Jump Ship to Freedom

by James Lincoln Collier

  I slipped across to the cabin and had a look in the window. There was a man in there lying on a little cornhusk mattress, sound asleep. I ducked back and slid down the bank to the rowboat. The oars were in it. Quickly I untied the rope from the tree. Then I eased out into the water, climbed in, and lay flat on the bottom, letting it drift downstream. I stayed that way with my head down for ten minutes. Then I figured I was far enough downstream to be out of sight of the cabin, and I sat up and began rowing.

  What was going to happen to me now? It would be a sad thing for Mum to have me sold off to the West Indies. Then she’d be all alone, no husband, no son, no friends: just her working away for the rest of her life for the Iverses.

  I wondered what she was doing just then. Was she thinking about me, the same as I was thinking about her? By this time she’d have learned about the shipwreck and Birdsey and all. Some Connecticut captain who’d been in New York was bound to have brought home the news. Did she know that Captain Ivers was planning to sell me off to the West Indies? Would Mrs. Ivers have told her that? I didn’t know; but I knew she’d be worried about me, worried that I’d drowned or got hurt.

  What would happen to her if I got caught? The only hope we had was in the soldiers’ notes. And I didn’t even know if they’d ever be worth anything. So I decided to stop thinking about it, and I sat in the boat, drifting along and looking at the sights.

  Around the middle of the morning there began to be a road alongside the riverbank, and some houses and then people coming along the road on foot or horseback. I went drifting on, and a couple of hours later I came into Philadelphia harbor.

  14

  It was a pretty sight, with ships everywhere and a forest of masts and bowsprits sticking out over the harbor street. It was just as busy as New York harbor—men everywhere, loading ships from wagons and loading wagons from ships, or just lounging around; stacks of casks and boxes and piles of hay and barrels; small boats filled with fruit and vegetables tied to the wharves. There was a pretty good number of blacks around, too. One old fellow was sitting there smoking a pipe and playing queer tunes on a kind of fiddle made of gourds.

  I didn’t want to go drifting around the harbor in a stolen boat any longer than I had to, so I pulled up to the first dock I came to, tied up, and climbed out, trying not to look nervous. I walked along the wharves a good way so as to be away from the boat I’d stolen, in case somebody came along and recognized it. Then I leaned up against a wall and waited until a black person came along and asked him how to get to the State House. It wasn’t hard to get to, he said, and told me the way. In about twenty minutes I was standing in front of it, feeling pretty nervous.

  I tell you, it was a fine great place, all brick, with lots of big windows sparkling in the sun, and carvings and patterns in the moldings around the door. There were gravel walks along the front and some little elm trees they’d just planted. And that wasn’t all of it, either. On each side there was stone and brick buildings near as large as the State House. One of them was a prison, I could see that right away. Some of the prisoners was standing by the bars hollering out into the street. A few of them had got long poles, which they tied their caps to and stuck through the bars into the street so people could put pennies in the caps if they were feeling kind and had a mind to do it. And if nobody put anything in a cap, why the man who owned it would set up the most terrible cursing you ever heard. As I stood there watching the prisoners, it came to me that if Captain Ivers caught me, I might end up there, too.

  But it was too late to worry about that. There was stone arches on either side between the State House and the other buildings. The arches opened onto a mall which ran out to the back. I walked through one of the arches. Just past it there was a door. I walked up the steps and opened it. I was mighty scared to go into a place of such importance, me being low as dirt, and my hand shook on the knob. But I knew I had to do it, so I went on in.

  I was in a big hall. There was people in fancy clothes walking around and talking to each other. Some of them was delegates to the convention, I reckoned, and was bound to be famous, but I couldn’t tell which.

  Just inside the door there stood a soldier in blue, with a sword on one side of his belt and a pistol on the other. He put his arm out. “Hold up there, you,” he said. “Deliveries around to the rear.”

  My knees was shaking. “I have a message for somebody, sir.”

  “All right. Give it to me.”

  “It ain’t written out, sir. It’s in my head.”

  He stared at me. “I don’t believe it. Nobody’d give a nigger a message in his head. No nigger could ever get anything like that straight.”

  It made me mad, him saying that after all the trouble I’d been through to get there. “It’s important,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “They always are.”

  I was getting madder and madder. “It’s for Mr. William Samuel Johnson.”

  “Sure,” he said. “And I’m the Queen of May. Now run along before I lock you up.”

  I could feel tears coming up behind my eyes, I was so mad. “I have to see him. I’m not lying, it’s important.” Just then I realized that a very fancy dressed man no bigger than me was staring at me.

  “Guard,” the man said, “please remove the nigger from the doorway so a gentleman can pass through.”

  The guard grabbed me by the arm and jerked me away. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton,” he said. “He’s been trying to tell me that he has a message for Mr. William Samuel Johnson.”

  “No doubt,” Mr. Hamilton said. I knew right away who it was: Mr. Alexander Hamilton, one of the most famous of all the men at the convention. He started to go for the door. I was scared to death, but I knew I had to do something. “Sir,” I said. “I ain’t lying. It’s important.”

  Mr. Hamilton snapped his head around. “Guard, would you please keep this nigger away from me.”

  The guard grabbed for my arm and jerked me back hard, away from Mr. Hamilton. “I ain’t lying,” I cried out. “It’s for Mr. Johnson from Mr. Fatherscreft.”

  Hamilton was halfway out the door, but he stopped dead and spun around. “Fatherscreft? Where is he? He was due here yesterday.”

  “He’s dead, sir. He died of the cough last night at Trenton. He was mighty sick.”

  “Dead? Fatherscreft is dead?” He was speaking in a loud voice, and I noticed that some of the other men in the hall had turned to look at us.

  Yes sir.

  “And he gave you a message for us?”

  “For Mr. Johnson, sir.”

  “All right. Give it to me.”

  Two or three other men had walked over to us and were standing there, listening. “I can’t tell it to anybody but Mr. Johnson.”

  “What?” Mr. Hamilton shouted. “Why, I’ll wring your neck, you impudent little wretch.” He snatched at my shirt front. “Now tell me.”

  My mouth was bone dry and I could hardly talk, but scared as I was of Mr. Hamilton, I was more scared of going back on a promise to a dying man and being haunted all the rest of my life. “I can’t, sir,” I said. “I promised Mr. Fatherscreft. I can’t go back on my promise.”

  He let go of my shirt. “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Daniel Arabus,” I said.

  “Arabus?”

  Now one of the other men who had been standing by pushed forward. “What’s all the commotion, Hamilton?”

  “This darky says he has a message from Fatherscreft, General.”

  “What is your name, boy?”

  I was scared before; now I was about ready to drop down onto the floor in a dead faint, for it was General Washington. I’d seen his picture hanging in Fraunces’ Tavern. It was him, sure enough. “Arabus, sir,” I sort of gasped out. “My daddy fought with you.”

  “He did, did he? Maybe I remember. Was it at Trenton? Where’s he now?”

  “He drowned, sir. He went out in the Katey Lee this spring and never came back. He helped you across a stream once. He h
eld your horse.”

  General Washington smiled, and some of the others laughed. “I don’t remember that. I remember the fighting at Trenton.”

  When he said that, the picture of my daddy came into my mind. I saw him standing there brave and strong, looking down at me, and I began to feel braver and stronger myself.

  Mr. Hamilton turned to General Washington. “He has a message for Dr. Johnson. It’s obviously word of the negotiations on the slavery issue. He says Fatherscreft is dead, and he won’t tell anybody but Johnson. Well have to wring it out of him.”

  “There’s no need of that, Mr. Hamilton,” General Washington said. “I won’t ask the boy to go back on a deathbed promise. Dr. Johnson is in the writing room with one of his constituents.” He took my arm. “We’ll go see him, shall we, Arabus?”

  We marched on with General Washington on one side of me and Mr. Hamilton on the other, and some of the other men coming along behind. Oh, I was scared half to death to be with such famous men. We crossed the hall and then turned into a little room filled with fancy furniture—big captain’s chairs, a lot of tables, and two fireplaces. I looked around, and that’s when I got the most awful shock. Dr. Johnson was sitting at one of the tables with some papers in front of him. Sitting opposite him was Captain Ivers.

  The minute Captain Ivers saw me he jumped to his feet. “Arabus,” he shouted. Then he looked at General Washington, sort of confused.

  Dr. Johnson stood up, too. “Your runaway slave seems to have run back to you, Captain,” he said.

  “He has a message from Peter Fatherscreft,” General Washington said. “He won’t give it to anybody but you, Johnson.”

  “Fatherscreft? At last. Where is the old soul?”

  “He’s dead, sir. He died last night at Trenton.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “He was mighty sick all the way down. He shouldn’t ought to have been traveling.”

  “And he gave you a message?”

  “Yes, sir. He said I wasn’t to tell it to anybody but you.”

  “Well, you have Dr. Johnson now, boy,” Mr. Hamilton said.

  I looked up at him, and then at General Washington, and finally at Dr. Johnson. “I ain’t supposed to tell it to anybody but Dr. Johnson,” I said, kind of low.

  General Washington smiled. “All right, Arabus. Come, gentlemen, let us leave these two to their business.” Captain Ivers gave me a hard look, like he was warning me not to run off again, but he didn’t dare go against General Washington. They all went out. Dr. Johnson sat down, and I stood in front of him and told him the whole message. Then he asked me a lot of questions about the message, just to make sure I’d got it right and wasn’t lying about the whole thing.

  “And how did you happen to meet Mr. Fatherscreft in the first place, Daniel?” he asked. “According to Captain Ivers, you jumped ship and ran away.”

  There wasn’t any point in lying about that. “Yes, sir, I ran away. Captain Ivers, he was going to sell me off South.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I heard him tell Birdsey.”

  “Birdsey?”

  “He’s Captain Ivers’s nephew,” I said. “Or he was, sir. He got washed overboard in a storm on the way down.”

  “Yes, now I remember him. He was drowned?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve had a lot of hard luck recently, Daniel,” he said.

  “Yes, sir, I guess I have. Nor was that all of it.” I reached into my shirt and took out the oilcloth package. “Captain Ivers is after my daddy’s soldiers’ notes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  So I told him all about it: how Mrs. Ivers had taken them from Mum, and how I’d stolen them back, and us planning on asking him to help us sell them so as to get our freedom money. He just sat there and listened and nodded, and asked a question here and there. When I got finished with the whole story, he said, “And you knew that Captain Ivers was in Philadelphia?”

  “I reckoned he would be, knowing that me and Mr. Fatherscreft was headed that way,” I said.

  “And you came down anyway?”

  “Yes, sir. I couldn’t go back on a promise to a dying man.”

  He thought about it for a minute. Then he said, “You know, Daniel, I’m constantly surprised. It’s generally said that Africans don’t have a true moral sense, the same as whites do.”

  “Sir, I’ve been looking at the whole thing pretty hard the past little while, and it seems to me that there ain’t much difference one way or another. You take my daddy, and Big Tom and Mr. Ivers and Birdsey and me, and take the skin off of us, and it would be pretty hard to tell which was the white ones and which ones wasn’t.”

  “That’s not what most white people believe.”

  “It ain’t what most black folks believe, either. I didn’t believe it myself, back home. But my daddy, he believed it, and I reckon I believe it now, myself.”

  He didn’t say anything for another minute. Then he said, “Well now, Daniel, you understand that I have to turn you back to Captain Ivers. You’re his property, and that’s the law in Connecticut.”

  “I guess I know that as well as anybody,” I said.

  He gave me a sharp look to see if I was being uppity, but I wasn’t sorry I’d said it. “I suppose you do,” he said. “But did you know that it’s also the law in Pennsylvania? However, I can see to it that he doesn’t sell you for a while all right. Your father performed a service for the country, and now you’ve performed another one at considerable personal sacrifice. It’s the least we can do. I’m sure that General Washington will agree with me, and I doubt strongly that Captain Ivers will want to oppose the general’s wishes.”

  “Sir, I don’t want to be uppity, but there’s Mum.”

  “Oh, your mother, too.” He smiled, then he got serious again. “Daniel, there’s a lot of talk in Connecticut about passing a law forbidding the selling of slaves out of the state. I think such a law will pass, and if it does, you and your mother won’t have to worry about being sold away.”

  “Sir, there’s my daddy’s soldiers’ notes. Do you think they’ll ever be worth anything?”

  Dr. Johnson thought about that for a minute. “It’s hard to predict,” he said. “But I think they will. Now that we’ve got an agreement on the slavery question, I’m pretty confident we’ll get a constitution to form a new nation with. And it’s my belief that the new government will pay off the notes.”

  I could feel the tears come up behind my eyes, and I blinked to keep from crying. “So Mum and me could buy ourselves free?”

  He thought about that some more. “Daniel, I think the smart thing would be for you to give me those notes for safekeeping. If the government votes to pay them off, I’ll make an arrangement with Captain Ivers to obtain your freedom and your mother’s.”

  And that was what happened. Over the next few years, Connecticut passed laws saying we couldn’t be sold away from the state. The Constitution was voted on, too, and the thirteen little countries was organized into the United States. And soon the new government decided to pay off the soldiers’ notes. Dr. Johnson took our notes to Captain Ivers and made a deal with him, and after that we were free. Oh, I can tell you, the day me and Mum packed our clothes and walked out of Captain Ivers’s house was the greatest feeling I ever had. It was like the whole world for years and years had been in clouds, and then the sun came out.

  Mum knew where there was a little old lean-to house in Stratford we could borrow. She figured she’d go to work for Dr. Johnson in his house, and I figured I’d go to sea for a while, save up some money, and buy my own fishing boat.

  So we walked away, and after a bit we got to the lean-to. There wasn’t much to it; just a little shingle place with the roof half fallen in and the chimney needing work. But we could fix all that up. The most important thing was, it was ours. It was the first time in our lives we’d had a place of our own.

  We went in and began figuring out wh
at to do to the roof. But even though it was a happy day for us, I could see that Mum was looking a little bit sad. I knew what it was, too: She was thinking about all the ones that wasn’t with us on that day. She was thinking about my Aunt Willy, who’d run off to New York, and now we didn’t know where she was. She was thinking about Birdsey, who’d got washed overboard and drowned. Most of all she was thinking about my daddy, for if it wasn’t for him fighting all those years in the Revolution, we’d never have got free.

  But I didn’t say anything; and we started in on the roof and after a while I heard Mum singing and I knew she was looking down the road ahead.

  How Much of This Book Is True?

  It is never easy, even for highly trained and experienced historians, to know exactly what happened in the past. We are always to some extent unsure about what we think we know. One of the things we are not sure about is how people spoke in the eighteenth century. We know how they wrote, of course, because we have many letters and diaries from that time. But we do not know if they talked the way they wrote.

  Daniel Arabus almost certainly did not speak the way we have him talking in the book. The style of speech we have picked for him, and various other people, is much too modern for the Revolutionary Era. We have used this style in order to give the flavor of language as it might have been employed by a poor boy—black or white—without much schooling, growing up surrounded by people who did not speak English very well themselves.

  In particular, we had to consider very carefully our use of the word nigger. This term is offensive to modern readers, and we certainly do not intend to be insulting. But it was commonly used in America right into the twentieth century, and it would have been a distortion of history to avoid its use entirely. In addition to historical accuracy, it was important to use the word to show how Daniel learned self-respect and developed self-confidence. You might also note which of the characters in the book used the term and which did not. Such use can tell you something about the social attitudes of the speakers.