Flash For Freedom!

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.

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.