The slave ship
I was twenty-four. I heard Barget tell two fine guests of Colonel
Amory, riding past Old Mill quarter, that I worked well, but needed
watching. “Runaway. And has spells of darkness.”
So I had! Spells of darkness.
All this time, at Old Mill quarter, the few white men came and went,
but the score of black men stayed. Mingo, Barbadoes Tom, Pickaninny,
Great Joe, Cæsar, Dominick, Bob and Dick and Frank and others.
From time to time Mingo or Great Joe or Pickaninny ran away, were
found--Mingo got as far as Baltimore--returned, and were severely
whipped. You see there is no way a Negro _can_ pay but with his
skin. The white bondservant’s time may be doubled, but Negroes are
already slaves for life. Elsewhere man may be put to forced labor,
but servant and slave already labor from red morn to purple night.
To give them any more would be quite to break down and irremediably
injure--property. Again men may be fined; but from what should
servant-without-wage and slave pay a fine? Culprits may be put in
prison, but if you put servant or slave in prison, it is the master
that is punished, losing the delinquent’s service. The only way
out--since it was nonsense to say that Negroes and white servants did
not transgress--was to make them remember it by bodily pain. Hence the
whip everywhere, ancient Egypt or Chaldea or some antiquity having
found out, for the use and benefit of every country since, that this
was the simplest, easiest, cheapest, everywhere handiest instrument
with which to inflict pain that should warn and deter (and revenge) and
yet not necessarily cripple even for a day. Nothing else could be so
nicely graduated from little to much. If an example were to be made,
it _could_ cripple for any length of time. Pushed far enough, it
might even slay.
One could see the human reason in it--at cool seasons. The lawgiver
might point at vice enough and folly enough among slaves and servants.
Murderous rages, obstinacy against orders and against work, lying,
stealing, wantonness, jealousy, laziness and tale-bearing, I’ve seen
them all, in Guinea Negro and white bondsmen. Not in all Guinea Negroes
nor in all white bondsmen, but in many. The planters may well have
said, “What can we do? It is law and custom and perfectly right that
we own these Negroes, and in a sense and for a time these white men.
We don’t particularly love--no, nor our overseers don’t particularly
love--the whip. But what, for instance, would you do?”
Pickaninny--called so because he was so big a fellow--and Old Hannibal
began to sing, breaking the clods with their hoes. They were born in
Virginia, and Pickaninny’s parents before him.
“When hab I done wid de trouble ob de world,
O-hhh! when hab I done?
Trouble ob de world!
I ask de Lord how long I hold ’em,
Trouble ob de world!
I ask de Lord how long I hold ’em?
I ask de Lord how long I hold ’em?
Hold ’em to de end.
My sins so heavy I can’t get along.
Aahh!
Ah, trouble ob de world!”
Eboe Sam differed from these two. Bought naked out of the
_Albatross_, straight from Bang-alang the same year that I was
bought clothed from the _King William_, we apparently experienced
the same trouble in settling down. I had to face the “seasoning.” He
missed that, his native climate being many degrees hotter and ranker
than Virginia. He had run away. So had I. But he had gone, madly and
desperately, over and over again, chance or no chance. I had not. I was
Scotch and sought straw for my bricks, though bricks in the end I meant
to have, bricks and my fortress and palace! He was, I should reckon,
four or five years older than me. He said he was a chief’s son. “Son
of Mongo--same as him!” He flung his hand toward Colonel Amory who had
just paced by, on his bay mare Cherry.
“African chief!” I said. “I’m the cousin of a Scots chief. Mickle
difference does it make!”
He had little English, and he came under Barget’s wrath continually. A
proud and haughty one! used, that was the trouble, to slaves of his own.
“Ah! Trouble ob de world.
When hab I done wid de trouble ob de world?”
I asked Eboe Sam many questions about Africa. He took a fancy to me,
perhaps because I was at pains to learn a little of his language,
perhaps because I was big of frame and cousin to a chief, perhaps
because I once did him a small kindness. He had as much sense as many
a white man, and there, while we tended tobacco in a blazing July, I
gathered a notion of the things and ways of his country. To him it
was the finest country in the world. Like Scotland. It was totally a
mistake, he said, _his_ being taken and sold.
I had from him my first notion of how, from ancient, ancient time,
African men were the gowden guineas of Africa, aye, and the silver
coin and the note of hand. They did not use metal money; they bought
with men and women and children. How did they get them? It spread as
big as forever, that land; he ran over names of tribes and peoples,
and it was worse than the Old Testament! All warred with one another
for that very money, just like us. Money was money, whether it walked
itself or was carried. Also they battled because of bitter feud and
family quarrel--again similarities!--and they lifted each other’s
cattle and in foray strove always to take prisoners, for prisoners were
money. It was gleeful so to drain the foeman clan’s purse! If there
were dead peace and no good wars going and chiefs were waxing poor,
then was the time _to make one’s own village smaller_. There were
always men and women who could be spared. And children. Plenty people
did wrong. Sell them to the white men! But here he fell into a fit of
rage so sorrowful and righteous indignant that it made one quake.
He--Jarroo--had done no wrong. He was not liable in any way. He was
chief’s son, Great Jarroo’s son. All he could say was that Satan had
been at work. He had slept on his mat after a feast. When he waked he
was out of the village and a rope was round his neck, and so many men
pushed him along whom, when it was light, he found to be Mandingoes. He
killed one, but they dragged him to the coast.
“Kidnapping or Spiriting!” I said. “Don’t you know everything about
that too?”
Yes, he did. But he was chief’s son, Jarroo! It shouldn’t have befallen
_him_.
Another time I asked him what folk in his part of Africa bought with
their money. His eyes gleamed, his tongue moistened his lips, he looked
around the bare cabin--it was at night--with disdain, and began to
describe. Muskets--I made out those at once--knives, cutlasses, powder,
rum, red cloth, blue and white and figured cottons, looking-glasses,
shining ewers and basins, fine coats, bells, trumpets, beads to give
women--all that he craved he told of in a kind of triumph. He had had
them; nothing could take that away from him. England had given them to
him for black and brown, walking ingots. But he liked it not when the
thimble fell in his own lap.
Though he was still a young man he had abundant war scars. Wars must
go on, he said, because there must be slaves for sale. So when there
wasn’t quarrel, pick quarrel. The white men at the castles on the
coast, the factories, helped the chiefs pick them.
The fire on the cabin hearth glared. They were dancing before the long
cabin--Mingo and Great Joe and Pickaninny and others, and Mingo’s wife
and two or three women from Big Field quarter. They had a fiddle;
Barnabas played it. The music screamed and laughed and lilted. All
their voices and their shuffling feet and the flame.
CHAPTER VI
Barget had a shrew of a wife, and a daughter, a slim girl of eighteen,
not beautiful, but with a kind, freckled face and bright blue eyes.
Ten years ago this overseer had been an indentured servant like the
many others around. His own man at last, he then worked for wages, and
saved and bought a little and sold a little and saved again until he
had saved enough to bring over from England his wife and child. Now he
was overseer under Williams at Amory Hall, living in a decent log house
two hundred yards from Old Mill quarter cabins. With him lived a young
fellow, his assistant, whom he was training for his successor when
Williams should have retired and he himself have stepped into Williams’
shoes. For his successor and his son-in-law.
My eyes began to seek this girl. It was three years since I had walked
with Mysie Johnston in the glen. I was twenty-five and unhappy. Nelly
Barget! She had not been at Old Mill at first.
All this time in Virginia I had seen young white women afar, at church,
on the road to the landing or at the landing itself, or in boats that
passed, or in coaches that came a-visiting to Amory Hall. I had seen
young Mistress Maria Amory, seated at the spinet, playing “The Four
Maries.” I had seen, nay, I had touched hands with six young slips of
the ruling order.
And how on earth did that come about? I will tell about that.
It was the day before the ball at the great house. Not even Old Mill
quarter was without talk of that ball and the fine folk who would be
there. They would come by boat, they would come by coach, they would
come on horseback, arriving from other great houses up and down the
river and from Williamsburg. A dozen fine young men and women, Amory
kindred and intimates, were already at Amory Hall. Colonel Amory had
three daughters. The ball was for the birthday of the oldest, my young
Mistress Maria of the spinet.
This day before came Barget to David Scott. Did I know Scots reels
and strathspeys and maybe the Sword Dance? Without taking thought,
I said I did. Then I was to make myself clean and go at once to the
house. Dances of surprise were being arranged for the coming ball and
instruction in the Scotch was wanted.
I said I would not go. Barget whistled. “What d’ye think the Colonel
will say to that?” I did not care what the Colonel said for I was in a
rage. Then all of a sudden that changed and a great wave came over me
of I know not what, save that it might be just youth and longing and
“Mak’ what ye can of it!” and I said I would go.
We had two suits of clothes each, we white servants. Work clothes and
church clothes. So I put on my church clothes--shoes and stockings
and a coarse white shirt, and breeches and coat of indifferent cloth.
It was a tingling, gray, winter day, and Dick Merry and I had been
cutting an oak nine feet in girth. When I came to the great house fires
glowed through the windows and out of an opened door poured laughter. I
entered the hall, and when a mulatto boy appeared, told him to say that
the Scot was here. He grinned and I followed him. They were dancing in
the great parlor, and large enough was the room and all polished the
floor. They had two Negro fiddlers and everything was in practise for
a great affair with masks and dressings-up. They lived, these Virginia
planters, with no little jollity.
Well, here I was, regarding as from an enormous distance a dozen or
more young men and women and two or three elders. The Colonel saw me
and exclaiming, “Ha, Scott, are you there?” signed me to a place by the
fiddlers. So at last they came to the reel and called on me to state if
this were right or that was wrong.
They were good-natured and flushed and free with the dance. They wanted
one step and then another. David Scott was there to answer them, and he
answered.
In the auld historic movement upon which we were engaged, there is a
good deal of handling and clasping and flying together. And of all
there there wasn’t any who danced with the spirit that showed the
Colonel’s second daughter, who was named Judith. She had dark, ringlets
and dark flashing eyes, and a rosebud cheek and a laughing mouth. “Is
this the way--what’s your name--David Scott?” She gave me her hand. I