Jump Ship to Freedom

by James Lincoln Collier

  Oh my, was it busy. It was the middle of the afternoon. There were sheds and stalls and warehouses and shops and inns. And of course thousands of people everywhere—men and women and boys and lots of sailors, some dressed up fine, some drunk and dirty, some racing here and there carrying boxes or sacks over their shoulders, or pushing barrows filled with fish or meat or vegetables through the crowd. And everywhere barrels, boxes, casks, stacks of lumber, crates of chickens, cattle, bales of hay, bundles of cotton. It was all so rich, and busy, and full. Whitehall Street ended and I had to turn. I decided to go right on Dock Street.

  Suddenly it came to me that for the first time in my life I was free. I stood there, letting the feeling of it rise up in me. There wasn’t anybody around to tell me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted. I could stroll along the waterfront and take in the sights, I could set off for the wilderness, I could walk into one of the warehouses or shops along the dockside, take a job, and spend the money I earned any way that I wanted. Thinking about it, I felt light and sparkling inside. It was just about the sweetest feeling I’d ever had.

  But then my worries came over me, and the sparkling feeling went away. The first thing was, I didn’t have the soldiers’ notes anymore—they was still tucked down inside that cherrywood linen chest on the Junius Brutus. The second was that Captain Ivers and Big Tom was certain to be around the waterfront somewhere. If they spotted me, I wouldn’t be free anymore, I’d be on my way South to the cane fields. Captain Ivers was bound to reckon that if I ran off once, I’d run off again, and he’d sell me South sure as the moon.

  What I had to do was to go to the Congress and find Mr. Johnson. But it was a mighty big city and I didn’t have an idea where Congress was.

  I was at the corner where Dock Street ran into a great, wide road just full of people and wagons and horses and cows, and even pigs. The signpost said Broad Street. So I slipped back out of the way and stood in the shadows of a long warehouse building, waiting for somebody to come along I could ask directions of who wouldn’t ask too many questions back. And in about a minute there came along a little black girl, about ten years old, pushing a barrow filled with oysters. I reckoned she wasn’t going to pry too much and wasn’t likely to give me away if she got suspicious of me, anyway. As she went by, I grabbed her arm. “Say,” I said.

  She stopped pushing the barrow and looked at me. “What?” she said.

  “I’m looking for the Congress. My master sent me down there with a letter. He told me how to get there, but I forgot. I’m bound for a licking if I don’t get there soon.”

  “I don’t see no letter,” she said.

  “It’s in my shirt,” I said.

  “Who’s it for?”

  “That ain’t none of your business,” I said.

  “How’d you get your clothes all wet?” she asked.

  “You’re pretty nosy, ain’t you?” She was younger than me. I wasn’t going to take anything from her.

  “Tell me,” she said, “or I won’t tell you where the Congress is at.”

  I’d never met anyone like her for nosiness. “Don’t you know it ain’t polite to ask all those questions?”

  “You asked the first question,” she shot back.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said.

  “Yes, you did. You asked where the Congress was.”

  “That ain’t the same,” I said. Any minute Captain Ivers might come along. “Now tell me or I’ll give you a cuff. I can’t spend all day talking. I’m bound for a licking as it is.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute. Then she said, “I don’t believe nothing you said. You been swimming around in the harbor. You jumped off your ship and run away.”

  I grabbed the collar of her gown. “You’re a pretty smart darky, ain’t you? Now cut out the sass and tell me where Congress is.”

  She began to squirm around. “I don’t know where it is. Let go of my shirt.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I never said I did,” she said. She looked at me, worried.

  “I ought to cuff you for wasting my time like that. My capt—I could have got into a peck of trouble standing around here.”

  “It ain’t my fault,” she said. “I didn’t say I knew.” She grabbed onto the barrow handles. “I got to go before I get a licking.”

  “A licking? You ain’t likely to get the kind of licking I’ll get if they catch me.”

  “Oh, you don’t know,” she said. “I work at the most famous tavern in America, and maybe the whole world. They make us step pretty smart.”

  “What tavern is that?” I said quick.

  “Fraunces’ Tavern. It’s the most—”

  I grabbed her by the neck of her gown again. “All right, Nosy,” I said. “I’m giving you one last chance. You take me to Fraunces’ Tavern and I won’t cuff you. But no fooling around this time.”

  It was a stroke of luck. Of course it made me pretty nervous to think about going to see Black Sam Fraunces, being as he was so famous. Maybe he’d forgot all about my daddy. But he was sure to know where Congress was, and maybe how to find Mr. Johnson, too. I had to take a chance on it.

  We set off. Nosy turned off from the waterfront, pushing the barrow before her, and I walked alongside. The streets was narrow and crooked and pretty muddy. The houses was right up against the street, and sometimes the cellar stairs cut into the roadway, so you had to watch out. There wasn’t so many people coming along here as there was by the waterfront, but the people was made up for by the hogs and cows wandering around loose. There was plenty of dogs, too, and sometimes dead ones lying in the mud.

  Finally we came out to where Broad Street met Pearl. “There it is,” Nosy said, pointing. I looked down the street. I couldn’t believe it. Back home a tavern was about the size of a house, with a bench out front for the loungers to sit on. Fraunces’ Tavern was about the biggest building I ever did see. It was made of brick, four stories high with lots of chimneys in the roof, big windows sparkling in the sunshine, and a big fancy door with carvings all around. I could see why Black Sam Fraunces was so famous: I reckoned his tavern was the finest one in all of America. I got more nervous than ever. Why would anybody rich and famous as that take notice of somebody like me, who wasn’t anything at all?

  Nosy shoved the wheelbarrow along around back. I knew better than to go in through the front door, so I went around back with her. There was a stable there, and a couple of sheds I figured they used for storage, and a well with a big sweep for hauling the bucket up and down. There was people going to and fro in the yard on business—working the stables or carrying food and water in and out of the kitchen. A lot of them were black folks, too.

  Nosy shoved the wheelbarrow up next to the kitchen door. “What are you going to do now?” she said.

  “I ain’t sure,” I said. I was good and nervous. It didn’t seem right for me just to go in there and barge up to Black Sam Fraunces like he was anybody. “Maybe Mr. Fraunces ain’t here?” I wasn’t sure whether I was hoping for it or not.

  “Oh, he’s here all right. He ain’t always here, ’cause he sold it, so he goes out to his farm in New Jersey a lot. But he’s here right now.”

  “I guess you probably know what he looks like.” I didn’t know if I had the nerve for it or not. “I guess you could point him out to me?”

  “Why sure I can. Everybody in New York knows him.”

  “Well listen, Nosy,” I said. “You go in there and tell him that Jack Arabus’s son is out in the yard, and if he wants to see me he can, and if he don’t want to he don’t have to.”

  “Arabus? That’s a mighty queer name.”

  “It ain’t any queerer than Nosy.”

  “Nosy ain’t my name,” she said. “And if you don’t stop calling me that I won’t tell Mr. Fraunces nothing about you.”

  “All right, No—All right, I won’t call you it no more. Now you just go on in there and tell him what I said.”

  “I got to fill this bucket first.
” So I helped her fill the bucket with oysters from the barrow. She carried it inside, and then I stood there beside the barrow, waiting, feeling mighty nervous. And suddenly I realized that there was a man standing in the door, looking at me.

  His skin was dark, there wasn’t no doubt of that. Just from looking at him you’d take him for a darky. But he was dressed up mighty fine, in a cockade hat, his shirt all ruffles at the neck and sleeves, and pantaloons the color of ripe plums.

  He stepped out of the doorway into the yard, stood there for a minute more, still looking at me. I didn’t say anything but just looked back. ‘“Well,” he said, “you look like Jack Arabus’s boy.”

  “He was my daddy, sir.” I’d never said sir to a black man before. It felt peculiar.

  “Was?”

  “He drowned, sir,” I said. “He went out to sea in the Katey Lee and never came back.”

  “Drowned?”

  “A few weeks ago, sir.” I noticed that Nosy had come out of the kitchen and was standing behind Mr. Fraunces, listening.

  “Your father was a hero. He deserved better than drowning. That’s a cold and lonely way to die.”

  I thought of Birdsey being flung about by those waves. “Yes sir,” I said. “I saw my friend drown on the way down. He didn’t like it none. I wished he hadn’t.” And then all of a sudden I busted into tears. I didn’t know why. I stood there crying, not able to stop, and feeling ashamed for weeping so. I put my hands over my face to cover up the tears.

  “I knowed you was lying,” Nosy said. “You swum off a boat is how you got wet.”

  “Shut up, Carrie,” Mr. Fraunces said. “So, you’re a runaway slave? I wonder that your father didn’t buy your freedom.”

  I sort of gasped and got myself together. “He was saving up for it. He was going to use his soldiers’ notes for it, but somehow they ain’t worth enough anymore, and he had to go to sea to save up for it.”

  He nodded. “It was the same thing with your sister, wasn’t it?”

  “My sister?”

  “Didn’t you have a sister called Willy?” he asked.

  “She ain’t my sister. She’s my aunt. I figured she might be here.”

  He shook his head. “She was here for a while, but she left. She came too close to being caught and had to make a run for it.”

  “Oh,” I said. I was pretty sorry about that, and I knew Mum would be, too, if I ever got back to tell her. “You don’t know where she went, sir?”

  “No,” he said. “It was some time ago.” Then he put his arm around my shoulder. “Well, I guess you’ll be pretty hungry. Come on inside and well see what we can do about it.”

  He led me into the kitchen, with Nosy following along behind. It was the biggest kitchen I’d ever seen, with a fireplace you could have stabled horses in, and great pots and pans and kettles hanging down from the ceiling on hooks everywhere. There was a whole hog with its head still on, turning on the spit in the fireplace, and a couple of kettles on hooks over the fire, too. It was getting over toward suppertime now, and two or three men were bustling around, serving up big dishes of stew from the kettles, or chunks of pork and bread. There was waiters in red jackets going in and out. Oh, didn’t it smell good in there. I’d been too busy being scared most of the day to think about being hungry, but all of a sudden it hit me.

  Mr. Fraunces set me down at a little table off to one side and told Nosy to get me a dish of stew. Oh, it felt mighty warm and comfortable to be there. For the first time in a long, long while I was someplace where it seemed like people liked me. And I wondered if it was because Nosy was black and Mr. Fraunces was black, too. I wished I was sure about that—his being black. But my daddy said he never was sure about him, either, and if my daddy wasn’t sure, how was I to know?

  Nosy brought the stew, and when I’d got it in front of me and was digging in, I told Mr. Fraunces the whole story—about how Mrs. Ivers stole my daddy’s notes, and how I stole them back, and going on the brig, and the storm, and Birdsey drowning, and swimming to Bedloe’s Island and coming ashore from there. And when I ended, he just nodded and said, “And what are you planning to do now?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” I said. “I got to get those notes back, somehow.”

  “And suppose you get the notes?” Mr. Fraunces said.

  “I’ll take them to Congress and find Mr. William Samuel Johnson, sir. My Aunt Willy used to work for him. He’ll help me to sell them.”

  Mr. Fraunces shook his head. “You’re out of luck there, Dan. Some of the men from Congress have gone down to Philadelphia to help rewrite the Articles of Confederation. Mr. Johnson was one of them.”

  8

  It seemed like I was carrying my own bad luck in my pocket. No matter where I went it was there, too, coming along right beside me so as to give me a punch anytime it looked like things were going my way. Here I’d finally made it to New York; but Mr. Johnson was in Philadelphia, and the soldiers’ notes was on the Junius Brutus.

  Mr. Fraunces went off to do some business, and Nosy was set to work opening oysters. I sat there ramming in the food and thinking about my troubles. There just wasn’t any way I could sneak on board the brig without getting caught, and once Captain Ivers got hold of me he’d lash the tar out of me, and then sell me off to the West Indies as quick as he could. There wasn’t any doubt about that. Nor was there any way for me to get to Philadelphia. If I’d have been white, I could have worked my passage down there in a coastal ship, or even walked down if worse came to worse. But a black boy on his own was bound to raise suspicions that he was a runaway. They generally put out a good reward for runaways. They’d get handbills printed up with a description of me on it, and maybe even a picture, saying fifty dollars reward. Somebody was bound to turn me in. I kept wishing I could think up some smart plan for getting my notes off the Junius Brutus, but nothing came to me. I wondered if Birdsey would have been able to think of something smart.

  When I’d rammed as much food in me as I could, I felt a little better. I hadn’t had a really good meal since before the storm, and just filling up my belly with fresh bread and hot stew encouraged me a little. I still had my troubles; but at least I felt warm and peaceful for a change. I was mighty sleepy, though, and I just sat there and by and by I dozed off in my chair, and the next thing I knew, Nosy was shaking me. “Hey, Arabus, wake up,” she said. “You’re supposed to come with me.”

  I jumped up, shaking my head to get the sleep out of it. “What?”

  “You’re supposed to come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “Just come along,” she said.

  I followed her out of the kitchen to a little hall where the back stairs started up. Through a door I could see into the tap room. It was a big room, almost the whole length of the building. There was tables set about, with people eating and drinking, some of them dressed up mighty fine, too, and waiters in red jackets rushing about serving them. The walls had carved paneling, and there was glass chandeliers filled with candles hanging down from the ceiling. Oh, it was the most fancy place I’d ever seen. I wished I could go out there, but the only way I’d ever get into a place like that was if I got to be a waiter and went out there to serve the white folks.

  We went on up the stairs, with Nosy asking me the usual questions about where I came from and what it was like for black folks there, and did my daddy really fight in the Revolution, and such. I didn’t see any harm in answering, so I did. On up we went, past the second floor and the third one, to the top floor underneath the eaves. We went down a passage to the end, and Nosy knocked on a door. “Who is it?” somebody said from inside.

  “It’s Carrie, sir. I got Arabus.” The door opened, and we went in. It was a little corner room, with two windows looking out south and west. There wasn’t much furniture in it—just a bed, a chest of drawers, a couple of chairs, a little table, and a fireplace. Even though it was warm out, there was coals glowing in the fireplace.

  Mr. Fraunces was there, stan
ding by the door. Lying in bed propped up on a pillow, with the blankets tucked up under his chin, was an old man. His hair was white, and his wrinkled skin was pale and sweaty. He hadn’t shaved, either. It was plain that he was sick, which explained why there was a fire going in the July heat.

  Mr. Fraunces shut the door. Me and Nosy just stood there. The old man looked at me. Then he said, “Thou are Jack Arabus’s boy?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “Sam says he was drowned. Is that true?”

  “Yes sir,” I said. “He went out in the Katey Lee and they never came back.”

  “What a pity. He was a fine man. I knew him. I visited him when he was in jail.” He began to cough, and stopped talking. There was a glass of rum on the table by the bed, and he took a swallow of it.

  It hadn’t surprised me too much that Black Sam Fraunces knew about my daddy, because my daddy had told me he knew Mr. Fraunces. But it sure surprised me that this old white man knew him, too. It seemed like my daddy was more famous than I reckoned. It made me feel kind of proud. But there was another part of it, too. From the way the old man said “thou,” I knew that he was a Quaker. According to their religion, they wasn’t supposed to hurt anybody and was against war. On account of this way of thinking they was against slavery, too, and they was always trying to help out the black folks and some of them even wanted to do away with slavery completely. I figured he knew about my daddy suing Captain Ivers for his freedom.

  His name was Mr. Fatherscreft. He asked me a lot of questions, and I told him about stealing our soldiers’ notes back, and the storm, and Birdsey getting drowned, and escaping from the brig and the rest of it.

  When I got finished, he nodded and lay there thinking for a bit. Then he said, “Well, thou has got thyself in quite a bit of trouble, haven’t thee, Daniel?”

  “Yes sir, I guess so. I’m worth eighty pounds; Captain Ivers ain’t going to let me go easy.”