So we filed out, downstairs, and came to the back of the house, and into a plain room where a young nigger was sitting at a table, writing by the light of an oil lamp. He looked up, but didn't rise, and one sight of his face told me that here was a fellow I didn't like above half.
He was about my age, slim but tall, and a quadroon. He had a white man's face, bar the thickish lips, with fine brows and a most arrogant, damn-you-me-lad expression. He sat while Crixus poured out the tale, turning his pencil in his hand, and when he had been told that here was the man who would pilot him to the promised land, and Crixus had got round to presenting me, he got up languidly and held out a fine brown hand. I took it, and it was like a woman's, and then he dropped it and turned to Crixus.
“You are in no doubt?” says he. His voice was cold, and very precise. A right uppity white nigger, this one was. “We cannot afford a mistake this time. There have been too many in the past.”
Well, this took me flat aback; for a moment I almost forgot my own fears. And Crixus, to my astonishment, was all eagerness to reassure him.
“None, George, none. As I have told you, Mr Comber is a proved fighter on our side; you could not be in better hands.”
“Ah,” says Randolph, and sat down again. “That is very well, then. He understands the importance of my reaching Canada. Now, tell me, exactly how do we proceed from here? I take it the modus operandi is as we have already discussed it, and that Mr Comber is capable of falling in with it precisely.”
I just gaped. I don't know what I had expected-one of your woolly-headed darkies, I suppose, massa-ing everyone, and pathetically grateful that someone was going to risk his neck to help him to freedom. But not your Lord George Bloody Randolph, no indeed. You'd have thought he was doing Crixus a favour, as the old fellow went through the plan, and our runaway sat, nodding and occasionally frowning, putting in his points and pursing his lips, like a judge on the bench. Finally he says:
“Very well. It should answer satisfactorily. I cannot pretend that I welcome some of the. . . er. . . details. To be chained in a gang of blacks—that is a degradation which I had hoped was behind me. But since it must be—” he gave Crixus a pained little smile “—why, it must be endured. I suppose it is a small price to pay. My spirit can sustain it, I hope.”
“It can, George, it can,” cries Crixus. “After all you have suffered, it is a little thing, the last little thing.”
“Ah, yes—always the last little thing!” says Randolph. “We know about the camel, do we not, and the final feather. Do you know, when I look back, I ask myself how I have borne it? And this, as you say, is a trifle—why should it seem so bitter a trifle? But there.” He shrugged, and then turned in his chair to look at me—I was still standing, too.
“And you, sir? You know the gravity of what lies before us. Your task should not be hard—merely to ride on a steamboat, in rather greater comfort than I shall be. Are you confident of. . .”
“Yes, yes, George,” says Crixus. “Mr Comber knows; I talked to to him in the library.”
“Ah,” says Randolph. “In the library.” He looked about him, with a little, crooked smile. “In the library.”
“Oh, now, George,” cries Crixus, “you know we agreed it was safer here. . .”
“I know.” Randolph held up a slim hand. “It is of no importance. However, I was speaking to Mr Comber—yes, you will have been told, sir, how vitally important is this journey of ours. So I ask again, do you trust yourself entirely to carry it through—simple though it should be?”
I could have kicked the black bastard off his chair. But caught as I was, in the trap Crixus had sprung on me, what was there to do but cram down my resentment on top of my fears—I was an overloaded man, believe me—and say:
“No, I've no doubts. Play your part on the lower deck, and I'll play mine in the saloon—George.”
He stiffened just a little. “You know, I believe I prefer Mr Randolph, on first acquaintance.”
I nearly hit him, but I held it in. “D'you want me to call you Mr Randolph on the steamboat?” says I. “People might talk—don't ye think?”
“We shall be on the steamboat soon enough,” says he, and there our discussion ended, with Crixus fidgetting nervously as he ushered me out, and telling Randolph to get some sleep, because we must soon be off. But when the door had closed I let out my breath with a whoosh, and Crixus says hurriedly:
“Please, Mr Comber—well, I know what you may be thinking. George can be. . . difficult, I guess, but—well, we have not endured what he has endured. You saw his sensitivity, the delicacy of his nature. Oh, he is a genius, sir—he is three parts white, you know. Think what slavery must do to such a spirit! I know he is very different from the negroes with whom you are used to dealing. Dear me, I sometimes myself find it. . . but there. I remember what he means to our cause—and to all those poor, black people.” He blinked at me. “Compassionate him, sir, as you compassionate them. I know, in your own loving heart, you will do so.”
“Compassion, Mr Crixus, is the last thing he wants from me,” says I, and I added privately: and it's the last thing he'll get, too. Indeed, as later I tried unsuccessfully to sleep under that strange roof, I found myself thinking that I'd find Master Randolph's company just a little more than I could stomach—not that I need see him much. My God, thinks I, what am I doing? How the devil did I get into this? But even as my fears reawoke, it came back to the same thing: almost any risk was preferable to letting the U.S. authorities get me, unmask me, and—. After all, this would be the quicker way home, and if things went adrift, well, Master Randolph could shift for himself while Flashy took to the timber. He would be all right; he was a genius.
9
If ever you have to run slaves—which seems unlikely nowadays, although you never can tell what may happen if we have the Liberals back—the way to do it is by steamboat. The Sultana, bound for Cincinnati by way of Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, Memphis and Cairo, beat the old Balliol College all to nothing. It was like cruising upriver in a fine hotel, with the niggers out of sight, mind and smell, no pitching or rolling to disturb the stomach, and above all, no John Charity Spring.
The speed and sureness with which Crixus and his minions organised our departure had almost banished my first fears. I had woken on a resolve to run from the house and take my chance with the Navy, but they kept far too close a watch on things for that, and by the afternoon I was glad of it. Crixus spent four hours drilling me in the minu test details of the journey, about cash, and passage tickets, and how the slaves would be fed en route, how I might answer casual inquiries and take part in river gossip without appearing too out of place, and by the end of it I realised how little chance I would have stood as a fugitive on my own account. The main thing was to talk as little as possible; there were enough Englishmen on the river in those days to make an extra one nothing out of the ordinary, but since I was meant to be a new-fledged slave trader it was important that I shouldn't make any foolish slips. My story would be that I had recently forsaken African blackbirding in favour of river dealing—I had all the expert knowledge for that, at any rate.
Really, it was astonishing how easy it was. In mid-afternoon, With a broad-brimmed planter's hat, my long-tailed coat, and half-boots, I joined my coffle in the cellars of Crixus's house. There Were six of them, in light ankle irons, with Randolph in the middle, looking damned miffed, which cheered me considerably. The other five, by the way, were free niggers in Crixus's employ, and like him devoted to the underground railroad. There was much hand-shaking and God-blessing, and then we were conducted through what seemed like miles of cellars to a deserted yard, from which it was a short step to the levee.
I had my heart in my mouth as I strode along, trying to look like Simon Legree, with my gang of coons shuffling behind; I had protested to Crixus that if the Navy were on the look-out for me the waterfront would be a deuced dangerous place, but he said not at the steamboat wharves, and he was right. We pushed through the cro
wds of niggers, stevedores, boatmen, passengers and bummarees without anyone giving us a glance; there were coffles by the score, with fellows dressed like me shepherding and spitting and cursing, bawling to each other and chewing on big black cigars; old ladies with hat-boxes and parasols and men with carpet-bags and stove-pipe hats were hurrying for their boats niggers with carts were loading piles of luggage; the big twin smoke-stacks were belching and the whistles squealing; it was like the Tower of Babel with the scaffolding about to give way. I pushed ahead until I found the Sultana, and within an hour we were thrashing upstream, close inshore, on the slow bend past what is now called Gretna—and with the great jam of ships and rafts and scuttling small boats along its levee, anything less like the real Gretna you never saw. My niggers were stowed down on the main deck at water-level, where the baggage and steerage people go, and I was reclining in my state-room up on the texas deck, smoking a cigar and deciding that things had turned out not so badly after all.
You see, it had gone so well and naturally in the first hour that I was beginning to believe Crixus. The purser fellow had accepted my ticket, in the name of James K. Prescott, without a blink, and bawled to one of his niggers to come an' take the gennelman's coffle and see 'em disposed forrard, thankee sir, straight ahead there to the stairway, an' mind your head. And with the boat so crowded with passengers I felt security returning; this looked like an easy trip to the point where one Caleb Cape, trader and auctioneer, would meet me at Cincinnati and take my coffle, and I would steam on up the Ohio, free as a bird.
In the meantime I set out to enjoy the trip as far as possible. The Sultana was a big fast boat, and held the New Orleans-Louisville record of five and a half days; she had three decks from the texas to the water-line, with the boiler deck in the middle.[35] This was where the main saloon and state-rooms were, all crystal chandeliers and gilding and plush, with carved furniture and fine carpets; my own cabin had an oil painting on the door, and there were huge pictures in the main rooms. All very fine, in a vulgar way, and the passengers matched it; you may have heard a great deal about Southern charm and grace, and there's something in it where Virginia and Kentucky are concerned—Robert Lee, for instance, was as genteel an old prig as you'd meet on Pall Mall—but it don't hold for the Mississippi valley. There they were rotten with cotton money in those days, with gold watch-chains and walking-sticks, loud raucous laughter, and manners that would have disgraced a sty. They spat their “terbacker” juice on the carpets, gorged noisily in the dining saloon—the sight of jellied quail being shovelled down with a spoon and two fingers, and falling on a shirt-front with a diamond the size of a shilling in it, is a sight that dwells with me still, and I ain't fastidious as a rule. They hawked and belched and picked their teeth and swilled great quantities of brandy and punch, and roared to each other in their hideous plantation voices.
Theirs weren't the only manners to cause me concern, either. That first evening I went down to the main deck to see that my slaves were being properly housed and fed, as a good owner should, and to enjoy the sight of the precious Master Randolph regaling himself on pulse and pone. A slave's life didn't suit him one little bit; he had taken his place in the coffle that afternoon with a very ill grace, and much self-pitying nobility for Crixus's benefit. When he and his fellows were herded off to their passage quarters he had still been damned peaked and sulky, and now he was sitting with a bowl of hash from the communal copper, sniffing at it with disgust.
“How d'ye like it, George?” says I. “You and the other niggers feeding well?”
He gave me a glance of sheer hate, and seeing there was no one else at hand, he hissed:
“This filth is inedible! Look at it—smell it, if you can bear the nauseating stuff!”
I sniffed the bowl; it would have sickened a dog. “Capital stew!” says I. “Eat it down, heartily now, or I shall begin to fear I have been spoiling you, my boy. Now, you other niggers, are you all pitching into your vittles, hey? That's the spirit.”
The other five all cried: “Yes, massa, shore 'nuff, mighty fine, massa.” Either they had more acting gumption than Randolph or else they liked the awful muck. But he, all a-quiver with indignation, whispers fiercely:
“Capital stew, indeed! Could you bear to eat this foulness?”
“Probably not,” says I, “but I'm not a nigger, d'ye see.” And without another glance at him I strolled off to my own dinner, resolving to describe it to him later. I never believe in neglecting the education of my inferiors.
It was worth describing, too. Mississippi food, once you get outside Orleans, tends to be robust and rich, and I wolfed my stewed chicken, prime steak and creamed chocolate with all the more relish for the thought of Randolph squatting on the main deck grubbing at his gristle. I had champagne with it, too, and a very passable brandy, and finally topped the whole thing off with a buxom little cracker girl in my cabin. Her name was Penny or Jenny, I forget which; she had dyed gold hair which went vilely with her yellow satin dress, and she was one of your squealing hoydens, but she had tremendous energy and high pointed breasts of which she was immensely proud, which made up for a lot. Most of the women on the boat were noisy, by the way; the respectable ones clacked and squawked to each other interminably, and the mistresses and whores, of whom there seemed to be a great number, were brassy enough to be heard in San Francisco. Penny (or Jenny) was one of the quieter ones; she didn't scream with laughter above once a minute.
I was lying there, drowsy and well satisfied, listening to her prattling, when a nigger waiter comes up with a message that I was wanted on the main deck—something to do with my coffle, he said. Wondering what the devil was what, I went down, and to my rage and concern discovered that it was that confounded George up to his nonsense again.
The overseer was swearing and stamping over in the corner where my slaves were, with Randolph standing in front of him looking as arrogant as Caesar.
“What's the matter with it, damn ye?” the overseer was shouting, and then, seeing me:
“Says look here, Mist' Prescott—here's this jim-dandy nigger o' yours don' like this yere 'commodation. No suh, 'pears like 'taint good enough for him. Now, then!”
“What's this I hear, George?” says I, pushing forward. “What are you about, my boy? Turning up your nose at the quarters—what's wrong with them, sir?”
He looked me straight in the eye, with as much side as old Lord Cardigan.
“We have been given no straw to make beds for ourselves. We are entitled to this; it is covered in the money you have paid for our passage.”
“Well,—me drunk, will ye hear that, now?” cries the overseer. “Entye—entitt—ent-what-the-hell-you-say! Don' you give me none o' your shines, ye black rascal! Beds, by thunder! You'll lay right down where you're told, or by cracky you'll be knocked down! Who're you, that you gotta have straw to keep yore tender carcase offen the floor? 'Tother hands is layin' on it, ain't they? Now, you git right down there, d'ye hear?”
“My master has paid for us to have straw,” says Randolph, looking at me. “The other slaves over yonder have it; only our coffle goes without.”
“Well, there ain't no more goddamed straw, you no-good impident son-of-a-bitch!” cries the overseer. “So now! I never heerd the like—”
I could have felled that bloody ass Randolph on the spot—perhaps I should have done. Couldn't the fool understand that he must behave as a slave, even if he didn't feel like one? How the devil he ever existed on a plantation was beyond me—it must have taken a saint or a lunatic to put up with his insolent airs. All I could do was play the just master, kindly but firm.
“Come, come, George,” I said sternly. “Let us have no more of this. Lie down where you are told directly—what, is this how you repay my kind usuage, by impertinence? Have you forgotten yourself altogether, that you speak back to a white man? Lie down at once, sir, this instant!”
He stared at me; I was urging him with my eyes, and he had just wit enough to obey, but with n
o great humility, plumping down on the deck and folding his arms stubbornly round his knees. The overseer growled.
“I'd take the starch outer that jackanapes right smart, if he was mine. You be 'vised, Mist' Prescott, an' give that uppity yaller bastard a good dressin' down, or he'll have the whole passel on 'em as bad as hisseif. Beds, by Christ! An' sassin' back to me! That's the trouble with all these fancy house-niggers, with bein' roun' white folks they start thinkin' they white, too. Peacocky high-an'-mighties, every last dam' one of them. He'll have bin brought up 'mong white ladies, I don't doubt; too much dam' pettin' when he's young. You trim him up smart, Mist' Prescott, like I say, or he'll be a heap o' trouble to ye.”
He stumped off, muttering to himself, and Randolph sneered softly to himself.
“The gentleman is not without perception,” says he. “He, at least, was not brought up among white ladies; white sows, perhaps.” He glared up at me. “We are entitled to straw to lie on—why did you not insist that he provides it? Isn't it enough that I am chained up like a beast in this verminous place, fed on nauseating slops? Aren't you meant to protect me—you, who neglect me to the mercies of that uncouth white scum?”
I wondered if the fellow was insane-not for the way he spoke to me, but for the purblind stupidity with which he overlooked the position he was in, the role he was meant to be playing. He was five days away from freedom, and yet the idiot insisted on drawing attention to himself and provoking trouble. Ordinarily I'd have taken my boot to him, but he so mystified me that I was alarmed. I glanced round; the overseer was out of sight.
“Come over by the rail,” says I, and when we were standing apart:
“Look—haven't you got sense enough to keep your mouth shut and your head down? Where the hell do you think you are—the House of Lords? D'ye think it matters whether you get straw or not—or whether I've paid for it or not? D'ye expect me to take your side against a white man—it'd be the talk of the boat in five minutes, you fool. Just you forget your lofty opinion of yourself for once, and talk humble, and don't be so damned particular, or you'll never see Ohio this trip!”
Flash For Freedom! Page 18