Chapter XXIII

The _Janet_, her second voyage after refitting at Bristol, carried a cargo slightly differing from her usual one in that it represented Negroes from the Zaire and Africa beyond the Camaroons, a vast back country that Daga did not ordinarily drain. But Daga, ministering to twenty ships, had this time thrown her net in that direction and drawn. These Negroes were heathenish to us; from afar, very heavy and black. The Coast tongues, north and south, and the back country tongues that we knew did not meet their case. We handled them more like animals than was the _Janet’s_ wont.

Daga lay three days astern.--

My Fancy in Jamaica lay to me more than a year astern. Back I had gone to Bartram and Colley and McNaughton and the ship.

Colley had paid his debts in London, but here he was again. He had even had a fair offer of a practise--but here he was. “You know it ruins you, David, this life! ruins you for anything else. At last you don’t know how to treat any other world, and it doesn’t know how to treat you.--Well, here’s a right good company too!”

And it seemed that we did cling together, Bartram, McNaughton, Colley, David Scott, Tom and Don, Michaelson, Llewellyn the carpenter, Geordie, Jack Dannet and Dory and other who still lasted from the _Janet’s_ population that autumn night when I climbed her side from the boat of Christian Todd--and later ones too,--Wheeler the boatswain who took Davis’s place, and others. Benjamin the steward was dead. Black the second mate had left us for the _Sherwood Oak_. In his place we had a big, slow Dane named Olafson. And every year saw changes, many of them, among the seamen.

She had come into Kingston Harbor, white and trim from England, all her sails so lovely, and strong new masts and rigging, her decks and her hold and her cabins sweet again, her figurehead, a sea goddess, restored, her flag and pennant new--the big and fair ship, the _Janet_. In her hold and boxed upon her decks she carried stores as she had carried them when first I knew her, all manner of trade goods for Daga. She came in with a kind of music, and David Scott had a warming of the heart to see her, the Enchantress, the good and evil one together! She had been away a year; he had been at My Fancy a year. He knew about when she was due, and had ridden from the north and the west through the great island to Kingston, having resigned his manager’s place at My Fancy, given it back to Mr. Godfrey North who was home from England, and who would have kept him on. But David Scott was restless, and his own unhappiness had tainted for him My Fancy. So he returned to Kingston and North the agent, and the _Janet_ was sighted and swam into harbor like a mountain of pearl.

That had been a successful voyage to the Coast and back. Going out, it minded me of that first voyage from Chesapeake Bay. Returning, we had only the best luck, weather, health and all, and landed four hundred and ninety-two out of five hundred slaves. This time our port had been Charlestown in South Carolina.

Said Bartram, “All in all, David, taking all my years together, East Indiaman and Guineaman, they may call me a fortunate captain! We have our ups and downs, but that one ghastly ribbon has been spun off the spool!” But as he spoke he put out an arm and touched wood. When he saw that I saw it he laughed, then drew a kind of long, sighing breath. “Eh, man, eh, man David! Life’s a strange bird that goes across the sky and who’ll say whence or to where? And then, you see, there’s yon net of stars up there!”

Back at Daga and Rathbone Lace and his boat up the river, to the Oil Palm village.

Markham the surgeon asked me about Fanny. That luckless voyage was of course known in all detail at Daga, but such things were never stressed. The accidents of the trade--they were the accidents of the trade--and all trades have accidents. But I went to Markham’s house--Colley chancing to be somewhere up the river--about a cut that I had received upon the arm in the bush, and when he had dressed it he asked me the question. I told him briefly. He nodded, was silent a moment, then said, “I find it natural enough.”

“I am quite of your mind,” I answered. “I think it was so.”

“They were her people.”

“Yes.--It’s all the same, Markham, all over.--God knows how we can be One Thing that hates and hurts itself so, and can’t give messages to itself from itself! But so I come to feel it is. One Thing. One tragic, pitiful, insane Thing!”

We came out upon his verandah. Daga lay in the afternoon light. All suddenly castle and village and ivory beach and native boats and palm trees made again the picture of that witches’ night in Edinburgh, long ago now, long ago! It passed, and I saw with distinctness a mournful, human Face--and whether it were Fanny, or a girl in Barbadoes, or Maria at My Fancy, or old Melinda at Old Mill Quarter, or Eboe Sam, or Old Hannibal, or Pickaninny, or Tom and Don, or all together--and I think it was all together, all these and many more together--it held, it overwhelmed and drowned me. Then it was gone.

“What is the matter?” demanded Markham.

“I don’t know.--I saw a vision.”

“Don’t do it!” said Markham. “I began it once. But I stopped them off.”

But I made a gesture and left him, going down unseeingly to the sea.

That was the first time at Daga after the _Janet’s_ refitting. The second time, for two weeks, I was drinking and altogether for and with Rathbone Lace, and what I did or left undone one day I may pick up and stare at with affright. I came back into sobriety, and all of Rathbone’s power could not make me drink. He laughed and gave it up. “But it won’t be always so, David, it won’t be always so! No wall that you’ve built but shall crumble! Then you’ll stay at Daga, and find rum good every day in the year, and we’ll go forever, my boy, from Oil Palm village to Oil Palm village!”

At times, from the first, I hated him. And then Daga again, and we sought each other out.

This second time the _Janet_ had swung at anchor long weeks before Daga. There were trade troubles. A war that had been expected to send down streams of slaves, that had indeed been fomented for just that purpose, had failed of bursting. Other chiefs were demanding more and more and more for their villagers, and the factor had made a stand against such exorbitancy with the result that here, too, befell a temporary drought. Add to this that a rival British company had lately established a factory no distance at all up the Coast and was making glittering promises. Trade, diverted, flowed that way as well as to Daga. And other things had happened. We had been not far from two months at Daga when like a flood tide came traders with those Negroes from the Zaire and beyond Camaroons.

We took them and filled the _Janet_ with them. They seemed to us brutish, with their heaviness and unknown tongues--we handled them at last in the piece and with no ceremony. All at last was done--the water was in--all was ready--we should get away that night. In the harbor about us lay the _Sharon_ of Boston, the _Waterlily_, the _Blake_ and the little _Frances Fynes_, the _Sharon_ taking too of those southern and inland Negroes and almost ready to sail, the others just in. When the factor came aboard before sunset to bid Captain Bartram farewell the captains of the _Sharon_ and the _Blake_ came with him, and all had wine in the _Janet’s_ great cabin.

“Here’s to you, Captain Bartram!”

“Thank you, Mr. Lace. Thank you, Ross. Thank you, Jenkins!”

“The best of voyages!”

“I’m thanking you again. If it’s like the last it will be good.”

He was not convivial--“Holy Bartram.” They knew it and secretly winked that the bottle was emptied and there would not be another. A little further talk, and out they trooped and down into their boats and so away--and that night about three we sailed from Daga.

Africa lay five days astern.

I came in the early morning out of Philip Smith’s cabin into the great one to find seated at the table Bartram and Colley. The latter was speaking in a low voice. Bartram, looking particularly tawny and big, sat staring out of open door. The sun was just up, the sea ran sparkling, a brisk wind filled the sails. I remember the blue and gold and white, the humming, the thrilling salt, the cool and lift. I made to pass through the cabin, but Bartram spoke, “Come here, David! There’s trouble walking beside us.”

“What is it?”

“It’s sickness.”

He moved his big frame, put his hands behind his head--a way he had--and stared through the door at what showed of his ship. “Five dead this morning.”

I asked Colley, “What do you think it is?”

“God knows! _I_ don’t. I’ve never seen it before. We bought it with these Negroes, and where they bought----” He described the sickness. “It’s one of the old plagues.”

“None but the Negroes----”

“Yes. Jack Dannet’s got it.”

Bartram stood up. “We’ll do as we’ve done before--the best we can! Say nothing of its newness or anything else. Say it will presently stop. I’ll order an extra dram for all.”

“All” meant the _Janet’s_ officers and seamen. No one told or could tell the freight that it was not serious and would presently stop.

Seven days out from Daga. There had been half a dozen more deaths, and another seaman lay in the ship’s hospital. But that was not so bad--we could weather it at this rate. Then suddenly like a tiger the thing jumped. On a hot morning, the sails lank, we brought up and cast into the sea fifteen bodies. At noon Dannet died, and in the evening Jonathan Williams. Between dusk and dawn three more were smitten in the forecastle. It settled down.

McNaughton’s opinion was that we should put back to Daga.

“What for?” asked Bartram, with reason. “The sea opens for them as easily here. We can’t send them back into barracoon and poison all there--and for us white men the _Janet’s_ still the best hospital. If it’s bad, better to be bad keeping our course. If it’s an evil that’s got a term, what’s the object in turning tail? What’s to be will be, McNaughton, and we’ll go on our way.”

The next day panic appeared, in the black and in the white. Bartram quelled it, shamed it, dissipated it, so that at least it came into bounds. In both colors arrived the drawing into two camps: they who feared and gave all way to fear, and they who feared but kept their manhood and banded to help themselves and others.

We ceased to drive the Africans at night under the gratings. The most of them stayed night and day on the deck and they began to die like flies. It was fearful, their noise; and fearful their stillness. In every throng of black men and women as in every throng of white, there will be so many who are better, braver and wiser than the others. They are smothered under until times like this. Then they come forth and are seen to be tall and strong. So out of this mourning or desperately silent mass sprang at last their own helpers. When we saw who they were we picked them out, gave them freedom and told them as best we could what to do, then left it to them.

When we were two weeks from Africa a third of our cargo was gone. Seven seamen were dead. Hardly any one who was taken recovered. It was malignant from the first.

Add that there now befell a calm. Day after day of it when we hardly moved. And each day dead men and burials, and the sea hardly seemed to take them away.

Bartram apparently did not sleep at all. The old lion went padding at all hours through his ship, strengthening here, strengthening there. Bartram, McNaughton, Olafson, Colley and young Winter his helper, David Scott, Wheeler the boatswain, Llewellyn, Dory and Wat Allen, Geordie, Tom and Don and some others feared, but worked.

Then Winter was taken and died, then Geordie, then Llewellyn. Three weeks, and half the cargo was gone, and out of fifty white men aboard were left not thirty-five. The dead calm held. The sea was brass and the sky was brass, and the sharks swam beside the ship.

It was middle of the night. It had been my watch; Olafson had relieved, and I came to my bed, to throw myself upon it and sink into dead sleep, forgetting for three hours the stench and the cries and the heat. But as, half-naked, I touched it, I heard Bartram’s voice at the door, “David!”

I knew, I knew, what it was. I knew it in his voice. When I reached him, he was supporting himself against the table. “It’s the number and the star, David! They’ve come again--they’ve come again!”

I got him to his bed and went for Colley, who presently stood beside him. “Captain, Captain! You’re stronger than us. You pull through! We need you.”

But Bartram regarded us with strange eyes. “You’ve got McNaughton.--William Bartram is sending in his papers, and crisscross and blotted and torn they are!”

We gave him water which he at once began to call for as they all did, and McNaughton came quietly and took his orders which were short. “The best you can, McNaughton, the best you can!”

It was to be kept from the _Janet_ as long as might be, which was short enough, we knew. There were three dying men in the forecastle. Colley, thin as paper, with hollows and shadows under his eyes, returned to his enormous work; McNaughton to his. I stayed beside Bartram. His speech was rapid and dry; now and then he groaned, and his hands moved over the bed or with strange signallings in the air. “Is it dawn? Is it dawn?”

“It’s coming, Bartram.”

“There was to be a wind at dawn. A right wind. And land at dawn! Land, land, land!”

He struggled to sit up. I pressed him back. “Lie down, Bartram, lie down!”

His wits came back. “Ah, David, man, a sair trouble--but we’ve known so many! I’m fortunate in McNaughton. That Dane, too, is a good man.”

“Yes, he is,” I said. “But you’re the best man here, Bartram.”

“Na, na!” he said. “And I’ve got a star to fight.”

With that he began again to toss and speak at random. Colley returned and looked at him. “No worse and no better than the others. The same boat, we’re all in the same boat, captain and crew.” But by dawn he was worse. The very strength and bigness of him seemed, when it turned, to aid that direction. He fell into a stupor. When the sun rose and poured light about him, it was seen what ravage the one night had made. When Colley came again he said, “He’ll go, David, and it won’t be long.”

It was not. At sunset Bartram died.

At dawn we buried him--and the _Janet_ seemed dead with him, the _Janet_ and the sea.

McNaughton was captain. We had no time for grief or for memory,--time for nothing but a dull, eternal struggle with the pestilence.

Then McNaughton was taken, and in twenty-four hours followed Bartram into the sea.

Olafson came to me, with him Wheeler and Michaelson and others.

“We’re come, Mr. Scott, to say that I do not wish to be captain of the _Janet_, sir. I’ll do my duty as your first mate, but you be captain. All of us who are alive, and we think those who are dead, say the same.”

So I was captain--Captain David Scott of the _Janet_.

The next day Colley was taken. For a little while he was very clear-headed. “I’m dead tired, David--too tired really to suffer. I’ll go quick.--They never should have been!”

“You’ve done the work of a dozen, Colley. And always you’ve doctored and helped us----”

“Yes, maybe. But they never should have been--the errands of the _Janet_. Leave her now, David--I’d leave her if I were you.”

“Oh, Colley!” I cried. “Little fear but I shall be leaving her! Look around soon and you’ll see me--and Olafson and Michaelson and all!”

He turned his head and turned it again. “And I’ll be seeing, too, don’t you think, David, the black folk?”

I was summoned for something, and when I returned he did not know me. As he said, it was quick and he suffered little. Colley died, and we dropped him into the sea.

We were a month from Africa, but because of the calm not a third of the way over. Of five hundred slaves the _Janet_ held now a hundred and forty; of fifty white men there were now twenty to man her. And I was captain and Olafson was my mate.