The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Frank by name, I suppose, since he is bedded there.”

  “It has walked while Frank was before me.”

  “It walks in the attick and eats the cold victuals,” I summed up. “Here’s a mystery for you, sir.”

  “’Tis soon solved. Follow me, Mr. Boswell, to the attick.”

  “Where you’ll find, I warrant you, that Frank has been up to mischief,” Miss Williams tossed after us.

  There was no appearance of mischief about the woebegone figure on the bed in the attick. A quilt was pulled about the narrow shoulders, the round woolly head was turned to the wall.

  “What, Frank lad, art ill, boy?” enquired Dr. Johnson with concern.

  The blue-black countenance turned to us. Simultaneously there was a clatter on the stair, and Frank Barber came into the room.

  We stared. The unknown blackamoor was thin and gaunt, and his kinky head was bandaged. He turned dark eyes upon us, and said nothing.

  “So here’s our ghost,” observed Dr. Johnson.

  “And our Brownie too,” I added, “that eats up the victuals.”

  “I found him starving in the street,” burst out Frank. “Sure, sir, you’d never grudge him a bite and a sup?”

  “Why, boy, you know I would not,” rejoined Johnson gravely, “so why this secrecy?”

  “I promised it him, sir. He’s an escaped slave, and fears recapture.”

  “A slave? In London?” I interjected.

  “Why, then,” replied Dr. Johnson, “he’s but one of many. The West Indians bring them hither, as Frank was brought. Well, my lad, account for yourself. Who’s your master?”

  “Stand up!” admonished Frank anxiously, “and make a reverence to the gentleman.”

  The fellow came slowly to his feet. Like Frank, he was low of stature and slender of build, with lank shanks and long slim hands, and his dusky visage bore a look both innocent and proud. He wore an old shirt of Frank’s and nothing else. He executed a kind of awkward salaam, at which Frank nodded approval, and spoke in a musical drawl.

  “Cap’n Standart, Sallee Plantation, Jamaica. Cap’n beat me—”

  “He beat him without provocation,” put in Frank, “under drink taken, and broke his head, as you see.” The fellow nodded and touched his bandage. “What could he do but run, and what could I do but succour him?”

  “What’s your name, boy?” asked my friend gently.

  “Quashie, marsa.”

  “He may stay?” enquired Frank anxiously.

  “Quashie may stay, and share your couch and your victuals.”

  To my surprise, Quashie, beaming, expressed his satisfaction in song:

  “Calipash! Calipee!” his ditty ran, in a sweet plaintive voice:

  “Calipash! Calipee!

  “O how happy us all be!”

  He even essayed a little dance step on his long slim black feet.

  “No more o’ that, Quashie!” said Frank sharply, scandalized; “make your reverence and retire.”

  “Well, be easy, Quashie,” smiled Dr. Johnson, “Frank shall take care of you till we see what must be done with you.”

  “Not go back to Cap’n!” cried Quashie in alarm. “Never!”

  “I hope not, Quashie. But ’tis a touchy affair, and must be thought on. Come, Mr. Boswell.”

  He led the way down the stair, shaking his head.

  “What will become of poor Quashie, I know not.”

  “Surely,” I said, “no man can hold a slave in England?”

  “That’s to be seen,” replied my friend. “The matter is sub judice before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield. There’s a cause before him between an escaped slave, Somerset by name, and his former master. Till ’tis settled. Quashie must keep close.”

  “What hinders the settling?”

  “There are fourteen thousand such slaves in England. My Lord Mansfield shrinks from freeing them all at once with his single word. He’d like to find an excuse, as he has done before, lack of documents or so, to set this particular slave free and spare the general judgment. But this time he’s caught a Tartar. Somerset won’t have it, nor will his sponsor, the noted crusader against slavery, Mr. Granville Sharp. Nor, for his part, will the master neither.

  “But Lord Mansfield procrastinates, and thus the fate of Quashie hangs in the balance, and that of fourteen thousand like him. Meanwhile the boy is Captain Standart’s property, and may be shipped out for Jamaica, there to be worked, lashed, even killed, at pleasure. We must keep him under cover.”

  That was easier said than done. If one black boy in Johnson’s Court was a curiosity, two were a nine days’ wonder. Soon we had a visitation.

  The visitant was a thin, sallow, upright personage in a red coat. He presented himself in the one-pair-of-stairs sitting room, bowed stiffly, curtly uttered his name—“Captain Standart, to command—” and came straight to the point:

  “It comes to my ears, sir, that you are detaining my neger slave Quashie, and I require you’ll hand him over instanter.”

  Standing four-square before the fire-place in his old rusty brown broadcloth, Dr. Johnson put up his well-marked brows.

  “Require?”

  “Yes, sir, require. I demand my property.”

  “Your property? That’s to be seen.”

  “Aye, sir, my property, to the value of fifty pounds, which he’ll fetch on the slave black in Jamaica.”

  “You must catch him first,” smiled Johnson.

  “I’ll catch him, never fear,” snarled Captain Standart, “and I’ll have the law on you for a thief.”

  “As to that, the law shall decide.”

  But the Captain was breathing fire and alcohol. He had come to bully his antagonist, and when one threat failed to move my intrepid friend, he was ready with another.

  “D-mn the law!” he exclaimed. “You shall answer to me in person.”

  “Why, so I do, I answer, do your worst.”

  “You shall answer in the field.”

  “How, a duello!” I exclaimed, half aghast, half excited.

  “If old square-toes don’t fear me,” sneered the Captain uncivilly.

  “I hold the duello in abhorrence,” said my moral friend calmly, “yet I don’t fear you. I’ll meet you, sir, at the time and place, and with the weapons of my choice, as is the right of the challenged.”

  “Then chuse,” snapped the soldier.

  “I chuse here and now, and for weapons—here are weapons to hand (indicating the fire-irons). You may take the poker, and I’ll make shift with the tongs.”

  So saying, he seized them up and made them to snap a scant inch from the startled slave-owner’s nose.

  “Unheard of!” ejaculated the Captain, backing off.

  “You have no taste for my weapons? Nor I for yours. I’ll not run you through or shoot you down, sir, for Scripture bids us do no murder; but I’ll wring your nose if I can come at it,” cried the burly philosopher, snapping the tongs wildly, “so en garde!”

  “The man is mad!” cried the Jamaican, dodging in alarm. He gained the door, flung it open, and was gone. We heard his boots clatter on the stair, and Dr. Johnson’s Olympian laughter followed him.

  “A pretty brute to own a man,” he observed, sobering. “We must keep Quashie out of his hands.”

  Again time passed. Quashie mended and grew strong. We would hear his delighted chuckle below stairs, or his mellow voice singing strange little melodies by the kitchen fire. He had a ditty for every contingency. “Rain crowd fly away” greeted the downpour. “Stranger come riding” announced the caller. “Calipash! Calipee!” did for grace before meat. This mysterious incantation, I learned, called upon the Jamaicans’ favorite comestible, green turtle.

  No such regale of Aldermen adorned Dr. Johnson’s table; but Quashie was equally happy with the pork and pease, and gobbled it down. This pained Frank, who strove earnestly to improve his protégé’s demeanour; but cheerfulness was always breaking in. Miss Williams delighted to hear Quashie sing, a
nd the pair quietly made up an alliance against Frank’s authority, at which Dr. Johnson smiled indulgently. He had come to repose confidence in Quashie’s ministrations, approved his progress under Frank’s tutelage, and meditated sending him, too, to be schooled in the country. But fate interposed.

  One bright May morning, when we returned from breakfasting abroad, Quashie was gone.

  “Where is Quashie?” repeated Miss Williams fretfully. “Why do you ask, sir, when you sent for him yourself, to fetch your prayer book to the Mitre?”

  “My prayer book? What would I be about, with a prayer book at a tavern?”

  “Nay, sir, who knows your whim? Frank was gone for provisions, and Quashie found the book where it lies on your bureau, and ran off with it.”

  “He ran, I fear, straight into the hands of Captain Standart, who has thus tricked us all.”

  “What’s to be done?” I cried.

  “Nay, I know not. He may be any where, and meeting any fate, even death itself.”

  “Come, sir,” I urged, making for the street door, “we cannot sit idle.”

  “’Twill not help to run about at random. No, sir, we must have intelligence to proceed upon.”

  As we stood at the door, wondering thus which way to turn, a hackney coach clattered into the court, and pulled up before us.

  “One of you Sam: Johnson?” demanded the coachman hoarsely.

  “I am Sam: Johnson.”

  The coachman dropped the reins. His nag drooped in an attitude of repose, and the fellow descended. He smelled of gin and horse.

  “This is your prayer book?”

  He shewed the neat script on the fly leaf: Sam: Johnson, Johnson’s Court.

  I could sense my friend’s excitment, but he answered calmly enough:

  “It is mine. How did you come by it?”

  “Worth a little something, an’t it?” demanded the coachman.

  “Perhaps; and more, if you tell me where you got it.”

  “I didn’t steal it,” said the fellow truculently.

  “Of course not. Where did you find it, then? For a shilling (producing one).”

  “Two,” said the Jehu instantly.

  For answer I pulled a shilling from my pocket and held it up next to Johnson’s. The coachman looked from shilling to shilling, seemed minded to have more, and then shrugged.

  “At the West India docks.”

  “At the docks! Does a ship lie there?”

  “Yes, sir, the Guinea Gold is laden; she’ll sail for Jamaica with the morning tide.”

  “Bravo, Quashie!” cried Dr. Johnson. “By dropping the book, he has contrived to send us a message. You, friend, is your coach for hire?”

  “What else?”

  “Then here’s your two shillings, and a third for earnest. You shall be ours for the day.”

  “Ben Handey’s at your sarvice, gentlemen both.”

  I was for speeding straight to the docks. But the first errand, it seemed, was to the milliner, whither Frank was sent with a billet, and whence he returned with a large band-box. Meanwhile, Dr. Johnson donned his best array, full-skirted purple camlet coat and large bushy grizzled wig of state.

  Soon our little entourage was ready to take coach. Dr. Johnson carried his stout oak stick. Frank Barber attended us. At him I stared. He was tricked out like a courtesan’s monkey, in a brocaded caftan—somewhat the worse for wear—and a large swathed turban with fringes enclosed his inky countenance.

  “Well, Dr. Johnson,” I remarked, “I never thought to see you attended by such a gaudy page.”

  “Among West Indian nabobs,” replied my friend, “it behooves us to cut a figure. Frank, have you the gallipot?”

  “Yes, sir (shewing such a small pot as ladies use for pomatum).”

  “Have you the tools?”

  “In my waistcoat pockets, sir.”

  “Then let us go. Drive on, Handey.”

  A motley posse, we rattled towards the docks. I marvelled how we were to gain access to the ship; but I was soon instructed.

  We scented the vessel before we saw it.

  “Phew,” I ejaculated, “what cargo does she carry, that stinks so pernitiously?”

  “Don’t you know, sir? She’s a slaver. ’Tis human cargo that smells so high. Pah!” Ben Handey spat emphatically. “Guinea gold, that’s slaves, sir. The stench of ’em can’t be quelled. She beats about the triangle—gauds and cloth out to the Guinea coast, there to trade for slaves, and carry them by the middle passage for sale in Jamaica, and so home laden with rum, sugar, and tobacco. ’Tis very profitable.”

  “’Tis infamous,” growled Dr. Johnson. “But what does she in London port? That’s a Liverpool trade.”

  “Nay, I know not, but there she lies.”

  The Guinea Gold was a dirty-looking vessel of small tonnage, with dingy sails furled, linked to the dock by a plank walk. From the deck a burly person in authority looked across. Dr. Johnson measured him, and coolly mounted.

  “Captain—?”

  “Westover, what then?”

  “From the City Wharfinger,” I recited my lesson. I knew not whether there was such an official, but as it fell out, Captain Westover, unused to London port, knew no more than I; and my words were backed by a most impressive document of Johnson’s concocting, gaudily sealed in red. The Captain frowned at it myopically.

  “As Inspector of Wharves,” said I glibly, “I am directed to view your ship before she sails; and my friend comes with me, Colonel Johnson, a wealthy nabob of Barbadoes, who having money to put out, desires to see how the slave trade goes on.”

  “Scurvily,” grumbled the Captain; “but view what you will. Mr. MacNeill!”

  MacNeill proved to be the ship’s supercargo, a sandy little tight-mouthed person who led us about in silence. We walked the deck, where sailor-men in loose pantaloons and tarry pigtails busied themselves mysteriously with coils of rope. They stared curiously at Frank’s gauds, but said nothing. I drew from my pocket the tablets I invariably carry about me (to record my friend’s memorable discourses) and officiously made notes. Quashie, the real object of our search, was nowhere to be seen.

  From the deck we descended the stair to the chart room and the officers’ quarters. All was narrow and dark and empty, but shipshape and ready to clear. No Quashie.

  We passed forward to the forecastle, where dwelt the crew. We saw their few hammocks and sleeping gear trussed up out of the way against the wooden side. Well forward, a thin sailor in greasy slops scoured a pot. He gave us a surly look. No Quashie.

  “So, sir,” said MacNeill, “you’ve seen how we live. Will it please you go up?”

  “No, sir,” said Johnson, “we’ll go down.”

  “As you will,” shrugged MacNeill. “The hold is in order, but I fear it won’t please you.”

  The stench from the open hatch was already turning our stomachs, but we descended the narrow ladder, and stood in the darkness of the hold. I felt Frank shudder. As our eyes adjusted, we saw that the airless space, barely six feet high, was ringed round about by a double shelf, too low for a man to sit erect. MacNeill became voluble.

  “On these shelves,” said he, “we may transport two or three hundred blacks from Guinea to Jamaica, chained two and two—”

  The chains were visible, stapled to the wall.

  “And on the voyage out to Guinea, as you see, the shelves serve for the trinkets and trade goods.”

  Indeed the surfaces were crammed with boxes and bales. Loading was done, and the ship was ready to sail.

  “And what’s this ironmongery?” With his oak stick, Dr. Johnson poked at a tangle of implements in a recess.

  “Why, sir, to control the negers.”

  With a shudder I made out the sinister shape of a cat-o’-nine-tails with barbed lashes, spiked collars, leg-irons, and manacles. My gorge rose.

  “Well thought on,” said Johnson coolly; “and what’s backwards of the hatch?”

  “More shelves, sir; and there, of co
urse, the mainmast is stepped.”

  We made it out by the faint light from the hatch over head, a great oak tree trunk, affixed to the ship’s spine; and against it, as if embracing it, sat poor Quashie. His slim wrists were encircled with iron bracelets, rivetted on, and a chain round the mast held him fast, so that he could sit or stand against it, but not turn away. He had no song now. He rolled his eyes upon us in silent despair.

  “What’s to do here?” asked Johnson, still maintaining his character of a stranger from Barbadoes.

  “’Tis a runaway slave, sir, consigned to Jamaica to be sold. They’ll teach him better there, I warrant you,” said MacNeill with satisfaction.

  “And a good thing too,” Dr. Johnson seconded the sentiment. “You, Frank, you scoundrel, look on him and be warned,” he added with affected menace.

  “Yes, marsa,” said Frank.

  “Well, let us go. Pray, Mr. MacNeill, go you before. You, Mister Wharfinger (politely naming me by my supposed function), shall boost from behind, and so I’ll get myself up this precipice.”

  MacNeill shewed his agility by scampering up. Dr. Johnson put one foot to the ladder, and paused. His oak stick had vanished, and must be found. Frank and I were put to the search:

  “Go you abaft the mainmast, Frank, and you, Mister Wharfinger, forward. And, Bozzy (calling after me), turn over the ironmongery.”

  Inwardly shrinking, I did so, setting up a prolonged clangour and clatter, before the lost object finally came to light by the ladder foot. Satisfied, my friend ascended another rung of the ladder, and again paused. This time the delay was caused by a slightly loose shoe buckle, which must be (with much difficulty and a handy scrap of packthread) secured, lest the wearer trip in ascending.

  “Well, sir, what’s the matter?” called MacNeill impatiently.

  “Nothing, sir, all’s put to rights. Here we come. Frank! Where’s that rascal?”

  “Here, marsa.” Caftan and turban appeared beside us.

  “Up we go! Boost, Frank! And you, Mister Wharfinger, pray pass up my stick and follow on.”

  I followed on. When I came up out of the noisome hold, I saw the departing flick of a brocade hem at the officers’ stair head, and heard my friend’s sonorous voice saying: