The slave ship
And yet, a thousand years might hardly span from where I stood then
and where now--the dead fire and the kindled fire and the living fire!
The wind ran fresh; the light made the low shores beautiful; little
boats and two or three statelier ones were upon the green water; the
white gulls flew around and overhead. We came to Point Comfort that I
well remembered. We stood across to Norfolk.
Here it sat, the same town, but a little enlarged. I marked it under
the bright, blue, autumn sky. It was now October. The seamen of the
_Miranda_ began their chantey, the anchor slid down, cut the
water, and grappling with the earth became a root to hold the ship.
It held her no great while. The second dawn from the red, entering
one, we watched her forth from river mouth into the Bay, Olafson and
I, standing upon a wharf. The three left with us were sleeping or
waking at the Seaman’s Hearth. It was so early the wharf had few upon
it beside us two. The white mist clung to the great river and the low,
Virginian land. I said, “Olafson, I’ve never told you, but Bartram took
me upon the _Janet_ here. I was in trouble--I was fleeing.”
He answered in his Viking voice, “That may happen easily to a man who
follows the sea.”
“Aye, but I was not following it then. I’ll tell you some day about it
all. It’s enough now that though it’s many a year, Virginia is not
utterly without danger to me.”
“Then,” he said, “let’s take the first ship we may, big or little. And
I’ll make the inquiry while you lie close at the Seaman’s Hearth.”
But it seemed to me slight danger. Years and years, and I was never
known at Norfolk. And seamen looking for a ship are just that--few
men inquire further. Still I did not, in the days that followed, seek
crowded places.
No ship for Philadelphia presented herself. We heard however of the
_Indian King_ that would presently come in, receive her tobacco,
and go on to the Delaware. She at last seemed our best chance. Olafson
and I, after trials elsewhere, agreed to await her, seeing that we had
little choice but to do so. But all suddenly those that were with us at
the Seaman’s Hearth--Bush and Allgood and Reddy--announced that they
had signed with the _Marigold_ of London, sailing with tobacco a
week after the departure of the _Miranda_, and wanting men.
They went--a fickle lot--but Olafson and David Scott must stay for
Philadelphia.
The _Indian King_ came leisurely. We had sufficient money, and
none seeing aught in me but Jack awaiting a ship, I at last threw away
fear. It was October and gorgeous weather. Olafson and I lounged by
the water side, talking a little and watching all the craft, great and
small. He too had a power of silence. We might be together for hours,
and content with each other’s company, yet our words would never sail a
boat. The Seaman’s Hearth, just by the water, with a bit of a yard and
a broken landing, had so much custom and no more. Seamen came and went,
making, the most of them, short tarrying. The man and his wife who
kept the Hearth got used to two big men, quiet and giving no trouble,
waiting for the _Indian King_.
The town was small enough. It took no long time to view it over. It
was a place of trade and shipping as against Williamsburg that was of
Government, a College, and Polite Society. Not that Norfolk, either,
lacked a small polite world of merchants and retired sea captains and
lawyers and others. It had inns other and better than the Seaman’s
Hearth. Officers from British and foreign ships were seen in these,
and planters on business, arriving in wherries or their own sloops, or
if of the neighborhood, on horseback. What with the coming and going
of many seamen, of nations more than one--for often one heard Spanish,
French or Dutch--and with frontiersmen appearing from the forests west
and south with their wares and on their own business and quick, after
their kind, to take offense, the town had the name of a quarrelsome
one. To meet that condition the officers of the law were numerous and
arbitrary; there were a prison, a stout mayor, a court and lawyers.
Olafson and I examined this borough, and then we sat by harbor side
or walked afield--long walks, through October, into the land south of
the James. Pine trees and other trees and rich and tangled brakes, and
tobacco and tobacco. Now and then a good house, with Negro quarters
near, oftener small houses built of logs; oftenest no house at all,
but autumn forest, marshes, ancient, abandoned Indian fields, streams,
autumn forest coloring like a sunset.
Olafson was not of an impatient kind and David Scott had learned to
curb it. We walked dreamily, soberly, content to await the _Indian
King’s_ good time. Meanwhile there was beauty of a low, forested
land and sighing reeds by still, winding water, of magnificent single
trees, and of a clear, pure, high heaven. I felt it as I had never
done--it gave my heart a contented ache. Years ago I should have said
that I hated Virginia, but now I had passed that bewilderment. These
old, old forests, these still flowing waters, these fields, these
horses, dogs, and others of four feet, these flying folk, these hasty
roads and houses of log and now and then of frame and brick, the
infrequent humans passing, white and black and colored and now and
then a red man, the old and young, the child, the woman, the man, the
mounted and afoot--all were now to me as they had not been. In this
kingdom, when one enters it, long progressions happen in short times.
I was not as I had been when I was in Virginia before and grew less
so all the while. Now the momentary feeling of that evening at the
inn in Charlestown had come to keep house with me. Compassion, hope,
admiration. All things--David Scott with them--had become soul rather
than body, with spirit our ultimate.
Olafson and I talked at times. I told him one day, walking under pine
trees, having just passed a great, ragged, tobacco field, of why and
how I had been in Virginia. He said at the end, “We’d better be more
careful! The _Inez_ that’s going to Baltimore this week is a poor
thing, but I think that her master will take us. Or one of us. You go.
We’ll find each other at Philadelphia. The _Indian King’s_ too
much delayed.”
But that finger with some meaning in it was laid again upon my
shoulder. I did not take, or move to take, the _Inez_.
The days went by. It became evident that weather or some need had
delayed the _Indian King_. But Olafson and David Scott were happy
enough. There is something beyond happiness. Each morn when I waked I
touched that. It held for a longer or shorter while, then faded through
the day. But with each succeeding morn it renewed itself, though with
an infinite variety. It was not dependent upon place or outward history.
October was flying, and still I waited. Perhaps I was waiting for the
_Indian King_, perhaps not.
There came a splendid, frosty morning. The frost vanished, the
windless, sunny day grew warm. Olafson and I debated whether we should
walk afar or go down to our favorite landing and watch the water and
its life. We went to the landing, out to the end, and sat upon the gray
boards, our feet above the green water lapping the piles, our shoulders
against unsawn logs brought down by some raft. Usually this was a quiet
place, a lesser wharf and landing with no great business, but from it
we could watch well the movement of the water world. So we sat there,
and the sun warmed our backs, and the half hours passed, and we did not
trouble to talk, being so much at one.
I was in Philadelphia, telling Philip Smith that I would go to England.
Olafson’s voice entered my ear.
“That sloop is making in here.”
We watched her; she was from the river, not the sea. That and the look
of her brought back something--the tang of up country, of the forests,
of the gray landings like long forefingers, of the brick great houses
and the fields. The wind was light, she came slowly.
I heard Olafson’s voice again, “There are more and more folk upon this
wharf. We had better go walking.”
“Not yet,” I said, and now I was upon the _Janet_, and Bartram
seemed to be saying something, saying it solemnly. I answered Bartram,
“God knows we all have sinned and sin! But there is Something that has
ways and means of its own to draw us forth.” And then I was not on the
_Janet_ or in Philadelphia or England, but somewhere where the
Something spoke. And it was not Something, it was All, it was One. From
that I came stilly, quietly down to the gray wharf and the gleaming
water under the October sky.
The sun shone warm. A small crowd--not a great one, fifteen or twenty
perhaps--was gathering upon the wharf. The sloop might be expected. A
great, laughing black man with a pole came by me and I thought, “You’re
like Pickaninny.”
The sloop grew in size. I saw her kind--that she belonged to some
planter--was bringing tobacco and other matters downstream and would
take back goods, and likely enough had on board her owner. She came
on, a fair creature; she was close and they prepared to bring her
alongside the wharf. Behind us two seamen some one shouted a welcome
and voices answered from the sloop. Then strangely, strangely, to David
Scott, there began to play a flute. A shaggy man in a squirrel-skin
cap, seated cross-legged on the deck by a heap of pelts, breathed into
the instrument, and the soaring, dropping notes relimned for me the
River James from a sycamore south of Daniel Askew’s to the side of the
_Janet_.
Without thought, of its own accord, my hand went up to that scar across
my forehead. Neither swiftly nor slowly I got to my feet and turned my
back upon the sloop. There were folk upon the wharf, but not enough to
impede movement. I walked away, Olafson following me. They saw but two
seamen, so fulfilled with ships that a mere river craft was no magnet.
When we were quit of the wharf I spoke. “I know that flute player. He
would not say my name if he thought, but he might not think.”
We returned to the Seaman’s Hearth and ate our dinner. Afterwards the
question was if we should stay by the Hearth or should take a long walk
into the country. We went, and the smell and feel of it come back to
me to-day, and the goodness of Olafson. We returned under a tremendous
sunset, red and purple ships of the gods on a golden sea. That night I
slept sound and deep, and when I waked at dawn it was with the sense of
having been in a far country, far and great and dear.
Olafson and I ate breakfast. That over, I said that we would not mew
ourselves up because that old Indian trader and flute player was in
town, or more probably somewhere upon the edge of it. The chance of
meeting was very slight, and he was not an enemy; he was a friend. If I
could meet him where none other was by I should like it.
Olafson still demurred. He said that he did not know how it came to
him but he had a sense of danger. But I was restless. I could not stay
within--I was drawn forth--and when he proposed the country again I
said no. At last we went to the water side to watch for the _Indian
King_, but to another wharf than that by which lay the sloop from up
river.
The _Indian King_ did not appear to-day, either. Toward noon we
began our return to the Seaman’s Hearth. We might have taken obscure
ways but we did not. When Olafson proposed it I shook my head. So we
came into the principal street.
Before us rose the chief tavern of the place--we made to pass it; there
were loungers about, and a knot of men emerging from the house, two or
three important persons, it seemed, with satellites. Together they were
enough to halt us; we made to go around in the dusty street and a voice
said, “Those are seamen. Ask them, Colonel!”
We were stopped. Another voice spoke. “Are you men from the _Indian