FOR TEN YEARS.
It was a numerous company gathered together on the deck of the ship.
By their dress they were country lads; by their pale cheeks they
were prison birds like ourselves; by their dismal faces they were,
also, like ourselves, rebels condemned to the Plantations. Alas!
how many of these poor fellows have returned to their homes, and
how many lie in the graves of Jamaica, Virginia, and Barbadoes? As
for preparations for a voyage, not one of us could make any, either
of clothes or of provisions. There was not among the whole company
so much as a change of clothes; nay, there was not even a razor,
and our faces were already bristling horribly with the beards which
before long made us look like so many Heyducs.
Among them I presently discerned, to my great surprise and joy,
none other than Barnaby. His coat of scarlet was now so ragged and
stained that neither colour nor original shape could be discerned,
his ruffles and cravat of lace were gone, and the scarlet sash
which had formerly carried his hanger was gone also. In a word, he
was in rags and covered with the dust of the road. Yet his jolly
countenance showed a satisfaction which contrasted greatly with the
dejection of his companions. He sniffed the scent of tar and ropes
with a joy which was visible to all, and he contemplated the ship
and her rigging with the air of one who is at home.
Then he saw us and shouted to us while he made his way roughly
through the rest.
'What cheer, ho! Humphrey, brave lad of boluses?'--never did any
man grasp the hand of friend with greater vigour. 'This is better,
I say, than the accursed prison, where one got never a breath of
fresh air. Here one begins to smell salt water and tarred rope,
which is a downright wholesome smell. Already I feel hearty again. I
would willingly drink a tankard or two of black beer. What, Robin,
what? We are not going to be hanged, after all. Lift up thy head,
therefore: is this a time for looking glum? We shall live to hang
Judge Jeffreys yet!--what? Thy looks are but poorly, lad. Is it the
prison or is it thy disappointment? That villain, Benjamin! Hark
ye, Robin'--some men's faces look black when they threaten, but
Barnaby's grew broader, as if the contemplation of revenge made him
the happier--'Hark ye, this is my business. No one shall interfere
with me in this. Benjamin is my affair. No one but I myself must
kill Benjamin: not you, Humphrey, because he is your cousin; not
you, Robin, because you must not kill Alice's husband even to get
back your own sweetheart.' Barnaby spoke wisdom here; in spite of
Robin's vows he could not get Alice for himself by killing her
husband, unworthy though he was. 'Benjamin,' he went on, 'may call
her wife, but if he seek to make her his wife, if I know Sis aright,
he will meet his match. As for her safety, I am certain that she is
safe. For why? Wherever there are folks of her religious kidney,
there will she find friends. Cheer up, Robin! Soon or late I will
kill this fine husband of hers.'
But Robin shook his head.
Barnaby then asked if I knew whither we were bound. I told him
Barbadoes, according to the information given me by Mr. Penne.
'Why,' said Barnaby, rubbing his hands, 'this is brave news, indeed.
There is no place I would sooner choose. 'Tis a small island, to
begin with: give me a small island, so that the sea runneth all
round about and is everywhere within easy reach. Where there is the
sea there are boats; where there are boats there are the means of
escape. Cheer up, my lads! I know the Spanish Main right well. Give
me a tight boat, I care not how small, and a keg of water, and I
will sail her anywhere. Ha! we are bound to Barbadoes, are we? This
is truly brave news!'
I asked him next what kind of place it was.
'It is a hot place,' he replied. 'A man is always thirsty, and there
is plenty to drink except water, which is said to be scarce. But the
merchants and the planters want none. They have wine of the best,
of Spain and of France and of Madeira. Cider and strong ale they
import from England. And drinks they make in the country--perino and
mobbie--I remember--grippo and plantain wine and kill-devil. 'Tis a
rare country for drink, and many there be who die of too much. Hold
up thy head, Robin; we will drink damnation to Benjamin yet. But
'tis I who shall kill him. Courage, I say. What? Our turn will come!'
I told him, then, what had been done with Mr. George Penne--namely,
the ransom bought by the Rector for us all, and the letter which I
carried to Mr. Penne's correspondent.
'Why,' he said, with some discontent, 'we shall not be long upon
the island after all, and perhaps the money might have been
better bestowed. But 'twas kindly done of the Rector. As for the
banishment, I value it not a farthing. One place is as good as
another; and, for my own part, I love the West Indies. We shall have
our choice among them all, because, where there are boats and the
open sea, a man can go whithersoever pleaseth him best. The voyage
out'--he glanced round him--'will, I fear, be choking work--the
rations will be short, there will be neither drink nor tobacco, and
at nights we shall lie close. A more melancholy company I never saw.
Patience, my lads; our turn will come.'
Well, 'twas a special mercy that we had with us one man, at least,
who preserved his cheerfulness, for the rest of the company were as
melancholy as King James himself could have desired. Indeed, to look
back upon the voyage is to recall the most miserable time that can
be imagined. First of all, as I have said, we were wholly unprepared
for a voyage, having nothing at all with us. Then we had bad weather
at the outset, which not only made our people ill, but caused the
biscuit to be mostly spoiled, so that before the end of the voyage
a few peas with the sweepings of the biscuit-room, and sometimes a
little tough beef, was all our diet, and for drink nothing, not so
much as a pannikin of beer, but water, and that turbid, and not too
much of it.
As for me, I kept my health chiefly by the method common among
physicians--namely, by watching the symptoms of others. But mostly
was I concerned with the condition of Robin. For the poor lad,
taking so much to heart the dreadful villainy which had been
practised upon Alice, never once held up his head, and would talk
and think of nothing else but of that poor maid.
'Where is she?' he asked a hundred times. 'Where hath she found a
shelter and a hiding-place? How shall she escape the villain, who
will now do what he pleases since we are out of his way? And no help
for her--not any until she die, or until he dies! And we cannot even
send her a letter to console her poor heart! Humphrey, it drives
me mad to think that every day carries us further from her. If I
could but be with her to protect her against her husband! Humphrey,
Barnaby said well: I could not get her back to me over the dead body
of her husband. But to protect her--to stand between her and the man
she hath sworn to obey!'
There is no more dangerous condition of the mind than that which
we call despair. It is, I take it, a disease, and that of the most
dangerous kind. I have observed many men in that condition. With
some, the devil enters into them, finding all the doors open and
unguarded; nay, he even receives a warm welcome. With others it is
as if the body itself was left without its armour--a cheerful and
hopeful mind being certainly an armour against disease, capable of
warding off many of those invisible arrows which are always flying
about the air and striking us down with fevers, agues, calentures,
and other pains and grievous diseases.
I marvel that more of the men on board were not sick; for, to
begin with, the water soon became thick and swarmed with wriggling
creatures difficult to avoid in drinking; and then, though during
the day we were allowed to be on deck (where the air was fresh even
if the sun was hot), at night we were terribly crowded below, and
lay too close for health or for comfort. However, we finally made
Carlisle Bay and the port of St. Michael's or the Bridge. And I must
say this for Barnaby, that he maintained throughout the whole voyage
his cheerfulness, and that he never ceased to make his plans for
escape, drawing on a paper, which he procured, a rough chart of the
Spanish Main, with as many islands as he could remember. Of these
there are hundreds, some desolate and safe for fugitives, some with
neither water nor green trees, and some with springs and woods, wild
fruit, land turtles on the shore, fish in the sea, and everything
that man can desire.
We made the land, after I know not how many weeks, one day in the
forenoon.
'Barbadoes,' said Barnaby, pointing to a little cloud far away on
the horizon. 'Well; of this job I am wellnigh sick. To-morrow, if
the wind holds, we shall have sailed round the island and shall beat
up for Carlisle Bay. Well, it is lucky for us that we have this
letter of Mr. Penne's. We will go--I know the place well--to the
sign of the Rock and Turtle, kept by old Mother Rosemary, if she
lives still, or, if she be dead, by one of her daughters--she had
fifty daughters, at least, all buxom mulatto girls. There we will
put off these filthy rags, have a wash in a tub of fresh water,
get shaved, and then with smooth chins and clean shirts we will
sit down to a dinner such as the old woman knows how to make, a
potato-pudding and Scots collops with Rhenish wine, and afterwards
a cool cup of beverage, which is nothing in the world but squeezed
limes, with sugar and water, fit for such a womanly stomach as
yours, Doctor. With this, and a pipe of tobacco, and perhaps a song
and (when your Worship hath gone to bed) a dance from one of the
girls--I say, my lad, with this I shall be ready to forget Sedgemoor
and to forgive Judge Jeffreys. When we are tired of Barbadoes, we
will take boat and sail away. I know one island, at least, where
they care nothing for King James. Thither will we go, my lad.'
Well; what we found at our port, and how we fared, was not quite as
Barnaby expected and hoped, as you shall hear. But I must admire
the cunning of the man Penne, who not only took from Alice--poor
child!--all her brother's money, amounting to two hundred and fifty
pounds or thereabouts (which you have read), on the pretext of
bestowing it for the advantage of all, but also received two hundred
guineas from Mr. Boscorel on the same pretence. This made in all
four hundred and fifty pounds. And not one penny--not a single
penny--of this great sum did the man spend upon the purpose for
which it was given him.
You have heard how the merchants and planters came aboard the ships
which put in with servants and slaves, and how these are put up
for sale one at a time. As was the sale described by Alice, just
such was ours: though, I take it, our lads were not so miserable a
company as were those on board her ship. Pale of cheek they looked,
and dejected, and some were sick with various disorders, caused by
the confinement of the prison or the sufferings of the voyage. They
put us up one after the other and we were sold. I forget what I
myself fetched, and, indeed, it matters not, save that many jests
were passed at our expense, and that when one was put up--as Robin,
for instance--who had been a Captain in the rebel army, the salesman
was eloquent in praise of his rich and illustrious family, who would
never endure that this unfortunate man should continue in servitude.
But Barnaby put his tongue in his cheek and laughed.
When the sale was concluded, we were bundled into boats and taken
ashore to the barracoon, of which you have heard from Alice. Here
the same officer who read to her party the laws concerning servants
and their duties, and the punishments which await transgressors,
read them also to ourselves.
'Faith,' Barnaby whispered, 'there will be a great scoring of backs
before many days are done, unless their bark is worse than their
bite.'
This business despatched, I thought it was time to present my
letter. Therefore I stepped forward, and informed the officer, who,
by reason of his gown and wig and the beadles who were with him, I
judged to be some lawyer, that, with my cousin and another, I held a
letter which should hold us free from servitude.
'Ay, ay,' he said. 'Where is that letter?'
So I gave it to him. 'Twas addressed to one Jonathan Polwhele, and
enjoined him to receive the three prisoners, named Humphrey Challis,
Robin Challis, and Barnaby Eykin, to pay for them such sums as would
reasonably be required to redeem them from servitude, and to advance
them such moneys as they would want at the outset for maintenance,
the whole to be accounted for in Mr. Jonathan Polwhele's next
despatches to his obedient, much obliged servant, G. P.
'Sir,' said the officer, when he had read the letter through, 'this
epistle is addressed to one Jonathan Polwhele. There is no merchant
or planter of that name on the whole island.'
He gave me back the letter. 'If this,' he said, 'is all you have to
show, there is no reason why you and your friends should not march
with the rest.'
Truly, we had nothing else to show. Not only was there no one named
Polwhele on the island, but there never had been any one of that
name. Therefore it was plain that we had been tricked, and that the
man George Penne was a villain. Alas! poor Barnaby. Where now were
his cool cups and his pipe of tobacco? Then the officer beckoned to
a gentleman--a sober and grave person--standing near, and spoke to
him.
'Gentlemen,' said the merchant, 'permit me to read this letter. So,
it is in the handwriting of Mr. George Penne, which I know well.
There is here some strange mistake. The letter is addressed to Mr.
Jonathan Polwhele; but there is no one of that name in the place.
I am myself Mr. Penne's correspondent in this island. My name,
gentlemen, is Sefton, not Polwhele.'
'Sir,' I said, 'do you know Mr. Penne?'
'I have never seen him. He consigns to my care once or twice a year
a cargo of transported servants, being rogues and thieves, sent
here, instead of to the gallows. He ships them to my care, I say,
as he hath shipped the company arrived this morning; and I sell
them for him, taking for my share a percentage, as agreed upon, and
remitting to him the balance in sugar and tobacco.'
'Is there no letter from him?'
'There is a letter in which he advises me of so many rebels
consigned to me in order to be sold. Some among them, he says, were
captains and officers in Monmouth's army, and some are of good
family, among whom he especially names Robin and Humphrey Challis.
But there is not a word about ransom.'
'Sir,' I said, knowing nothing as yet of Alice and her money, 'two
hundred guineas have been paid to Mr. Penne by the Rev. Philip
Boscorel, Rector of Bradford Orcas, in the county of Somerset, for
our ransom.'
'Nothing is said of this,' he replied gravely. 'Plainly, gentlemen,
without despatches from Mr. Penne I cannot act for you. You have
a letter; it is written by that gentleman; it is addressed to Mr.
Polwhele; it says nothing about Barbadoes, and would serve for
Jamaica or Virginia. So great a sum as two hundred guineas cannot
have been forgotten. I exhort you, therefore, to patience until
other letters arrive. Why, two hundred guineas would have gone far
to redeem you all three, and to maintain you for a great while.
Gentlemen, I am grieved for you, because there is for the present no
help for it, but that you must go with the planter who hath bought
you, and obey his orders. I will, however, send to Mr. Penne an
account of this charge, and I would advise that you lose no time in
writing to your friends at home.'
'Heart up, lad!' cried Barnaby, for I turned faint upon this
terrible discovery, and would have fallen, but he held me up.
'Patience; our turn will come.'
'Write that letter,' said the merchant again. 'Write that letter
quickly, so that it may go with the next vessel. Otherwise the work
is hard and the heat is great.' So he turned and left us.
'Courage, man!' said Barnaby. 'To every dog his day. If now for
five minutes only I could have my thumb on Mr. Penne's windpipe
and my fingers round his neck! And I thought to spend the evening
joyfully at Mother Rosemary's! Courage, lad! I have seen already,'
he whispered, 'a dozen boats in the bay, any one of which will serve
our turn.'
But Robin paid no heed, whatever happened. He stood up when his
name was called, and was sold without showing any emotion. When we
found that we had been tricked he seemed as if he neither heard nor
regarded.
When all was ready we were marched, twenty in number, along a white
and dusty road to our estate. By great good fortune--rather by
Providence--we were all bought by the same master. He was, it is
true, a bad man; but to be bought all together was a happiness which
we could not expect. He bought us all because he understood that we
belonged to the same family (and that one of position), in the hope
of receiving substantial ransom. This man rode with us, accompanied
by two overseers (these were themselves under the same sentence)
who cracked their whips continually, and cursed us if we lagged.
Their bark was worse, we afterwards found, than their bite, for it
was only in the master's presence that they behaved thus brutishly,
and in order to curry favour with him and to prevent being reduced
again to the rank of those who served in the field. There was no
doubt, from the very outset, that we were afflicted with a master
whose like, I would hope, is not to be found upon the island of
Barbadoes. Briefly, he was one whose appearance, voice, and manner
all alike proclaimed him openly to all the world as a drunkard, a
profligate, and a blasphemer. A drunkard he was of that kind who are
seldom wholly drunk and yet are never sober; who begin the day with
a glass and go on taking more glasses all day long, with small ale
for breakfast, strong ale and Madeira for dinner, a tankard in the
afternoon, and for supper more strong ale and Madeira, and before
bed another tankard. As for compassion, or tenderness, or any of the
virtues which a man who holds other men in slavery ought to possess,
he had none of them.
Let me speak of him with no more bitterness than is necessary.
We have, I think, all forgiven him, and he hath long since gone
to a place where he can do no more harm to any, but awaiteth
judgment--perhaps in the sure and certain hope of which the funeral
service speaks--but this is open to doubt.
When we were arrived at the estate, the master dismounted, gave his
horse to a negro, and ordered us to be drawn up in line.
He then made a short speech. He said that he had bought us, rebels
and villains as we were, and that he meant to get his money's worth
out of us or he would cut us all to pieces. Other things he told
us, which I pass over because they were but repetitions of this
assurance. He then proceeded to examine us in detail. When he came
to me he cursed and swore because he said he had been made to pay
for a sound, proper man, and had got a crookback for his bargain. I
told him that, with submission, he might find the crookback, who
was a physician, a more profitable bargain than many a stronger man.
'What?' he roared. 'Thou art a physician, eh? Wouldst slink out of
the field-work and sit idle among bottles and boluses? John'--he
turned to one of the overseers--'pay particular attention, I command
thee, to this learned physician. If he so much as turn round in his
work, make his shoulders smart.'
'Ay, ay, Sir,' said the overseer.
'And what art thou, sirrah?' He turned next to Barnaby. 'Another
learned physician, no doubt--or a Divine, a Bishop likely, or a Dean
at the least?'
'As for what I was,' said Barnaby, 'that is neither here nor there.
For what I am, I suppose I am your servant for ten years, or until
our pardons are sent us.'
'Thou art an impudent dog, I dare swear,' returned the master. 'I
remember now. Thou wast a Captain in the rebel army, once a sailor.
Well, take care, lest thou taste the cat.'
'Gentlemen who are made to taste the cat,' said Barnaby, 'are apt to
remember the taste of it when their time is up.'
'What?' he cried. 'You dare to threaten? Take that--and that!' and
so began to belabour him about the head. I trembled lest Barnaby
should return the blows. But he did not. He only held up his arm to
protect his head, and presently, when the master desisted, he shook
himself like a dog.
'I promise you I shall remember the taste of that wood,' he said
quietly.
The master looked as if he would renew the cudgelling, but thought
better of it.
Then, without more violence, we were assigned our quarters. A
cottage or hut was given to us. We were served with a hammock, and a
rug each; a pannikin, basin, spoon and platter for each; a Monmouth
cap; two shirts, common and coarse; two pairs of canvas breeches,
and a pair of shoes for each--so that we looked for all the world
like the fellows who live by loading and unloading the ships in the
port of Bristol. Yet the change after the long voyage was grateful.
They served us next with some of the stuff they call loblollie, and
then the night fell and we lay down in our hammocks, which were
certainly softer than the planks of the ship, and then fell fast
asleep in spite of the humming and the biting of the merrywings, and
so slept till the break of day.