O moaner, don’t you weep,
When you see that ship come sailin’ over.
Shout, “Glory, Hallelujah!”
When you see that ship sail by.
Spiritual
THE COLONEL STOOD ON THE HURRICANE deck, his field glasses pointed at the plantation across the river. “Any sign a pickets?” she asked.
Montgomery lowered his binoculars. “No. I think they all escaped over the bridge. Let’s pray they don’t reach the main army before we cast off.”
Harriet nodded. She’d seen the four horses.
Montgomery put the glasses to his eyes once more. “But I’m concerned about the crowd in the trees. The ones coming down the far road.” He lifted the lanyard over his head and handed her the binoculars. “We can only take so many without sinking.”
A rutted dirt track led from the ferry landing to the estate hidden on a rise. Harriet aimed the glasses at the top of the road. Dense foliage obscured the wooded bluff and smoke further limited her view. The part of the road that came into focus looked deserted. Montgomery tapped her shoulder. “To the right.”
Harriet shifted the binoculars. Pines, tupelos, and live oaks swam together in a green blur. She aimed the instrument downward to find the riverbank. Oriented, she pointed the glasses toward the right-hand side of the hill. There, a smaller lane curved through some shanties on the bluff. Odd colors and shapes filtered past the buildings and through the trees. She followed the direction of their movement and picked out the spot where the lane ended down near the river. There, on a short dock built off the levee, a crowd of slaves awaited their turn for a trickle of rowboats that plied back and forth. A soldier at the landing coordinated the boarding process.
Harriet lowered the field glasses. Across the narrow channel, the group on the landing wasn’t hard to spot. She noticed a young man with no shirt push around another boy his own age.
A thump sounded below. Harriet peered over the side of the gunship. Two decks down, a small rowboat bobbed against the ship. A pair of black hands reached across the watery gap and helped a woman climb aboard. “Lawd Almighty, a cullud sojer! Tank you, brudduh,” she said before disappearing into the ship. The next instant, hands reached forward again and took another refugee by the wrists.
Harriet handed back the binoculars, and Montgomery slung them around his neck. She stared at the crowd, which didn’t seem to be growing larger so much as more desperate. Crossing the river by rowboat was a slow process. Armed overseers couldn’t be far away, and Rebel reinforcements would be right behind them. Harriet noticed a heap of cooking pots and blankets near the embankment. Someone must have told people they couldn’t bring anything.
Another rowboat on the far side of the river loaded a group of slaves. The soldier on the landing raised his hands to keep too many from boarding at once. The dinghy cast off after a moment as another approached. The soldier caught a line thrown to him and knelt to cleat the craft.
The crowd surged around the stooping man. The boy who had pushed ahead of another clambered on board and took a seat in the bow. Others followed. The soldier stood. He put up his hands again. The onward rush slackened, but when the soldier leaned over to speak to a tiny woman who clung to a cooking pot, the fearful crowd surged again, and the dinghy swiftly filled. A refugee untied the line and jumped into the drifting craft. The oarsman steered the boat into the channel.
Harriet observed that the rower pulled easily. The man wasn’t fighting the current. She wondered how much time had passed. The Combahee must be napping. Slack water had arrived. Soon the tide would turn.
Another rowboat made for the crowded landing. Harriet no longer saw the soldier on the dock, just a mass of people. Refugees were jammed so close together that she worried someone might fall into the murky river. The soldier on the dock reappeared when he reached up for a rope that came sailing across the water from the approaching dinghy. Several slaves grabbed for it at the same time, and the line fell uselessly into the stream. The rower pulled the dripping rope aboard and threw it again. This time, the soldier caught the line and tied the craft to the dock.
As before, the crowd pressed forward. Panic filled the air. Harriet could smell it—a sharp odor of fear and sweat. Men and women scrambled quickly into the rocking boat. Parents grabbed children onto their laps. A large, well-built man stepped aboard, and the vessel swayed wildly until a boy gave up his seat in the middle. The man pulled the child onto his lap. People shouted in Gullah from the dock to the rowboat. Soon, all the space was taken. Yet the skiff didn’t move.
“Cast me off,” the oarsman yelled.
The soldier on the dock cupped his hands around his mouth and called, “You clear!”
Yet the dinghy didn’t budge. Harriet saw that its bowline dangled in the water. The vessel ought to be moving. Then she realized that refugees still on the dock had gripped the gunwales for fear of being left behind. The rowboat was locked in place.
Montgomery turned to her. “Moses,” he said. “Do something. Calm your people, or nobody will get out. Tell them to take turns.”
Voices on the far bank grew more tumultuous. “He’p! De Buckra coming,” someone shouted. Harriet saw another man tumble onto the small craft. The rowboat dipped perilously low in the water. The dark Combahee almost lapped the gunwales. The soldier on the dock yanked the musket off his back, accidentally banging a woman behind him in the face. With the butt of his gun, he hit at hands clinging to the side of the rowboat, but when one person let go, two others grabbed on. “Hol’ fast! Hol’ fast!” a mother shouted to the boy alongside her.
Eighty slaves or more now crowded the landing. The lone soldier would soon be overwhelmed. The boat would be swamped, people thrown into the river. Where one alligator waited, there would be others.
Montgomery shook her arm. “Moses, call to your people!”
“Colonel,” she snapped, angry at her own helplessness. “They ain’t my people. They jest people.”
A wild thought occurred to her. They were John Brown’s people. Harriet cleared her throat. She began to hum. The notes stuck like dry breadcrumbs. She swallowed and started again. She could think of no other way to calm them. They needed faith.
“John Brown’s body is a-molderin’ in its grave,” she sang hoarsely. Harriet drew a deep breath. “John Brown’s body is a-molderin’ in its grave,” she sang louder and better. Heads on the dock turned in the direction of the tune. A woman looked up from the landing and waved at Harriet. The young boy holding her hand waved, too.
“John Brown’s body is a-molderin’ in its grave,” she sang as loudly as she could. People gripping the boat looked up. “His soul is marching on!” she belted from the deck, and she clapped as hard as she could on the powerful word.
Tuneful voices across the water chimed in. “Glory, glory hallelujah. His soul is marching on!” Others clapped, too, as the joyful sound gathered strength. The dory suddenly pulled away. Those holding onto the boat had let go to put their hands together. Miraculously, the crowd had calmed.
“Keep it up,” Colonel Montgomery said as he moved to scan the opposite shore for Confederate forces.
Harriet sang on. An oarsman who had backed water in the middle of the channel now rowed toward the landing. The people boarded in an orderly fashion, still singing. The soldier on the dock cast off the line again without interference. A few minutes later, another rowboat pulled away, then another. The floorboards under Harriet’s feet hummed. The ship’s engine must have started. She sang and clapped until the last rowboat finally pushed off from the landing, loaded with a handful of bondsmen and the soldier from the dock. In the stern of the craft, he looked up wearily at the John Adams, then broke into a smile and saluted her as he came alongside.
The gunship shuddered briefly once it got underway again. Harriet kept her eyes trained on the green bluff. Some people worked too far afield to get to the dock. Flickers of light and color suggested movement between the shanties above. High tide had passed. Sweet water pushed back the salt, and the John Adams steamed alongside the charred ferry building. A blackened chimney guarded the smoking ruins. Harriet wondered which plantation Private Webster’s assistant had been taken to the week before—and if the big-eared man had made it onto the Adams or Weed.
The Middleton landing receded. She continued gazing upriver. Something bright flashed among the trees at the margins. A second later, a man in a white shirt pounded onto the makeshift dock, followed by a woman. Each carried a child on the hip. The pair waved frantically. Harriet couldn’t bring herself to wave back and admit she was leaving them.