Flash for Freedom!

‘Souse him and let him hang there to dry!’ says he, and then he addressed the unconscious victim. ‘And let me catch you at your filthy tricks again, you scum, so help me G-d I’ll hang you – d’ye hear!’

He glared at us with his madman’s eyes, and my heart was in my mouth for a moment. Then his scar faded, and he said in his normal bark:

‘Dismiss the hands, Mr Comber. Mr Sullivan, and you, supercargo, come aft. Mrs Spring is serving tea.’

There were a few curious glances at me as I followed Spring and the Yankee mate – I was new to the crew, of course – and as we went down the ladder to his cabin, Spring looked me over. ‘Go and put on a jacket,’ he growled. ‘G-d d--n you, don’t you know anything?’ so I scudded off smartly, and when I came back they were still waiting. He examined me – and in a flash of memory I thought of waiting with Wellington to see the Queen, and being fussed over by flunkeys – and then he threw open the door.

‘I trust we don’t intrude, my dear,’ says he. ‘I have brought Mr Sullivan to tea, and our new supercargo, Mr Flashman.’

I don’t know what I expected – the Queen of Sheba wouldn’t have surprised me, aboard the Balliol College – but it wasn’t the mild-looking, middle-aged woman sitting behind a table, picking at a sampler, who turned to beam at us pleasantly, murmured something in greeting, and then set to pouring tea. Presently Comber came in, smoothing his hair, and the grizzled old second mate, Kinnie, who ducked his head to me when Spring made us known to each other. Mrs Spring handed over cups, and we stood round sipping, and nibbling at her biscuits, while she beamed and Spring talked – she had little to say for herself, but he paid her as much respect as though it had been a London drawing-room. I had to pinch myself to believe it was real: a tea party aboard a slaver, with this comfortable woman adding hot water to the pot while a flogged man was bleeding all over the deck above our heads, and Spring, his cuff specked with the victim’s gore, was laying it off about Thucydides and Horace.

‘Mr Flashman has had the beginning of an education, my dear,’ says he. ‘He was with Dr Arnold at Rugby School.’

She turned a placid face in my direction. ‘Mr Spring is a classical scholar,’ says she. ‘His father was a Senior Fellow.’

‘Senior Tutor, if you please, my dear,’ says Spring. ‘And it’s my belief he achieved that position by stealing the work of better men. Scholarship is merely a means to an end these days, and paucis carior est fides quam pecunia.fn5 You remember Sallust, Mr Comber? No? There seems to be little to choose between the ignorance of Rugby and that of Winchester College.’ (Oho, thinks I, Winchester, that accounts for a lot.) ‘However, if we have some leisure on this voyage, we may repair these things, may we not, Mr Flashman?’

I mumbled something about being always eager to learn.

‘Aye,’ says he, ‘pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit,fn6 we may hope. But I imagine Seneca is yet another among the many authors with whom you are not acquainted.’ He munched on a biscuit, the pale blue eyes considering me. ‘Tell me, sir, what do you know?’

I stole a glance at the others; Kinnie had his head down over his cup, and Sullivan, the big, raw-boned Yankee, was gazing bleakly before him. Comber was looking nervous.

‘Well, sir,’ says I, ‘not very much …’ And then, like a fool, I added, toady-like: ‘Not as much as a Fellow of Oriel College, I’m sure.’

Comber’s cup clattered suddenly. Spring says, very soft: ‘I am not a Fellow, Mr Flashman. I was dismissed.’

Well, it didn’t surprise me. ‘I’m very sorry, sir,’ says I.

‘You well may be,’ says he. ‘You well may be. You may come to wish that I was in my rightful place, sir, instead of here!’ His voice was rising, and his scar going crimson. He set his cup down with a force that rattled the table. ‘Herding with the carrion of the sea, sir, instead of … of … d--n your eyes, man, look at me! You think it a matter for contempt, don’t you, that a man of my intellect should be brought to this! You think it a jest that I was flung into the gutter by jealous liars! You do! I see it in your …’

‘No, no indeed, sir!’ cries I, quaking. ‘I was expelled myself … I don’t …’

‘Hold your confounded tongue!’ he bawled. ‘You can’t do right for doing wrong, can you? No, by G-d! Well, I warn you, Mister Flashman – I’ll remind you of another text from Seneca, whom you don’t b----y well read, d--n your ignorance! Gravis ira regum semper.fn7 Mr Comber will construe it for you – he’s heard it before, and digested it! He’ll tell you that a captain is to be feared as much as a king!’ He thumped the table. ‘Mrs Spring, you’ll excuse me!’ And he burst past me, slamming the door behind him.

He left me shaking, and then we heard his voice on deck, bawling at the man at the wheel, and his feet stamping overhead. I felt the sweat starting on my forehead.

‘May I give you some more tea, Mr Sullivan?’ says Mrs Spring. ‘Mr Comber, a little more?’ She poured for them in silence. ‘Have you been to sea before, Mr Flashman?’

God knows what I said; it was too much for me, and it’s quite likely I answered nothing at all. I know we stood about a little longer, and then Sullivan said we must be about our duties, and we thanked Mrs Spring, and she inclined her head gravely, and we filed out.

Outside, Sullivan turned to me, glanced up the ladder, sighed, and rubbed his jaw. He was a youngish, hard-case sailor, this one, with a New England figurehead and a slantendicular way of looking at you. At last he says:

‘He’s mad. So’s she.’ He thought for a moment. ‘It don’t matter, though. Much. Sane or silly, drunk or dry, he’s the best d----d skipper on this coast, or any other. You follow me?’

I stood there, nodding.

‘Well and good,’ says he. ‘You’ll be in Mr Comber’s watch – just tail on to the rope and keep your eyes open. And when the skipper starts talkin’ Latin, or whatever it is, just shut up, d’ye hear?’

That was one piece of advice which I didn’t need. If I’d learned one thing about the Balliol College, it was that I had no wish to bandy scholarship with John Charity Spring – or anything else, for that matter.

By now you will have some idea of what life at sea was like when Uncle Harry was a boy. I don’t claim that it was typical – I’ve sailed on many ships since the Balliol College, and never struck one like it, thank G-d – but although it was often like cruising in an asylum, I’ll say one thing: that ship and crew were d---d good at their work, which was kidnapping niggers and selling them in the Americas.

I can say this now, looking back; I was hardly in a position to appreciate their qualities after that first day of flogging and tea parties. All I could think of then was that I was at the mercy of a dangerous maniac who was h--l bent on a dangerous criminal expedition, and I didn’t know which to be more scared of – him and his Latin lectures or the business ahead. But as usual, after a day or two I settled down, and if I didn’t enjoy the first weeks of that voyage, well, I’ve known worse.

At least I had an idea of what I was in for – or thought I had – and could hope to see the end of it. For the moment I must take care, and so I studied to do my duties well – which was easy enough – and to avoid awakening the wrath of Captain J. C. Spring. This last wasn’t too difficult, as it proved: all I had to do in his presence was listen to his interminable prosing about Thucydides and Lucan, and Seneca, whom he particularly admired, for he dearly loved to display his learning. (In fact, I heard later that he had been a considerable scholar in his youth, and would have gone far had he not assaulted some dignitary at Oxford and been kicked out. Who knows? he might have become something like Head at Rugby – which prompts the thought that Arnold would have made a handy skipper for an Ivory Coast pirate.)

At any rate, he lost no opportunity of airing his Latinity to Comber and me, usually at tea in his cabin, with the placid Mrs Spring sitting by, nodding. Sullivan was right, of course; they were both mad. You had only to see them at the divine service which Spring insisted on holding on Sundays, with the whole ship’s company drawn up, and Mrs Spring pumping away at her German accordion while we sang ‘Hark! the wild billow’, and afterwards Spring would blast up prayers to the Almighty, demanding his blessing on our voyage, and guidance in the tasks which our hands should find to do, world without end, amen. I don’t know what Wilberforce would have made of that, or my old friend John Brown, but the ship’s company took it straight-faced – mind you, they knew better than to do anything else.

They were as steady a crowd as I’ve ever seen afloat – hard men, and sober, who didn’t say much but did their work with a speed and efficiency that would have shamed an Indiaman. They were professionals, of course, and a good cut above your ordinary shellback. They respected Spring, and he them – although when one of them, a huge Dago, talked back to him, Spring smashed him senseless with his bare fists inside a minute – a man twice his size and weight. And another, who stole spirits, he flogged nearly to death, blaspheming at every stroke – yet a couple of hours later he was reading aloud to us from the Aeneid.

Mind you, if it was a tolerable life, it was damned dull, and I found my thoughts turning increasingly to Elspeth – and other women – as the days grew longer. But it was Elspeth, mostly; I found myself dreaming about her soft nakedness, and that silky golden hair spilling down over my face, and the perfume of her breath – it was rough work, I tell you, knowing there wasn’t a wench in a hundred miles, nor likely to be. And from that my thoughts would turn to Morrison, and how I might get my own back when the time came: that at least was a more profitable field of speculation.

So we ran south, and then south by east, day after day, and the weather got warmer, and I shed my coat for a red striped jersey and white duck trousers, with a big belt and a sheath knife, as like Ralph Rover as ever was, and the galley stopped serving duff and the cask-water got staler by the day, and then one morning the wind had a new smell – a heavy, rotten air that comes from centuries of mangrove growing and decaying – and that afternoon we sighted the low green bank far away to port that is the coast of Africa.

We sighted sails, too, every now and then, but never for long. The Balliol College, as Kirk told me, drew wind like no other ship on the ocean – the best fun was to stand up in her forechains as she lay over, one gunwale just above the crests, thrashing along like billy-be-damned, with mountains of canvas billowing above you – Dick Dauntless would have loved it, I’ll be bound, and I enjoyed it myself – or at night, when you could lean over and watch the green fire round her bows, and look up at that African sky that is purple and soft like no other in the world, with the stars twinkling. G-d knows I’m no romantic adventurer, but sometimes I remember – and I’d like to run south again down Africa with a fair wind. In a private yacht, with my youth, half a dozen assorted Parisian whores, the finest of food and drink, and perhaps a German band. Aye, it’s a man’s life.

That land we had sighted was the Guinea Coast, which was of no interest to us, because as Kirk assured me it was played out for slaving. The growing sentiment for abolition at home, the increasing number of nations who joined with England in fighting the trade, the close blockade of the coast by British and Yankee patrol ships, who burned the slave stations and pounced on the ships – all these things were making life more difficult in the blackbird trade in the ’forties. In the old days, the slavers had been able to put in openly, and pick up their cargoes, which had been collected by the native chiefs and herded into the great pens, or barracoons, at the river mouths. Now it wasn’t so easy, and speed and secrecy were the thing, which was why fast ships like the Balliol College were at an advantage.

And of course clever slavers like Spring knew exactly where to go for the best blacks and which chiefs to deal with – this was the great thing. Your slaver might easily dodge the patrols on the way in and out – for it was a huge coast, and the Navy couldn’t hope to watch it all – but unless he had a good agent ashore, and a native king who could keep up a supply of prime nigs, he was sunk. It’s always amused me to listen to the psalm-smiting hypocrisy of nigger-lovers at home and in the States who talk about white savages raping the Coast and carrying poor black innocents into bondage – why, without the help of the blacks themselves we’d not have been able to lift a single slave out of Africa. But I saw the Coast with my own eyes, you see, which the Holy Henriettas didn’t, and I know that this old wives’ tale of a handful of white pirates mastering the country and kidnapping as they chose, is all my eye. We couldn’t have stayed there five minutes if the nigger kings and warrior tribes hadn’t been all for it, and traded their captured enemies – aye, and their own folk, too – for guns and booze and Brummagem rubbish.

Why my pious acquaintances won’t believe this, I can’t fathom. They enslaved their own kind, in mills and factories and mines, and made ’em live in kennels that an Alabama planter wouldn’t have dreamed of putting a black into. Aye, and our dear dead St William Wilberforce cheered ’em on, too – weeping his pious old eyes out over niggers he had never seen, and d--ning the soul of anyone who suggested it was a bit hard to make white infants pull coal sledges for twelve hours a day. Of course, he knew where his living came from, I don’t doubt. My point is: if he and his kind did it to their people, why should they suppose the black rulers were any different where their kinsfolk were concerned? They make me sick, with their pious humbug.

But it’s all by the way; the main thing is that Spring had a good black king to work with, a horrible old creature named Gezo, who lorded it over the back country of Dahomey. Now that the Windward Coast wasn’t the place any more, and the slavers were concentrating round the corner in the White Man’s Grave, stretches like Dahomey and Benin and the Oil rivers were where the real high jinks were to be found. The Navy lay in all the time at places like Whydah and Lagos, and your sharp captains like Spring were as likely as not to use the lonelier rivers and lagoons, where they could load up at their leisure, provided no one spotted ’em coming in.14

After our first landfall we bore away south, and came eastabout to Cape Palmas, where you could see the palm trees that gave it its name down by the water’s edge, and so along the Ivory Coast and Gold Coast past Three Points to Whydah, where we put into the open roads. Spring had the Stars and Stripes at the masthead, and was safe enough, for there wasn’t a Yankee in port. There were two British naval sloops, but they wouldn’t come near us – this was where the slavers scored, Kirk told me; the Yanks wouldn’t let any but their own navy search an American ship, so our blue-jackets would interfere only with Portuguese and Spaniards and so on.

We lay off, looking at the long yellow beach with the factories and barracoons behind it, and the huge rollers crashing on the sand, and it was as hot as hell’s kitchen. I watched the kites diving and snatching among the hundreds of small craft plying about between ships and shore, and the great Kroo canoes riding the surf, and tried to fan away the stench that rose from all the filth rotting on the oily water. I remembered what Kinnie had said:

‘Oh, sailor, beware of the Bight o’ Benin.

There’s one as comes out for a hundred goes in.’

You could smell the sickness on the wind, and I wondered why Spring, who was talking at the rail with Sullivan and scanning the shore with his glass, had put in here. But presently out comes a big Kroo canoe, with half a dozen niggers on board, who hailed us, and for the first time I heard that queer Coast lingo which passes for a language from Gambia to the Cape.

‘Hollo, Tommy Rot,’ cries Spring, ‘where Pedro Blanco?’15

‘Hollo, sah,’ sings out one of the Kroos. ‘He lib for Bonny; no catch two, three week.’

‘Why he no lib for come? Him sabby me make palaver, plenty plenty nigras. Come me plenty good stuff, what can do, him lib Bonny?’

‘Him say Spagnole fella, Sanchez, lib for Dahomey ribber. Him make strong palaver, no goddam bobbery. You take Tommy Rot, sah, catch Rum Punch, Tiny Tim, plenty good fella, all way ribber. Make good nigra palaver wid Spagnole fella, no Inglish Yankee gunboat.’

Spring cursed a bit at all this; it seemed he had been hoping to meet one Pedro Blanco at Whydah, but the Krooboy Tommy Rot was telling him instead he should make for a river where a Spaniard named Sanchez would supply him with slaves. Spring didn’t like it too much.

‘Blanco bobbery b-----d,’ says he. ‘Me want him make palaver King Gezo one time.’

‘Palaver sawa sawa,’ bawls the Kroo. ‘Sanchez lib for Gezo, lib for you, all for true.’

‘He’d better,’ growls Spring. ‘All right, Tommy Rot, come aboard, catch Tiny Tim, ten fella, lib for ship, sabby?’

We took on a dozen of the Kroos, grinning, lively blacks who were great favourites among the Coast skippers. They were prime seamen, but full of tricks, and went by ridiculous names like Rum Punch, Blunderbuss, Jumping Jack, Pot Belly and Mainsail. Each one had his forehead tattooed blue, and his front teeth filed to points; I thought they were cannibals, but it seems they carried these marks so that they would be recognised as Kroos and therefore wouldn’t be taken as slaves.

With them aboard, the Balliol College stood out from Whydah, and after two days sniffing about out of sight of land we put in again farther east, on to a long low rotting coast-line of mangrove crawling out into the sea among the sunken sandbars. It looked d----d unpleasant to me, but Spring at the wheel brought her through into a lagoon, beyond which lay a great delta of jungle-covered islands, and through these we came to what looked like a river mouth. We inched through the shoals, with everyone hauling and sweating at the sweeps, and the Kroos out ahead in canoes, while three men either side swung the lead incessantly, chanting ‘Three fathom, two and a half, two and Jesus saves, two and a half, two and Jesus saves, three fathom!’

And then, round the first bend, was a clearing, and huge stockades between river and jungle, and huts, and presently a fat Dago in a striped shirt with a hankie round his head and rings in his ears comes out in a small boat, all smiles, to meet a great storm of abuse from Spring.

‘You’re Sanchez, are you? And where the h--l’s my cargo? Your barracoons are empty, you infernal scoundrel! Five hundred blacks I signed for with that thieving blackguard, Pedro Blanco, and look yonder!’ He flung out an arm towards the empty stockades, in which the only sign of life was a few figures idling round a cooking-fire. ‘D---l a black hide in sight apart from your own! Well, sir?’

The Dago was full of squealing apologies, waving his arms and sweating. ‘My dear Captain Spring! Your fears are groundless. Within two days there will be a thousand head in the barracoons. Pedro Blanco has taken order. King Gezo himself has come down country – especially on your behalf, my good sir. He is at Dogba, with his people; there has been much fighting, I understand, but all quiet now. And many, many nigras in his slave train – strong young men, hardy young women – all the best, for you, captain!’ He beamed around greasily.

‘You’re sure?’ says Spring. ‘Two days? I want to be out of here in three – and I want to see King Gezo, d’you hear?’

Sanchez spread his sticky hands. ‘There is no difficulty. He will be coming west from Dogba to Apokoto tomorrow.’

‘Well …’ growls Spring, quieting down. ‘We’ll see. What’s he got for us. Sombas?’

‘Sombas, Fulani, Adja, Aiza, Yoruba, Egbo – whatever the captain requires.’

‘Is that so? Well, I’ll have six hundred, then, ’stead of five. And no sickly niggers, see? They’re not going to be auctioned off with their arses stuffed with tar, mind that! I want sound stock.’16

Sanchez took his leave, full of good wishes, and the Balliol College was made fast, as close to the bank as she could be warped. Men were sent aloft to hang her topmasts with leaves and creepers, so that no patrol vessel out at sea might spot us, and Sanchez sent men aboard to unload the cargo. This meant work for me, making sure they pinched nothing, and by the time the last bale was out and under the guard of Sanchez’s native soldiers, I was running with sweat. It was a hellish place; green jungle all around, and steam coming off the brown oily surface of the water as though it were a bath; clouds of midges descended as soon as the sun dropped, and the heat pressed in on you like a blanket, so that all you could do was lie stifling, with your chest heaving and the perspiration pouring off you. Three days, Spring had said; it was a wonder to me that we had survived three hours.

That night Spring called a council in his cabin, of all his officers; I was there, as supercargo, but you can be sure I was well out of the running. I don’t suppose I’ve listened to a more interesting discussion in my life, though, unless it was Grant and Lee meeting in the farmhouse, or Lucan and my old pal Cardigan clawing at each other like female cousins at Balaclava. Certainly, for technical knowledge, Spring’s little circle was an eye-opener.

‘Six hundred,’ says Spring. ‘More than I’d bargained for; it’ll mean fifteen inches for the bucks, and I want two bucks for every female, and no d----d calves.’

‘That’s an inch under the old measure, cap’n,’ says Kinnie. ‘Might do for your Guineas, but it’s tight for Dahomeys. Why, they’re near as big as Mandingos, some of ’em, an’ Mandingos take your sixteen inches, easy.’

‘I’ve seen the Portugoosers carry Mande’s in less than that,’ says Sullivan.

‘An’ had twenty in the hundred die on ’em, likely.’

‘No fear. They put bucks in with wenches – reckon they spend all their time on top of each other, an’ save space that way.’

Spring didn’t join in their laughter. ‘I’ll have no mixing of male and female,’ he growled. ‘That’s the surest way to trouble I know. I’m surprised at you, Mr Sullivan.’

‘Just a joke, sir. But I reckon sixteen inches, if we dance ’em regular.’

‘I’m obliged to you for your opinion. Dance or not, they get fifteen inches, and the women twelve.’17

Kinnie shook his head. ‘That won’t do, sir. These Dahomey b-----s takes as much as the men, any day. Sideways packin’s no use either, the way they’re shaped.’

‘Put ’em head to toe, they’ll fit,’ says Sullivan.

‘You’ll lose ten, mebbe more, in the hundred,’ says Kinnie. ‘That’s a ten-thousand-dollar loss, easy, these days.’

‘I’ll have no loss!’ cries Spring. ‘I’ll not, by G-d! We’ll ship nothing that’s not A1, and the b-----s will have fresh fruit with their pulse each day, and be danced night and morning, d’ye hear?’

‘Even so, sir,’ insisted Kinnie. ‘Twelve inches won’t …’

Comber spoke up for the first time. He was pale, and sweating heavily – mind you, we all were – but he looked seedier than the others. ‘Perhaps Mr Kinnie is right, sir. Another inch for the women …’

‘When I want your advice, Mr Comber, I’ll seek it,’ snaps Spring. ‘Given your way, you’d give ’em two feet, or fill the b----y ship with pygmies.’

‘I was thinking of the possible cost, sir …’

‘Mr Comber, you lie.’ Spring’s scar was going pink. ‘I know you, sir – you’re tender of black sheep.’

‘I don’t like unnecessary suffering, and death, sir, it’s true …’

‘Then, by G-d, you shouldn’t have shipped on a slaver!’ roars Spring. ‘D--nation, d’you want to give ’em a berth apiece? You think I’m cruising ’em round the b----y lighthouse for a lark? Forty pieces a pound, Mr Comber – that’s what an ordinary buck will fetch in Havana these days – perhaps more. A thousand dollars a head! Now, take note, Mr Comber, of what your extra inch can mean – a forty-thousand-dollar loss for your owner! Have you thought of that, sir?’