Chapter XIV

We began to lade the _Janet_. She was clean and stanch and as all had always sworn, roomy. Our seamen, to whom Bartram had given just as much shore leave and license as his name for a “good” captain obliged him to and no more, were all home again and fairly fit. The officers no less--McNaughton who never seemed to take a holiday, Pomeroy who took all of it that he could hold, but who had a bull’s strength, Colley who took with moderation. As for Captain William Bartram, his holidays were of his own devising and within his own mind and spirit. Tom and Don, the cooks, had been three times, I think, ashore. Once I had encountered them on the wall, staring down into the barracoon. Those therein had surged toward them with shouts and appeals. They had answered back, but their tongues were not pure African and did not seem to be understood. The barracoon had begun to laugh and to jibe, and then it seemed to menace spiritually, seeing that it had no material power. The two from the _Janet_ cried something back and left the place. Again I had seen them at low tide, sitting on the beach, upon a piece of a wrecked boat, staring into the west, where would be Jamaica. If anywhere was home to them it was Jamaica--and the _Janet_.

If anywhere was home now to David Scott, it was the _Janet_. Scotland was fading. A time would be when all its tint would come again, but now it was fading.

Davis the boatswain and Llewellyn the carpenter, Hamilton that was surgeon’s mate, Benjamin the steward and Geordie, Jack Dannet and all his fellows, poop, midship and forecastle, we were all aboard. The sun was shining--the hatches were open--one looked down along shafts of light into that depth that, quite clean and airy and empty now, would soon be not the one nor the other. Colley said that the Captain had them up from it an hour earlier and into it an hour later than any other that he knew. “He’s got good customs.”

McNaughton, standing by, put in, “Aye, he gaes tae kirk inside. At times it gets into the way of complete effeeciency.”

“I don’t agree there,” said Colley. “I think he’s more efficient for it.”

“Aweel,” answered McNaughton, “there’s room for a difference of opeenion.--But yon’s the first boat.”

He moved to the side. William Bartram was on the poop deck. I went to him there and watched with him the oncoming boats, two or three between us and the shore. They were the long, native boats, made of the greatest trees; they had many rowers and were packed with slaves. On the white beach beyond showed a number of Daga figures, the factor and the assistant and Rathbone Lace and others; and squads of naked slaves were issuing from the barracoon and Daga castle, driven forth and down to the water where waited boats. The sky was the bluest imaginable, there was a sweet, singing air. The scene had beauty, but there was horror too.

On the _Janet_ a certain number of our seamen were armed with cutlass and pistols. “There’s a fear and despair at first,” said Bartram, “that makes them dangerous.”

The foremost boat now touched the shadow of the ship. Men stood by with rope and the long, cleated, landing board. This boat had women and children, mostly silent, ashy with fright. They were taken aboard--the boat pushed off--the second took its place. Again naked black women, naked young boys and girls. In Africa many tribes wear some slight show of clothing, some light and partial attire in a land of heat, but Africans put upon a slave ship are put there naked--nor could it be otherwise, the conditions given. If they felt it or did not feel it, I do not know. There was so much else to feel. In this second boat there was wailing and praying.

Bartram descended to the deck. He stood among those women and children and honestly tried to comfort them. He had, as had all at Daga, a rough and ready acquaintance with African tongues that were all, so to speak, variants one of the others. Now I made out that it was:

“Stop greeting, you women; you’re wringing your bairns’ hearts! Nobody wants to eat you--nobody’s going to hurt you in any way if you’re good! Ship--this is a good ship--fine ship. Men--these are good white men. You’re going to a good country--plenty to eat, houses, good folk. Plenty your own kind there!--Now, here comes another boatful. See if you can’t get up a laugh to meet them!”

The third boat--women and children still--came alongside and gave to the deck, Pomeroy and half a dozen seamen handling the cargo. I had followed Captain Bartram, and now in the momentary lull while the company aboard watched those coming aboard, he spoke to me and with feeling.

“I’m looking to you, David, to follow my ways and Mr. McNaughton’s ways, not Pomeroy’s ways nor Rathbone Lace’s ways. I’m fain to treat these poor souls, just as far as ’tis possible, like kindly Scots folk torn from hame by poverty and trouble and gaeing ower seas. I’ve seen greeting amang women at Glasgow and Leith when first they came to the white ship that was to take them away. Not loud greeting like these poor, naked children of the sun, but greeting. In the end greeting’s greeting, sorrow’s sorrow, whatever the color of her claiths.” He sighed, “There’s many a cruel necessity, David!”

From out the women from the third boat started one, taller than the others, vigorous, with a deep and intelligent eye, with a dark fire running well-nigh visibly through and around her.--David Scott had in his time felt anger too deep for any shaken voice or idle movement, and he recognized it. She spoke, and she checked attention and held it breathless. We did not know her tongue; she seemed a Negress from the mountains. Maybe she had been a prophetess or a queen. Beyond doubt, by nature she was something like that. Her speech straightened the cowering groups and for a little made it to seem that the captors cowered. There was a strange illusion.--David Scott, at least, saw as in a mirage a great dark figure, out of space and time, standing as judge.

The voice of this woman thrilled through the _Janet_. She cried upon God--presumably ours and hers alike--to show us through suffering. We did not know her tongue, but the ship understood. Through suffering.

Then I, watching, saw and heard something strange. It came as it were from the inner sky, out upon her visibly. The dark fire changed hue, became rose and sapphire, then a golden flame. Her arms were lifted, she seemed tall as a mast, her voice sang and was universal as the wind. “Show! If it must be through suffering, then suffering, but show! Show!” That was her saying, though I knew not the words. I do not know if what I saw and heard was caught by any other, though Bartram beside me shuddered slightly as though one had passed over his grave. But David Scott heard it and felt it for the _Janet_ and all ships upon the seas, and Africa and the rest of the earth. Show! Show!

It stayed with us a moment, that enchantment or that Truth. Then, Bartram having nodded to him, Davis the boatswain seized the prophetess and threw her reeling among the dark crowd. “You’ll stand watching, for it’s you that bring about risings!” She fell to her knee, caught by one of the women and stood up, but spoke no more. I saw her now as only a tall negress with the air of one who held rank. Her voice sank away, now and for this voyage. She died the third week, and we dropped her body into the wave.

The boats that were coming now held men. The sun blazed over Daga. The whitened castle and the many palm trees, the river mouth, the village, the factor’s hill, the white beach and the ant procession out of castle, out of barracoon--and again there flashed to me Edinburgh and the Luckenbooths. A naked black man, first of his boatful, stepped upon the _Janet’s_ deck, and for all the world he looked like Pickaninny.