Meanwhile the meal finished, and presently Gezo beckoned Spring to draw his stool closer; they grunted away at each other through the interpreter, and I heard Spring suggest the purchase of six of the Amazon women. This threw Gezo into a great passion, but Spring let it rage, and then whispered to the interpreter again. There was much conferring, and Gezo barked and screamed, but less loud each time, I thought, and at last Spring turned to me.
“Show him your pistol,” says he, and I handed it over. Gezo pawed over it excitedly, rasping questions at Spring, and finally it was given back to me, and Spring says:
“Fire it for him—all five shots as fast as you can. Into the side of the death house will do.”
I stood up, all eyes on me, Gezo chattering and bouncing up and down on his stool. I drew a bead on one of the skull bricks and fired; it kicked like blazes, but I thumbed back the hammer smartly and loosed off the next four shots in quick time. Five gaping holes were smashed in the wall, with splinters flying all over the place, the mob roared, Gezo beat his fists on his knees with excitement, and even the Amazons put up their knuckles to their mouths; my own pipsey-popsey with the white turban stared at me roundeyed.
Then Spring called up one of our seamen, who carried a case, and when he opened it there were the five other Colt pistols; Gezo slobbered and squealed at the sight of them, but Spring wouldn't hand them over—he had more guts than I'd have had with that blood-stained maniac mowing and yelling at me. They whispered away again, and then Gezo rolled his eyes shifty-like at the Amazons, summoned my girl, and mumbled orders to her. She didn't bat an eyelid, but snapped a command to six of her wenches. They grounded their spears like guardsmen, put by their cleavers, and then stood forward. Gezo yammered at them, one of them said something back, Gezo yelled at them, and from the ranks of all the other Amazons there was something like a gasp and a murmur, which rose to a growl; they didn't like what was happening, and Gezo had to stand up and bawl at them until they were quiet.
I didn't like the look of this; you could feel the anger and hatred welling up all round us. But Spring just snapped shut the case, handed it to Gezo, and then turned to us.
“Mr Kinnie,” says he, “the palaver is finished. Form up round these six women; we're getting out of here.” Then he tipped his hat to Gezo, who was sitting back on his stool, looking d-d peevish, and clutching his case. Our fellows had turned to face the crowd, who were milling closer beyond the ranks of the Amazons; it was beginning to look ugly, but Spring just marched ahead, bulldog fashion, the Amazons stepped back smartly to let him go, and with our six black beauties in our midst we followed after. Two of the girls hesitated, looking round over their shoulders, but my Amazon lady, standing beside Gezo's throne, shouted to them, and they dropped their heads meekly and marched on with us.
By jove, it was a long minute's walk to the gate of the stockade, through the double file of those black Amazon furies, their faces sullen with anger and grief at the sale of their fellows, while the great crowd of townsfolk roared in protest behind them. But the discipline of those women warriors was like iron; the king had said, and that was that—mind you, if Gezo had run for president at that moment, he wouldn't have had my money on him, but even so, no one in that whole town was bold enough to gainsay him.
We were moving d-d smartly by the time we reached the stockade, a tight knot of men with our needle guns at the ready, and the women being jostled along in the middle. Spring was first at the gate, where he stopped and hurried us through, I stood close by him; his jaw was tight and he was as near scared as I ever saw him.
“Hurry, b—t you!” he shouted. “d-n that Gezo, to haggle so longs and d-n those women—I didn't think they'd raise such a bother about the business. Straight ahead, Mr Kinnie, and keep those six sluts close, d'you hear?” Then to me: “Come on!”
“Wait!” say I—it was instinctive, believe me; I'd no wish to linger, not with that growling mob behind me. But I'd noticed the little ferrety cabin boy was missing. “Where the h—l is he?”
“Back there!” snaps Spring. “He's senseless with nigger beer—Gezo wanted him—wanted a white slave! Come on, d-n you, will you stand there all day?”
I'm not shocked easy, but that took me flat aback—for about the tenth part of an instant. If Spring wanted to trade his cabin boy to a nigger king, it was all one to me; I was into the fringe of the jungle a yard ahead of him, and then we were running, with the others in front of us, the Amazons being driven along, one of 'em wailing already. Behind us the hubbub of the town was cut off by the dense foliage; we hustled down the path, but you don't run far in that climate, and soon we had to slow down to a trot.
“Well enough, I think,” says Spring. He stopped for a moment to listen, but there was nothing except the jungle noises and the sobbing of our own breathing. “I didn't like that,” says he, addressing no one in particular. “By G-d, I didn't! If I'd known they were so d-d jealous of their fighting wenches. . . Phew! It's the last time I deal with Gezo, though. Quid violentius aure tyranni? [What is more dangerous than having the ear of a tyrant?—Juvenal.] For a moment I'd a notion he would change his mind—and keep the pistols, which would have been short shrift for us.” He laughed, and the mad pale eyes blinked. “On, there, Mr Kinnie! Mr Comber, keep a sharp eye on the prisoners! Back to that boat in double time, my lads, before his majesty thinks better of his bargain!”
We pushed on down the narrow trail, and we must have been half-way to the river when Spring stopped again, listening. I strained my ears; nothing. Just the chickering of the forest beasts and birds. Spring called to the fellows to be quiet, and we all listened. Spring turned his head from side to side, and then I heard Kirk say: “Wot the h-l we standing here for? If there's anything to hear, then the sooner we're in that boat the better.”
“There's nuthin' behind us,” says another, uneasily.
“Silence!” snaps Spring. He was peering through the foliage at the side of the path. I found my heart racing, and not just with exertion—if we were pursued, they couldn't have outflanked us, through that swamp and jungle, surely. We would have heard them—and then I remembered Kirk saying: “They can move in dead silence when they wants to.”
“For G-d's sake!” I whispered to Spring. “Let's get on!”
He ignored me. “Mr Kinnie,” he called softly. “D'you hear anything to port?”
“No, cap'n,” sings back Kinnie, “there's noth—”
The end of that word was a horrid scream; in terror I stared down the path, and saw Kinnie stagger, clawing at the shaft in his throat before tumbling headlong into the mangrove. Someone yelled, a musket banged, and then Spring was thrusting forward, bawling:
“Run for it! Keep on the path for your lives. Run like h-l!”
His order was wasted on me-I was running before he had started thinking, even; someone screamed in front of me, and a black shadow leaped on to the path—it was an Amazon, swinging a machete; one of the seamen caught it on his musket, and dashed the butt into her face. She went down, shrieking, and as I leaped over her my foot landed on her bare flesh; I stumbled, but went careering on. The vision of those two naked black fiends slashing a man to death was before my eyes, and the crash of shots and yelling behind me urged me on. I fairly flew along that trail.
And by gum, I wasn't alone. They say sailors are poor runners, but that landing party from the Balliol College could move when they wanted to; we stampeded along that twisting path, elbowing each other aside in our panic to get away from the horror in the jungle on either side. They were screaming their war cries now, those terrible black sows; once a spear flashed past in front of my face, and I believe a couple of arrows buzzed above our heads, and then I tripped and fell headlong, with the others trampling over me.
I thought I was done for, but when I scrambled to my feet I saw we were on the edge of the clearing by the river. The fleetest of our party was tearing aside the branches where our canoe was hidden, the man who had been left on guard was on one knee
, aiming his musket; it banged, and I turned to see an Amazon fall shrieking not ten yards from me, her cleaver bouncing along to land at my feet. Instinctively I grabbed it, and then a flying body knocked me sideways. Some of our fellows were firing from the water's edge; as I scrambled up I saw an Amazon on her knees, clutching her side with one hand as she tried vainly to hurl her spear with the other. Close by me was Spring, bawling like a madman; he had his pepper-pot revolver in one hand, firing back towards the path, and by G-d, with the other he was trying to drag along one of the Amazons he'd bought. The man's dedication to scholarly research was incredible.
They were leaping through the edge of the jungle now, howling black devils, and if you believe that even the worst of young women has charms, you are in error. As I fled for the boat, I saw the man who had been on guard spin round with an arrow in his shoulder; before he could regain his feet three of them were on him, and while two held him down, throat and ankle, the third carefully pulled up his shirt, and with the utmost delicacy disembowelled him with her machete. Then I was at the boat, a needle gun was in my hands, and I was firing at another who was leaping across the clearing; she went cartwheeling into the river, and then Spring was beside me, dashing down his empty gun and drawing his cutlass.
“Shove off!” he bawled, and I made a leap for the thwart, missed, and came down in the shallows. Spring jumped over me, and I felt someone drag me upright; it was Comber. For a moment we were shoulder to shoulder, and then an Amazon was on us. Her spear was back to thrust into my breast, and in that split second I saw it was my white-turbanned wench of the fly whisk, her teeth bared in a ghastly grin. And you may think me fanciful, but I'll swear she recognised me, for she hesitated an instant, swung her point away from me, and drove it to the haft into Comber's side. And as I threw myself headlong over the gunwale the ridiculous thought flashed through my mind: bonny black cavalry whiskers, they can't resist 'em.
“d-nation!” Spring was roaring. “I lost that confounded slut!” And as the boat shot away from the bank he seized a needle gun, almost crying with rage, and blazed away. I pulled myself up by the thwart, and the first thing I saw was a bloody hand gripping the edge of the boat. It was Comber, clinging on for dear life as we wallowed out into the stream, with the dark red blood staining the water around him. For a second I wondered whether I should try to haul him in or bash his fingers loose, for he was encumbering our way, but then Spring had leaned over and with one titanic heave had dragged him over the thwart.
We were ten yards from the bank, and it was lined with shrieking black women, hurling their spears, bending their bows, leaping up and down in a frenzy of rage. Why none of them took to the water after us I don't know, unless it was fear of crocodiles; we cowered down to escape their missiles, and then a voice was screaming from the bank:
“Help, cap'n! Cap'n, don't leave me—for Jesus' sake, cap'n! Save me!”
It was Kirk; he was in the shallows, being dragged back by half a dozen of those black witches. They hauled him on to the bank, screaming and laughing, while we drifted out into midstream. Some bold idiot had seized a sweep, and Comber, bleeding like a butchered calf, was crying:
“Help him, sir! We must turn back! We must save him!”
Spring thrust him away, threw himself on to the sweep with the sailor, and in spite of the arrows that whistled over the boat, the two of them managed to drive us still farther away towards the opposite mangrove shore. We were beyond the spears now, and presently the arrows began to fall short, although one of the last to reach the boat struck clean through the hand of the seaman at the oar, pinning him to the timber. Spring wrenched it clear and the fellow writhed away, clutching his wound. And then Holy Joe Comber was at it again:
“Turn back, sir! We can't leave Kirk behind!”
“Can't we, by G-d?” growls Spring. “You just watch me, mister. If the b-d can't run, that's his look-out!”
Spoken like a man, captain, thinks I; give me a leader you can trust, any day. And even Comber, his face contorted with pain, could see it was no go; they were swarming on the bank, and had Kirk spreadeagled; we could see them wrenching his clothes off, squealing with laughter, while close by a couple of them had even started kindling a fire. They were smart housewifely lasses those, all right.
Kirk was yelling blue murder, and as we watched, my girl in the white turban knelt down beside him, and suddenly his voice rose into a horrible, blood-chilling shriek. Several of the Amazons prancing on the bank indicated to us, by obscene gestures, what she was doing to him; Comber groaned, and began to spew, and Spring, swearing like a lunatic, was fumbling to load one of the needle guns. He bawled to the rest of us to follow suit, and we banged away at them for a moment, but it was too dangerous to linger, and with Kirk's screams, and the gloating shrieks of those she-d—ls, drifting downstream after us, we manned the sweeps and rowed for all we were worth. With the current to help us we drove along hard, and I was finally able to choke down my panic and thank my stars for another delivery. Of the half dozen of us in the boat, I was the only one without even a scratch; Spring had a machete cut on his left arm, but not a deep one, and the others' wounds were mild enough, except for Comber's. But if Spring was only slightly injured in the flesh, his ambition had taken a nasty jar. He d-d Gezo's eyes for a treacherous hound, and called the Amazons things that would have made a marine blush, but his chief fury, voiced over and over again as we rowed downstream was:
“I lost that black slut. All these years, and I lost the sow! Even that single one—she would have done! My G-d, I could have used that woman!”
I was pondering that I could have used my white-turbanned Hebe, for a different and less academic purpose-but then I thought of Kirk, and discovered that any tendre I might have cherished for the lady had died. And as I think back now, strapping lass though she was, I can't say that the old flame rekindles. She was a shrew if ever I saw one.
4
With the danger safely past, I was soon in good fettle again. As I've said before, there's nothing so cheering as surviving a peril in which companions have perished, and our losses had been heavy. Five men had died in our hasty retreat from Apokoto; apart from Kinnie, Kirk, and the guard on the boat, two others had been cut down by Amazons on the path, and of course the cabin boy had been left behind deliberately by Spring, not that he was any great loss. (It will give you some notion of the kind of men who manned the Coast slavers, when I tell you that not a word of protest was said about this; nobody had liked the little sneak anyway.)
For the rest, it looked as though Comber was a goner. My wench had shovelled her spear well in under his short ribs, leaving a hole like a hatchway; Murphy the surgeon, when he had sobered up, announced that there was nothing he could do but clean and stitch it, which he did, “but for what may have come adrift inside,” says he, “I can't answer.” So they put Comber in his berth, half-dead, with Mrs Spring to nurse him—“that'll carry the poor s-d off, even if his wound doesn't,” says Murphy.
Then we went to work. There were upwards of a thousand niggers in the barracoons on the morning after our Apokoto exploit, and Spring was in a sweat to get our cargo loaded and away. It was the possibility of naval patrols sniffing us out that worried him; Sullivan's suggestion, that Gezo might take it into his head to come down and make a clean sweep of us, he dismissed out of hand. As Spring saw it, the Amazons and not Gezo had been responsible for the attack; now they had rescued their six wenches, and Gezo still had his pistols, he wouldn't want to offend us further. He was right; Sanchez, who was an astonishing good plucked 'un, for a Dago, actually went up to talk to Gezo a day later, to see that all was well, and found the black rascal full of alarm in case Spring was going to wash his hands of the Dahomey trade. Sanchez reassured him, and dropped a hint that if Gezo would even now part with an Amazon it would make for friendly relations, but Gezo was too windy of provoking his bodyguard. He just clutched his case of pistols and begged Sanchez to tell Spring that he was still his friend, sawa
sawa, and hoped they would continue to do good business together—all this, mark you, while Kirk and one of the men who'd been caught on the path were strung up in front of the death house, with those black shefiends working on them before a cheering crowd. They were still alive, Sanchez said, but you wouldn't have known they were human beings.
So honour was satisfied, both sides, but Spring and Sanchez took no chances. The Balliol College's nets were rigged, and her twelve and nine-pounders shotted, while Sanchez's pickets guarded the jungle trails and the river. All remained peaceful, however, and the business of loading the slaves went ahead undisturbed.
With our second mate dead and our third apparently dying, I found myself having to work for a living. Even with men who knew their business as well as these, it's no easy matter to pack six hundred terrified, stupid niggers into a slave deck; it's worse than putting Irish infantry into a troopship.
First Spring and Murphy went through the barracoons, picking out the likeliest bucks and wenches. They were penned up in batches of a hundred, men and women separate, a great mass of smelling, heaving black bodies, all stark naked, squatting and lying and moaning; the sound was like a great wailing hum, and it never stopped, day or night, except when the tubs of burgoo were shoved into the pens, and they shut up long enough to empty the gourds which were passed round among them. What astonished me was that Spring and Murphy were able to walk in among them as though they were tame beasts; just the two of them in that mass of cowed, miserable humanity, with a couple of black guards jerking out the ones selected. If they'd had a spark of spirit the niggers could have torn them limb from limb, but they just sat, helpless and mumbling. I thought of the Amazons, and wondered what changed people from brave, reckless savages into dumb resigned animals; apparently it's always the way on the Coast. Sullivan told me he reckoned it was the knowledge that they were going to be slaves, but that being brainless brutes they never thought of doing anything about it.
Flash For Freedom! Page 9