I stood by the man at the wheel and looked at the glassy sea. Then afar
there seemed upon it a little darkening. It spread. I felt an elfin
stroke upon my brow, my hand; a rope hanging near swung, though ever so
slightly. It came again, more strongly. I looked at the man--he was a
New Englander whom we called Dandy--and he looked at me. “That’s wind,
Dandy!”
“Praise God!” he said, and the water stood in his eyes.
The _Janet_ started from her dream, shook herself and began to hum
and move. Life! It was life again!
That day we had but five deaths and four new cases, three among the
Negroes, one in the forecastle. The next day saw further lessening; the
next it dwindled still. There came a day when was no death and no one
struck down. The plague departed. It left alive upon the _Janet_
one hundred and two Negroes and fifteen white men.
That day when with a great and weary breath we saw that it was gone,
there came up with us the _Sharon_ that had left Daga twenty-four
hours after us. She was built for speed, and she packed close, carrying
between six and seven hundred Negroes, though I know not how she did
it. Now as she neared, there poured down the wind upon us her stench.
We lay to; she came on and hailed us.
“_Janet_, ahoy!”
“Ahoy, _Sharon_!”
“The plague! Have you the plague?”
“We have had it. It is over.”
“How do you stand?”
“One hundred and two Negroes living. Fifteen white men. Captain Bartram
is dead, McNaughton and our surgeon.”
“Who is that?”
“David Scott, Captain of the _Janet_. How is it with you?”
“Dying. We are dying! Do you know anything to do?”
“Nothing. We could do nothing. You’ve got your surgeon?”
“Yes, but we’ve never seen this thing before.”
“It has gone from us. It will from you.”
“If it isn’t too late---- We’ve thrown overboard half our
Negroes.--Good-by, the _Janet_!”
“Good-by, _Sharon_!”
She sailed swiftly. In an hour she had left us quite behind. The sea
ran dark blue and in hills and vales; the warm wind behind us pushed
us on, straight into west. But we were hardly half through the Middle
Passage, and we had fifteen to handle the ship and our freight. David
Scott regarded the latter, knowing by now every face, and seeing in
them, when all is said, only Universal and Eternal Man. By now he
had enough of their tongue roughly to understand and be understood.
They had endured the plague and in some sort tended one another and
had buried in the sea their host that was gone. Of those able or
compassionate or higher men of their own who had at last stood out to
serve, three or four remained alive. Over all rested as it rested upon
us fifteen the shadow of something gigantic behind and over-topping
life that was small. I went among them and talked, and it was to me as
if I were at Old Mill Quarter, discoursing in the dusk after work with
Old Hannibal and Eboe Sam and Pickaninny and Joe and the others.
I offered, the weather resting fair, to let them sleep upon deck--they
having a great horror of below, where in the blackness companies of
them had died. They would have had space enough down there now for some
sort of comfort, but they had that horror. They might stay upon their
deck--they should be unshackled--they should have abundant food and all
the water we could safely give. What we could do for them we would. In
return would they undertake obedience to orders? We had the guns, the
cutlasses, the great guns, and always we could sink the _Janet_.
And lastly, I wanted six to help clean the ship and carry the food.
A great black man--one of the helpers from the first--stood forth. I
will put his words into plain English.
“Where are you taking us?”
“To an island named Jamaica.”
“Are you going to kill us there to please your god? Some of us think
that.”
“No. If a man has bad luck in Africa he becomes a slave. You know all
about being slaves to head men and chiefs and kings. You know about
going into far countries to be slaves. In Jamaica you will just be
slaves to white chiefs.”
“Are there other black men there?”
“A great many. You will find folk who have been your neighbors.”
“What will happen to us? How shall we be treated?”
“You will work to make sugar and rum and tobacco, or to cut down trees.
If you will not work or if you run away, you will have hard treatment.
If you work and stay where you are and make no trouble you will be
treated differently. Some of you will be treated very kindly.--You know
a great deal about it, though you have never been out of Africa.”
His face seemed to work. He looked at every man of us armed, and at
the ship and the piled sails and all the matters that were foreign and
marvellous to them, and at his people. Something solemn, something
of rest awhile after that Death Cloud, was upon them as upon us.
Something of resignation, something of muteness before Destiny. After
a time there might manifest among them, even here, that cheerfulness
that was theirs by nature--but to-day was other coloring. The speaker
for them, and he was tall and big and black as night, but his head was
well-formed and his countenance showed homely strength, looked at sky
and sea, the _Janet_ and us.
“We cannot help ourselves. If we fight we just die and gain nothing. We
do not know for what evil we are here and are going into a far land to
work for others. Maybe it is for evil, and maybe it is for some good at
last. We do not know. Maybe somebody bigger than you is taking us. We
won’t make trouble.”
The good weather held, we cleaned the ship, the plague made no return,
though we had a degree of other sicknesses, due chiefly to exhaustion
and desolation. Our Negroes as a whole remained tractable, and helpful.
God knows, by this time David Scott knew the good qualities and those
not so good of Negro folk! On the _Janet_ this disastrous voyage,
the good rose, the bad sank away. There is in this people a Philosopher
who is over and over again slain by Passion and who over and over again
rises from the dead. He had, in this voyage, an exemplar in the big,
black man, and the rest were guided.
We fifteen white men, divided into two shifts, under captain and first
mate, had our work, being so short-handed.
There was scant time for musing grief. I _saw_ Bartram and Colley
and McNaughton and others.
A week--ten days--went by of steady westward going. Then befell another
calm. I heard Wheeler the boatswain say to Michaelson, “Somebody’s gone
to war against this ship.”
“Aye, I’m thinking myself somebody has a scunner against us.”
The third day of it Olafson and I went secretly and examined the water
casks. We were only in mid-passage who should have been nearly to
port. A hundred and twenty now drank water as against an expected five
hundred and fifty. But for very need and mercy we had been free with it
during the pestilence, giving the sick and dying what they cried for.
That first dead calm had lasted long, and this, for all we knew, might
equal or outgo it. Our faces were grave when we saw what we had--and
the lift of any land so far away. Said Olafson, “Something less than
the old allowance?” and I nodded.
David Scott and the black man together made the hundred understand and
acquiesce. For the most part our fifteen and Tom and Don in the cook’s
galley met the stress with courage. We shared equally, black and white,
captive and free. As captain, I said it should be so. At first there
threatened mutiny, but Olafson and Michaelson and others stood by me,
and it was so. Each soul upon the _Janet_ had each day enough
water just to do with and no more.
Again the _Janet_ was pinned to the moveless sea.
The calm lasted--so hot, so still--with little to do for the ship. Dead
distaste, dead weariness, bodings, and at last with us all nerve and
temper a frayed and giving thing.
The fifth night of it I entered the captain’s cabin--it was Olafson’s
watch--and lay down. There were the arms, there the books, stars
glimmered in the window. There formed in me the words, “It’s time!” I
smelled rum. In one moment lust for it had me by the throat. It was
more than that; it clutched in every member of the will as well as the
body. I sat up. Already the delusion flowed about me--the delusion that
everything and all was best served by my taking the key of the spirit
room, going there softly, and returning with a great jug of rum. I
arose and took it, and went barefoot and returned unseen with my store.
I put it down, a cup stood by me. I sat upon the bed. A voice spoke in
me--another voice, I thought then, than my own. “If you taste that cup
you are damned.”
At the same moment I was pervaded by a light that was not starlight,
moonlight or sunlight. In it I saw the _Janet_ with a drunken, mad
captain, and saw disaster to her and to six-score human beings. I saw
widely, intensely, with minuteness, many-formed disaster. The light
went, the voice was silent, but a rod was lifted over my soul.
My fingers unclasped from the cup. I pushed it a little from me on the
shelf by the bed, then motionless in the dark I began to wrestle.
All the rest of the night.--Toward dawn I got up and took the jug and
restored it to the spirit room. But I kept the key. I could get it
again.
The cold, the forlorn dawn streaked the sky. The demon and I still were
locked. The bell struck. I must go on deck and send Olafson to rest. I
went, and he exclaimed, “Are you ill, sir?”
“No. I could not sleep.”
He and his men went to eat, to have a small measure of water and to
sleep. Mine came wearily out of forecastle. On the deck the Negroes
were still sleeping. A deathlike purple hung in the east.
I moved about the ship as was needed, or sat in my place upon the poop
deck and I fought until I was spent. “I will not take it to-day, but as
soon as it is night----” When noon was passed Olafson relieved me, but
I would not go to Bartram’s cabin. I lay solitary upon the deck in the
shadow with the dead mirror of the sea around and fought. Once I fell
asleep but I met a terrible dream and woke trembling, with sweat upon
me. The sun sank and I must take charge while the others rested and
sweetly slept. Somehow the hours passed till midnight. Olafson took the
ship. I left the deck and sat upon my bed in the cabin, waiting just
for a little when I should go barefoot, unlock the door of the spirit
room and bring the jug back. Again said the voice, “If you do it you
are damned.”
Oh, what lion, what tiger, what army, is like this to fight? Oh,
help--help to break a slave’s chain!
Once I went outside the door and halfway to that place of storage that
was to me Heaven. But I saw in mid-air before me a mournful face, and I
turned back and sat again, shivering, upon my bed.
And again dawn----
All day--all day----
It was sunset. The sun went down a ball of fire, and there were no
clouds. The west flared carnation then ebbed to purple and the sea
likewise turned to clear purple glass. I stood by the side with the
moveless sails in mountains above me. The ship had its sounds enough
but there fell to my senses a silence like a night in space. I seemed
to stand alone in a quiet place. It was like a battlefield a year
after the battle. I stood as one foredone, and yet I knew there was a
victory. But who won it I hardly knew, whether it was I or another.
That raging desire in me died or fell asleep. I came quietly, stilly
back to David Scott before or after his two weeks. And yet not to that
David Scott either--seeing that on my part or on Another’s part there
had been a victory.