Chapter XVII

And yet it was days between the sighting of the first of the Windward Isles and the vision, like enchantment, of the Blue Mountain of Jamaica that was twice as high as Ben Lomond.

These days were different from those before them. The run was all but over, many dangers overpassed. The ration of water was doubled; the slaves might have all they wished to eat. All the object was now that ills be forgotten and the cargo seem and indeed be in the fittest conceivable shape. It was Daga’s triumph to ship stout slaves; it was the _Janet’s_ or the _Sherwood Oak’s_ or the _Fancy’s_ to deliver whole and stout as many as might be. Ours were fed and cleansed, and given oil to rub with, and at the last the most were unshackled. And they were told tales of the goodness of the Indies.

There is something in the Negro of a vast good nature and a knowing how to live. Tragic was this ship to him, and his own land was left behind forever and forever, his land and kin and ways and tongue. He had not left it of his own will, but was stolen, forced, dragged, wronged. He was going to a world strange to him as the moon, and into slavery, and the slavery he was already tasting was not sweet. And yet Great Nature gave him humor and mirth, and the moment, on the _Janet_, physical pain and oppression lessened, up and out they welled, like springs from dark hillsides. Not from all but from many. And another thing. He is a barbarian and a heathen, with images of stone and wood, but behind that mask and that childhood yet, he is religious. David Scott found that out of old in Virginia, and nothing ever changed his conviction here. Not that it shows in every man and woman. In many it shows not at all or most fitfully. But in the whole there is the tincture and the mark. Even on the _Janet_ it rose in many or descended upon many, and out of the black present sprang a bloom, a sense of a Future that was different. David Scott saw that happen, and deep, deep in him something knew what it was. It was there, behind or above all the flows of passion, all the sluttishness.--Something in them, as in the Africa they were leaving, dark and rank and strong, incredibly old and incredibly childish. Something mirthful, despite the world. Something savage, something grotesque, something shallow as the skin and deep as the bone, something foolish, something passionate, something delighting in music and drama, something religious, something warm and kind, something good, something wise, after one of Nature’s many ways of wisdom. It was all there; it showed on the _Janet_ as elsewhere.

Some were credulous of the tales that were told, some were not. John Dory and Benjamin the steward were the ones set by custom to tell them. Our slaves would like to have heard, I thought, from Tom and Don. But Tom and Don avoided Africa, naked and chained; as little as might be went that way or looked that way.

John Dory and Benjamin had been afoot through Jamaica, Barbadoes and Trinidad, and on the steed of imagination across the Spanish and French islands. I listened to them telling preposterous marvels of fat and ease and plenty. One or the other or both sat cross-legged atop of barricade and dealt out fairy tales in a mixture of Negro tongue and sailor’s English. The four hundred and seventy listened, and woebegone faces shortened and white teeth showed. What was dearest to them was that they would meet a lot of their own folk--a lot of black skins--and that these were universally happy, and that they, too, would be happy. A woman shrilled at John Dory, “They won’t part me and him?” “Lord, no!” said Dory.

We passed by the Bahamas, and saw the mountains of Cuba, and the mountains of Santo Domingo and at last the mountains of Jamaica. The _Janet_ was made as clean as was possible, the sick sailors seemed to recover, fiddles sounded in the forecastle. The officers smiled; around Bartram played like a beam of light, _The star that warred does not return!_ The Middle Passage was gone over, the voyage made, the luck fair.

The shores of Jamaica are gorgeous to see, under the golden light, under the rose and purple when the sun is low. I gazed and gazed at the peaky mountains and the vales between and thought I saw a paradise. Dusk gathered, stars swam above the purple land, it seemed to me that there was music. In the cabin after supper, McNaughton and Colley having gone on deck, Bartram put out a detaining hand. “We’ll anchor presently in Kingston harbor. And there, David, what is your will? Will you be leaving me?”

“I hope the _Janet_ may be my home still,” I said, “until I know.”

“You do not know?”

“No.”

Opening a box beside him he took out golden guineas. “Here is what I would have paid Philip Smith--a little more, maybe.”

“I’ll take just what you would have paid him.--Thank you, sir.”

“The _Janet_ will stay two weeks or more. North, that’s the agent here, has a good enough house and decent connections and is a safe man. If you want to see Jamaica he can put you in the way of it. It will be best just to say that you’re my cousin who came out with me from Bristol.”

“You’re very good to me, Captain Bartram.”

“Of course it must be ‘Captain’ before the warld of the ship. But when we’re like this, David, it might be ‘Bartram’--for all that I’m a wheen aulder than you.”

I said, “That’s as the warld counts it, Bartram. Inside, there’s no telling which is the auldest or the youngest.”

“Guid!” he answered. “Have you a purse for your money?”

At midnight we anchored. At dawn all the slaves were let upon the deck. The east reddened and threw a light against mountains and a broad coastal plain, blue water breaking against the shore and a host of cocoanut palms leaning from the land over the wave. We saw bright green patches of sugar cane. The air breathed balm, one made out a kind of houses among trees, and the crowing of cocks came faintly to the ear. All the upturned dark faces!--It was not hideously, fearfully, unlike Africa.--_It was like Africa!_

The sailors were making sail. Up came the anchor to a chantey. A steaming breakfast went to the deck, and, with the Captain’s compliments, a dram for each man and a smaller one for a woman. Afterwards abundant water was given with which to bathe. They scrubbed themselves and each other, while the cleaning gang below made the slave deck sweeter than it had been since we laded at Daga. The wind blew fair, the _Janet_ went hummingly, the great sun laughed on flag and pennant and sails. Bartram sent Willy the fiddler to play for Africa. Then out of the storeroom came cotton breeches and shifts--slaves’ clothing, since English and Christian countries must not be shocked by nakedness--even black nakedness, which in itself, so comfortably has Nature arranged it, shocks much less than does white nudity! In an hour the slaves were clothed; they only needed now to be baptized.

We entered Kingston harbor, that is a goodly one. Ships large and small rode at anchor, and before us, flat upon the plain, sat a fairsized town, all embowered in tropic trees. There are shoals and reefs and spits of land. A pilot came to us, and he was white but his boat held black men. Ah!--and ah!--and ah! Africa to Africa.

The town enlarged before us. There showed a wall and a long and low stone building and a wharf that ran out toward us like a giant’s finger. All grew until we could see the moving crowd that watched us--watched the _Janet_, known to Kingston, coming in with hundreds of Negroes. Her wings were folded.

“Oh, heave her down,
Oh, heave her down,
Heave her down----”

Her anchor grappled the white sea floor. Another boat appeared under our bows. It had in it a medical man who stood up and flourished a fine hat. “Good day and welcome, Captain Bartram! Have you smallpox, or any plague?”

“Good day, Doctor Cawthorne. We’ve no smallpox and no plague.”

“Then I’ll come aboard,” said Cawthorne, and doing so, greeted Bartram and Colley standing beside him. “_We’ve_ the yellow fever,” he said. “But that’s a matter of course.”

A third boat appeared. “That’s North, just behind me.”

Mr. North came aboard. Geordie put wine and glasses on the cabin table. Captain and first mate, the port doctor and Colley and the Company’s agent and Mr. David Scott, cousin to Captain Bartram, drank to one another, to the _Janet_ and Jamaica and the market and so forth. Cawthorne and North both were tallish, thin, yellowish men, somewhat drawling and weary in speech. They asked of the voyage and the cargo and the luck, and gave the news of Jamaica and of England from a man-of-war in harbor.

We went on deck, to find small boats enough around us, chiefly oared craft. The rowers were Negroes, naked to the waist, with cotton drawers, and some with a shirt beside. They had fruit and wares for sailors, and all around the ship pulsed a chanting, shouting noise. The four hundred and seventy from Africa were not silent neither. A strong light beat, the plain shimmered, the mountains behind melted into misty greens and colors of heather. Bartram and the others were talking, talking. David Scott thought, “How old is the world, seeing that this has been going on since old time, and yet is but a moment?” And it seemed to him drawn out like a long, long violin note, yet there was silence on all sides of it.

That very day we transferred cargo to the long building that was the Company’s barracoon. The Company had a fleet of boats. Load after load the four hundred and seventy were ferried ashore. They left the _Janet_ without seeming reluctance. A man, standing up in the first boat, shook his clenched fists toward her and shouted something that Pomeroy translated for me. “‘Stinking hell!’ he’s saying. ‘All evil to you, stinking hell!’ If I had him here, I’d flog him to a mask of blood for that!”

Pomeroy’s red face grew redder. And David Scott too had a kind of love for the ship--left from her outgoing--and resented the black man’s words. But then he had not spent his nights on the slave deck.