We landed all our slaves at Roatan, herding them down into the big lighters where the Dago overseers packed them in like sheep, while Spring conducted business aft of the mizzen-mast with half a dozen brokers who had come aboard. A big awning had been rigged up, and Mrs Spring dispensed tea and biscuits to those who wanted it—which meant to Spring himself and to a wizened little Frenchman in a long taffeta coat and wideawake hat, who perched on a stool sipping daintily from his cup while a nigger boy stood behind fanning the flies off him. The other brokers were three greasy Dagoes in dirty finery who drank rum, a big Dutchman with a face like a suet pudding who drank gin punch, and a swarthy little Yankee who drank nothing at all.
They had all made a quick tour of the slave-deck before it was cleared, and then they bickered and bid with Spring, the Dagoes jabbering and getting excited, the other three mighty calm and business-like. In the end they divided the six hundred among them, at an average price of nine dollars a pound—which came to somewhere between seven and eight hundred thousand dollars for the cargo. No money changed hands; nothing was signed; no receipts were sought or given. Spring simply jotted details down in a note-book—and I daresay that after that the only transactions that took place would be the transfer of bills and orders in perfectly respectable banks in Charlestown, New York, Rio and London.
The niggers we landed would be resold, some to plantation owners along the Main, but most of them into the United States, when smugglers could be found to beat the American blockade and sell them in Mobile and New Orleans at three times what we had been paid for them. When you calculate that the trade cargo we’d given to King Gezo, through Sanchez, had been worth maybe a couple of thousand pounds—well, no wonder the slave trade throve in the forties.29
I said we sold all our slaves, but in fact we kept Lady Caroline Lamb. Spring had decided that if I persevered with her instruction in English, she would be worth keeping as an interpreter for later voyages—such slaves were immensely valuable, and we had actually made our last trip without one. I didn’t mind; it would help pass the time, and I felt somehow that it was a feather in my cap.
To her Spring also added about a dozen mustee and quadroon girls sent aboard by the brokers, who wanted them shipped to America where they were destined for the New Orleans brothels. Spring agreed for a consideration to take them as far as Havana, where we were to load cargo for our homeward trip. These yellow wenches were quite different from the blacks we had carried, being graceful, delicate creatures of the kind they called “fancy pieces”, for use as domestic slaves. I’d have traded twenty Lady Caroline Lambs for any one of them, but there was no chance of that. They weren’t chained, being so few and not the kind who would make trouble anyway.
We didn’t linger in Roatan. Slaves from the barracoons came aboard with a load of lime and scoured out the slave-deck, and then we warped out of the bay to cleaner water, and the pumps and hoses washed out the shelves for twenty-four hours before Spring was satisfied. As one of the hands remarked, you could have eaten your dinner off it—not that I’d have cared to, myself. After that we made sail, due north for the Yucatan Passage, and for the first time, I think, since I’d first set foot on that d - - - - d ship, I began to feel easy in my mind. It was no longer a slaver, I felt—well, give or take the few yellows we were carrying—we had turned the corner, and now there was only Havana and the run home. Why, in two or three months, or perhaps even less, I would be in England again, the Bryant affair—how trivial it seemed now!—would be blown over, I would be able to see Elspeth—by jove, I would be a father by then! Somebody would be, anyway—but I’d get the credit, at least. Suddenly I began to feel excited, and the Dahomey Coast and the horrors of that jungle river were like a nightmare that had never truly happened. England, and Elspeth, and peace of mind, and—what else? Well, I’d see about that when the time came.
I should have known better, of course. Whenever I’m feeling up to the mark and congratulating myself, some fearful fate trips me headlong, and I find myself haring for cover with my guts churning and Nemesis in full cry after me. In this case Nemesis was a dandy little sloop flying the American colours that came up out of the south-west when we were three days out of Roatan and had Cuba clear on our starboard bow. That was nothing in itself; Spring put on more sail and we held our own, scudding north-east. And then, out from behind Cape San Antonio, a bare two miles ahead, comes a brig with the Stars and Stripes fluttering at her peak, and there we were, caught between them, unable to fly and—in my case, anyway—most unwilling to fight.
But not John Charity Spring. He turned the Balliol College on her heel and tried to race the sloop westward, but on this tack she came up hand over fist, and presently from her bow-gun comes a plume of smoke, and a shot kicked up the blue water off our port bow.
“Clear for action!” bawls he, and with Sullivan roaring about the deck they ran out the guns while the little sloop came tearing up and sends another shot across our bows.
Now, in my experience there is only one way to fight a ship, and that is to get below on the side opposite to the enemy and find a snug spot behind a stout bulkhead. I was down the main hatch before the first crash of our own guns, and found myself on the slave-deck with a dozen screaming yellow wenches cowering in the corners. I made great play ordering them to keep quiet and settle down, while overhead the guns thundered again, and there came a hideous crash and tearing somewhere forward where one of the Yankee’s shots had gone home. The wenches shrieked and I roared at them and waved my sheath-knife; one of them ran screaming across the tilting deck, her hands over her face, and I grabbed hold of her—a fine lithe piece she was, too, and I was taking my time manhandling her back to her fellows when Sullivan stuck his head through the hatch crying:
“What the h - - l d’ye think you’re about?”
“Preventing a slave mutiny!” says I.
“What? You skulking rascal!” He flourished a pistol at me. “You shift your d - - - d butt up here, directly, d’ye hear?” So reluctantly I dropped the wench and went cautiously up the ladder again, poking my head out to see what was what.
I’m no judge of naval warfare, but by the way the hands were serving the port guns we were in the thick of a d - - - - d hot running fight. The twelve-pounders were crashing and being reloaded and run out again like something at Trafalgar, and although from time to time there was the shuddering crack of a shot striking us, we seemed to be taking no great harm; the deck watch were tailing onto a line while Sullivan was yelling orders to the men aloft. He bawled at me, so I scrambled out and tailed on to the line, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the sloop running across our bows, her broadside popping away like fury, and the scream and crash of shot just overhead sent me diving for the scuppers. I fetched up against the rail with a crash, wondering why the blazes I’d been fool enough to come out from cover just because Sullivan told me to—instinct, I suppose—and then there was a rending crackle from overhead, something hit the deck with an almighty crash, and somebody fell on top of me. I pushed him off, and my hand came away sticky with blood. Horrified, I watched as the body rolled into the scuppers; it had no head, and blood was pouring out of the neck stump like a fountain.
All this had happened in a matter of minutes. I climbed unsteadily to my feet and looked around. A great tangle of cordage and splintered timber lay between the main and mizzen masts; looking up I saw that our main top mast had come away, and for a moment I felt the ship floundering and rolling helplessly. Someone was shrieking beneath the wreckage, and Sullivan was jumping forward with an axe and a dozen men at his heels to try to clear the tangle away. Beyond them Spring was at the wheel, hat jammed down as usual, but his orders were lost in the crash of one of our port guns.
What happened in the next five minutes I barely remember; I know that we were hit again, and for a time you could hardly see across the deck for acrid powder smoke. I crouched beside the rail, palpitating, until the clearing party came dragging their mass of wreckage and I had to jump away as they bundled it overside. Our guns had stopped firing, and presently I was aware the Yankee wasn’t firing either, so I chanced a look.
Somehow, after that brief holocaust, a semblance of order had been restored. The gun crews were standing by their pieces, Sullivan was by the mizzen, volleying commands to the topmen, and Spring was at the wheel. The Yankee sloop was astern, limping, with her foresail all askew, but the brig was ploughing along like thunder; in our injured condition even I could see she would be with us in no time at all. And then, no doubt, she would batter us to pieces—or take us, with slaves aboard, and that would be prison, and possibly the gallows. I felt the bile coming up in my throat.
And then I heard Spring’s voice, raised in a bellow of anger.
“You’ll do as you’re d - - - - d well told, mister. Now, get those yellows up on deck, with their shackles on! Lively, d - - n you, d’ye hear?”
Sullivan, his hat gone, seemed to be protesting, but Spring silenced him with another bellow, and presently the hands were driving up the yellow girls, fastening leg irons about their ankles and herding them together by the mizzen mast. Spring and Sullivan were by the wheel, the latter pointing to the brig, which was overhauling us fast.
“We’ll have her shooting us up in five minutes!” he was shouting. “We can’t run, skipper; we can’t fight! We’re crippled, d - - n it!”
“We can fight, mister!” Spring’s scar was flaming. “We’ve settled the sloop, haven’t we? What’s that but a measly brig? D’ye want me to strike to her?”
“Look at her!” cries Sullivan. “She’s got thirty guns if she’s got one!” I always knew he was a sensible chap.
“I’ll fight her, though,” says the idiot Spring. “I haven’t made this cruise to be towed into New Orleans by that pack of longshore loafers! But we’ll make that nigger rubbish safe first—and if we fight and fail there won’t be a black hide aboard to show against us. Now—get the chain into ’em!”
Sullivan looked as though he would burst. “It won’t do! They’re too d - - - - d close—they’ll see ’m drop, won’t they?”
“What if they do? No niggers, no felony—they can make what they like of the ship, with the d - - - - d equipment law, but they can’t lay a hand on you or me! Now, I’m telling you, mister—get that chain rove through!”
I made nothing of this, until four of the hands came running aft, dragging a massive chain, which they laid by the starboard rail. Then they herded the wenches over, and began to pass the chain between their legs, above the shackles, so that it linked them all together. They made the chain fast with rope to the end slaves in the line, then forced the girls to lie flat with their feet up, and by main force lifted the chain until it lay along the rail.
“Steady, there!” bawls Spring. “Now—hold it, so, till I give the word.”
I don’t bilk at much: I watched them blowing sepoys from the ends of guns at Cawnpore with a keen interest, and I ate my dinner at Peking an hour after the massacre, but I confess that Spring’s method of disposing of incriminating evidence made me gulp. The wenches screamed and writhed in terror; once that chain was pushed over they would be hurtled across the rail by its weight, and in the sea they would sink like stones. And then, if the Balliol College Was taken—well, what slaves do you mean, captain? I’d heard of it being done,30 and I remembered Sullivan’s story of the Dago who set his ship on fire. But for all Spring’s confidence, I couldn’t believe it would wash; the Yankee brig must have half a dozen glasses trained on us; they could swear to murder done and seen to be done, and then it was the gallows for certain.
Funk-stricken though I was, I could think at least. Spring obviously hoped he could fight the Yankee off, and save his liberty and his slaves at the same time; he’d only push ’em over in the last extremity. I was sure Sullivan was right; we couldn’t hope to fight the brig. Somehow that madman had to be stopped, or he’d have all our heads in the noose.
If there’s one thing that will make my limbs work in a crisis, it is the thought of self-preservation. I’d no notion of what I intended, but I found myself, unheeded in the excitement, walking across to the chest of arms that had been broken out by the main mast. Two of the hands were loading and priming pistols and passing them out; I took a couple, one a double-barrelled piece, and thrust them into my belt. Then, seeing all eyes were fixed either on the pursuing brig or the line of squealing unfortunates shackled by the rail, I dropped down the main hatch on to the slave deck.
I still didn’t know what I was going to do; I remember thinking, as I stood there in an agony of uncertainty, this is what comes of dabbling in politics and playing vingt-et-un with spinsters. I had some frenzied notion of making my way aft through the main bulkhead door, which was open now that the slave-deck was in a wholesome condition, finding Mrs Spring in the main cabin, and appealing to her; I knew it was a lunatic thought, but I found myself scampering through anyway, pulling up by the after companion, swithering this way and that, cursing feebly to myself and racking my brains over what to do next.
Spring’s bellowing almost directly overhead had me jumping in alarm; squinting up the companion I could just see his head and shoulders, facing away from me, as he stood at the wheel. He was roaring to the gun crews, urging them to their stations, and by the sound of his voice he was having his work cut out. Like Sullivan, they were ready to strike, and then I heard the mate’s voice, shouting at Spring, and suddenly cut off by the crack of a pistol shot.
“Take that, d - - n you!” shouts Spring. “Stand away from him, you there! Get to those tackles, or by G - d you’ll get the next round!” His hand came into view, holding a smoking pistol, and thinks I, if he’s daft enough to turn a gun on Sullivan there’s no stopping him except by the same way.
That was it, of course, as I’d known all along. Here was I, armed, and there was the back of his head not fifteen feet away. And, by G - d, if ever a man needed a bullet in the skull it was J.C. Spring, Fellow of Oriel. But I daren’t do it—oh, it wasn’t that I shrank from the dirty deed for Christian reasons; I’d killed before, and anyone who stands between me and safety gets whatever I can give him, no holds barred. But only if it’s safe—and this wasn’t. Suppose I missed? Something told me that Spring wouldn’t. Suppose the crew raised objections? Well, if they didn’t the Yankee Navy would—they’d be just the kind of idiots to consider it murder. One way and another, I couldn’t risk it, and I stood there sweating in panic, torn between my terrors.
Suddenly there was a patter of feet from the main bulkhead, and here came the idiot Looney, trying to buckle on a cutlass as big as himself. And to my amazement he was grinning foolishly to himself as he hurried towards the companion.
“What the blazes are you doing?” cries I.
“I’m goin’ to kill them b - - - - ds!” cries he. “Them’s is firin’ on us!”
“You numskull!” And then suddenly a great light dawned, and I saw the safe way out. “You don’t want to kill them! It’s the captain that’s doing this! That d - - - l Spring, up there!”
I pointed to the companion way, down which our skipper’s dulcet voice could be clearly heard. “He’s your man, Looney! He’s the man to kill!”
He stood gaping at me. “Whaffor?” says he, bewildered.
“He’s just killed Mr Sullivan!” I hissed at him. “He’s gone mad! He’s killed Sullivan, your friend!” And some guardian angel prompted my next words. “He’s going to kill you next! I heard him say so! I’m going to settle that b - - - - - d Looney’; that’s what he said!”
The loose idiot face just stared for a moment, while I shook his arm; from far astern came the boom of a gun, and from overhead there was a crash of breaking timber and shouts and running feet.
“It’s him they’re trying to kill! Not you! Not me! He’s the Devil, remember! He just killed Sullivan! He’ll kill you—and all of us.”
Suddenly his face changed; I’ll swear a light of understanding came into his eyes, and to my consternation he began to weep. He stared at me, choking:
“’E killed Mr Sullivan? ’E done that?”
By gum, I know a cue when I hear one. “Shot him like a dog, Looney. In the back.”
He gave a little whimper of rage. “’E shouldn’t ’ave! Why ’e done that?”
“Because he’s the Devil—you know that!” I’ve done some fearful convincing in my time, but this topped everything. “That’s why the Yankees are shooting at us! You’ve got to kill him, Looney, or we’re all done for! If you don’t, he’ll kill you! He hates you—remember how he flogged you, for nothing! You’ve got to kill him, Looney—quickly!”
I was thrusting a pistol at him as though it had been red hot, and suddenly he grabbed it out of my hand, just as our own stern-chasers thundered overhead in reply. His face contorted with rage—wonderful, beatific sight—and he plunged past me to the ladder.
“’E killed Mr Sullivan! The b - - - - - d! I’ll do for ’im!”
It was splendid. Thank God he was an idiot, and hated Spring like poison. I reckon it had taken me all of sixty seconds to turn him to murder, which was a considerable feat of persuasion; now all I had to do was make sure he didn’t flinch from the act.
“Up you go, Looney! Good lad! It’s him or you! Quick, man, quick!” I thrust at his backside as he swung on to the ladder. “Jam it into his back and give him both barrels! He killed Sullivan! He’s the Devil! Sick ’im, boy!”
I probably could have spared my breath; the thought of Sullivan—the only person Looney cared for—dead at Spring’s hand, had probably completed the turning of that idiot brain. He fairly flung himself up the ladder, scrambled half-way through the hatch, mouthing hideous oaths; he thrust out the pistol, and with an incoherent scream let fly with both barrels together.
Before the echo of the shots had died I was tearing down to the main bulkhead, and up the main hatch. As my head came clear I looked aft; Spring was writhing on the deck beside the wheel, his hat gone, his hands beating at the planks. Looney was struggling in the grip of one of the hands, yelling that he’d killed the Devil. Sullivan was sprawled face down in the scuppers, and the after rail was a milling scene of men running every which way, while another shot from the brig’s bow-chasers came whistling overhead to tear through the mainsail. She was close up now, and turning to port to show her starboard guns, like grinning teeth; there was a yell of alarm from the men aft, and then hands were hauling at the flag lanyard; with Spring gone, everyone knew what had to be done.
I was not backward, either. I strode over to the men at the rail who were still gripping the chain, and in my parade ground voice ordered them to bring it inboard, smartly. They obeyed without a second’s pause, and when I ordered them to free the slaves’ ankle-irons they did that, too, falling over each other in their hurry. I lent a hand myself, patting the yellow sluts on the shoulder and assuring them that all was well now, and that I would see they came to no harm. I trusted this would go a little way to ensuring that I came to no harm myself, and as the Yankee brig ran up on our port beam I began to rehearse in my mind the scheme I had formed for getting old Flash safely out from under this time.