Flash For Freedom!

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 crowds 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