Spoken like a man, captain, thinks I; give me a leader you can trust, any day. And even Comber, his face contorted with pain, could see it was no go; they were swarming on the bank, and had Kirk spreadeagled; we could see them wrenching his clothes off, squealing with laughter, while close by a couple of them had even started kindling a fire. They were smart housewifely lasses those, all right.
Kirk was yelling blue murder, and as we watched, my girl in the white turban knelt down beside him, and suddenly his voice rose into a horrible, blood-chilling shriek. Several of the Amazons prancing on the bank indicated to us, by obscene gestures, what she was doing to him; Comber groaned, and began to spew, and Spring, swearing like a lunatic, was fumbling to load one of the needle guns. He bawled to the rest of us to follow suit, and we banged away at them for a moment, but it was too dangerous to linger, and with Kirk’s screams, and the gloating shrieks of those she-d - - - ls, drifting downstream after us, We manned the sweeps and rowed for all we were worth. With the current to help us we drove along hard, and I was finally able to choke down my panic and thank my stars for another delivery. Of the half dozen of us in the boat, I was the only one without even a scratch; Spring had a machete cut on his left arm, but not a deep one, and the others’ wounds were mild enough, except for Comber’s. But if Spring was only slightly injured in the flesh, his ambition had taken a nasty jar. He d - - - - d Gezo’s eyes for a treacherous hound, and called the Amazons things that would have made a marine blush, but his chief fury, voiced over and over again as we rowed downstream was:
“I lost that black slut. All these years, and I lost the sow! Even that single one—she would have done! My G - d, I could have used that woman!”
I was pondering that I could have used my white-turbanned Hebe, for a different and less academic purpose—but then I thought of Kirk, and discovered that any tendre I might have cherished for the lady had died. And as I think back now, strapping lass though she was, I can’t say that the old flame rekindles. She was a shrew if ever I saw one.
* * *
a Who has learned to die, has learned how not to be a slave.
b What is more dangerous than having the ear of a tyrant?—Juvenal.
Chapter 4
With the danger safely past, I was soon in good fettle again. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing so cheering as surviving a peril in which companions have perished, and our losses had been heavy. Five men had died in our hasty retreat from Apokoto; apart from Kinnie, Kirk, and the guard on the boat, two others had been cut down by Amazons on the path, and of course the cabin boy had been left behind deliberately by Spring, not that he was any great loss. (It will give you some notion of the kind of men who manned the Coast slavers, when I tell you that not a word of protest was said about this; nobody had liked the little sneak anyway.)
For the rest, it looked as though Comber was a goner. My wench had shovelled her spear well in under his short ribs, leaving a hole like a hatchway; Murphy the surgeon, when he had sobered up, announced that there was nothing he could do but clean and stitch it, which he did, “but for what may have come adrift inside,” says he, “I can’t answer.” So they put Comber in his berth, half-dead, with Mrs Spring to nurse him—“that’ll carry the poor s - d off, even if his wound doesn’t,” says Murphy.
Then we went to work. There were upwards of a thousand niggers in the barracoons on the morning after our Apokoto exploit, and Spring was in a sweat to get our cargo loaded and away. It was the possibility of naval patrols sniffing us out that worried him; Sullivan’s suggestion, that Gezo might take it into his head to come down and make a clean sweep of us, he dismissed out of hand. As Spring saw it, the Amazons and not Gezo had been responsible for the attack; now they had rescued their six wenches, and Gezo still had his pistols, he wouldn’t want to offend us further. He was right; Sanchez, who was an astonishing good plucked ’un, for a Dago, actually went up to talk to Gezo a day later, to see that all was well, and found the black rascal full of alarm in case Spring was going to wash his hands of the Dahomey trade. Sanchez reassured him, and dropped a hint that if Gezo would even now part with an Amazon it would make for friendly relations, but Gezo was too windy of provoking his bodyguard. He just clutched his case of pistols and begged Sanchez to tell Spring that he was still his friend, sawa sawa, and hoped they would continue to do good business together—all this, mark you, while Kirk and one of the men who’d been caught on the path were strung up in front of the death house, with those black she-fiends working on them before a cheering crowd. They were still alive, Sanchez said, but you wouldn’t have known they were human beings.
So honour was satisfied, both sides, but Spring and Sanchez took no chances. The Balliol College’s nets were rigged, and her twelve and nine-pounders shotted, while Sanchez’s pickets guarded the jungle trails and the river. All remained peaceful, however, and the business of loading the slaves went ahead undisturbed.
With our second mate dead and our third apparently dying, I found myself having to work for a living. Even with men who knew their business as well as these, it’s no easy matter to pack six hundred terrified, stupid niggers into a slave deck; it’s worse than putting Irish infantry into a troopship.
First Spring and Murphy went through the barracoons, picking out the likeliest bucks and wenches. They were penned up in batches of a hundred, men and women separate, a great mass of smelling, heaving black bodies, all stark naked, squatting and lying and moaning; the sound was like a great wailing hum, and it never stopped, day or night, except when the tubs of burgoo were shoved into the pens, and they shut up long enough to empty the gourds which were passed round among them. What astonished me was that Spring and Murphy were able to walk in among them as though they were tame beasts; just the two of them in that mass of cowed, miserable humanity, with a couple of black guards jerking out the ones selected. If they’d had a spark of spirit the niggers could have torn them limb from limb, but they just sat, helpless and mumbling. I thought of the Amazons, and wondered what changed people from brave, reckless savages into dumb resigned animals; apparently it’s always the way on the Coast. Sullivan told me he reckoned it was the knowledge that they were going to be slaves, but that being brainless brutes they never thought of doing anything about it.
Those who were selected were herded out of the barracoons into a long railed place like a sheep pen, all jammed together with three black guards either side, armed with whips and pistols. There was a narrow gate at the other end, just wide enough to let one slave through at a time, and the two biggest guards were stationed there. As each nigger emerged they seized him and flung him face down beside an iron brazier full of glowing coals, and two of Sanchez’s Dago pals clapped a branding iron on his shoulder. He would squeal like blazes, and the niggers in the pen would try to crowd back out the other end, but the guards lashed them on, and another would be hauled out and branded the same way. The screaming and weeping in the pen was something to hear; everyone who could was on hand to watch, and there was much merriment at the antics of the niggers, blubbering before they were burned, and hopping and squealing afterwards.
Spring was there for the branding of the wenches, to see that it was done lightly, just below the ankle on the inside, in the case of the better-looking ones. “Who the d - - - l wants a young wench with scars on her backside?” he growled. “Even if we ain’t selling fancies, the less marking the better; the Legrees tell me the Southern ladies don’t want even their field women burned these days.22 So have a care with those irons, you two, and you, doctor, slap on that grease with a will.”
This was to Murphy, who sat beyond the brazier with a huge tub of lard between his feet. As each branded nigger was pulled forward one of the black guards would thrust the burned shoulder or ankle under Murphy’s nose; he would take a good look at it and then slap a handful of the lard on the wound, crying either, “There’s for you, Sambo”, or “That’ll pretty you up, acushla”; he was half full of booze, as usual, and from time t
o time would apply himself to his bottle and then cry encouragement to the niggers as they came through, or break into a snatch of raucous song. I can see him now, swaying on his stool, red face glistening, shirt hanging open over the red furze on his chest, plastering on the grease with his great freckled hand and chanting:
“Al-though with lav-ish kind-ness
The gifts of Go-od are strewn,
The heath-en in his blind-ness
Bows down to wood and sto-one.”
When he was done with them the heathen were pushed through a series of wooden frames set up close by the Balliol College’s gangplanks. One was six feet by two, another slightly smaller, and a third smaller still. By means of these the slaves were sized, and sent up one of three gangplanks accordingly; the biggest ones were for the bottom of the slave deck, the middle-sized for the first tier of shelves, and the smallest for the top tier, but care was taken to separate men and women—a tall wench or a little chap could have got in among the wrong sex, and Spring wouldn’t have that. He insisted that the women should be berthed forward of the first bulkhead and the men all aft of it, and since they would be chained up they wouldn’t be able to get up to high jinks—I didn’t see why they shouldn’t, myself, but Spring had his own reasons, no doubt.
Once up the planks, though, the really hard work began. I didn’t know much about it, but I had to work with the hands who stowed the slaves, and I soon picked up the hang of it. As each slave was pushed down the hatch, he was seized by a waiting seaman and forced to lie down on the deck in his allotted place, head towards the side of the ship, feet towards the centre, until both sides of the deck were lined with them. Each man had to go in a space six feet by fifteen inches, and now I saw why there had been so much argument over that extra inch; if they were jammed up tight, or made to lie on their right sides, you could get ever so many more in.
This was the hard part, for the slaves were terrified, stupid, and in pain from their branding; they wriggled and squirmed on the deck and wouldn’t be still, and the hands had to knock them about or lay into the most unruly ones with a rope’s end. One huge buck, bawling and with tears streaming down his face, made a dash for the hatch, but Sullivan knocked him flat with a hand-spike, threw him into place, and terrified the others by shaking a cat-o’-nine-tails at them, to let them see what they might hope to get if they misbehaved.
When they were placed, a shackle was clapped round each right ankle, and a long chain threaded through it, until they were all stowed, when the chain was made fast to the bulkheads at either end. Soon there were four lines of niggers flat on the deck, with a space up the middle between them, so that the seamen could stand there to pack the later arrivals into the shelves.
It’s not that I’m an abolitionist by any means, but by the end of that day I’d had my bellyful of slaving. The reek of those musky bodies in that deck was abominable; the heat and stench grew by the hour, until you’d have wondered that anything could survive down there. They howled and blubbered, and we were fagged out with grabbing brown limbs and tugging and shoving and mudging them up with our feet to get the brutes to lie close. They fouled themselves where they lay, and before the job was half done the filth was indescribable. We had to escape to the deck every half hour to souse ourselves with salt water and drink great draughts of orange juice, before descending into that fearful pit again, and wrestle again with wriggling black bodies that stunk and sweated and went everywhere but where you wanted them. When it was finally done, and Sullivan ordered all hands on deck, we climbed out dead beat, ready to flop down anywhere and go to sleep.
But not with John Charity Spring about. He must go down to inspect, and count the rows, and kick a black body into place here and tug another one there, before he was satisfied. He d - - - - d our eyes for letting ’em soil the deck, and ordered the whole place hosed down, niggers and all; they dried where they lay in no time, of course, and the steam came out of the hatches like smoke.
I looked down at it just before the hatch gratings went on, and it was an indescribable sight. Row upon row of black bodies, packed like cigars in a box, naked and gleaming, the dark mass striped with glittering dots of light where the eyes rolled in the sooty faces. The crying and moaning and whimpering blended into a miserable anthem that I’ll never forget, with the clanking of the chains and the rustle of hundreds of incessantly stirring bodies, and the horrible smell of musk and foulness and burned flesh.
My stomach doesn’t turn easy, but I was sickened. If it had been left to me, then and there, I’d have let ’em go, the whole boiling of them, back to their lousy jungle. No doubt it’s a deplorable weakness in my character, but this kind of raw work was a thought too much for me. Mind you, sit me down in my club, or at home, and say, “Here, Flash, there’s twenty thou for you if you’ll say, ‘aye’ to a cargo of black ivory going over the Middle Passage”, and I ain’t saying I’ld turn you down. Nor do I flinch when someone whips a black behind or claps on a brand—but enough’s enough, and when you’ve looked into the hold of a new-laden slaver for the first time, you know what hell is like.23
I mentioned this to Sullivan, and he spat. “You think that’s hell, do you? First blackbird voyage I made, as a young hand, we took three hundred coons from the Gallinas, and we were setting out for Rio when a Limey sloop tacks on to us. It was a Portuguese flag we carried, with a yaller-black Dago skipper in command; he saw sure enough they were going to take us.” He looked at me with his head on one side. “Can you guess what that Christian Angolese son-of-a-b - - - h did? G’wan, have a guess.”
I said I had heard of slave cargoes being thrown overboard, so that when the Navy came up all the evidence had gone. Sullivan laughed.
“There wasn’t time for that, our skipper figures. But we were carryin’ palm oil as well as slaves, and had a good deal of trade powder left over. So he set the ship on fire, an’ we took to the boats. Navy couldn’t get near her, so she just burned out an’ sank—with three hundred niggers aboard. I wouldn’t care to guess how many of ’em were lucky enough to drown.” He laughed again, without any mirth at all. “And you think that’s hell, down there? I guess you also think that Mr. J.C. Spring is a real tough skipper!”
Well, I did, and if there were bigger swine afloat in the earlies I’m only glad I never met them. But Sullivan’s story gave me the shudders all right, for it reminded me that the next stage of our voyage was the notorious Middle Passage, with all the dangers of pursuit and capture, to say nothing of hurricane and shipwreck.
“D’you think there’s any chance of … of that happening with us?” says I, and Sullivan snorted.
“I’ll say this for Spring—he don’t lose ships, or cargoes. He believes in keeping the sharks hungry. Any Navy coaster that comes up with us is in for a h - - l of a chase—less’n she’s a steamer an’ catches us in a flat calm.”
Here was a fearful thought. “What then?” says I.
“Then—why, we fight her,” says he, and left me prey to a nausea that had nothing to do with the heat or the slave-stench or my weariness. Having lately been at grips with fighting nigger women, I could see myself shortly assisting in a running-sea-battle against the Royal Navy—just what was needed to liven up the cruise. And by jove, it nearly came to that, too, and on our very first hour out from that abominable coast.
We dropped down river early the next morning, to catch the ebb tide, I believe, and it seemed a piece of lunacy to me to try those shoals and islands in the half light. However, Spring knew his business; he took the wheel himself, and with only the foretopsail spread we drifted slowly between the green banks, the leadsmen chanting quietly, and the first hint of dawn beginning to lighten the sky over the black jungle mass astern. It was a queer, eery business, gliding so silently along, with only the mumble of the slaves, the creak of rope and timber, and the gurgle of water to break the stillness, and then we were clear of the last banks and the sun shot a great beam of light ahead of us across the placid surface of the sea.
Spring just stared for a moment, and then says: “Foresail and main-tops’l, Mr Sullivan,” before getting his glass out for a look.
“White ens’n,” says he presently, without any emotion. “Take a look, mister. Twenty-gun sloop, I’d say.”
Sullivan agreed, and while my bowels did the polka the two of them just stood and watched her as though she’d been a pleasure steamer. I didn’t know much about sailing, as you’re aware, but even I could see that she was moving more briskly than we were, that there was nothing but light airs stirring the surface, and that she wasn’t more than two miles away. It looked to me as though the Balliol College’s voyage was over before it had rightly begun, which merely shows how ignorant I was.
For an hour, while my gorge rose steadily, we watched her; we were doing no more than creep out from the coast, and the sloop did the same, only a little faster, and converging gradually all the time on our course. I could see that eventually we would be bound to meet, if we held our courses, and I had an idea that in light wind the sailing advantage would be all with the smaller vessel. But Spring seemed unconcerned; from time to time he would turn and survey the coast behind us, and the sky, converse shortly with Sullivan, and then go back to watching the sloop, with his hands stuck deep in his pockets.
He was waiting confidently, I now know, for a wind, and he got it just when I had finally given up all hope. The sails flapped, Spring barked an order, and at a shout from Sullivan the hands were racing aloft; in the same moment the boom of a shot sounded over the water, and a pillar of spray rose out of the sea a few hundred yards from our port bow.
The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection Page 146
