If you’ve been for what seems a lifetime in a black and narrow place,
sky and sea, salt air and sunshine make you drunk and childish happy
and childish sad. Even if you’re leaving your land forever--even if
you’re leaving a loved lass. Just for a time it turns you a bairn--just
for a time!
There was a man upon the _King William_ who bulks in my memory.
Morrison was his name, Gervase Morrison; he had a lank but stately
figure and a face too early withered, was from London or thereabouts
and ten years my senior.
The _King William_ was no Scotch ship but an English one from
Hull, owned by merchants of that place. Captain and crew were King
George men, and King George men the three score and upward who for
reasons of wretchedness had signed papers to go and be sold in
Virginia for five years, receiving after that time freedom and certain
perquisites and opportunities. We six Scots were upon this ship the
only willy-nilly men, transported and sold without any “by your leave”,
or a set term of years. We alone wore outward shackles.
We wore them for ten days until England and France were behind us. Then
said the master of the ship, “Pass me your word that you’ll make no
trouble and you may go like the others!” We passed it, the six of us,
and we were named Alan McGregor, James MacLeod, Alan MacLean, Fergus
Ross, Alexander Gordon and David Scott. That captain comes to me across
the years as a decent man, short and red and bluff and well-spoken.
The mates and the crew were not so bad either. But those English
merchants had sair crowded the brig and had laid in for their
merchandise but scant and wretched food. Most of their bondsmen were
very young, youths of the poorest condition, scraped from field and
village. Four or five had taken a loaf or a coat or a guinea, and might
have been hanged but had mercy shown them after this manner. The rest
seemed honest enough, but some were dull and few had any learning. Yet
there might be found those who had been to school and were born to
better estate, but had come down in the world. Such an one was that
stately man, Gervase Morrison.
Even before we were free of our shackles he had marked us out for talk.
At last, I know not why, he settled upon me. The weather held good,
else we had had a horrid time, packed like herrings below. But the
master said, “For health, stay in the air!” and morning, noon and night
we lay like fruit upon the decks. Morrison came and sat beside me.
“So I suppose you drink to one over the water, and Jamie and Chairlie
are your favorite names!”
I said, “There’s not a drop of drink aboard, and that’s a sair loss!”
“It is,” he answered and politely cursed those merchants of Hull who
treated human beings as though they were casks of tobacco.
“I know how I got here,” I said. “But how did you?”
He told me. He was younger son of a good family, had gone to Oxford and
worshipped knowledge. But it was that very drink that killed him--drink
and the cards. Three years ago he had reformed. Only in a sty like this
would he really look at a bottle of port or a puncheon of rum--only
there was none here to look at! As for gaming he touched it no more,
only looked on over others’ shoulders. But the devil was that he had no
means and was about to starve. No one gave and no one lent, and as for
earning, “I wrote for a bookseller. It was then that I grew so lank,
and this suit is my only one.” The end was that he met a man who was
gathering poor youths to go to Virginia. “I was not a youth but I was
damned poor. I would be a rare figure in a tobacco field, and so I told
him, but then he pulled out a letter from a rich planter who wanted
sent him a man with education to be clerk or what not. Five years’
service, well fed and lodged and apparelled, and at the end a start
in life, and a determined man might do anything and mount fast in the
New World! I was tired of my bookseller and the Old World. Here is my
Indenture.” And he tapped a paper in his breast pocket.
“You’re luckier than me,” I said. “I’ll be at the tobacco, and for all
I ken for the rest of my life.”
He turned a little--he was seated upon a coil of rope--and studied me.
“You’ll run away,” he said and took snuff. He had a very good snuffbox,
and in a bundle a number of small belongings that marked him off from
the rustics around. Among them were a dozen small books, poets and
Latin authors. In large part I read the first, borrowing from him from
week to week of that weary while upon the _King William_. But now
he said, “You’ll run away,” and helped himself to snuff.
For David Scott, he looked at the green seas thrust from the bow of the
ship, and at the piled canvas and the blue sky above. “Where to?” I
asked.
He did not say and what came to me did not wait upon him. What came was
again that vision of the black night between Saint Giles and Tolbooth.
It came like the levin, unearthly clear. Ocean bluer than this ocean,
white sand, strange, narrow boats, palm trees, and a pile of whitened
building, wall and keep. What it was and where it was I had no idea at
all, _but I saw it_. It departed like the levin.
“Where to?” I repeated, without well knowing what I said.
“God knows!” answered Gervase Morrison. “I am not well acquainted with
the geographical _minutiæ_ of our country to be!”
In truth, however, he had a great fund of knowledge and he liked to
give it to any listening ear, prisoner of war, Hodge from the plough,
or Tyburn Tom, as the case might be. Or all three together. He was out
of the bonds of gentry but into those of the learned man, given to
philosophizing and to relating as he saw it the history of the world.
He saw it somewhat darkly, with an acid interest that never went so far
as to interfere. I listened to him fitfully, staring between times at
the sea and my own unhappiness.
I remember another day. A red sun was burning down to the sea,
setting a path of fire and blood. There was a listening ten of us
and he discoursed on Poverty and the heavy hand of old Law. He had
a dry, didactic way that took the edge off his startling things. It
was November wind in dry leaves, accomplishing little. Now he said
“Slavery”, but the word did not groan.
“Slavery! And isn’t there sufficient slavery in Europe? We don’t
precisely have to seek it out in America, in red and black folk, though
I won’t deny a certain exaggeration of it in those colors.”
A weaver began to curse and swear. “No, we don’t have to seek it here!”
Morrison went on. “Greece and Rome knew all about slavery, and all
times and countries since. Before and since. It’s only the foolish who
don’t see that men are slaves in England! The four winds blow over
slaves and have always blown up and down time. What does it matter what
they are called? I’ve heard of Russia and I’ve been in Italy and Spain
and the Low Countries and France, to say nothing of the British Isles.
Always the same. Slaver and enslaved, however they trim the name! ‘I
want to ride--it’s right that _I_ should ride--let me ride on
you!’ Through time. They change places. Now the slave is master and the
master slave. But the precious model remains!” He laughed. “That’s the
jib and cut of the good ship, _Society_!”
A young boy who was listening said, “It’s so and not so.”
“You can’t make that out. It’s so!”
As he spoke he stared round, and I followed him and saw two-score
examplars and instances. Again David Scott blasphemed. “It’s the Nature
of Life. _His_ doing, if _He’s_ up there!”
“Oh, I don’t think _He’s_ up there! _He’s_ gone out--like a
candle!”
That pleased me. “Yes! Like a candle!”
It never occurred to me to dispute what he said about the Ship that Man
had built and was sailing. I saw it and I hardened. If it was so, then
let it be so! _But it was pleasanter to ride than to be ridden._
He considered the sun and then said further, “It is true that it is
bottom as well as top. The bottom man will have his woman and his dog,
and if ever he creeps to the top thinks of no other course for the
ship!”
The sun went down so red! The path over the sea stretched so sinister,
so red. It faded and there came velvet blackness and the sorrowful
stars.