The Kingdom on the Waves Read online

  Over the month since my arrival in this distressed Colony, I have, as might well be supposed, been sensible of a whole realm of social niceties, rivalries, and alliances in our Company about which I understand little. These, Bono illuminates for me in asides, and for the first time, I fully comprehended the magnitude of human story in our endeavor and the intricacies stashed like clockwork behind the regularity of our uniforms.

  Yesterday, I witnessed an argument between two of the men of our Company. At dinner, an old man burst out yelling in his tongue; the object of these expostulations being one of Bono’s friends, Charles. Charles would not face the old man, but turned his back to him. He would not meet the elder’s eyes, but, even in these cramped quarters, swiveled and contemplated the walls furiously. The old man snatched at his shoulder, importuning him still in a language unknown to me. Charles remained in his situation, unmoving.

  I asked Bono if he knew the reason of this altercation; and he answered, “The reason for this altercation? The reason for this altercation is once you lose your teeth from old age, you wish especially to bite people.” When I inquired further, he explained, “They’re both of the Ibo nation, Charles and the old article, Better Joe. Charles, he been here in the Colonies since he was eight or nine years. But Better Joe was already old when he was took. He was some species of wizard in Africa. He was the captain of some spirit club up in the Ibo highlands.

  “So they join this Regiment and meet each other, and Better Joe sees from Charles’s scars he’s an Ibo, and he thinks, ‘Now, here’s somebody going to pay me some mind.’ For three months, he been saying he wants to be Charles’s teacher, show him mysteries. But Charles don’t even want to think about any of that. He already saw his gods beat once when he was a child. They didn’t do a single thing to help him when he was took and then they forgot him entirely when he and his family was on the ship. So he don’t want to see some creaky baggage who gets whipped and spit on — some addled, sad old dotard who can’t shave without he cuts himself — saying he’s the voice of the sky or the dead or all powerful or such. The old man just reminds him of defeat.”

  These things, Bono explained to me.

  And he continued the chain of stories, explaining that Charles could not abide the looks or Efik speech of yet another man, Jocko; for Jocko, sharp and sleek, had been employed in one of the great Canoe Houses of Old Calabar, which had sold Charles, and Better Joe, and countless thousand others, to the white men whose ships lay out in the bay. Charles recalled too clearly the cruelty of his Efik captors, taunting him and his father, telling them that the white men had sharp teeth and purchased slaves to eat them soulless. When, rowed out to the slave-ship, they first saw the white men peering over the gunwales, Charles’s father had despaired, cried a prayer, lifted up his hands, and made a valiant attempt to strangle his son with their chains, that he might end the boy’s agony before the slaughter to come; that his son’s spirit might remain, at least, in Africa and find its way back up into the hills.

  “His father had his arms and the chains round his neck,” said Bono. “They pulled the father off.”

  I could not speak for horror.

  “The father died a few weeks later at sea. So now Charles can’t abide an Efik.”

  “He told you this?” I asked with some incredulity.

  “This is a time for speaking,” said Bono. “All of us, we come here, and we been nobody for a long time; and so we want to tell a tale.”

  “Did you tell them yours?”

  He shrugged. “I told them enough,” he said.

  Many of our number have never known the Africk shores, but tell the tales of parents removed decades before, who were attached for debt, or taken in adultery, or captured on slave-runs made in the name of warfare, some petty difference elevated to conceal the greed for human chattels — for when a nation needs despoil another to produce captives, they find a reason.

  They speak what they have heard of the warrior-women of Dahomey, or the child-soldiers of Morocco; of the great Mohammedan universities of the north; of the wise men of Islam, the marabouts and mallams, fabled throughout the continent for the sorcery of script, who write charms to be rolled in amulets, and who sew on the tunics of warriors sorcerous sigils of protection to keep them safe. They speak of the travado clouds which darken the Gold Coast; of the fierce harmattan winds, which boreal blasts itch and turn black men white; they tell of the mangrove marshes of the Windward Coast, where stand ancient stone circles, and where the canoe-men hunt their human chattels. They tell of the great herds of the Fulani, who peddle their hides even upon the Slave Coast, whence my mother was dispatched. They speak of small things: the intoxication of kola nut, or how no food hath tasted right for these twenty years without palm oil.

  These tales of Africa I remember best, because of their strangeness; but most of our Regiment have never seen the country, and remember it only as a place of legend. Thus, there are many stories of the Colonies, too. One man learned the art of furniture-making from his master, and thereafter assisted in his master’s shop, which was a great pleasure to him. He speaks of the glories of joinery and its satisfactions. He talks of how Christ was a carpenter, and how he is blessed to follow in the same profession.

  Another man was apprenticed to a farrier, that he might save his master the expense of having his horses shod; but his apprenticeship ended when two white farriers, angry at the loss of custom occasioned by the training of slaves in this art, threatened to kill him, did he continue to learn the trade; and his master deemed it prudent to withdraw him, and place him instead in the field.

  There are tales of escape, many as wily as Bono’s own. Three men who set off together for Dunmore’s force, fearing detection, bound one of their number and led him on a rope; those passing by upon the road presuming that the slave thus bound had escaped and been recaptured by the other two. White men jeered as they rode by. When the bound man was fatigued, the three shifted the rope to another of their number, and so made their way over days to Hampton and Lord Dunmore.

  So, tale after tale. Indeed, they are tales of hardship, but notable even more for their bravery. For every man, every woman, every child upon these ships, there is by necessity a romance of adventure and flight; this ship a book of stories; every one has his heroism, her ingenuity; all their close escapes and desperate relief.

  So doth Christ in His mercy often supply courage and industry equal to adversity, that His creations might meet their travails.

  I set these stories down so that the deeds of our Company may be remembered; and more, so that as we sit here, raging at our leisure, despising our impotence, awaiting the order to attack those who mock us from the shore, we may recall what we have already undergone — and we may remember our enemy in preparation for marching out against him. And I record them because when we or our forebears passed over the water on ships, we lost our names and our stories; and now, in these ships, moving upon these waters, we shall regain them.

  THE TALE OF POMP

  Pomp was employed by his master as a cowherd in the Great Dismal Swamp, and oft saw refugees flee past him, but had no stomach for flight. He tells us of the legends of that place: In the curdled depths of the Great Alligator Swamp, says he, the beast for which it is named is so vast it can devour a cow in one snap of its jaws. Or this: One day, as Pomp tended his cattle, a man appeared to him and told him of a fabulous town of runaways in the Swamp, complete with their own houses and streets, and roosts in the trees, and a governor in a strong hat.

  Pomp is a fellow given to dreams, and did not much mind his tedious days nor his isolate, swampy environs. He took pride in knowing the ways and mires, and was, after his fashion, content to be employed away from the eye of censure and the lash. He should not have flown, but for this circumstance: His master’s cattle were marked upon their ear, one cut to signify his ownership. Another man’s slaves, seeing this mark, recommended that their own master take up a sign of two cuts upon the ear of his cattle; and th
en, at night, coming across Pomp’s cows and bulls, would give them an extra cut upon the ear and claim the cow as their own. By the time Pomp had detected this piece of deception, five or six cows were missing, and his master so wroth that Pomp scarce knew what to do. Though perhaps if Pomp had remained and had simply informed his master of the source of this base trickery, his master had pursued an action against the neighboring farmer without prejudice to Pomp; still, Pomp, being too full of imaginations of disaster, decided upon flight, and traversed the route north from the Great Dismal Swamp to Norfolk with two kine driven before him, his excuse when questioned being that he drove the cattle to market upon command.

  “I was very welcome at Norfolk,” he said, “but I reckon, mostly for my beef.”

  THE TALE OF ISAAC THE JOINER

  Isaac, the pious carpenter, was enjoined from his youth to accept the teachings of Christ, which doctrine he received with joyful heart. He being possessed of a memory excellent in its acuity, most especially for those things which stirred up the embers in his breast and reflected the scintillant glory of the King of Kings, he quickly conned long passages of Scripture, though not a word could he read.

  At length, he found himself preaching at the Sunday night dances held near his master’s house, and his sermons were not unwelcome. He spake of the end of bondage, and the Lord’s donation of a soul to each human body, which soul could never be degraded nor yielded up; which spirits, when gathered in Heaven, would be of no low or high degree, and would wear no garments nor finery nor frip, but all should stand equal and justified before the Throne. Beautiful clothing, said he, and the jewels of the wealthy are of tough, heavy fabric when weighed upon the airy bodies of spirits; and shall either drag the wealthy down, or fall away like so much chaff through their excellent and imperishable spirits in that giddy moment of the end. He bade his brethren: “Wait and be ready, for the Lord shall come.”

  For this doctrine, as may be presumed, he was debarred from all preaching. His master indeed forbade him from leaving his quarters on Sunday nights, for fear that in preaching of equality before the Lord on High, Isaac might incite riot on Earth.

  This was a tribulation; Isaac wanted sorely the camaraderie of his heretic congregation, their sweet witness; he missed the singing and tears, the prayers of love and fellow-feeling, the entreaties of sorrow assuaged.

  Every Sunday, he knelt through the evening and prayed to the Lord, that he might be delivered and be freed to partake of God’s Word.

  And behold: At ten o’clock one Sunday night, his master came to him, and demanded he take up a scythe and go down to the chicken-house, for a body of Lord Dunmore’s Negroes was landed and seized upon the fowls for provender.

  So Isaac went down the hill toward the river with his scythe in his hand. He saw the ship waiting for him upon the waters, the boat upon the shore. And he saw the adversary stealing the fruits of his master’s fields and paddocks, carrying off chickens and leading goats by ropes. They spied him and paused in their depredations.

  He raised his hand in greeting.

  “At long last,” said he, “you are come.”

  And he went down to welcome them.

  THE TALE OF SLANT

  Slant’s tale was most affecting. He told it me himself. Slant’s childhood and youth were spent upon a tobacco plantation presided over by a benevolent widow by the name of Croak and her son, who was of Slant’s age. The son deplored slavery and oft would grow into a fury at the sight of mistreatment of his mother’s slaves. He saw to it that Slant and his fellows were not used unkindly; their diet of Indian corn, for example, to be supplemented with helpings of meat, and new huts built for such hands as did not live in the servants’ quarters in the house.

  When Mrs. Croak died, her son, not yet having achieved his majority, was helpless to interfere with the wishes of his trustees, whose discipline upon the plantation was much harsher than had ever been offered by the widow, their desire to profit from the farm being greater than their attachment to its persons. They discounted the boy’s protests for their impracticality and sought to rationalize expenditure.

  This was a severe period on that plantation, and saw many unhappy restrictions upon the small luxuries and freedoms the servants had been accorded. There was much toil, and still complaints from the trustees’ overseers that the slaves were unaccountably lazy and devious. ’Twas in these years that the harshness and rigor of the discipline so made its mark upon Slant that he cannot speak without wrestling his words, and will not name what dire thing was done to him.

  When Master Croak, the son, reached suitable age, he dismissed his trustees with curt thanks. He called his slaves all together in the yard. He spake kindly to them, and said, “You have undergone great hardship; and now shall be your reward. You know well, i’faith, I cannot abide the barbarism of your state. You have suffered indignities and evils that none should suffer. I cannot free you outright, for it would ruin me; but I can provide you with a small weekly sum for your labor, to be placed against your price, so you might, in three or four years, purchase yourselves of me and enjoy complete manumission. Once freed, you are at liberty, of course, to go where you will; but as you are like a family to me, I hope you shall choose to remain here, in this happy place, upon a footing as paid laborers. We shall be as a beacon to show those around us how great the bounty and fruits of amity may grow.”

  The slaves, when they heard this, clustered close about him and embraced him; and he embraced them, and none could forbear weeping. That night, he laid out a feast for them, and they danced and sang until dawn.

  The gentry of the neighborhood, hearing of his pronouncement, appeared in the following days to protest, saying that he would incite a rebellion in the neighborhood if others heard of his system. To the supplications of reason they eventually added the insult of imprecation, calling him a young cur and a scoundrel and, moreover, a fool. He ejected them with celerity, and his servants watched with some satisfaction as these lords of the leaf stalked back out to their chaises, disappointed in their designs.

  Following this victory, young Croak undertook various improvements in the servants’ quarters, that each chamber might be warm in winter, cool in summer, and free of dirt and disease; and he altered substantially the diet afforded his field hands, proclaiming that work undertaken in health and in a spirit of felicity should always excel beyond the drudgery of the miserable.

  Such was Master Croak’s scheme.

  It is to be deplored that the experiment failed utterly. The trade in tobacco was suffering materially due to the unrest with the mother country and the late crisis in credit. This depression of the market was compounded, on the Croak estate, by the antagonism of every neighbor, who made of every favor a dispute; and, in the end, of course, despite Master Croak’s expostulations that there was in liberty a wondrous œconomy, there is a more wondrous financial potency to abject exploitation. Within two years the farm was bankrupt and the honest Croak was bankrupt, and had hanged himself in his bedchamber, leaving instructions in his will that all his slaves should be manumitted forthwith. It might well be predicted that the wider Croak family intervened before this instrument could be executed, and argued that the youth was clearly not of sound mind and so was unable to dispose of his property fitly. This necessitated a hearing to settle the contestation of the will.

  A night some weeks ago, one of the overseers crept to the slave quarters, and alerted the hands that on the morrow, young Master Croak’s uncle and aunt would descend upon the estate and secure the Negroes who remained until such time as their case was heard; and, the courts being suspended and the government in confusion, it might be some years before the suit was settled, and by that time, Slant and his kin would be accustomed to the yoke of tyranny; and, said the overseer, “Master Croak would not wish this. He wished you free. You all must fly tonight.”

  Most of them lit out for the western hills or for Florida; Slant stole a small boat and set out to join Dunmore. He was washed do
wn the James and then rowed up the Elizabeth, and reached us when I have recorded, since when, he is delighted to have taken a new name, Slant, and will no longer answer to the old, which we do not know; though he has taken his master’s last name, in memory of that tragic youth’s attempts at generosity.

  Thus the tale of Slant Croak.

  THE TALE OF PRIVATE JOCKO

  Jocko grew up among the great Canoe Houses of Old Calabar, and was accustomed to the sight of white men who visit that port for their dismal trade. One day as he walked along the street, he observed a small hut that had not been there two days previous, around which was a cluster of youths, all clamoring for admittance. The door of this hut would open, and one man would go in, and another come out. When they went into the hut, their hands were empty; when they set out from the hut, each of the men carried a sack with some small object in it.

  Emboldened by curiosity at this mysterious transaction, Jocko approached and inquired about this practice; and he was told, to his great surprise, that

  INTERRUPTED BY THE CHILDISH CRUELTY OF MY FRIEND

  — Pro Bono — who some minutes ago seized this book out of my hands.

  I protested — rose — he held it away, saying, “I have need of paper. Stay! I have need of paper!”