Flash For Freedom!

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.

Those who were selected were herded out of the barracoons into a long railed place like a sheep pen, all jammed together with three black guards either side, armed with whips and pistols. There was a narrow gate at the other end, just wide enough to let one slave through at a time, and the two biggest guards were stationed there. As each nigger emerged they seized him and flung him face down beside an iron brazier full of glowing coals, and two of Sanchez's Dago pals clapped a branding iron on his shoulder. He would squeal like blazes, and the niggers in the pen would try to crowd back out the other end, but the guards lashed them on, and another would be hauled out and branded the same way. The screaming and weeping in the pen was something to hear; everyone who could was on hand to watch, and there was much merriment at the antics of the niggers, blubbering before they were burned, and hopping and squealing afterwards.

Spring was there for the branding of the wenches, to see that it was done lightly, just below the ankle on the inside, in the case of the better-looking ones. "Who the d—-l wants a young wench with scars on her backside?" he growled. "Even if we ain't selling fancies, the less marking the better; the Legrees tell me the Southern ladies don't want even their field women burned these days.²² So have a care with those irons, you two, and you, doctor, slap on that grease with a will."

This was to Murphy, who sat beyond the brazier with a huge tub of lard between his feet. As each branded nigger was pulled forward one of the black guards would thrust the burned shoulder or ankle under Murphy's nose; he would take a good look at it and then slap a handful of the lard on the wound, crying either, "There's for you, Sambo", or "That'll pretty you up, acushla"; he was half full of booze, as usual, and from time to time would apply himself to his bottle and then cry encouragement to the niggers as they came through, or break into a snatch of raucous song. I can see him now, swaying on his stool, red face glistening, shirt hanging open over the red furze on his chest, plastering on the grease with his great freckled hand and chanting:

"Al-though with lav-ish kind-ness

The gifts of Go-od are strewn,

The heath-en in his blind-ness

Bows down to wood and sto-one."

When he was done with them the heathen were pushed through a series of wooden frames set up close by the Balliol College's gangplanks. One was six feet by two, another slightly smaller, and a third smaller still. By means of these the slaves were sized, and sent up one of three gangplanks accordingly; the biggest ones were for the bottom of the slave deck, the middle-sized for the first tier of shelves, and the smallest for the top tier, but care was taken to separate men and women — a tall wench or a little chap could have got in among the wrong sex, and Spring wouldn't have that. He insisted that the women should be berthed forward of the first bulkhead and the men all aft of it, and since they would be chained up they wouldn't be able to get up to high jinks — I didn't see why they shouldn't, myself, but Spring had his own reasons, no doubt.

Once up the planks, though, the really hard work began. I didn't know much about it, but I had to work with the hands who stowed the slaves, and I soon picked up the hang of it. As each slave was pushed down the hatch, he was seized by a waiting seaman and forced to lie down on the deck in his allotted place, head towards the side of the ship, feet towards the centre, until both sides of the deck were lined with them. Each man had to go in a space six feet by fifteen inches, and now I saw why there had been so much argument over that extra inch; if they were jammed up tight, or made to lie on their right sides, you could get ever so many more in.

This was the hard part, for the slaves were terrified, stupid, and in pain from their branding they wriggled and squirmed, on the deck and wouldn't be still, and the hands had to knock them about or lay into the most imruly ones with a rope's end. One huge buck, bawling and with tears streaming down his face, made a dash for the hatch, but Sullivan knocked him flat with a hand-spike, threw him into place, and terrified the others by shaking a cat-o'-nine-tails at them, to let them see what they might hope to get if they misbehaved.

When they were placed, a shackle was clapped round each right ankle, and a long chain threaded through it, until they were all stowed, when the chain was made fast to the bulkheads at either end. Soon there were four lines of niggers flat on the deck, with a space up the middle between them, so that the seamen could stand there to pack the later arrivals into the shelves.

It's not that I'm an abolitionist by any means, but by the end of that day I'd had my bellyful of slaving. The reek of those musky bodies in that deck was abominable; the heat and stench grew by the hour, until you'd have wondered that anything could survive down there. They howled and blubbered, and we were fagged out with grabbing brown limbs and tugging and shoving and mudging them up with our feet to get the brutes to lie close. They fouled themselves where they lay, and before the job was half done the filth was indescribable. We had to escape to the deck every half hour to souse ourselves with salt water and drink great draughts of orange juice, before descending into that fearful pit again, and wrestle again with wriggling black bodies that stunk and sweated and went everywhere but where you wanted them. When it was finally done, and Sullivan ordered all hands on deck, we climbed out dead beat, ready to flop down anywhere and go to sleep.

But not with John Charity Spring about. He must go down to inspect, and count the rows, and kick a black body into place here and tug another one there, before he was satisfied. He d––d our eyes for letting 'em soil the deck, and ordered the whole place hosed down, niggers and all; they dried where they lay in no time, of course, and the steam came out of the hatches like smoke.

I looked down at it just before the hatch gratings went on, and it was an indiscribable sight. Row upon row of black bodies, packed like cigars in a box, naked and gleaming, the dark mass striped with glittering dots of light where the eyes rolled in the sooty faces. The crying and moaning and whimpering blended into a miserable anthem that I'll never forget, with the clanking of the chains and the rustle of hundreds of incessantly stirring bodies, and the horrible smell of musk and foulness and burned flesh.

My stomach doesn't turn easy, but I was sickened. If it had been left to me, then and there, I'd have let 'em go, the whole boiling of them, back to their lousy jungle. No doubt it's a deplorable weakness in my character, but this kind of raw work was a thought too much for me. Mind you, sit me down in my club, or at home, and say, "Here, Flash, there's twenty thou for you if you'll say 'aye' to a cargo of black ivory going over the Middle Passage", and I ain't saying I'ld turn you down. Nor do I flinch when someone whips a black behind or claps on a brand — but enough's enough, and when you've looked into the hold of a newladen slaver for the first time, you know what hell is like.²³

I mentioned this to Sullivan, and he spat. "You think that's bell, do you? First blackbird voyage I made, as a young hand, we took three hundred coons from the Gallinas, and we were setting out for Rio when a Limey sloop tacks on to us. It was a Portuguese flag we carried, with a yaller-black Dago skipper in command; he saw sure enough they were going to take us." He looked at me with his head on one side. "Can you guess what that Christian Angolese son-of-a-b—-h did? G'wan, have a guess."

I said I had heard of slave cargoes being thrown overboard, so that when the Navy came up all the evidence had gone. Sullivan laughed.

"There wasn't time for that, our skipper figures. But we were carryin' palm oil as well as slaves, and had a good deal of trade powder left over. So he set the ship on fire, an' we took to the boats. Navy couldn't get near her, so she just burned out an' sank — with three hundred niggers aboard. I wouldn't care to guess how many of 'em were lucky enough to drown." He laughed again, without any mirth at all. "And you think that's hell, down there? I guess you also think that Mr J. C. Spring is a real tough skipper!"

Well, I did, and if there were bigger swine afloat in the earlies I'm only glad I never met them. But Sullivan's story gave me the shudders all right, for it reminded me that the next stage of our voyage was the notorious Middle Passage, with all the dangers of pursuit and capture, to say nothing of hurricane and shipwreck.

"D'you think there's any chance of … of that happening with us?" says I, and Sullivan snorted.

"I'll say this for Spring — he don't lose ships, or cargoes. He believes in keeping the sharks hungry. Any Navy coaster that comes up with us is in for a h—l of a chase — less'n she's a steamer an' catches us in a flat calm."

Here was a fearful thought. "What then?" says I.

"Then — why, we fight her," says he, and left me prey to a nausea that had nothing to do with the heat or the slave-stench or my weariness. Having lately been at grips with fighting nigger women, I could see myself shortly assisting in a running-sea-battle against the Royal Navy — just what was needed to liven up the cruise. And by jove, it nearly came to that, too, and on our very first hour out from that abominable coast.

We dropped down river early the next morning, to catch the ebb tide, I believe, and it seemed a piece of lunacy to me to try those shoals and islands in the half light. However, Spring knew his business; he took the wheel himself, and with only the foretopsail spread we drifted slowly between the green banks, the leadsmen chanting quietly, and the first hint of dawn beginning to lighten the sky over the black jungle mass astern. It was a queer, eery business, gliding so silently along, with only the mumble of the slaves, the creak of rope and timber, and the gurgle of water to break the stillness, and then we were clear of the last banks and the sun shot a great beam of light ahead of us across the placid surface of the sea.

It was all very beautiful, in its way, but just as Sullivan was roaring the watch up to set more sail the idyll was marred by the appearance round the southern headland of a small, waspishlooking vessel, standing slowly out on a course parallel to our own. It happened that I saw her first, and drew my commander's attention to her with a sailor-like hail of: "Jesus! Look at that!"

Spring just stared for a moment, and then says: "Foresail and main-tops'l, Mr Sullivan," before getting his glass out for a look.

"White ens'n," says he presently, without any emotion. "Take a look, mister. Twenty-gun sloop, I'd say."

Sullivan agreed, and while my bowels did the polka the two of them just stood and watched her as though she'd been a pleasure steamer. I didn't know much about sailing, as you're aware, but even I could see that she was moving more briskly than we were, that there was nothing but light airs stirring the surface, and that she wasn't more than two miles away. It looked to me as though the Balliol College's voyage was over before it had rightly begun, which merely shows how ignorant I was.

For an hour, while my gorge rose steadily, we watched her; we were doing no more than creep out from the coast, and the sioop did the same, only a little faster, and converging gradually all the time on our course. I could see that eventually we would be bound to meet, if we held our courses, and I had an idea that in light wind the sailing advantage would be all with the smaller vessel. But Spring seemed unconcerned; from time to time he would turn and survey the coast behind us, and the sky, converse shortly with Sullivan, and then go back to watching the sloop, with his hands stuck deep in his pockets.

He was waiting confidently, I now know, for a wind, and he got it just when I had finally given up all hope. The sails flapped, Spring barked an order, and at a shout from Sullivan the hands were racing aloft; in the same moment the boom of a shot sounded over the water, and a pillar of spray rose out of the sea a few hundred yards from our port bow.

"Burn your powder, you useless son of a Geordie coaster skipper, you!" bawls Spring from the wheel. "Look alive, Mr Sullivan!" And he sent out a perfect volley of orders as the Balliol College heeled gently and lifted to the first puffs of wind, and then I found myself tailing on a rope with the others, hauling for dear life and wondering what the d—-l would happen next.

If I were a nautical man, no doubt I could tell you, but I'm not, thank God; the mysteries of ship handling are as obscure to me today as they were fifty years ago. If I were Bosun McHearty I daresay I could describe how we jibed with our futtock gans'ls clewed up to the orlop bitts, and weathered her, d'ye see, with a lee helm and all plain sail in the bilges, burn me buttocks. As it was, I just stuck like a shadow to a big Portugal nigger of the deck watch, called Lord Peabody, and tailed on behind him with the pulley-hauley, while Spring and Sullivan bawled their jargon, the men aloft threw themselves about like acrobats, and the Balliol College began to surge forward at greater speed. There was another shot from the sloop, and an ironic cheer from our fellows — why I couldn't imagine, for our pursuer was soon cracking along famously, and I could make out her ensign plainly, and the figures on her deck, all far too close for comfort. I saw, in the intervals of scampering about after Peabody, and hauling on the ropes, that she would be able to fire in earnest soon, and I was just commending my soul to God and wondering if I could turn Queen's Evidence, when Spring let loose another volley of orders, there was a tremendous cracking and bellying of sails overhead, and the Balliol College seemed to spin round on her heel, plunge over with a lurch that brought my breakfast up, and then go bowling away across the track of the sloop.

I don't understand it, of course, but in the next hour Spring executed a similar manoeuvre half a dozen times, while the wind freshened, and although the sloop copied our movements, so far as I could see, she always somehow finished up farther away — no doubt any yachtsman could explain it. The hands cheered and laughed, although you could hardly hear them for the fearful howling that was coming from below decks, where the slaves were spewing and yelling in terror at the bucketing of the ship. And then we were standing out to sea again, and the sloop was away off our quarter, still flying along, but making no headway at all.

Only then did Spring hand over the wheel and come to the stern rail, where he delivered a catechism to the distant Navy vessel, calling them lubberly sons of dogs and shaking his fist at them.

"There's where the tax-payer's money goes!" he roared. "That's what's supposed to defend us against the French! Look at them! I could sail rings round 'em in a Blackwall coal lighter! Quo, quo, scelesti ruitis,*[* Where are you hastening, fools?] eh? I tell you, Mr Sullivan, a crew of All Souls dons could do better on a raft! What the blazes are they letting into the Navy these days? He'll be some rum-soaked short-haul pensioner, no doubt — either that or a beardless brat with a father in the Lords and some ladylike Mama whoring round the Admiralty. My stars, wouldn't I like to put them all to sea under Bully Waterman,²⁴ or let 'em learn their trade in an opium clipper with a Down East Yankee skipper and a Scotch owner — you hear that, you Port Mahon bumboatman, you? You ought to bean the beach!"

It was fine stuff, but wasted since the sloop was miles away; by afternoon she was just a speck on the horizon, and the coast of Africa had vanished behind us. The ease of our escape, I was told, all came of Spring knowing his weather, for standing away from the Slave coast was evidently a most unchancy business, and many slavers had been caught in the calms that so often beset them there. But some of the deltas and river mouths could be relied on to give you wind, and Spring knew all about this; it was also true that he was a first-rate seaman with a prime crew, and together they were probably a match for anything. We did sight another patrol vessel on the following day, but we were tearing along at such a rate that she never came near us, and Spring didn't even interrupt his dinner.

It was blowing fairly stiffish now, and the slaves had an abominable time. For the first few days they just lay howling and weeping in their sea-sickness, but Spring insisted that the huge coppers and tubs in which their pulse porridge was made should be kept at work, and by flogging one of the bucks down on the slave deck in the sight of his fellows he terrified them into eating, ill as they were. Murphy was constantly at work, especially among the women, to make sure that none died, and twice a day the hoses were turned on to scour out the filth which would otherwise have bred an epidemic in no time.

About the fourth day, the wind dropped, the slaves stopped spewing, and the cooks who tended the mess tubs became the hardest-worked men on the ship. One thing the Balliol College didn't stint to its human cargo, and that was food — which was good business, of course. Spring also insisted that lime juice be issued, and the slaves forced to drink it — they hated it, but when they saw it was that or the cat they swilled it down fast enough. They were still in a fearful funk, of course, since they had no idea of what the ocean was like, and couldn't seem to get used to the rolling of the ship; when they weren't eating or sleeping they just lay there in their long black rows, wailing and rolling their eyes like frightened sheep. There was no spirit in them at all, and I began to see why the slavers thought of them not as humans, but as animals.

Every day they went through a curious exercise which was called dancing. They were brought up on deck in batches, and forced to caper about for half an hour, leaping up and down and trotting round the deck. This of course was just to keep them in trim; they didn't like that, either, at first, and we had to smarten them with rope's ends to get them moving. But after the first few times they began to enjoy it, and it was the most ludicrous sight to see them skipping and shuffling round the deck, clapping their hand's and even crooning to themselves, the bolder spirits grinning and rolling their eyes — they were just like children, forgetting the misery of their condition, and sky-larking about, quite delighted if the hands cried encouragement to them. One of the fellows had a fiddle, on which he would play jigs and reels, and the niggers would try to out-do each other in capering to the music.

The men got over their fears faster than the women, who danced with much less jollity, although everyone on the ship was always on hand to watch them. You couldn't have called any of 'em pretty, with their pug faces and great woolly mops of hair, but they had fine shapely bodies, and none of us had seen a proper woman for near on six weeks. The sight of those naked black bodies shuffling and swaying got me into a fever the first time I saw it, and the others were the same, licking their lips and muttering when was Murphy the surgeon going to set about his business?

I understood what this meant when we were all ordered to report and strip down for Murphy in his berth, where he examined us carefully to see that none of us had pox or crabs or yaws or any of the interesting diseases that wicked saiormen are prone to. When we were pronounced clean Spring had us each pick out a black wench — I thought this was by way of seaman's comforts, but it turned out that the more black wenches who could be got pregnant by white men, the better the traders liked it, for they would produce mulatto children, who being half-white were smarter and more valuable than pure blacks. The Cuban dealers trusted Spring, and if he could guarantee that all his female slaves had been bulled by his crew, it would add to their price.

"I want all these wenches pupped," says he, "but you'll do it decently, d'you hear, salvo pudore,*[* Without offending modesty.] in your quarters. I'll not have Mrs Spring offended."

It may sound like just the kind of holiday for a fellow like me, but it was no great fun as it turned out. I picked out a likely enough big wench, jet black and the liveliest dancer of the lot, but she knew nothing, and she reeked of jungle even when she was scrubbed down. I tried to coax some spirit into her, first by kindness and then by rope's end, but she was no more use than a bishop's maiden aunt. However, one has to make do, and in the intervals of our laborious grappling I tried to indulge my interest in foreign languages, which apart from horses is the only talent I can boast. I can usually make good use of a native pillow partner in this way, provided she speaks English, but of course this one didn't, and was as stupid as a Berkshire hog into the bargain. So it was no go as far as learning anything was concerned, but I did succeed in teaching her a few useful English words and phrases like:

"Me Lady Caroline Lamb. Me best rattle in Balliol College." The hands thought this a great joke, and just for devilment I also taught her a tag from Horace, and with immense work got her perfect in it, so that when you pinched her backside she would squeak out:

"Civis Romanus sum. Odi pro fanum vulgus."*[* I am a Roman citizen. I hate vulgar profane persons.]

Spring almost leaped out of his skin when he heard it, and was not at all amused. He took the opportunity to upbraid me for not having sent her back to the slave-deck and taken another wench, for he wanted them all covered; I said I didn't want to break in any more of 'em, and suggested that if this one learned a little English it might add to her value; he raised his voice and d—-d my impudence, not realising that Mrs Spring had come up the companion and could hear us. She startled him by suddenly remarking:

"Mr Flashman is a constant heart. I knew it the moment I first saw him."

She was mad, of course, but Spring was much put out, because she wasn't meant to know what was going on with the black women. But he let me keep Lady Caroline Lamb.

So it was a pleasant enough cruise to begin with, for the weather blew just enough to give us a good passage without being too rough for the niggers; their health remained good, with no deaths in the first week, which greatly pleased Spring; the work was light above deck, as it always is in a fast ship with a favourable wind, and there was time to sit about watching the flying fish and listening to the hands swapping yarns — my respect for them had increased mightily over our encounter with the British sloop, which had confirmed my earlier impression that these were no ordinary packet rats with the points knocked off their knives, but prime hands. And I've learned that no time is wasted which is spent listening to men who really know their work.

However, as always when I feel I can loaf for a spell, something happened which drove all other thoughts out of my head — even my daydreams about Elspeth, and how I might contrive to come home respectably before too long, and scupper old Morrison, too, if possible. What happened was little enough, and not unexpected, but in the long run it certainly saved my liberty, and probably my life.

On the seventh day out from Dahomey, Murphy came to me and said I must go directly to Comber, who was dying. Since we sailed he'd been stowed away in a little cubby off the main cabin aft, where there was a window and Mrs Spring could tend to him.

"It's all up with him, poor lad," says Murphy, fuming with liquor. "His bowels is mortified, I'm thinkin'; maybe that jezebel's spear wuz pizened. Any roads, he wants to see you."

I couldn't think why, but I went along, and as soon as I clapped eyes on him I could see it was the Union Jack for this one, no error. His face was wasted and yellow, with big purple blotches beneath the eyes, and he was breathing like a bellows. He was lying on the berth with just a blanket over him, and the hand on top of it was like a bird's claw. He signed feebly to me to shut the door, and I squatted down on a stool beside his cot.

He lay for a few moments, gazing blankly at the sunbeams from the open window, and then says, in a very weak voice:

"Flashman, do you believe in God?"

Well, I'd expected this, of course; his wasn't the first deathbed I'd sat by, and they usually get religious sooner or later. There's nothing for it but to squat down on your hunkers and let them babble. Dying people love to talk — I know I do, and I've been in extremis more often than most. So to humour him I said certainly there was a God, not a doubt about it, and he chewed this over a bit and says:

"And if there is a God, and a Heaven — there must be a Devil, and a Hell? Must there not?"

I'd heard that before, too, so playing up to my part as the Rev. Flashy, B.D., I told him opinion was divided on the point. In any event, says I, if there was a Hell it couldn't be much worse than life on this earth — which I don't believe for a minute, by the way.

"But there is a Hell!" cries he, turning on me with his eyes shining feverishly. "I know it — a terrible, flaming Hell in which the damned burn through all Eternity! I know it, Flashman, I tell you!"

I could have told him this was what came of looking at the pictures in Bunyan's Holy War, which had blighted my young life for a spell when I first struck it. But I soothed him by pointing out that if there was a Hell, it was reserved for prime sinners only, and he probably wasn't up to that touch.

He rolled his head about on the pillow, biting his lip with distress and the pain of his wound.

"But I am a sinner," he gasped. "A fearful sinner. Oh, I do fear I am beyond redemption! The Saviour will turn from me, I know."

"Oh, I'm not sure, now," says I. "Slaving ain't that bad, you know."

He groaned and closed his eyes. "There is no such sin on my conscience," says he fretfully, which I didn't understand. "It is my weak flesh that has betrayed me. I have so many sins — I have broken the seventh commandment …"

I couldn't be sure about this; I had a suspicion it was the one about oxen and other livestock, which seemed unlikely, but with a man who's half-delirious you can never tell.

"What is it that's troubling you?" I asked.

"In that — that village …" he said, speaking with effort "Those … those women. Oh, God … pity me … I lusted after them … in my mind … I looked on them … as David looked on Bathsheeba. I desired them, carnally, sinfully … oh, Flashman … I am guilty … in His sight … I . ."

"Now, look here," says I, for I was getting tired of this. "You won't go to Hell for that. Leastways, if you do, it'll be a mighty crowded place. You'll have the entire human race there, including the College of Cardinals, I shouldn't wonder."

But he babbled on about the sin of lechery for a bit, and then, as repentant sinners always do, he decided I was right, and took my hand — his was as dry as a bundle of sticks.

"You are a good fellow, Flashman," says he. "You have eased my mind." Why he'd been worried beat me; if I thought that when I go I'll have nothing worse on my conscience than slavering over a buxom bum, well, I'll die happy, that's all. But this poor devil had obviously been Bible-reared, and fretted according.

"You truly believe I shall be saved?" says he. "There is forgiveness, is there not? We are taught so — that we may be washed clean in the blood of the Lamb."

"Clean as a whistle," says I. "It's in the book. Now, then, old fellow …"

"Don't go," says he, gripping my hand. "Not yet. I'm … I'm dying, you know, Flashman … there isn't much time …"

I said wouldn't he like Mrs Spring to look in, but he shook his head.

"There is something … I must do … first. Be patient a moment, my dear friend."

So I waited, wishing to blazes I was out of there. He was breathing harder than ever, wheezing like an old pump, but he must have been gathering strength, for when he opened his eyes again they were clear and sane, and looked directly at mine.

"Flashman," says he, earnestly, "how came you aboard this ship?"

It took me aback, but I started to tell him (a revised version, of course), and he cut me off.

"It was against your will?" He was almost pleading.

"Of course. I wouldn't have …"

"Then you too … oh, in God's name tell me truthfully … you detest this abomination of slavery?"

Hollo, thinks I, what's here? Very smartly I said, yes. I detested it. I wanted to see where he was going.

"Thank God!" says he. "Thank God!" And then: "You will swear to me that what I tell you will be breathed to no one on this accursed vessel?"

I swore it, solemnly, and he heaved a great sigh of relief.

"My belt," says he. "On the chest yonder. Yes, take it … and cut it open … there, near the buckle."

Mystified, I examined it. It was a broad, heavy article, double welted. I picked out the stitches as he indicated, with my knife, and the two welts came apart. Between them, folded very tight, was a slender oilskin packet. I unfolded it — and suddenly thought, I've been here before: then I remembered slitting open the lining of my own coat by the Jotunschlucht, with de Gautet lying beside me, groaning at the pain of his broken toes. Was that only a few months ago? It seemed an eternity … and then the packet was opens and I was unfolding the two papers within it. I spread the first one out, and found myself gaping at a letterhead design which showed an anchor, and beneath it the words:

"To Lieutenant Beauchamp Millward Comber, R.N. You are hereby required and directed …"

"Good G-d!" says I, staring. "You're a naval officer!"

He tried to nod, but his wound must have caught him, for he groaned and gasped. Then: "Read on," says he.

"… to report yourself immediately to the Secretary of the Board of Trade, and receive from him, or such subordinate official as he may appoint, instructions and directions whereby you shall assist, in whatsoever capacity the Secretary shall deem most fitting, against those persons engaged in the illicit and illegal traffic in human slaves between the Guinea, Ivory, Grain, Togo, Dahomey, Niger and Angola Coasts and the Americas. You are most strictly enjoined to obey and carry out all such instructions and directions as though they had proceeded from Their Lordships of the Admiralty or others your superior officers in Her Majesty's service." It was signed "Auckland".

The other paper, which was from the Board of Trade, was really no more than a sort of passport, requesting that all officials, officers, and other persons in H.M. service, and of foreign governments, should render to Lieutenant Comber all assistance of which he might stand in need, etc., etc., but in its way it was equally impressive, for it was signed not only by the President, Labouchere, but also coimtersigned by my old pal T. B. Macaulay, as Paymaster, and some Frog or other for the French merchant marine.

I goggled at these things, hardly understanding, and then looked at Comber; he was lying with his eyes shut, and his face working.

"You're a spy," says I. "A spy on the slavers!"

He opened his eyes. "You … may call it that. If it is spying to help to deliver these poor creatures … then I am proud to be a spy." He made a great effort, gasping with pain, and turned on his side towards me. "Flashman … hear me … I'm going … soon. Even if you don't… see this as I do … as God's work… still, you are a gentleman … an Army officer. Why, you are one of Arnold's people … the paladins. For God's sake, say you will help! Don't let all my work … my death … be in vain!"

He was in a desperate sweat, straining a hand out towards me, his eyes glittering. "You must … in honour … and, oh, for these poor lost black souls! If you'd seen what I've seen … aye, and had to help in, God forgive me … but I had to, you see, until I had done my work. You must help them, Flashman; they cannot help themselves. Their minds are not as ours … they are weak and foolish and an easy prey to scoundrels like Spring … but they have souls … and this slavery is an abomination in God's sight!" He struggled to get farther up. "Say you will help … for pity's sake!"

"What do you want me to do?"

"Take those letters." His voice was weakening, and I could see blood seeping through his blanket; he must have opened his wound in his exertion. "Then … my chest … there under the canvas shirt … packet. Copy of Spring's accounts … last voyage. I took some of them … completed them this trip. Letters, too … evidence against him … and others. For God's sake get them to the Admiralty … or the American Navy people … oh, dear God!"

He fell back, moaning, but by then I was ferreting through his chest, snatching out a slender packet sewn in an oilskin cover. I slipped it and the letters quickly out of sight in my pocket, and bent over his cot.

"Go on, man! What more? Are there any others like yourself — agents, officers, or what?"

But he just lay there, coughing weakly and breathing in little moaning gasps. I closed the chest and sat down to see if he would revive again, and after a moment he began to mumble; I leaned close, but it was a moment before I could make out what he was saying — in fact, he was singing, in a little whisper at the back of his throat; it was that sad little song, "The Lass so good and true", that they call "Danny Boy" nowadays. I knew at once, without telling, that it was the song his mother had used to sing him to sleep, for he began to smile a little, with his eyes closed. I could have kicked the brute; if he'd spent less time making his soul and belly-aching to me about hell fire, and minded his duty, he would have had time to tell me more about his mission. Not that I cared a button for that, but all knowledge is useful when you're in the grip of folk like Spring. But he was going to slip his cable with all the good scandal untold, by the looks of it.

Sure enough, when his whispered song died away, he began muttering, "Mother … Sally … yes, Mother … cold . . ," but nothing to make sense. It was maddening. Of course, my generation were preoccupied with their mothers, which sets me apart; mine died when I was little, you see, and I never really knew her, which may account for a deal. It crossed my mind, in that moment, what will I have to say in the last few seconds before I slip over the edge of life? Whose name will be on my repentant lips? My father's ? — now there would be a cheery vision to carry over to the other side, all boozy face and rasping voice. Elspeth's? I doubt it. Some of the other ladies? — Lola, or Natasha or Takes-AwayClouds-Woman or Leonie or Lady White Willow or … no, there wouldn't be time. I'll have to wait and see. Which reminds me, young Harry East, when they pulled what was left of him into the dooli at Cawnpore, muttered, "Tell the doctor", and everyone thought he meant the surgeon — but I knew different. He meant Arnold, which as a dying thought has one advantage, that the Devil, if you meet him later, will be an improvement.

So I speculated, as Comber's breathing slackened, and then I saw the shadow of death cross his wasted face (there is such a shadow, down from the temple and across to the chin, seen it scores of times) and he was gone. I pulled the blanket over his head, went through his jacket pockets and chest, but found nothing worth while except a pencil case and a good clasp knife, which I appropriated, and then went topsides to tell Spring.

"He's gone at last, is he?" was his charitable comment. "Aye, omne capax movet urna nomen.*[* Every name is shaken in death's great urn.] We need not pretend he is a great loss. Blackwall fashion was about his style²⁵ — a sound enough seaman, but better fitted for an Indiaman than our trade. Very good, you can tell the sailmaker to bundle him up; we'll bury him tomorrow." And he continued to survey the horizon through his glass, while I slipped away to think over the momentous news I'd learned from the dying Comber. Obviously the fact that he had been an Admiralty man working against the slavers was of the first importance, but for the life of me I couldn't see what use it might be to me. For all that I'd soothed his passing moments out of an uncommon civility, I didn't mind a snap whether his precious evidence ever reached government hands or not. In fact, it seemed to me that if an information was laid against the Balliol College and her master, those who had sailed with him would land in the dock as well, and they included H. Flashman, albeit he wasn't aboard willingly. Yet my knowledge, and Comber's, might be valuable somehow, provided I kept them safe from prying eyes.

So it seemed to me at the time anyway, so I took a leaf out of Comber's book, and in the privacy of my berth sewed his two letters into my belt. I hesitated a long while over the packet, for I knew the secrets it contained would be fatally dangerous to whoever shared them; if Spring ever found out it would be a slit throat and a watery grave for me. But curiosity got the better of me in the end; I opened it carefully so that it could be re-sealed, and was presently goggling my way through the contents.

It was prime stuff, no question: all Spring's accounts for 1847 copied out in minute writing — how many niggers shipped, how many sold at Roatan and how many at the Bay of Pigs, the names of buyers and traders; a full description of deals and prices and orders on British and American banks. There was enough to hang old John Charity ten times over, but that wasn't the best of it; Comber had been at his letters, too, and while some of them were in cypher, quite a few were in English. They included one from the London firm which had supplied the trade goods for our present voyage; another from New York lawyers who seemed to represent American investors (for Comber had annotated it with a list of names marked "U.S. interests, owners") and — oh, b––y rapture! — a document describing the transfer of the Balliol College from its American builders, Brown & Bell, to a concern in London among the names of whose directors was one J. Morrison. I almost whooped at the sight of it — what Spring was thinking of to keep such damaging evidence aboard his vessel I couldn't fathom, but there it was. I found Morrison mentioned in one other letter, and a score of names besides; it might not be enough to hang him, or them, but I was certain sure he would sell his rotten little soul to keep these papers from the public gaze.

I had him! The knowledge was like a warm bath — with these papers at my command I could, when I got home again, turn the screw on the little shark until he hollered uncle. No longer would I be the poor relation; I would have evidence that could ruin him, commercially and socially, and perhaps put him in the dock as well, and the price of my silence would be a free run through his moneybags. By gad, I'd be set for life. A seat in the House? It would be a seat on the board, at least, and grovelling civility from him to me for a change. He'd rue the day he shanghaied me aboard his lousy slave ship.

Chuckling happily, I sewed it all up again in its oilskin, and stitched this carefully into the lining of my coat. There it would stay until I got home and it could be employed in safety to my enrichment and Morrison's confusion, I reflected, as I went back on deck later, that it all came from my act of Christian kindness in listening by Comber's deathbed and comforting his last moments. There's no doubt about it; virtue isn't always just its own reward.

Comber wasn't buried the next day, because one of the slaves died during the night, and when the watch found him at dawn they naturally heaved the body overside to the sharks. For some reason this sent Spring into a passion; he wasn't having a white man buried at sea on the same day as a black had been slung over, which seemed to be stretching it a bit, but a lot of the older hands agreed with him. It beats me; when I go they can plant me in with the whole population of Timbuctoo, but others see things differently. Spring, now, was mad about little things like that, and when eventually we did come to bury Comber on the morning after, and his body had been laid out on a plank by the rail, all neatly stitched up in sail-cloth, our fastidious commander played merry h—l because no one had thought to cover it with a flag. This on a Dahomey slaver, mark you. So we all had to wait with our hats off while Looney was despatched to get a colour from the flag locker, and Spring stamped up and down with his Prayer Book under his arm, cursing the delay, and Mrs Spring sat by with her accordion, She was wearing a floral bonnet in honour of the occasion, secured with a black scarf for mourning, and her face wore its usual expression of vacant amiability.

Looney came back presently, and you wouldn't believe it, he was carrying the Brazilian colours. We were wearing them at the moment, this being the Middle Passage,²⁶ so I suppose he thought he'd done right, but Spring flew into a towering passion.

"D—n your lousy eyes!" cries he, "Take that infernal Dago duster out of my sight — would you bury an Englishman under that?" And he knocked Looney sprawling and then kicked him into the scuppers. He cursed him something fearful, the scar on his head bright crimson, until one of the hands brought a Union Jack, and then we got on with the service. Spring rattled through it, the shotted corpse went over with a splash, Mrs Spring struck up, we all sang "Rock af Ages", and the "amen" hadn't died away before Spring had strode to the unfortunate Looney and kicked his backside again so hard that he went clean down the booby hatch to the main deck. I've often thought how instructive it would have been for our divinity students to see how the offices for the dead were conducted aboard the Balliol College.

However, this was just another incident which I relate to show you what kind of a lunatic Spring was; I suppose it stands out in my mind because the next few weeks were so uneventful — that may seem an extraordinary thing to say about a slave voyage on the Middle Passage, but once you are used to conditions, however remarkable, you start to twiddle your thumbs and find life a bore, I had little to do beyond stand my watches, help dance the slaves, and continue the instruction of Lady Caroline Lamb. She took to following me about, and had to be made to wear a cotton dress that the sailinaker ran up, in case Mrs Spring caught sight of her — as though she'd never seen naked black wenches before, by the hundred, Lady Caroline Lamb didn't care for this, and whenever she was in my berth she used to haul the dress off, and sit stark by the foot of my cot, like a black statue, waiting to be educated, one way or the other.

One other thing I should mention, because it turned out to be important, was the behaviour of Looney. Whether Spring's hammering had driven him even more barmy I can't say, but he was a changed man after Comber died. He'd been a willing, happy idiot, but now he became sullen, and started if anyone spoke to him, and took to muttering to himself in corners. I cuffed him smartly to make him stop it, but he wouldn't; he just blubbered and mowed and shuddered if Spring's name was even mentioned. "He's the Devil!" he whined. "The b––y Devil! He bashed us, for nowt. He did, the ––." And he would crawl away, whimpering obscenities, to find a place to hide. Even Sullivan, who was softer with him than most, couldn't prevail on him to do his duties aft as steward, and the cook's Chinese mate had to serve in Spring's cabin.

So we ran westward, and then north-west, for about a month if I remember rightly, until one morning I learned that we were out of the Atlantic and into the Caribbean. It all looked alike to me, for the weather had continued fine the whole way and I'd never worn more than my jersey, but now a change came over the ship. Each day there was gun drill at the long nines and twelves, which struck me as ominous, and you could sense a growing restlessness among the hands: where men off watch had been content to loaf before, they now kept watching the horizon and sniffing the wind; either Spring or Sullivan was always at the after rail with the glass; whenever a large sail was sighted Spring would have the guns shotted and their crews standing by. As the weather grew even hotter, tempers got shorter; the stench from the slave-deck was choking in its foulness, and even the constant murmuring and moaning of the cargo seemed to me to have taken on a deeper, more sinister note. This was the time, I learned, when slave mutinies sometimes broke out, as more of them died — although only five perished all told in our ship — and the others became sullen and desperate. You'd been able to feel the misery and fear down on the slave-deck, but now you could feel the brooding hatred; it was in the way they shuffled sulkily round when they were danced, heads sunk and eyes shifting, while the hands stood guard with the needle-guns, and the light swivel pieces were kept armed and trained to sweep the decks if need be. I kept as well away from those glowering black brutes as I could; even the sharks which followed the ship didn't look more dangerous — and there were always half a dozen of them, dark sinuous shapes gliding through the blue water a couple of fathoms down, hoping for another corpse to come overside,

I wasn't the only one in a fine state of nerves on the last week's run along the old Spanish Main; apparently even Spring was apprehensive, for instead of running up north-west to the Windward Passage and our intended destination — which was somewhere on the north side of Cuba — he held almost due west for the Mosquito Coast, which if anything is a more God-forsaken shore than the one we had left in Africa. I saw it only as a far distant line on our port beam, but its heavy air lay on the ship like a blanket; the pitch bubbled between the planks, and even the wind seemed to have come from a blast furnace door. By the time we stood into the bay at Roatan, which you'll find on the map in the Islas de la Bahia, off the Honduras Coast, we were a jittery, sun-dried ship, and only thankful that we'd come safe through with never a Yankee patroller or garda costa in sight.²⁷

We dropped anchor in that great clearing-house of the African slavers, where Ivory Coast brigs and schooners, the Baltimore clippers and Angola barques, the Gulf free-traders and Braziliano pirates all rode at their moorings in the broad bay, with the buinboats and shorecraft plying among them like water-beetles, and even the stench of our own slave-deck was beaten all to nothing by the immense reek of the huge barracoons and pens that lined the shore and even ran out into the sludgy green waters of the bay on great wooden piers. One never dreams that such places exist until one sees and hears and smells them, with their amazing variety of the scum of the earth — blacks and half-breeds of every description, Rio traders with curling mustachios and pistols in their belts and rings in their ears, like buccaneers from a story-book; Down Easter Yankees in stove-pipe hats with cigars sticking out of faces like flinty cliffs; sun-reddened English tars, some still wearing the wide straw hats of the Navy; packet rats in canvas shirts and frayed trousers; Scowegians with leathery faces and knives hanging on lanyards round their necks; Frog and Dago skippers in embroidered weskits with scarves round their heads, and niggers by the hundred, of every conceivable shape and shade — everyone babbling and arguing in half the tongues on earth, and all with one thing in common: they lived by and on the slave trade.

But best of all I remember a big fellow all in dirty white calicos and a broad-brimmed Panama, holding on to a stay in one of the shore-boats that came under our counter, and bawling up redfaced in reply to some one who had asked what was the news:

"Ain't ye heard, then? They found gold, over to the Pacific coast! That's right — gold! Reckon they're pickin' it up fast as they can shovel! Why, they say it's in lumps big as your fist — more gold'n anyone's ever seen before! Gold — in California!"²⁸