The slave ship
The sails were piled to catch the light but favoring wind, and men yet
worked aloft or upon the decks beneath those white billows. I watched
and listened, leaning against the side. Seamen, passing, stared at me.
But some word had been given, and they were civil when they spoke. Crew
and officers, and myself as supernumerary, I reckoned that there might
be not far from fifty men aboard. Some were Scots, but much the greater
number English. Three or four seemed to me French or Italians, and I
made out certainly one Dutchman. Sailors are--sailors. These seemed to
me a good average, or--so sweetly did everything blow to me--slightly
above the average. There would be good, bad and indifferent among
them as among any fifty men anywhere. But there have been crews of
scoundrels, and the _Janet’s_ was not such.
Cheerful were all the sounds of the ship, cheerful the golden sun that
now pushed above the wave. I looked toward Virginia, and saw a dimness
that I knew was land. It was vanishing. “Let it vanish!” I thought, and
“New Life! I shall taste New Life!”
Seeing that I was the Captain’s cousin, I mounted to the poop deck.
Now I saw that the ship carried guns, three to a side. Just above me
floated the great British flag. My eyes lifted to the mainmast top.
There streamed another flag--it would be that of the owners--but I
could not make it out.
McNaughton came up the ladder, saw me and stopped to speak. “I needna
ask ye how ye’re faring, Mr. Scott. Ye look like a bridegroom the
morn.--Aye, it’s grand, the sea and air and a good deck under a man’s
feet!”
I said, “What’s the flag yonder, Mr. McNaughton?”
He followed my gaze. The sky up there was now a lovely blue, and
against it the flag gleamed richly, streaming in the blissful morn.
“Eh, the flag? The Royal African Company’s.”
I did not answer. Something crashed, as though a castle fell, and it
was night, and a spectre arose. _The Royal African Company--The Royal
African Company--The Royal African Company!_
I heard some one say, and it might of course be David Scott that was
speaking, “We’re sailing then to Africa?”
“Oh, aye!” replied McNaughton. “To Daga that’s one of the Company’s
factories above the Niger.--And there’s Geordie signalling breakfast.
Will ye come along?”
CHAPTER IX
“So that’s where the wind blows!” said William Bartram. “I’ve marked
you through the day, walking in a cloud, and I said to myself, ‘What’s
wrong here?’ and ‘We’ll have it out the eve.’” He leaned back in the
great, fixed chair, in the cabin of the _Janet_, his pipe and
glass and bottle before him on the table. He only drank after supper,
and only wine, and no more than that leonine head of his could stand.
The yellow lantern light fell upon him. I liked him, had liked him
strongly, I knew now, when I was a boy; liked him to-day, and that
apart from all reasons for gratitude. There was that in our two
natures, for all our difference in years, that clung, that sounded
together. There would be great differences too, but we should never
escape, nor want to escape, from the liking.
“So it’s as a servant of the Royal African Company that you’re not
liking me?” he said without anger. “And you’re liking the _Janet_
no longer, because she’s built and decked and stocked for the slave
trade?”
“I have been in effect a slave; I don’t like slavery.”
He answered from behind a cloud of tobacco smoke. “It’s my own opinion
that it will not last forever. But in the meantime it’s the weary way
of this weary world. We’re all more or less slaves.”
“Yes,” I said. “More or less.”
“I take your emphasis. But the ‘less’ has always come on slowly and has
had to wait on time.--As for Negro slaves, Pharaoh owned them, and for
all we know, Solomon and David. Probably Pericles did, and certainly
Alexander and Augustus Cæsar. When you come to know Africa, you’ll see
that it’s just one great hunting ground for men and had always been so.
It’s recognized. Moreover, nothing would so break the public heart in
Africa as not to be allowed to trade enemies or the useless or their
own for what they want. When folk continuously enslave one another,
there’s no good shrieking about outside giants.”
Eboe Sam rose before me. I said, “Still you think it will not last.”
“I suppose one day we’ll all grow up,” he answered. “Europe, America
and Africa. Grow to some kind of a religious level. But now we’re in
and of the present world.”
“You tempt them.”
“Aye, they’re very temptable,” he answered.
He drummed on the table. “I will tell you, David. The _Margaret_
was my ship at the time when I came for a week to your father’s house.
I had had her then for three years, and I had her for four years
thereafter. Seven in all. She was a good ship, and I sailed her for
the East India Company. London to Calcutta, Calcutta to London again.
English goods and passengers going out, spices and ivory and fine
Indian weaves returning. Seven years--I sailed her for seven years,
and gave the people over me no trouble, and made the Company money.
Sailed her well! I could not tell you all the storms and plagues I
brought her through. And they praised me--they praised me in London
and Calcutta. If a great man of the Company was going out to India,
they used to say, ‘Go in Bartram’s ship.’ Storms and fearful calms and
plagues of kinds--those things happen in seven years--but I brought the
_Margaret_ and them in her safe to haven. And then in one night
came a typhoon that broke our masts and beat us down. Our seams opened,
the pumps were naught, we took to the boats. The _Margaret_ sank
before us. The boats parted company, two were lost that night. After
six days a Dutchman picked mine up. Three men and I only were alive
in it. We got at last to London. The Company had my record, and after
six months it gave me another ship, the _Falcon_. I sailed her
a year, then, passing Cape Saint Vincent, there shot out against us
two Moorish pirates. We fought them a day, they grappled and boarded,
we were afire. The officers and crew were slain or taken. I gathered
my strength and burst from those that swarmed upon me and leaped into
the sea. The murk saved me--the land was not so far--I swam and was
carried and a plank came by, and at dawn I was ashore.--I’ll not weary
you with the long road for a penniless man to London. I got there and
to India House and made my report, and old Hollingsbury said, as dry
as Sahara sand, ‘Your luck’s not so good as it used to be, Captain
Bartram.’ I knew what that meant. It meant ‘Nothing must happen to the
next ship, if so be you want to continue with the East India Company.’
But they gave me the _Good Adventure_, and inside three months she
was driven in a gale and staved to pieces on the Irish coast.”
He got up and walked the cabin twice and returned. “They who follow the
sea know certain things. To be called a fortunate captain is summer and
the fruits thereof. To be named an unfortunate captain is winter and
the blast that makes you shrink. The East India Company departed from
me. I had saved a little, but it wasna much. I had a hard year, David,
a hard year.
“And then Murchieson and Murchieson gave me the _Rose of Lorn_,
trading between Liverpool and Boston. And in a year, off Newfoundland,
in a fog, the _Lydia_, a barquentine, ran us down. When I got to
London this time I went to a woman teller of fates that I had heard of.
She said that I had entered a belt of trouble that had been waiting for
me, just as a ship might enter the doldrums or the Arctic seas. A star
was adverse to me and a number was my foe. Why?--Well, as to that, the
true I Myself had not been born in precisely the year 1720, as I had
mistakenly thought. The true I Myself was old enough to have earned a
world of good and ill.--And how wide did she think was the belt?--But
that she could not tell though she held that it was thinning. I could
not see that, David, when, after long, long waiting, I got just a
poor brig, the _Hannah Lisle_, owned by the Alleynes and plying
to Rotterdam. It was that or starve--and she burned at the wharf at
Rotterdam, the boat next her carrying powder and a spark reaching it,
none knew how. And what did it count that I did not set that fire, nor
had the eye of God to foresee such a thing? I was done for, David, done
for!--Did you hear no sound in all those years of my matters?”
“I was sent to school,” I said. “I lived with my mother’s brother in
Edinburgh, and he was a bookman and a dreamer. And then my own life
began to turmoil.”
“Well, so it was,” he said. “I had been a proud man, but that was over.
I found a garret and grew gaunt as a wolf there,--as gaunt as you,
David, when you came aboard. I knew owners and captains and seamen
enough, and many I knew would have given me a crust or a crown piece,
but I did not choose, as I did not choose to take my wage when my ship
was gone. What I had saved from my good years, having been always a
free spender, was all departed. And I did not believe, David, that I
would ever sail a ship again.”
He was silent, then poured wine with a steady hand and pushed the
bottle to me. “Then there came up my garret stair John Archibald that
had been mate upon the _Falcon_ and prisoner on the Barbary Coast
whence in six months he got away in a Spanish galleon that carried him
to Cuba, and from Cuba, by hook and crook, he got to Jamaica. He told
me all about it. Then came into Kingston harbor the _Swan_, a
Royal African Company ship, Captain Martin, wanting a mate. Archibald
appealed to Martin and got the berth. Two years afterwards Martin
retired. Archibald, who’s a queer chield, had kinsfolk above him in
station, with stock in the Company. He was given the _Swan_--is
her captain still--I saw him last trip at Daga. Well, David, to get
back to my garret! Once I had done him a good turn, and now he had come
up with me again, and he had not forgotten the bairn Gratitude. He
wanted me to go with him to see certain gentlemen. So I went, David,
having no chance in the world of an East Indiaman which is what I
would have much preferred. But beggars may not be choosers! And many
are willing to serve the Royal African Company.--Anyhow, I went with
Archibald. And like that, David, the luck turned! I came out of the
belt of darkness that woman talked about! They took to me.”
Color and vigor increased in my cousin’s face. “They saw and said that
those lost ships were not lost through me. They were willing to try
me. They talked of the _Janet_ that was building, that was nearly
ready for the sea.” Bartram’s voice rose almost to a shout. “David
Scott, in three months I trod her poop deck and took her down to the
blue water. And she’s seven years old, the _Janet_, and no man
quarrels more with William Bartram. If a star was my antagonist, he has
taken his war elsewhere!” Again he rose from his chair and walked the
cabin, then stopped before the window and looked forth upon a dark blue
night powdered with those orbs or beings or whatever they are. When
he spoke his voice had sunken and was not addressed to me. “He is no
longer in the sky; he is dead or obscured, banished as I was banished!
But as for the _Janet_, she and I are one!”
He turned toward me. “Since the days of Elizabeth this trade’s been
going on. Tudors and Stuarts and the Hanover Family have all been able
to put up with it! Parliaments no less--the Royal African Company has
its parliamentary grants. And all the pillars of the world, the big
pillars and the little pillars. If you could see now a list of the
Company supporters! It’s imposing, man, imposing!”
“I know the world is with the trade,” I said.
“Well, the world maun live!” he answered, with a kind of fierceness.
“It’s all inwound--it’s all so inwound. Things are built upon it to an