The slave ship
fish takes your line, and you’ve drawn him up and in before you can
think or wink! A bell inside just rang, ‘We’re short a couple of men,
since Ralph Daughter died and the Dutch lad left the ship.’ And anyhow,
what’s the care, considering we’re leaving, not coming, and ’twas all
in the dark and none seeing?”
“You’re an immoral man, Mr. McNaughton, with your no care at all for
civilized laws!” He addressed me. “It’ll be some trouble setting you
ashore, but I can take it!”
“I hope you won’t, sir,” I said. “I can serve you as a sailor, and I’m
sair wanting to see Scotland again.”
“So that’s where it lies?” he answered. “And when did you leave that
poor, cold, barren land, and for what?”
“I left it five years ago, and for being at Culloden.”
He jerked back from the table. “They were fools at Culloden! Some
kin of my ain were involved, but none the less they were fools at
Culloden.--What’s your name?”
“David Scott.”
“Scott! There are a mort of Scotts. Scott of Where?”
I gave the name of our old house. He looked at me thoughtfully. As for
me, I turned two dice around in my mind, and then cast one, seeing
I must choose quickly. “You are Captain William Bartram. I remember
you. You came to my father’s house when I was fourteen and I rowed you
across the loch. I called you Cousin Bartram, and you gave me a Spanish
gold piece.”
He stared. “Why, so I did! Well, this is the strangest world!” He drank
the red wine. “And what is it you think you’ll be doing?”
“What I said, sir. Mr. McNaughton has just stated that the _Janet_
needs seamen. I’ll work for my passage.”
“Your passage where?”
“To Scotland.” When I saw him that time, years and years ago, he was
captain of an East Indiaman. His ship, I remembered, was then the
_Margaret_. “To Scotland,” I said again, and Edinburgh rose before
me, and a mountain, a loch and a glen.
“Scotland?” he repeated. “And what should a Culloden man on the wrong
side, that has been deported for life or the better part of it, do in
Scotland? I’m thinking you might explain your disappearance for five
years, but not your reappearance! As I sit here, I’m remembering the
case, for I was told of it when I happened to be in Carlisle. You broke
gaol and were taken in a barn. Aye, there are plenty of informers
in Scotland who sit by the roadside and mark such as you!--You’re
noticeable, too,” he said, and again drank wine.
David Scott stood in silence. A window was open; he heard the light
washing of the river down which he had come. In the desperate ache and
urge to escape and find a life that was not this life, Desire had made
a picture and had declined to shadow it. I had thought somehow of easy
hiding, and men having forgotten, and safety, and old, sweet life. But
now I saw the shadows and that they hid an iron, inimical power that
might well toss me back across the ocean, a marked ball, precisely into
Daniel Askew’s hands. Then I would do murder and be hanged for it. But
likelier than all that, they would hang me first in Scotland. There
was no refuge; home was home no longer. I may have known it all along,
but never realized it. Dark, dark, dark!--But what was the power that
had set me on the _Janet_?
“If your port’s Bristol,” I said, “I’ll fare as I can in England. Or
I might shift there to some Dutch vessel, and live and die in the Low
Countries----”
“And anyhow,” he said, as if not marking me, “neither Scotland nor
England’s my destination at present.”
“What is it then?”
McNaughton behind me gave a click. “Ye’ve got your impudence with you
to be speirin’ the Captain that! Fine fo’castle stuff ye air!”
As for William Bartram, he did not change his countenance, but wiped
a drop of wine from the chart. He was a big man with his big nose and
hawk eyes, and knew how to command. Stories of him were running around
in my head, in motion after many years. There had been, I thought now,
many stories. At last he spoke, in his reasonable, deep voice. “So you
see, kinsman, your shortest way round might be just to step now into
the boat and be rowed ashore!”
I said, “Will you row me ashore yourself, kinsman, as I rowed you
across the loch?”
He put down the glass that was on the way to his lips, and leaning back
appeared to study me afresh. Again I heard the water lapping. The air
in the brown cabin began to move and hum around me, and yet no moving
or humming was visible or audible. But I felt changes and decisions,
and yet back of them something that neither changed nor decided. I
spoke again, “When you said ‘kinsman’, sir, you said ‘I’ll not put
you ashore against your will.’ Now all my will is to abide with the
_Janet_. You’ll not regret. I’ll work out the passage, wherever
it’s to, or long or short. The passage and the gold piece, too.”
His beard twitched. “Aweel, as to the gold piece, I gied ye that. But
I’m no objectin’ if it heightens your appetite for wark.” With that
he rolled up his chart and called out, “Geordie!” whereupon the cabin
boy appeared. “Glasses, Geordie, and another bottle and some biscuit.”
He measured me again. “I’m thinking that I’ve an old suit of clothes
that might nearly fit you. You can’t be parading around in a guise
that skirls out ‘Runaway!’” He rose from the table and crossed to his
own cabin that opened into the great one. Now I saw more clearly what
a big, muscular man he was. He vanished, and McNaughton gave another
click. “I hope ye’ll remember me, Mr. Scott, when ye’re scattering
moidores! What a thing it is to be daft about your ain kith and kin
that ye see but seldom, and to find a braw example rising like Neptune
out of the deep!”
I drew a long breath. “He’s a fine man. I remember him so well now!”
“Aye, he’s a fine man. No better captain in the trade! Aweel, your
fortune’s made. Dinna forget that ’twas I that pulled you out of the
river!”
“I won’t,” I said. “And truly I thank you for it.”
Captain William Bartram reappeared. “Go in there and change.” I obeyed.
There was a light, and he had laid upon the bed quite good enough
apparel, better than any David Scott had worn this long, long while.
We were both tall and big-boned men. He had more flesh than I, so that
his clothes hung somewhat loosely. But they answered. As I dressed I
looked around. His cabin was very neatly kept, with ingenious devices
of shelves and cupboards and racks. There were arms, pistols and a
sword and a cutlass, more pieces, it seemed to me, than would be usual
for the master of a trading vessel. It might, however, be his fancy.
Now David Scott had fought in battle and came of a fighting stock, and,
occasion given, he could and did revolt, and feel somber, wild and
hot anger and fight for his own. Witness all my life in Virginia for
that! But I did _not_ even then, not in Scotland, not at Culloden,
not for itself, God knows, even in Virginia! care for battling and
bludgeoning. I had rather reason it out, though I stifled that down so
often, and fought. So I looked at my kinsman’s armory, but did not
lust for it. He had a shelf of books. I lusted more for them, and I
lusted now for the rum and brandy which he must have upon his ship.
When I was dressed I rolled into a bundle those wretched and ragged
garments that I had worn, and through the cabin window tossed them
into the dark and gliding water. And then I returned to the great
cabin and to my cousin. Mr. McNaughton was now seated with a glass of
Canary before him, and the two had been talking. Both gazed at me a
moment before speaking. No doubt my general air was improved by decent
attire and by hope and warmth and kinsman and the taste of adventure
that was not tragic and despairing. At any rate, “Sit ye down, David,”
said William Bartram and poured wine for me. “Conditions cloak men
strangely!” Again he looked at me thoughtfully. “You’ve had a fair
education? You could clerk a bit at need?”
“I think so. Though for five years I’ve not touched a pen and hardly
seen a book.”
“You like books?”
“I used to. Yes, I like them.”
“I don’t like all books,” said my cousin. “But give me the Ancients--in
a translation--and I’m as happy as the day is long.” With which he
neatly picked up his talk with Mr. McNaughton at the broken end. “You
see, Mr. McNaughton, it’s not possible for a Bartram to derogate his
blood by putting it in the forecastle of his own ship. So we’ll just
name him a passenger and give him that bit hole in the side yonder. It
may have been providential that young Smith was just no clerk at all
and left me in Philadelphia.”
“Whatever you say, sir. Your will’s law here.”
“Well, that’s settled,” said the Captain. “Have you had supper, David?”
Christian Todd and I had eaten at sunset, and I said so. “Then it’s
bedtime,” answered Bartram. “We’ll be lifting and away with the first
blink of light.”
The _Janet_ seemed to me a roomy ship. The cabin that had been
young Smith’s who differed with the Captain and parted at Philadelphia,
was big enough for me to turn about in, and I heard the water lapping,
and seemed in a dream, and laid down a free man, and said the word to
myself mair than once. “Free! Free!” and then I went to sleep.
I waked after hours of dreamless sleep, deep as the nadir or high
as the zenith. In at the tiny window looked the pale dawn. Then the
morning star was set in the round and vanished and came again. A hum
and creaking entered my ears, and the cabin slanted slightly and
righted again. For a little I lay, savoring the most strange drama of
life. The _King William_ passed before me, and Gervase Morrison
and Colonel Amory and Williams and Barget and Nelly Barget and Judith
Amory and Dick Merry and Pickaninny and Eboe Sam and Daniel Askew and
others. I came down the river with Christian Todd, and his flute was
playing. I was in Scotland, that now it seemed my body would never be
in again. During the last three years the image of Mysie Johnston had
paled, the heart had despaired and altered and ceased to beat that way.
I thought now, “She has forgotten doubtless, and maybe married,” and
the thought had a dull sound and was no longer wholly unbearable. The
star swung again across the window and was gone.
Then Scotland no more! Well, then, where was I sailing? I thought of
the Bermudas, or on the other hand, Charleston or Bahamas or Barbados.
If the _Janet_ were for any of these places, I meant not to leave
her. I meant not to leave her until she put me somewhere in Europe. I
was still a young man. All manner of old, not all uncomely, ambitions
stirred and rose from the dead, from the slain and stamped upon. I felt
strength in me to make a name for David Scott, a name that should stand
for increase to all.
A hand knocked upon my door. It was the cabin boy, and he held a
tumbler of spirits and water. “Your dram, sir.” I took it and drank,
knowing that I had here a dragon to fight, and postponing the combat.
Dressing, I peered out of my small round for air and light and saw no
shore, but a green and rumpled sea and in the east saffron and purple
bars of sunrise. The star had melted away. We were moving under a good
breeze in the great bay or sea of Chesapeake. Quitting my quarters, I
found the cabin empty of all but Geordie, who was setting the table for
breakfast. It seemed that there was no shackle upon my movements. I
might go where I would, so I went on deck.
The _Janet_ was a fine ship, a four-master, larger, cleaner,
finer, a better sailer in every way than had been that _King
William_ of weary memory, or that long-ago brig on which I had
turned seaman through a northern summer. All my prepossessions of the
night before strengthened, and a love of the sea and of this white,
racing creature upon it shot up from some deep place within me. Oh, it
was better than working Daniel Askew’s tobacco!