The next day upsprang the wind and did not again fail us. Three days
thereafter we met the _Edina_ of Baltimore bound for Whidah. We
hailed her; she lay to and the _Janet_ near her. I went to her
in our boat and spoke from it to her Captain, Weymarch, whom Bartram
knew. Could they give us water? We would thankfully take no matter
how little. They had had a quick and prosperous voyage, with but
forty aboard. Weymarch knew the _Janet_, was sorry for Bartram’s
death. He offered three casks and when we had these shipped cried that
he thought he could give another and did. It was our saving, and we
blessed the _Edina_ for kindness.
She dwindled toward Africa while we ran into the west. We were careful
indeed with water, but thirst no longer tormented us, neither the white
nor the black. We would stop at the first of the Bahamas and fill our
casks before we took the Windward Passage downward to Jamaica.
Olafson, Wheeler, Michaelson and the rest of our seamen did well. I was
used to them and they to me. I knew the _Janet_, the _Janet_
knew me. The Africans, with that big black man their teacher, made no
trouble that might not be argued or soothed away.
Michaelson said to me, “You’ll be a Captain, sir, after the heart of
Captain Bartram, rest his soul!”
And Olafson said, “The Company will confirm you Captain, doubtless,
sir. I’d like to keep on the _Janet_ with you.”
But I was unhappy.
There broke a day that showed us the Blue Mountains. The anchor rattled
down in Kingston Harbor. North the agent came alongside in a boat.
“What’s wrong?”
I delivered to him the hundred and two Negroes. The next day I saw them
in the barracoon, and the big, black man still led and comforted them.
David Scott came and went, Kingston waterside and Kingston Harbor,
keeping Bartram’s cabin and watch upon the _Janet_ that was being
holystoned and painted and made all clean again. There was sympathy
among the world of ships and men of the sea and dealers in black men.
“Holy Bartram” had been much liked despite his queernesses. North
sincerely missed him. “If there were more like him the trade wouldn’t
get the name it has!”
“Has it a name?”
“The world is getting finicky,” he answered. “It wasn’t always so!”
He had been long with the Company, was esteemed and had power to
give a captain to a ship lacking one. Like a good agent he pondered
it, he talked with Olafson and the _Janet’s_ men, and he weighed
the claims of two or three in Kingston who had had ships, had them
not now, and wished them again. Then he offered the _Janet_ to
me--Bartram’s pay and all.
I thanked him and said I must think of it.
“There’s just one thing that made me hesitate,” he said. We were alone
in his quiet house behind the vines. “But I assert that Bartram never
told me you had a cloud over you in Virginia. If it ever comes out--and
with common prudence, now after ten years, it never need--why, I simply
knew and know nothing about it!”
“I understand.”
“Lord!” he said. “The high seas and the land are different things, and
Scotland and Africa are different things! Six out of ten men bound for
Guinea have strange stories.”
“Mr. North,” I asked, “when is the trade going to stop?”
He stared. “Why, when slavery stops, I presume. There’s no particular
sign of that!”
“The factories and the slave ships might cease and leave all the
Negroes in America slaves--till the world grows finicky again.”
“There’s finickiness and finickiness,” he said. “The Royal African
Company don’t see it to that extent.” He laughed. “Bartram used at
first to have those fits. But we’ve got to live--and he came round to
his bread and butter. What’s the use in being better than your time and
your work? But it made him a humane captain and that’s a good thing in
any trade! Follow him, and you’ll do all right.”
“I’ll have to think.”
He pursed his lips, then spoke, “There’s just this other thing,
Scott, that I’m not supposed to know about and yet _do_ know
about--except when somebody asks that’s got no proper or convenient
right to know. God knows there’s drinking enough in the African
trade--as there is for that matter everywhere--but I understand that
just at times you are as far as may be from Bartram’s way there. Now if
you have the right mates it’s possible----”
“It’s my belief that I’ve quit drinking.”
“For good?”
“If I take the _Janet_ I won’t drink while I am upon her.”
After a moment he said, “I’ll take your word, David.--Well, then, the
Company offers you the _Janet_, Captain Scott.”
I said again, “I’ll have to think.”
Returning to the _Janet_, I tried to think--but I loved the
_Janet_.
Next day I got a horse and rode out to the Blue Mountains. But from
every height I saw the passionate blue sea and the _Janet_ and I
loved them both.
It was to my advantage to go with her. I could not now find new things.
Bartram and Colley and McNaughton were in some sense there, there upon
her still.--Bartram’s cabin and the books and the long, clean voyages
out.--Daga--I would turn the new leaf at Daga. David Scott, world
flotsam with an easy job, and the Captain of the _Janet_ were two
things. If I took the _Janet_ I would be true to her.
The voyages out--but the voyages back?
Cargoes of slaves. Distaste, heat, stench, fatigue, close watch and
ward, barbarity and danger--all the deterrents that made men of the
sea draw back at the word “Guineaman,” that gave to the trade mostly
hardened and reckless men. Well, was I not hardened and reckless?
I was used to it all. There was even a crude excitement in seeing each
time if it could be done. Captains of slavers rarely at last left the
slavers, died in the trade unless it threw them out, broken and useless
hulls, decaying forever in some little port town.
I saw it, but I had known no human trade without distaste. Distaste in
soldiering, distaste on Virginia plantations, distaste at My Fancy. I
was used to the _Janet_--I was the slaver--there were reliefs.
Slavery. The hunting and trapping of black men and sailing with them,
against their will, over the seas and selling them for life, them and
their unborn children, the generations to come.
I got down from my horse and sat upon a stone, but between bough and
branch I saw the extreme blue sea and the ships in harbor and the
_Janet_.
Once, for five years, I had been almost as much a slave as if I were
born in Africa. I knew the taste of the cup. In much it tasted the
same, if you were white or if you were black.
Captain of the _Janet_. David Scott, Captain of the _Janet_.
If planters and merchants and others the world over did wrong in
enslaving--and according to that Quaker they did--_what of me?_
Captain of the _Janet_--Captain of the _Janet_.
As I sat there the _Janet_ seemed to come near. I saw her stem
to stern, every mast and boom and spar and rope, her sails, her decks
and her cabins. She seemed as she was when I climbed out of Christian
Todd’s boat upon her, but seemed more, with a thousand memories as of
home and things endured and enjoyed. I saw the great cabin and the
lanterns and the table and stacked in fairy columns the gold that would
be my pay; and Bartram and Colley and McNaughton seemed with me there
and approving. The sea flowed midnight purple, and the _Janet_ had
every sail spread, and the Trade Wing sang.
Somebody must do it--somebody must run the slave ships. Better the
decent, the humane-as-might-be, than Garth and McKenzie and their
kind! Better Bartram’s kind on the _Janet_ than some one who sneered
at “Holy Bartram,” and was himself a terror to white seaman and black
slave! Bartram seemed to stand beside me in his cabin.
“David, let us sail her still together! I wadna like another----”
And I was idle and indolent and slow in the inner man, distasting
change where I had taken the groove.
As well be unhappy on the _Janet_ as away from her! As for the
slave trade and slavery, they would persist while I lived and while
I died. The earth was wound with a chain. My being Captain of the
_Janet_ wouldn’t enslave and wouldn’t free a Negro of them all.
Another wouldn’t be so merciful a captain, and that was the solitary
difference.
I saw the chain around the earth and that it held white men as well
as black. It held us all, though some it appeared to gall less than
others. Degrees of harshness and various masters, but all, all, all,
possessors and possessed, in slavery!
I was again at My Fancy, roaming the great rooms at night and unhappy
almost to self-murder.
I rose from the stone and mounted my horse and rode back to
Kingston, and happening to meet North in the street, “Captain of the
_Janet_, is it?” he asked, and I answered, “Not yet.”
But next day, being on the _Janet_, silently, swiftly, like a
serpent raising his head, David Scott spoke to that Unnamed One in
prison within him, “If I am lost anyhow, I will walk, dance, and run
a little first!” And sat down at his table in his cabin and wrote to
North that he would take the ship.