Mr. Pollexfen was at one and the same time right and wrong--a condition
much more common than is generally supposed.
He was right in his indifferently expressed thought that a man whose
mien and words could daunt such a lord of terror as Jeffreys, should by
the dominance of his nature be able to fashion himself a considerable
destiny. He was wrong--though justifiably so--in his assumption that
Peter Blood must hang.
I have said that the tribulations with which he was visited as a result
of his errand of mercy to Oglethorpe's Farm contained--although as yet
he did not perceive it, perhaps--two sources of thankfulness: one that
he was tried at all; the other that his trial took place on the 19th
of September. Until the 18th, the sentences passed by the court of the
Lords Commissioners had been carried out literally and expeditiously.
But on the morning of the 19th there arrived at Taunton a courier from
Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, with a letter for Lord Jeffreys
wherein he was informed that His Majesty had been graciously pleased
to command that eleven hundred rebels should be furnished for
transportation to some of His Majesty's southern plantations, Jamaica,
Barbados, or any of the Leeward Islands.
You are not to suppose that this command was dictated by any sense of
mercy. Lord Churchill was no more than just when he spoke of the King's
heart as being as insensible as marble. It had been realized that in
these wholesale hangings there was taking place a reckless waste of
valuable material. Slaves were urgently required in the plantations,
and a healthy, vigorous man could be reckoned worth at least from ten
to fifteen pounds. Then, there were at court many gentlemen who had some
claim or other upon His Majesty's bounty. Here was a cheap and ready way
to discharge these claims. From amongst the convicted rebels a certain
number might be set aside to be bestowed upon those gentlemen, so that
they might dispose of them to their own profit.
My Lord Sunderland's letter gives precise details of the royal
munificence in human flesh. A thousand prisoners were to be distributed
among some eight courtiers and others, whilst a postscriptum to his
lordship's letter asked for a further hundred to be held at the disposal
of the Queen. These prisoners were to be transported at once to His
Majesty's southern plantations, and to be kept there for the space of
ten years before being restored to liberty, the parties to whom they
were assigned entering into security to see that transportation was
immediately effected.
We know from Lord Jeffreys's secretary how the Chief Justice inveighed
that night in drunken frenzy against this misplaced clemency to which
His Majesty had been persuaded. We know how he attempted by letter to
induce the King to reconsider his decision. But James adhered to it. It
was--apart from the indirect profit he derived from it--a clemency
full worthy of him. He knew that to spare lives in this fashion was to
convert them into living deaths. Many must succumb in torment to the
horrors of West Indian slavery, and so be the envy of their surviving
companions.
Thus it happened that Peter Blood, and with him Jeremy Pitt and Andrew
Baynes, instead of being hanged, drawn, and quartered as their sentences
directed, were conveyed to Bristol and there shipped with some fifty
others aboard the Jamaica Merchant. From close confinement under
hatches, ill-nourishment and foul water, a sickness broke out amongst
them, of which eleven died. Amongst these was the unfortunate yeoman
from Oglethorpe's Farm, brutally torn from his quiet homestead amid
the fragrant cider orchards for no other sin but that he had practised
mercy.
The mortality might have been higher than it was but for Peter Blood.
At first the master of the Jamaica Merchant had answered with oaths and
threats the doctor's expostulations against permitting men to perish
in this fashion, and his insistence that he should be made free of the
medicine chest and given leave to minister to the sick. But presently
Captain Gardner came to see that he might be brought to task for
these too heavy losses of human merchandise and because of this he was
belatedly glad to avail himself of the skill of Peter Blood. The doctor
went to work zealously and zestfully, and wrought so ably that, by his
ministrations and by improving the condition of his fellow-captives, he
checked the spread of the disease.
Towards the middle of December the Jamaica Merchant dropped anchor in
Carlisle Bay, and put ashore the forty-two surviving rebels-convict.
If these unfortunates had imagined--as many of them appear to have
done--that they were coming into some wild, savage country, the
prospect, of which they had a glimpse before they were hustled over
the ship's side into the waiting boats, was enough to correct the
impression. They beheld a town of sufficiently imposing proportions
composed of houses built upon European notions of architecture, but
without any of the huddle usual in European cities. The spire of a
church rose dominantly above the red roofs, a fort guarded the entrance
of the wide harbour, with guns thrusting their muzzles between the
crenels, and the wide facade of Government House revealed itself
dominantly placed on a gentle hill above the town. This hill was vividly
green as is an English hill in April, and the day was such a day as
April gives to England, the season of heavy rains being newly ended.
On a wide cobbled space on the sea front they found a guard of
red-coated militia drawn up to receive them, and a crowd--attracted by
their arrival--which in dress and manner differed little from a crowd in
a seaport at home save that it contained fewer women and a great number
of negroes.
To inspect them, drawn up there on the mole, came Governor Steed,
a short, stout, red-faced gentleman, in blue taffetas burdened by a
prodigious amount of gold lace, who limped a little and leaned heavily
upon a stout ebony cane. After him, in the uniform of a colonel of the
Barbados Militia, rolled a tall, corpulent man who towered head and
shoulders above the Governor, with malevolence plainly written on his
enormous yellowish countenance. At his side, and contrasting oddly with
his grossness, moving with an easy stripling grace, came a slight young
lady in a modish riding-gown. The broad brim of a grey hat with scarlet
sweep of ostrich plume shaded an oval face upon which the climate of
the Tropic of Cancer had made no impression, so delicately fair was its
complexion. Ringlets of red-brown hair hung to her shoulders. Frankness
looked out from her hazel eyes which were set wide; commiseration
repressed now the mischievousness that normally inhabited her fresh
young mouth.
Peter Blood caught himself staring in a sort of amazement at that
piquant face, which seemed here so out of place, and finding his stare
returned, he shifted uncomfortably. He grew conscious of the sorry
figure that he cut. Unwashed, with rank and matted hair and a
disfiguring black beard upon his face, and the erstwhile splendid suit
of black camlet in which he had been taken prisoner now reduced to rags
that would have disgraced a scarecrow, he was in no case for inspection
by such dainty eyes as these. Nevertheless, they continued to inspect
him with round-eyed, almost childlike wonder and pity. Their owner put
forth a hand to touch the scarlet sleeve of her companion, whereupon
with an ill-tempered grunt the man swung his great bulk round so that he
directly confronted her.
Looking up into his face, she was speaking to him earnestly, but the
Colonel plainly gave her no more than the half of his attention. His
little beady eyes, closely flanking a fleshly, pendulous nose, had
passed from her and were fixed upon fair-haired, sturdy young Pitt, who
was standing beside Blood.
The Governor had also come to a halt, and for a moment now that little
group of three stood in conversation. What the lady said, Peter could
not hear at all, for she lowered her voice; the Colonel's reached him
in a confused rumble, but the Governor was neither considerate nor
indistinct; he had a high-pitched voice which carried far, and believing
himself witty, he desired to be heard by all.
“But, my dear Colonel Bishop, it is for you to take first choice from
this dainty nosegay, and at your own price. After that we'll send the
rest to auction.”
Colonel Bishop nodded his acknowledgment. He raised his voice in
answering. “Your excellency is very good. But, faith, they're a weedy
lot, not likely to be of much value in the plantation.” His beady eyes
scanned them again, and his contempt of them deepened the malevolence of
his face. It was as if he were annoyed with them for being in no better
condition. Then he beckoned forward Captain Gardner, the master of the
Jamaica Merchant, and for some minutes stood in talk with him over a
list which the latter produced at his request.
Presently he waved aside the list and advanced alone towards the
rebels-convict, his eyes considering them, his lips pursed. Before the
young Somersetshire shipmaster he came to a halt, and stood an instant
pondering him. Then he fingered the muscles of the young man's arm,
and bade him open his mouth that he might see his teeth. He pursed his
coarse lips again and nodded.
He spoke to Gardner over his shoulder.
“Fifteen pounds for this one.”
The Captain made a face of dismay. “Fifteen pounds! It isn't half what I
meant to ask for him.”
“It is double what I had meant to give,” grunted the Colonel.
“But he would be cheap at thirty pounds, your honour.”
“I can get a negro for that. These white swine don't live. They're not
fit for the labour.”
Gardner broke into protestations of Pitt's health, youth, and vigour.
It was not a man he was discussing; it was a beast of burden. Pitt, a
sensitive lad, stood mute and unmoving. Only the ebb and flow of colour
in his cheeks showed the inward struggle by which he maintained his
self-control.
Peter Blood was nauseated by the loathsome haggle.
In the background, moving slowly away down the line of prisoners, went
the lady in conversation with the Governor, who smirked and preened
himself as he limped beside her. She was unconscious of the loathly
business the Colonel was transacting. Was she, wondered Blood,
indifferent to it?
Colonel Bishop swung on his heel to pass on.
“I'll go as far as twenty pounds. Not a penny more, and it's twice as
much as you are like to get from Crabston.”
Captain Gardner, recognizing the finality of the tone, sighed and
yielded. Already Bishop was moving down the line. For Mr. Blood, as
for a weedy youth on his left, the Colonel had no more than a glance of
contempt. But the next man, a middle-aged Colossus named Wolverstone,
who had lost an eye at Sedgemoor, drew his regard, and the haggling was
recommenced.
Peter Blood stood there in the brilliant sunshine and inhaled the
fragrant air, which was unlike any air that he had ever breathed. It
was laden with a strange perfume, blend of logwood flower, pimento, and
aromatic cedars. He lost himself in unprofitable speculations born of
that singular fragrance. He was in no mood for conversation, nor was
Pitt, who stood dumbly at his side, and who was afflicted mainly at the
moment by the thought that he was at last about to be separated from
this man with whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder throughout all
these troublous months, and whom he had come to love and depend upon for
guidance and sustenance. A sense of loneliness and misery pervaded him
by contrast with which all that he had endured seemed as nothing. To
Pitt, this separation was the poignant climax of all his sufferings.
Other buyers came and stared at them, and passed on. Blood did not heed
them. And then at the end of the line there was a movement. Gardner was
speaking in a loud voice, making an announcement to the general public
of buyers that had waited until Colonel Bishop had taken his choice of
that human merchandise. As he finished, Blood, looking in his direction,
noticed that the girl was speaking to Bishop, and pointing up the line
with a silver-hilted riding-whip she carried. Bishop shaded his eyes
with his hand to look in the direction in which she was pointing.
Then slowly, with his ponderous, rolling gait, he approached again
accompanied by Gardner, and followed by the lady and the Governor.
On they came until the Colonel was abreast of Blood. He would have
passed on, but that the lady tapped his arm with her whip.
“But this is the man I meant,” she said.
“This one?” Contempt rang in the voice. Peter Blood found himself
staring into a pair of beady brown eyes sunk into a yellow, fleshly face
like currants into a dumpling. He felt the colour creeping into his face
under the insult of that contemptuous inspection. “Bah! A bag of bones.
What should I do with him?”
He was turning away when Gardner interposed.
“He maybe lean, but he's tough; tough and healthy. When half of them was
sick and the other half sickening, this rogue kept his legs and doctored
his fellows. But for him there'd ha' been more deaths than there was.
Say fifteen pounds for him, Colonel. That's cheap enough. He's tough, I
tell your honour--tough and strong, though he be lean. And he's just the
man to bear the heat when it comes. The climate'll never kill him.”
There came a chuckle from Governor Steed. “You hear, Colonel. Trust
your niece. Her sex knows a man when it sees one.” And he laughed, well
pleased with his wit.
But he laughed alone. A cloud of annoyance swept across the face of
the Colonel's niece, whilst the Colonel himself was too absorbed in the
consideration of this bargain to heed the Governor's humour. He twisted
his lip a little, stroking his chin with his hand the while. Jeremy Pitt
had almost ceased to breathe.
“I'll give you ten pounds for him,” said the Colonel at last.
Peter Blood prayed that the offer might be rejected. For no reason that
he could have given you, he was taken with repugnance at the thought
of becoming the property of this gross animal, and in some sort the
property of that hazel-eyed young girl. But it would need more than
repugnance to save him from his destiny. A slave is a slave, and has
no power to shape his fate. Peter Blood was sold to Colonel Bishop--a
disdainful buyer--for the ignominious sum of ten pounds.