Jem (and Sam)

by Ferdinand Mount

  When Their Graces stepped ashore to take a review of the forces of this place, they looked transformed from the sickly wheyfaces that had left Plymouth six weeks earlier. What miracles a sea voyage can accomplish if the weather be pleasant and if Cupid launch his fisgigs!

  We dined that day with the Governor of the place upon shaddocks, guavas, pines (or pineapples as they now call them), mangrove-grapes and other fruits unknown in Europe (though the meats were worse than ours). Dr Sloane who was seated next to me said:

  This is worth the fatigues of the journey, isn’t it, Jeremiah? (He had a fancy to call me by my full name.)

  He had no notion of how pleasant had been my fatigues.

  As I lay upon my rattan bed in the Governor’s house that night listening to the cries of the natives in the forest, I could not but wish that her pale body might be by my side and not shackled to her stertorous lord who had been drinking hard all the voyage and must have had three of the Governor’s bottles of Madeira wine that night. So as in dreams we are carried to any place but that where we are sleeping, I was now transported to the little path at Churn where Emm and I had walked, but now in the dream I was walking with the Duchess, her clothing being dishevelled and her hair wild, and Mr Hignell the greasy old parson coming down from the church to reprove us for our lewd conduct and she beginning to cry. As he came closer to us I saw that the man was not Mr Hignell but Mr Pepys and he was crying out: You killed her, it was you.

  I woke solitary to the cry of parrots, my body bedewed with sweat. And I wondered whether I would ever be free of Pepys. Did he dream of me, I speculated, as I dreamed of him?

  Yet though I could not be with the Duchess at night, in the daytime we took many pleasant walks together while Kit was conversing (scilicet drinking) with the Governor. Dr Sloane came with us bearing a great satchel for his plants and while he was trotting off into the forest to gather the fruits of the martock tree or the custard-apple or the logwood for the laboratory, we would clasp hands or, if he were out of sight, our lips might touch, but only for an instant as even in the depths of the woods there were natives everywhere gathering wood to burn and fruit to eat. However far we might wander from the town, we could hear their laughter and chattering.

  They are spying on us, she said.

  No, no, these are their woods. This is where they take fuel and food.

  I am sure they are spying. Did you see that woman there with the red kerchief on her head? I have seen her at the Governor’s house.

  That’s a common manner of dress on the island. I have seen half a dozen red kerchiefs.

  No, Kit is posting spies. He grows suspicious, though he says nothing.

  And she called to Dr Sloane to say that she had walked far enough and we must go back.

  It was the day we came into Nevis roads that the Duchess took to her bed.

  Kit went ashore to be treated by the Governor, Colonel Hill, but she would not come. I inquired of one of her women whether she was sick. Nothing out of the common run, the woman said, indicating that it was a matter of the time of the month.

  If only she could bear a child, said the woman (her name was Mrs Wright, though she was no kin of the captain of the Assistance, Mr Wright, a pompous fellow, not trustworthy), that would set her right. I was never ill after I dropped my first.

  At which there came to me some premonition I could not perfectly express to myself. She would be distressed, I knew, for she was distressed each time Nature refused her dearest wish, yet I fancied her distress would be all the greater, since such sweet pleasures had preceded it but to no effect. Were women more likely, or less, to conceive if they had been amorous and the sun shining? I considered whether to ask Dr Sloane but feared lest I should put him on the scent. Besides, I doubted whether he was experienced in such matters.

  It was not until four days later that she came out of her cabin. She was as pale as the moon and there was some wild look in her eye.

  Good-day, I am very glad to see you.

  She gave no answer but stood at the door of her cabin, swaying somewhat with the motion of the ship, shading her eyes against the sun.

  How are you? Better I hope.

  No answer again. Then she walked very slowly past me, she might have been walking in her sleep. After she had gone past me, she said – to no one, because there was no one there:

  I must speak to the Captain. I will not have his woman on the ship.

  But the Captain is not married and he has no woman with him, I said behind her.

  He has a whore in his cabin and she must be taken off.

  She walked on along the deck, I following her, until she met a seaman.

  I must speak to the Captain.

  He’s on the Assistance, ma’am.

  Then take me there.

  Captain’s orders are to sail in her wake till we come to Port Royal.

  Will you bring my husband to me?

  He’s on the Assistance, too, ma’am.

  Well, then, we must go alongside her.

  I can’t do that, ma’am.

  Do as I say.

  But there was no wind to bring the yacht up with the Assistance, although the lieutenant tried to please her. When he came to tell her so, she had gone back to her cabin.

  Then an hour afterwards Mrs Wright, her woman, came out and beckoned me to her.

  I have a message for you from Her Grace, but I hardly know how to give it.

  How so?

  Well, she says that when she came out on deck this morning, there was a man there who would not bow to her. So I says, what man is that? And she says, carelessly as you might say, I forget his name but he is tall and black. So I know she means you, and though it is but foolishness, I thought it best to tell you, for when these peevish fits are on her there’s no knowing what she may do.

  I did not bow?

  So she says.

  I don’t know whether I did or not, we’re too well acquainted to stand upon such ceremony.

  I know that, Mrs Wright said and looked at me as much as to say that there was nothing of the matter she did not know.

  Well, in future, my nose shall scrape the ground, Mrs Wright.

  The next day, Mrs Wright told the lieutenant that Her Grace wished that whenever she left the yacht or boarded her again the whole crew should be mustered to greet her and in livery. The lieutenant said there must be some men elsewhere to sail the ship. Mrs Wright bore word back that Her Grace would have it that the whole ship’s company should be standing by.

  Thus those that were occupied in steering the ship or furling sails or navigating had to make themselves invisible, that the yacht might seem to be sailed by ghosts, while those that could be spared stood in a line with their buttons shining and their boots burnished as Her Grace came out to go to meet her husband on the Assistance.

  By now we had come within sight of Jamaica, and a week before Christmas we sailed into Port Royal Harbour. She still had not spoken a word to me directly but passed by as though I were not there and if I were standing with Dr Sloane would put some question to him about the birds in the rigging or the state of the weather and if I should answer would repeat the question as though no one had spoken.

  Yet when we came ashore (she was in the boat ahead of me), she stood up and waved to the Negroes who were walking on the beach and greeted the Lieutenant-Governor, though but few would recognise under that grave appellation old Sir Henry Morgan, the greatest pirate these islands have ever bred. He had been lately removed from the island council for some misdemeanour (though nothing to compare with the bloody deeds of his youth), and it was my master’s intention to restore him, for the planters loved him, they being reformed pirates like he.

  He stood there on the quay, a black Welshman who exhibited the signs of his intemperance and a thunderous look besides which bore witness to his notorious ill-temper. Yet the Duchess greeted him as sweetly as though he were the prettiest gallant she ever set eyes on.

  Sir Henry, it is an honour to
meet you. I have heard so many tales of your exploits.

  Pack of lies, ma’am, pack of lies. These planters will prattle.

  Well then, you must tell me the truth, must you not?

  Hrrumph, be a great honour . . . The old man was much moved by her courtesy and his jaundiced cheeks blushed hot.

  He dined with us that first night and many nights afterwards, and when I think of our time on the island – which was to be cut short by so tragic an event – it is of sitting out under the portico (for the house was made of brick as it might have been a house in Devonshire and was far too hot, while the Spanish houses were built low around a cool court) with the sound of the grasshoppers in the trees and the Negro attendants waving the great palm fans behind our chairs and the hot scent of the flowers while Sir Henry talked on in the mellifluous accents of his native Glamorganshire:

  So we heard that the Spaniards had imprisoned several Englishmen in their dungeons, at Porto Bello you know, in Panama. We landed about three o’clock in the morning. They had three forts there, ma’am, the first of ’em gave us no trouble at all, dealt with the garrison in half an hour. But the second was a harder nut, too steep to climb. So I had these ladders made, broad as a Frenchman’s arse, saving your presence, ma’am. Three or four men could climb them abreast. But we had to go across open ground to put them against the walls, and I didn’t care to lose my best men before we had started. So I got together a dozen priests and nuns we had captured, told ’em they were going to meet their fellow countrymen, sent ’em to plant the ladders against the walls. But those Spanish devils shot ’em down without pity, so we sent another lot in before they had time to re-load. They shot a few of them too, but we got up the ladders and took the place.

  And the garrison?

  Well, they had to be punished for their cruelty to their own people, didn’t they, ma’am? Yes, we had some sport with ’em.

  And the Governor?

  Oh we accounted for him too. There wasn’t a Spaniard left in Porto Bello after we had done, not left standing, I mean. The women were damnably fine, madam, such eyes. But the men were too slow to tell us where they had hid their treasure, so we made the women do it.

  Were the women quicker to tell then?

  After we had finished with them, Your Grace.

  Oh Sir Henry, I don’t care to hear such things.

  But she did. She sat motionless as the old villain unfolded his catalogue of pillage, rape and torture and all covered over with a cloak of patriotism:

  So the President of Panama sent me a gold ring and told me not to give myself the labour of coming to Panama again. And thereafter the Spaniards began to accept our title to the island.

  That is true, very true, Kit said somnolently, for he was drinking deeper than ever. You did that for old England.

  I did so, sir, as a loyal Welshman. And we did it all with four hundred men against three thousand.

  And the treasure, Sir Henry – Kit always wanted to know about the treasure, he was his mother’s true son.

  At Porto Bello itself, naught but small beer, enough to pay the garrison. But you recall the President paid us a hundred thousand pieces-of-eight to go away and three hundred Negroes into the bargain, though they were but poor specimens and I fancy they brought the swamp fever with them. Then at Lake Maracaibo . . .

  But his proceedings at Lake Maracaibo were not to be related to us, or not that evening, for he began to cough and splutter and his face grew fiery red so that we expected an apoplexy and as though by some contagion Kit began to do the same so that I thought they would explode simultaneously.

  Gentlemen, gentlemen, the Duchess cried. You must consult Dr Sloane together, for it seems you have the same disease.

  But Dr Sloane had gone to bed half an hour earlier. When I asked him the next morning what ailed the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor both, he said:

  You can see with your own eyes, Jeremiah. It’s intemperance, and nothing but intemperance, exacerbated by a sedentary life. If only we could persuade either of ’em to go riding or even to take a walk about the island, but they won’t budge from their chairs. They both have a pain in the legs, there is an oedematous swelling and I suspect that his liver is not right.

  Whose liver?

  Both of ’em. The cases are entirely parallel. I don’t know which of them will perish first. His Grace will take no medicine, he has a violent antipathy to clysters. Bleed me, bleed me, is all his cry, for he finds the bleeding eases the swelling in his veins, but it is not good to bleed a man without cause. I took five or six ounces from his arm this morning.

  I marvelled silently that two such depraved rogues should have the conduct of the whole island’s affairs and that one of them had won the island for the King, for without Sir Henry Morgan the Spaniards would still be snapping at our heels in every bay and inlet.

  But if her husband would not exercise himself, the Duchess would wander all about the island quite without fear and with only Mrs Wright or Dr Sloane for escort, although the woods were full of runaway Negroes who lay in ambush to kill the whites who came within their reach. Me she could not abide to be by her. Thus I found myself pressed once more into Kit’s employ, acting as his secretary in his discourses with the planters, a quarrelsome gang who had always a great catalogue of grievances against the Governor or the French or the Spanish, or all three at once.

  Their great complaint was that our frigates were not numerous enough to protect the trade in slaves from the Spanish interlopers. Either the Spanish seized our African ships on the high seas, or they sent their agents to pay higher prices than the Jamaican planters could afford. The Royal African Company was contracted to furnish the island with Negroes at £17 a head, but the cry was that they sold the best Negroes to the Spaniards and left the sick and maimed for Jamaica. It was a wearisome business and the planters were a mean and grasping crew without either the refinements of civilisation or the boldness of the buccaneers.

  Yet I made half a dozen friends among the better sort. We would club at Davies’s chocolate-house in Port Royal (coffee not yet being grown on the island). And it was a pleasant morning’s work to sit out under the canopy with a cup of chocolate, its bitterness being well sugared and with a spoonful of milk added, and to talk of plantations and factories and cargoes:

  Lost two of my best Negroes in the mill last week. When the rollers are stuck, they will try to loosen the canes without telling the ox-boy to halt. Then another lost a hand in the ovens and will be good for nothing.

  They complained of the Negroes, how they were lazy, deceitful and would run away into the woods rather than do an honest day’s work. But there were always more Negroes to be had at the market on the Palisades (though they said no healthy one had come out of Africa these last ten years). Their greater anguish was upon the fate of their ships, for they all had some share in a ship that was carrying slaves to Jamaica or sugar and chocolate and tobacco to Liverpool and how bitterly they complained that no Englishman could imagine what risk they undertook to furnish him with his modern comforts, how every ship was at the mercy of storm and piracy and foreign enemies, not to speak of the disease that might render a cargo worthless, so that when the hold was opened half of ’em were dead and the others could not hope to work for six months, so that what with the expense of feeding them, and burying them it was a wonder, etc., etc.

  Don’t you think to insure them, I mean the cargo and the ships too?

  Insure them, the planters laughed as though they were a chorus. Who would insure such perilous ventures in a place like this? We are not in Exchange Alley now.

  Well, I said, greatly daring and not wholly truthful, I have a little experience of such matters and might be able to accommodate one or two serious gentlemen.

  You? they said, and then more mildly, you? You mean you might . . . what per cent had you in mind?

  Well, that would depend on the state of the nation, whether we be at peace or war, the season, the nature of the journey and the
cargo. And being but in a small way of business, I could not insure the whole cargo but would need to confederate with others.

  Mmm, the planter said, his greedy eyes alight with the fair prospect, I could pay seven per cent on a half-cargo to Boston that is to land next month.

  Well, I said, let me make inquiry and I shall come back here two days hence. Good-day, gentlemen.

  I took my leave of them and promenaded along the quay under the palm trees and let my eye roam over the calm blue sea. If my master that was a numbskull had remade his fortune in treasure-hunting, why should I not increase mine from insuring the treasure-hunters and the slaveship-owners? I had £2,200 in my chest in the strong-room at the King’s House. By judicious assurance, I could quickly double it, so long as I never ventured too much at once and backed only sound bottoms.

  My first venture was with that same merchant who had a ship bound for Boston. He paid me £70 to insure a ship worth £1,000 that docked safely a week later. Then I insured two sugar-ships for Bristol at the same rate which came in safe also. Being a beginner at the trade, I would not insure slaves, for I knew nothing of the diseases in the African ports. But I did know the importance of accurate intelligence and soon had agents in the other islands and on the American coast. I was often better acquainted with the state of the voyage than the ship’s owner, so that when he thought the ship becalmed and overdue, and came to me for assurance, I knew the ship to be but two days’ sailing from its destination. Thus does superior intelligence lead to profit. Within two months I had made £400. Indeed had I not also had to go to Kit’s whistling, I could have made more.

  My example had soon found imitators, so that when we met at the chocolate-house, there would be half a dozen of us bidding for the assurances, which comforted the shipowners, for in our rivalry they saw their salvation. What they did not know was that we had agreed amongst ourselves that none of us would take less than 7 per cent as premio.