Chapter XV

All night and every night five hundred beings lay as close as herrings in a cask upon the _Janet’s_ slave deck, under the _Janet’s_ grated hatches. Men were shackled, two together at the ankles. Women and boys lay ungyved. Each and all had just enough space in which to lie their length, or almost their length, and their breadth without turning or spreading. Bodies touched and rubbed one another. Overhead was scant, scant space. The hatches were kept uncovered, but still was it suffocating down there--and fetid beyond believing. David Scott, who knew an Edinburgh prison, yet had never dreamed of anything like it. It steamed up through the gratings. He thought he saw it, one hot night, as a cloud surrounding the ship. It was black in that sighing, grunting place, black as the pit. Sounds came up all night long. Out of five hundred always some were sleepless, always some in anguish of body or mind, always some breaking out into wrath. They remonstrated with each other, they seemed to curse God, or now and then to be praying. Sometimes would come a wild and sudden cry. The watch on deck paid no attention, unless the noise grew and a certain note came in. Then a threat was cried down through the gratings.

In the morning, “an hour earlier than other ships”, the gratings were lifted, and they poured up the short ladders to the light and air. The deck became covered as a sugared board is with bees. They gasped, they stretched themselves, some leaped up and down; they stared at sea and sky and each other; their tongues were loosened. Water was given them and a sufficient breakfast. Divided into companies, they sat and ate from great platters of beans and rice. Now you might hear, out of one group or another, a guffaw of laughter. There is something in the Negro ineradicably cheerful. But there was never much or lasting laughter, not even on the _Janet_ that was so “good” a ship!

The slaves stayed on deck all day long. Two hours before sunset they had their second meal. The allowance of water was a pint and a half in the twenty-four hours to a man, less to women and children. This seemed great hardship and was miserably felt by these who at home drank when they wished from a thousand springs and streams. But the Middle Passage took long weeks, and tempest or dead calm might at any time make it longer. Among the ghastliest stories were those of slavers without water. The five hundred black folk were given sufficient for some degree of health and no more. A little thirst spaced through the voyage, said Bartram, was better than empty water barrels a hundred leagues from land. Certainly he wished there were room for more barrels.

“If we carried fewer Negroes----”

“The Company thinks we should carry more.”

He had his rules for the day. All ships had pretty much the same. There must be exercise, and it was best got by a kind of dancing. Fettered men still could shuffle and sway, and the women and boys were free of bonds. Dancing was good for the body and the spirit. Singing was good too, so that it leaned to the jovial and not the melancholy. All were encouraged to dance and sing. They might sprawl in the sun and sleep. They might converse and tell stories. The surgeon came and looked them over every morning when they emerged from the blackness, every evening before they returned to it. If there were any truly and really ill they were removed to a corner that was called their hospital. All wanted as few as possible to die. A certain number might be expected to go between Daga and the sight of Blue Mountain in Jamaica--half a dozen out of a hundred perhaps, in a decent ship like the _Janet_. Much more than that would mean some calamity. So soon as they were forth in the morning, salt water enough was sluiced about the slave deck, swabbing poles were used and it was dusted with purificatories. The Middle Passage was a time of labor for all but the Negroes, and as for risks and anxieties, slavers had them in abundance. A prime need always was to keep the cargo well and reasonably content, or if not content, submissive. Every interest led to kindness with firmness. Not only were the owners served by carrying their goods undamaged, but to secure as many lives as possible there had been devised head rights. Captain, first and second officers and surgeon had each so many shillings or pence out of the price of every able-bodied slave delivered to the agents in the ship’s port. Every interest led to reasonable kindness in Virginia. But there was Daniel Askew! And at Amory Hall, that meant kindness and in a degree achieved it, I had not loved their kindness.

The _Janet_, to many slave ships, was as Amory Hall to Daniel Askew. I will give her credit, and I will give Bartram credit, and McNaughton and Colley and many more. I will give David Scott credit. We were not demons. We were perplexed and erring men, calloused by this work.

The first week we lost nine. The first week, they said, was usually the worst. There was more despair, and there was the universal seasickness. Two suddenly, at sunset, jumped overboard, and though sailors leaped after them they were not rescued. One refused to eat and though at last Bartram ordered the cat, and though the third day Colley supervised the forcing open of his mouth and the pouring down of broth, neither did any good. He determinedly died. A man and two women died of some disease. Two children died. A boy died, apparently of mere homesickness. The second week saw less mortality. It had its toll, as had every week that followed, but we kept the fair side of calamity.

Time out of mind two things are most dreaded by slavers--plague and outbreak. The _Janet_ was helpless before plague, except inasmuch as she strove for what cleanliness was possible, and what order was possible, and had drugs enough and a good surgeon. But as to outbreaks, William Bartram kept the probability or the possibility of that as low as might be. And he kept it so to an extent by being a good captain, not a bad one.

The story was that he did not sleep on the Middle Passage. It is called that because a ship’s original course is England to Africa--Africa to America--America to England again. And so it is the Middle Voyage, the Middle Passage. Bartram slept, of course, but he slept little. All day he was wary; cool, just, according to canon, and wary. Throughout the night, any hour, he might be found going about his ship with his padding step, like a tawny, watching, desert lion. The watch had no chance to grow drowsy, the man at the wheel, the mate on duty, found him silently beside them one moment, then gone. He stood at a grating and harkened to the sounds coming up, and gauged their importance; he studied weather of whatever kind. Then he might go and sleep a while and return again. A tall, robust man with tawny hair and beard, big-nosed and keen-eyed. When he and McNaughton walked together, there were two tall, red Scots; when David Scott was joined to them, there were three.

He kept his seamen with his eye and his slow, full, reasonable voice, and the character behind both. They did their work, they made or took in sail, they sat aloft in the rigging or swabbed away the filth and refuse of the slave ship, or stood as guards over those five hundred prisoners; they toiled, watched, ate, slept and played, shouted, cursed and laughed, were sick and well, grumblers more or grumblers less, as seamen are; but they gave no fear of mutiny and the _Janet_ sailed her way.

The _Janet_ sailed her way. It was the winter and the heat not as it is in summer in the Middle Passage. But there was heat when the deep wind failed and the sun stood overhead. Then the sails hung slack, the sea became a hot blue floor which never might we cross; the ship seemed to fester, to fester and to groan. Then the wind blew again, the sails filled, and life revived.

Twice we met tempest, once bitter and prolonged, the greater part of a week. A mast broke, the seas washed over the sides, the ship was tilted and played with like a walnut in a boy’s hand. For three days and nights the Negroes must be kept below hatches. That was frightful. Eight were dead when the sun shone again and the waves stilled themselves. We lost also two seamen, Jonathan West and Walter Bigger.

Barring this week of storm we had a fair and uneventful voyage, day after day of good wind and bright, blue sky. We sighted two British Guineamen, a Spaniard to whom we gave a wide berth, and a craft that we could not make out. Africa now was far behind us and the great West coming nearer, though still it, too, was far, far away.

In some sort a part of the Negroes grew reconciled. I saw brutalities aboard the _Janet_. Pomeroy could be brutal, and Davis and certain of the sailors. But the ship’s intention was not brutality, other than the brutality of being there at all, a fetcher and carrier so, in the eye of day. Harshnesses appeared; punishments and intimidations. It is a problem of high difficulty, the ruling of five hundred barbarian captives crowded for long weeks on a ship upon the sea. What harshness Bartram exercised, or let the mates exercise, was always to him a necessity, done to save from worse things. But the same plea would be advanced by the captains of the _Sherwood Oak_ and the _Fancy_, or by that McKenzie of evil name, men of less judgment as to good and ill and necessity than the Captain of the _Janet_. When it was thought to be needed the whip was used, or other punishment such as deprivation of food and drink, detention under hatches by day as by night, or chainings to the mast. Disobedience and turbulence were the crimes. Some committed them, others did not, and Bartram strove for justice. And when he could--or thought he could--he showed much kindness. Only there was so little room for kindness on that slave deck!

Yet, as I had heard laughter in the Tolbooth--as I had known men to laugh at Daniel Askew’s--so I heard laughter among the black men and women on the _Janet_. For such is the human spirit. Laughter at times, weeping at times.