--Old Mill quarter.
We had enough to eat, though of a coarse and monotonous sort. We slept
on pallets stuffed with corn husks. In winter there was covering
enough, and at any time we might have a roaring fire. In summer we
dragged our beds out of the stifling cabin. Our clothing was poor
enough, but a Negro woman washed our shirts and drawers and stockings
and kept us fairly clean. In all this we were no worse off than the
laboring poor across the ocean. Better off! Barget was a decent man.
When the general overseer, Williams, came around as he did every three
or four days, still there were decent words and decent treatment. When
Colonel Amory rode a splendid horse our way he was cheer itself and
almost fatherly and all that. There were even holidays, and we did not
work on the Sabbath, and some leisure could be stolen out of most week
days. Not much, but a little to gloat over. When it was exceedingly hot
weather, we lay under a pine tree in the middle day for an hour or two.
On great occasions we had a little rum to drink. The white servants
were expected to go to church, there being one within two miles. The
preacher often preached for a quarter of an hour directly to us, seated
on the hard benches at the back, behind all the others. Our happy lot,
to change hopelessness at home in England for hope here in America!
There were men sitting near me, with serious, rugged faces, who tasted
that hope. I saw it in their eyes. At last, after hard service, they
would lay hands upon their own fortune, and she would be good. I saw
it, I saw it! We heard stories of men, now highly prosperous, planters
and burgesses, who had come out as some other man’s servants. The
preacher said it lay in our own hands, and in a measure what he said
was true.
There were those white men who chose a sturdy patience, and those who
never chose at all, but stayed or went in apathy. And others were
always reckoning how much longer or how little longer they had to
serve. In the meantime, in some ways, it was worse here in Virginia