Flash For Freedom!

guess he hated more than anything else That would boil his bile for him, but I wasn't so certain that my threats would have the desired effect on his conduct Well, if they didn't, I'd carry them out, by God, and he could get to Canada with a new set of weals to show on his lectures to the Anti-Slavery Society.

What beats me, looking back, is the stupidity of his ingratitude. Here was the railroad — and for all he knew, myself — in a sweat to save his black hide for him, but would he show a spark of thanks, or abate his uppity pride one jot? Not he. He thought he had a right to be assisted and cosseted, and that we had a duty to put up with his airs and ill humour and childishness, and still help him for his own sweet sake. Well, he'd picked the wrong man in me; I was ready to drop the bastard overboard just to teach him the error of his ways — indeed, I paused on the ladder going up to reflect whether I could get away with selling him to a trader or in one of the marts on the way north. He would fetch a handy sum to help me on my way home — but I saw it wouldn't do. He'd find a way to drag me down, and even if he didn't, the underground railroad would hear of it, and I'd developed too healthy a respect for Mr Crixus and his legions to wish them on my tail with a vengeance. No, I'd just have to carry on with the plan, and hope to God that Randolph wouldn't get us into some fearful fix with his wilful white-niggerishness.

It's an interesting thought, though, that within a few short weeks I'd found myself engaged in running niggers into slavery, and running 'em out again, and all the hundreds of black animals on the Balliol College, with every reason to resist and mutiny and raise cain, hadn't given a tenth of the trouble I was getting from this single quadroon, who should have been on his knees in gratitude to me and Crixus and the others. Of course, he was civilised, and educated, and full of his own importance. Lincoln was right; they're a damned nuisance.

One consolation I had on that first night was that it didn't look as though our trip would be a long one, and I could look forward to being shot of Master George Randolph within a week. We thrashed up and down the river in fine style — I say up and down because the Mississippi is the twistiest watercourse you ever saw, doubling back and forth, and half the time you are steaming South-east or south-west round a bend to go north again. It's a huge river, too, up to a mile across in places, and unlike any other I know, in that it gets wider as you go up it. There was nothing to see as far as the banks were concerned except mud flats and undergrowth and here and there a town or a landing place, but the river itself was thick with steamboats and smaller vessels, and great lumber rafts piled high with bales and floating lazily down the muddy brown waters towards the gulf.

It's a slow, ugly river, and the ugliness isn't in what you can see, but what you can feel. There's a palling closeness, and a sense of rot and corruption; it's cruel river, to my mind at any rate, both in itself and its people. Mind you, I may be prejudiced by what it did to me, but even years later, when I came booming down it with the Union Army — well, they boomed, and I coasted along with them — I still felt the same oppressive dread of it. I remember what Sam Grant said about it: 'Too thick to drink and too thin to plough. It stinks.' Not that he'd have drunk it anyway, unless it had been pure corn liquor from Cairo down.

She's a treacherous river, too, as I realised on the morning after we had boarded the Sultana, and she ran aground on a mud bank on the Bryaro bend, not far below Natchez. The channels and banks are always shifting, you see, and the pilots have to know every twist and stump and current; ours didn't, we stuck fast, and a special pilot, the celebrated Bixby, had to be brought down from Natchez to get us afloat again.³⁶ All of which consumed several hours, with the great man strutting about the pilot house and making occasional dashes out to the texas rail to peer down at the churning wheel, and scampering back to roar down his tube:

'Snatch her! Hard down! Let her go, go, go!' while the Mississippi mud churned up in huge billows alongside and you could feel the boat shuddering and heaving to be off. And when she finally 'snatched', and reared off the shoal into the water, Bixby was half over the rail again, yelling to the nigger leadsman, and the scream of the whistles all but drowned their great bass voices singing out: 'Eight feet — eight and a half — nine feet — quarterless-twain!' And then as she surged out; 'Mark twai-ai-ain!' and the whole ship roared and cheered and stamped and Bixby clapped his tall hat on his head and resumed his kid gloves while they pressed cigars on him and offered him drinks from their flasks. It was quite fun, really, and I'd have enjoyed it if I hadn't been so anxious to get ahead, for I like to see a man who's good at something, doing it, and throwing on a bit of extra side, just for show. As I've said, I don't have many kindly memories of the Mississippi, but the best are of the steamboats riding tall, and the swaggering pilots, and the booming voices ringing 'De-eep four!' and 'Quarter-twa-am' across the brown waters. I'll never hear them again — but they wouldn't sound the same today anyway.

However, after Mr Bixby's performance we steamed on to Natchez, and there any slight enjoyment I'd been getting from our cruise came to an abrupt end. From now life on the Mississippi was to be one horror after another, and I was to regret most bitterly the day I'd clapped eyes on her dirty waters.

I had no inkling of anything wrong until we were away and steaming up river again, and I sauntered down to see my coffle getting their evening meal — and no doubt, I thought, to discuss the menu with Black Beauty himself. I was considering a few taunts to add sauce to his diet, and wondering if it was wise to stir up his hysteria again, but the sight of his face drove them clear out of my mind. He looked strained and ugly, and quite deaf to the sneering abuse that the overseer gave him as he received his hash from the copper. He shuffled off with his bowl, glancing round at me, and I followed him out of eyeshot round the bales to the rail, where we could be alone.

'What's the matter?' says I, for I knew something had shaken him badly. He looked left and right up the rail.

'Something dreadful has happened,' says he in a low voice. 'Something unforeseen — my God, it can undo us utterly. It is the most terrible chance — a chance in a thousand — but Crixus should have anticipated it!' He beat his fist on the rail. 'He should have seen it, I tell you! The fool! The blind, incompetent blunderer! To send me into this peril, to —'

'What the hell is it?' I demanded, now thoroughly terrified. 'Spit it out, in God's name!'

'A man came aboard at Natchez. I was watching, when the passengers came up the plank, and by God's grace he did not see me. He knows me! He is a trader from Georgia — the very man who sold me to my first master! The first time I escaped, he was among those who brought me back! Don't you see, imbecile — if he should catch sight of me here, we are finished! Oh, he knows all about George Randolph — he will know me on the instant. He will denounce me, I will be dragged back to — oh, my God!' And he put his head in his hands and sobbed with rage and fear.

He wasn't the only one to be emotionally disturbed, I can tell you. He would be dragged back — by George, he would have company, unless I looked alive. I stood appalled — this was what my very first instinct had told me might happen, when Crixus had proposed this folly to me. But he had been so sure it would all be plain sailing, and in my cowardice I had allowed myself to be persuaded. I could have torn my hair at my own stupidity — but it was too late now. The damage was done, and I must try to think, and see a way out, and quieten this babbling clown before panic got the better of him.

'Who could have thought that it would happen?' he was chattering. 'Not a soul in Mississippi or Louisiana knows me — not a soul — and this fiend from Georgia has to cross my path! What is he doing here? Why didn't Crixus see that this could happen? Why did I let myself be driven into this calamity?' He jerked up his head, glaring through his tears. 'What are you going to do?'

'Shut up!' says I. 'Keep your voice down! He hasn't seen you yet, has he?' I was trying to weigh the chances, to plan ahead in case we were discovered. 'Perhaps he won't — there's no reason why he should, is there? He'll be travelling on the boiler deck or the texas — there's no reason why he should come down here, unless he has niggers with him, by God! Has he?'

'No — no, there were no new coffles came aboard at Natchez. But if he should, if —'

'He won't, then. Even if he did, why should he see you, if you lie low and keep out of sight? He's not going to go peering into the face of every nigger just for fun. Look, what's his name?'

'Omohundro — Peter Omohundro of Savannah. He is a terrible creature, I tell you —'

'Look, there's nothing to do but sit tight,' says I. It was a nasty shaker, no error, but common sense told me it wasn't as bad as he made out it was. I don't need any encouragement to terror, as a rule, but I can count chances, and there wasn't a damned thing to be done except watch out and hope The odds were heavy that Omohundro wouldn't come anywhere near him, if he did, thmks I, then Master Randolph can look out for himself, but in the meantime the best thing to do is get some of his almighty cockiness back into him.

'You keep out of sight and keep quiet,' says I. 'That's all we can do —'