Flash for Freedom!

Of course, if I’d been like Jack Merry or Dick Champion, or any of the other plucky little prigs that Tom Brown and his cronies used to read about, setting off to seek my fortune on the bounding wave, I’d have brushed aside a manly tear and faced the future with the stout heart of youth, while old Bosun McHearty clapped me on the shoulder and held me enthralled with tales of the South Seas, and I would have gone to bed at last thinking of my mother and resolving to prove worthy of my resolute and Christian commander, Captain Freeman. (God knows how many young idiots have gone to sea after being fed that kind of lying pap in their nursery books.) Perhaps at twenty-six I was too old and hard-used, for instead of a manly tear I did another manly vomit, and in place of Bosun McHearty there came a rush of seamen tailing on a rope across the deck, hurling me aside with a cry of ‘Stand from under, you --- farmer!’, while from the dark above me my Christian commander bellowed at me to get below and not hinder work. So I went, and fell asleep thinking not of my mother, or of the credit I’d bring my family, but of the chance I’d missed in not rogering Fanny Locke that afternoon at Roundway Down. Aye, the vain regrets of youth.

You will judge from this that I wasn’t cut out for the life on the ocean wave. I can’t deny it; if Captain Marryat had had to write about me he’d have burned his pen, signed on a Cardiff tramp, and been buried at sea. For one thing, in my first few days aboard I did not thrash the ship’s bully, make friends with the nigger cook, or learn how to gammon a bosprit from a leathery old salt who called me a likely lad. No, I spent those days in my bunk feeling d----d ill, and only crawling on deck occasionally to take the air and quickly scurry below again to my berth. I was a sea-green and corruptible Flashy in those days.

Nor did I make friends, for I saw only four people and disliked all of them. The first was the ship’s doctor, a big-bellied lout of an Irishman who looked as though he’d be more at home with a bottle than a lancet, and had cold, clammy hands. He gave me a draught for my sea-sickness which made it worse, and then staggered away to be ill himself. He was followed by a queer, old-young creature with wispy hair who shuffled in carrying a bowl from which he slopped some evil-looking muck; when I asked him who the d---l he was he jerked his head in a nervous tic and stammered:

‘Please, sir, I’m Sammy.’

‘Sammy what?’

‘Nossir, please sir, Sammy Snivels, cap’n calls me. But they calls me Looney, mostly.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Please sir, it’s gruel. The doctor sez for you to eat it, please, sir,’ and he lumbered forward and spilled half of it over my cot.

‘D--n you!’ cries I, and weak and all as I was I caught him a back-handed swipe on the face that sent him half across the cabin. ‘Take your filth and get out!’

He mowed at me, and tried to scrape some of the stuff off the floor back into the bowl. ‘Doctor’ll thump me if you don’t take it, please, sir,’ says he, pushing it at me again. ‘Please, sir, it’s nice tack, an’ all – please, sir,’ and then he squealed as I lunged out at him, dropped the bowl, and fairly ran for it. I was too weak to do more than curse after him, but I promised myself that when I was better I would put myself in a better frame of mind by giving the blundering half-wit a thumping on my own account, to keep the doctor’s company.

Next man in was no half-wit, but a nimble little ferret of a ship’s boy with a loose lip and a cast in one eye. He gave me a shifty grin and sniffed at the spilled gruel.

‘Looney didn’t ’ave no luck, did ’e?’ says he. ‘I told ’em gruel wouldn’t go down, no’ow.’

I told him to go to blazes and leave me alone.

‘Feelin’ groggy, eh?’ says he, moving towards the bunk. ‘Grub’s no good ter you, mate. Tell yer wot; I’ll get in bed wiv yer for a shillin’.’

‘Get out, you dirty little b-----d,’ says I, for I knew his kind; Rugby had been crawling with ’em. ‘I’d sooner have your great-grandmother.’

‘Snooks!’ says he, putting out his tongue. ‘You’ll sing a different tune after three months at sea an’ not a wench in sight. It’ll be two bob then!’

I flung a pot at him, but missed, and he let fly a stream of the richest filth I’ve ever listened to. ‘I’ll get Mister Comber ter you, yer big black swine!’ he finished up. ‘’E’ll give you what for! Ta-ta!’ And with that he slipped out, thumbing his nose.

Mr Comber was the fourth of my new acquaintances. He was third mate, and shared the cabin with me, and I couldn’t make him out. He was civil, although he said little enough, but the odd thing was, he was a gentleman, and had obviously been to a good school. What a playing-field beauty like this was doing on a merchantman I couldn’t see, but I held my tongue and watched him. He was about my age, tall and fair-haired, and too sure of himself for me to get on the wrong side of. I guessed he was as puzzled about me as I was about him, but I was feeling too poorly at first to give much heed to him. He didn’t champion the cabin boy, by the way, so that worthy’s threat had obviously been bluff.

It was four or five days before I got my sea legs, and by then I was heartily sick of the Balliol College. Nowadays you have no notion of what a sailing-ship was like in the ’forties; people who travel P.O.S.H. in a steam packet can’t imagine, for one thing, the h---ish continual din of a wooden vessel – the incessant creaking and groaning of timber and cordage, like a fiend’s orchestra playing the same discordant notes, regular as clockwork, each time she rolled. And, by G-d, they rolled, far worse than iron boats, bucketing up and down, and stinking too, with the musty stale smell of a floating cathedral, and the bilges plashing like a giant’s innards. Oh, it was the life for a roaring boy, all right, and that was only the start of it. I didn’t know it, but I was seeing the Balliol College at her best.

One morning, when I was sufficiently recovered to hold down the gruel that Looney brought me, and strong enough to kick his backside into the bargain, comes Captain Spring to tell me I’d lain long enough, and it was time for me to learn my duties.

‘You’ll stand your watch like everyone else,’ says he, ‘and in the meantime you can start on the work you’re paid for – which is to go through every scrap of that cargo, privatim et seriatim, and see that those longshore thieves haven’t bilked me. So get up, and come along with me.’

I followed him out on deck; we were scudding along like a flying duck with great billows of canvas spread, and a wind on the quarter deck fit to lift your hair off. There was plenty of shipping in sight, but no land, and I knew we must be well out of the Channel by now. Looking forward from the poop rail along the narrow flush deck, it seemed to me the Balliol College didn’t carry much of a crew, for all her size, but I didn’t have time to stop and stare, with Spring barking at me. He led me down the poop ladder, and then dropped through a scuttle by the mizzen mast.

‘There you are,’ says he. ‘Take a good look.’

Although I’ve done a deal more sailing than I care to remember, I’m no canvas-back, and while I know enough not to call the deck the floor, I’m no hand at nautical terms. We were in what seemed to be an enormous room stretching away forward to the foremast, where there was a bulkhead; this room ran obviously the full breadth of the ship, and was well lighted by gratings in the deck about fifteen feet above our heads. But it was unlike the interior of any ship I’d ever seen, it was so big and roomy; on either side, about four feet above the deck on which we stood, there was a kind of half-deck, perhaps seven feet deep, like a gigantic shelf, and above that yet another shelf of the same size. The space down the centre of the deck, between the shelves, was piled high with cargo in a great mound – it must have been a good seventy feet long by twelve high.

‘I’ll send my clerk to you with the manifest,’ says Spring, ‘and a couple of hands to help shift and stow.’ I became aware that the pale eyes were watching me closely. ‘Well?’

‘Is this the hold?’ says I. ‘It’s an odd-looking place for cargo.’

‘Aye,’ says he. ‘Ain’t it, though?’

Something in his voice, and in the dank feel of that great, half-empty deck, set the worms stirring inside me. I moved forward with the great heap of cargo, bales and boxes, on one side of me, and the starboard shelves on the other. It was all clean and holystoned, but there was a strange, heavy smell about it that I couldn’t place. Looking about, I noticed something in the shadows at the back of the lower shelf – I reached in, and drew out a long length of light chain, garnished here and there with large bracelets. I stood staring at them, and then dropped them with a clatter as the truth rushed in on me. Now I saw why the Balliol College had sailed from France, why her deck was this strange shape, why she was only half-full of cargo.

‘My G-d!’ cries I. ‘You’re a slaver!’

‘Good for you, Mr Flashman!’ says Spring. ‘And what then?’

‘What then?’ says I. ‘Well, you can turn your b-----d boat about, this minute, and let me ashore from her! By G-d, if I’d guessed what you were, I’d have seen you d----d, and old Morrison with you, before I set foot on your lousy packet!’

‘Dear me,’ says he softly. ‘You’re not an abolitionist, surely?’

‘D--n abolition, and you too!’ cries I. ‘I know that slaving’s piracy, and for that they stretch your neck below high-water mark! You – you tricked me into this – you and that old swine! But I won’t have it, d’ye hear? You’ll set me ashore, and –’

I was striding past him towards the ladder, as he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, eyeing me under the brim of his hat. Suddenly he shot out a hand, and with surprising strength swung me round in front of him. The pale eyes gazed into mine, and then his fist drove into my belly, doubling me up with pain; I reeled back, and he came after me, smashing me left and right to the head and sending me sprawling against the cargo.

‘D--n you!’ I shouted, and tried to crawl away, but he pinned me with his foot, glaring down at me.

‘Now, see here, Mister Flashman,’ says he. ‘I didn’t want you, but I’ve got you, and you’ll understand, here and now, that while you’re on this ship, you’re mine, d’ye see? You’re not going ashore until this voyage is finished – Middle Passage, Indies, homeward run and all. If you don’t like slaving – well, that’s too bad, isn’t it? You shouldn’t have signed aboard, should you?’

‘I didn’t sign! I never –’

‘Your signature will be on the articles that are in my cabin this minute,’ says he. ‘Oh, it’ll be there, sure enough – you’ll put it there.’

‘You’re kidnapping me!’ I yelled. ‘My G-d, you can’t do it! Captain Spring, I beg you – set me ashore, let me get off – I’ll pay you – I’ll –’

‘What, and lose my new supercargo?’ says the devil, grinning at me. ‘No, no. John Charity Spring obeys his owner’s orders – and mine are crystal clear, Mister Flashman. And he sees to it that those aboard his ship obey his orders, too, ye hear me?’ He stirred me with his foot. ‘Now, get up. You’re wasting my time again. You’re here; you’ll do your duty. I won’t tell you twice.’ And those terrible pale eyes looked into mine again. ‘D’ye understand me?’

‘I understand you,’ I muttered.

‘Sir,’ says he.

‘Sir.’

‘Come,’ says he, ‘that’s better. Now, cheer up, man; I won’t have sulks, by G-d. This is a happy ship, d’ye hear? It should be, the wages we pay. There’s a thought for you Flashman – you’ll be a d----d sight richer by the end of this voyage than you would be on a merchantman. What d’ye say to that?’

My mind was in a maze over all this, and real terror at what the consequences might be. Again I pleaded with him to be set ashore, and he slapped me across the mouth.

‘Shut your trap,’ says he. ‘You’re like an old woman. Scared are you? What of?’

‘It’s a capital crime,’ I whimpered.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ says he. ‘Britain doesn’t hang slavers, nor do the Yankees, for all their laws say. Look about you – this ship’s built for slaving, ain’t she? Slavers who run the risk of getting caught aren’t built so, with chains in view and slave decks and all. No indeed, qui male agit odit lucemfn4 – they pose as honest merchantmen, so if the patrols nab ’em they won’t be impounded under the equipment regulations. The Balliol College needs no disguises – for the simple reason we’re too fast and handy for any d----d patrol ship, English or American. What I’m telling you, Mister Flashman, is that we don’t get caught, so you won’t either. Does that set your mind at rest?’

It didn’t, of course, but I knew better than to protest again. All I could think of was how the h--l I was going to get out of this. He took my silence for assent.

‘Well enough,’ growls he. ‘You’ll begin on this lot, then’ – and he jerked a thumb at the cargo. ‘And for Christ’s sake, liven up, man! I’ll not have you glooming up this ship with a long face, d’ye see? At eight bells you’ll leave off and come to my cabin – Mrs Spring will be serving tea for the officers, and will wish to meet you.’

I didn’t believe my ears. ‘Mrs Spring?’

‘My wife,’ he snapped, and seeing my bewilderment: ‘Who the d---l else would Mrs Spring be? You don’t think I’d ship my mother aboard a slaver, do you?’

And with that he strode off, leaving me in a fine sweat. Thanks to an instant’s folly, and the evil of that rotten little toad, my father-in-law, I was a member of the crew of a pirate ship, and nothing to be done about it. It took some digesting, but there it was; I suppose that after all the shocks I’d had in my young life this should have been nothing out of the way, but I found myself shuddering at the thought. Not that I’d any qualms about slaving, mark you, from the holy-holy point of view; they could have transported every nigger in Africa to the moon in chains for all I cared, but I knew it was a d----d chancy business – aye, and old Morrison had known that, too. So the old swine had his fingers in the blackbird pie – and I’ll lay my life that was a well concealed ledger in his countinghouse – and had taken advantage of the Bryant affair to shanghai me into this. He had wanted me out of the way, and here was a golden chance of making sure that I would be away for good; no doubt Spring was right, and the Balliol College would come through her voyage safe, as most slavers did, but there was always the chance of being caught, and rotting your life away in jail, even if they didn’t top you. And there was the risk of getting killed by niggers on the Slave Coast, or catching yellow jack or some foul native disease, as so many slaving crews did – oh, it was the perfect ocean cruise for an unwanted son-in-law. And Elspeth would be a widow, I would never see her, or England, again, for even if I survived the trip, word of it might get home, and I’d be an outlaw, a felon …

I sat down on the cargo with my head in my hands, and wept, and raged inwardly against that little Scotch scoundrel. G-d, if ever I had the chance to pay him back – but what was the use of thinking that way in my present plight? In the end, as usual, one thought came uppermost in my mind – survive, Flashy, and let the rest wait. But I resolved to keep my spite warm in the meantime.

In the circumstances it was as well that I had work to do; going through that cargo, as I did when a couple of hands and the ship’s clerk came down presently, at least occupied part of my thoughts, and kept me from working myself into a terror about the future. After all, thinks I, men like these didn’t sign on in the expectation of dying; they seemed handy, sober fellows who knew their business – very different from the usual tarry-john. One of them, an oldish man named Kirk, had been a slaver all his days, and had served on the notorious Black Joke;12 he wouldn’t have shipped on any other kind of vessel.

‘What,’ says he, ‘at £15 a month? I’d be a fool. D’ye know, I’ve four thousand quid put by, in Liverpool and Charleston banks – how many sailormen have the tenth of that? Risk? I’ve been impounded once, on the Joke, shipwrecked once, and seen two cargoes of black ivory slung overside – which meant a dead loss for the owners, but I drew me pay, didn’t I? Oh, aye, I’ve been chased a score o’ times, and been yard-arm to yard-arm in running fights wi’ Limey an’ Yankee patter-rollers, but no harm done. An’ for sickness, ye’ve more chance of that from some poxed-up yellow tart in Havana than on the coast these days. You’ve been east – well, you know to keep yourself clean an’ boil your water, then.’

He made it sound not half bad, apart from the stuff about fighting the patrols, but I understood that this was a rare event – the Balliol College had never been touched in five trips that he knew of, although she had been sighted and chased times without number.

‘She’s built light, see, like all the Baltimore brigs an’ clippers,’ says Kirk. ‘Save a patch o’ calm, she’ll show her heels to anything, even steam-ships. West o’ Saint Tommy, even wi’ a full load o’ black cattle, she could snap her fingers at the whole Navy, and wi’ the fair winds coming south, like we are now, she’s gone before they see her. Only risky time is on the coast itself, afore we load up. If they was to catch us there, wi’ the Government wind pinning us on the coast, they could impound us, empty an’ all, ’cos o’ the law as lays down that if you’re rigged and fitted for slavin’, like we are, they can pinch you even wi’out a black aboard. Used to be that even then they couldn’t touch ye, if ye had the right papers – Greek, say, or Braziliano.’ He laughed. ‘Why, I’ve sailed on a ship that had Yankee, Gyppo, Portugee, an’ even Rooshian papers all ready for inspection, as might serve. But it’s different now – ye don’t talk, ye run.’13

He and the clerk and the other man – I think he was a Norwegian – harked back a good deal to the old days, when the slave ships had waited in turn at the great African barracoons to ship their cargoes, and how the Navy had spoiled the trade by bribing the native chiefs not to deal with slavers, so that all the best stretches of coast nowadays were out of court, and no niggers to be had.

‘Mind you,’ says Kirk, winking, ‘show ’em the kind o’ goods we got here, an’ they’ll spring you a likely cargo o’ Yorubas or Mandingos, treaty or not – an’ if sometimes you have to fight for ’em, as we did two trips back, well, it comes cheaper, don’t it? An’ Cap’n Spring, he’s got a grand nose for a tribal war, or a chief that’s got too many young bucks of his own people on his hands. He’s a caution, he is, an’ worth every penny the owners pay him. Like to guess ’ow much?’

I said I had no idea.

‘Twenty thousand pounds a trip,’ says Kirk. ‘There now! An’ you wonder I ship on a slaver!’

I knew slavers made huge profits, of course, but this staggered me. No wonder old Morrison had an interest in the trade – and no doubt paid a subscription to the Anti-Slavery Society and thought it well worthwhile. And he wasn’t laying out overmuch in trade goods, by the look of this cargo – you never saw so much junk, although just the kind of stuff to make a nigger chief happy, no doubt. There were old Brown Bess muskets that probably hadn’t been fired in fifty years, sackfuls of condemned powder and shot, rusty bayonets and cheap cutlasses and knives, mirrors and looking glasses by the dozen, feathered hats and check trousers, iron pots and plates and cauldrons, and most amazing of all, a gross of Army red coats, 34th Foot; one of ’em had a bullet-hole and a rusty stain on the right breast, and I remember thinking, bad luck for someone. There was a packet of letters in the pocket, which I meant to keep, but didn’t.

And there was case after case of liquor, in brown glass bottles; gin, I suppose you’ld call it, but even to sniff the stuff shrivelled the hairs off your arse. The blacks wouldn’t know the difference, of course.

We were searching through all this trash, I counting and calling out to the clerk, who ticked the manifest, and Kirk and his fellow stowing back, when Looney, the idiot steward, came down to gape at us. He squatted down, dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, making stupid observations, till Kirk, who was bundling the red coats, sings out to him to come over. Kirk had taken two of the brass gorgets off the officers’ coats – they must have been d----d old uniforms – and winking at us he laid the gorgets on the deck, and says:

‘Now, Looney, you’re a sharp ’un. Which is the biggest? If you can tell, I’ll give you my spirits tomorrow. If you can’t you give me yours, see?’

I saw what he was after: the gorgets were shaped like half-moons, and whichever was laid uppermost looked bigger – children amuse themselves with such things, cut out of paper. Looney squinted at them, giggling, and pointing to the top gorget, says:

‘That ’un.’

‘Ye’re sure?’ says Kirk, and taking the gorget which Looney had indicated, placed it beneath the other one – which now looked bigger, of course. Looney stared at it, and then said:

‘That un’s bigger now.’

Kirk changed them again, while his mates laughed, and Looney was bewildered. He gaped round helplessly, and then kicking the gorgets aside, he shouted:

‘You make ’em bigger an’ – an’ littler!’

And he started to cry, calling Kirk a dirty b-----d, which made us laugh all the more, so he shouted obscenities at us and stamped, and then ran over to a pile of bags stowed beyond the cargo and began to urinate on them, still swearing at us over his shoulder.

‘Hold on!’ cries Kirk, when he could contain his mirth. ‘That’s the niggers’ gruel you’re p-----g on!’

I was holding my sides, guffawing, and the clerk cries out:

‘That’ll make the dish all the tastier for ’em! Oh, my stars!’

Looney, seeing us amused, began to laugh himself, as such idiots will and p-----d all the harder, and then suddenly I heard the others’ laughter cut off, and there was a step on the ladder, and there stood John Charity Spring, staring at us with a face like the demon king. Those pale eyes were blazing, and Looney gave a little whimper and fumbled with his britches, while the piddle ran across the tilting deck towards Spring’s feet.

Spring stood there in a silence you could feel, while we scrambled up. His hands clenched and unclenched, and the scar on his head was blazing crimson. His mouth worked, and then he leaped at Looney and knocked the cowering wretch down with one smashing blow. For a moment I thought he would set about the half-wit with his boots, but he mastered himself, and wheeled on us.

‘Bring that – that vermin on deck!’ he bawled, and stamped up the ladder, and I was well ahead of the seamen in rushing to Looney and dragging him to the scuttle. He yelled and struggled, but we forced him up on deck, where Spring was stamping about in a spitting rage, and the hands were doubling aft in response to the roars of the Yankee first mate.

‘Seize him up there,’ orders Spring, and with me holding Looney’s thrashing legs, Kirk very deftly tied his wrists up to the port shrouds and ripped his shirt off. Spring was calling for the cat, but someone says there wasn’t one.

‘Then make one, d--n you!’ he shouted, and paced up and down, casting dreadful glances at the imploring Looney, who was babbling in his bonds.

‘Don’t hit us, cap’n! Please don’t hit us! It was them other b-----ds, changin’ things!’

‘Silence!’ says Spring, and Looney’s cries subsided to a whisper, while the crew crowded about to see the sport. I kept back, but made sure I had a good view.

They gave Spring a hastily made cat, and he buttoned his jacket tight and pulled his hat down.

‘Now, you b----r, I’ll make you dance!’ cries he, and laid in for all he was worth. Looney screamed and struggled; each time the lashes hit him he shrieked, and between each stroke Spring cursed him for all he was worth.

‘Foul my ship, will you?’ Whack! ‘Ruin the food for my cargo, by G-d!’ Whack! ‘Spread pestilence with your filth, will you?’ Whack! ‘Yes, pray, you wharfside son-of-a-b---h, I’m listening!’ Whack! ‘I’ll cut your b----y soul out, if you have one!’ Whack! If it had been a regulation Army cat, I think he’d have killed him; as it was, the hastily spliced yarn cut the idiot’s back to bits and the blood ran over his ragged trousers. His screams became moans, and then silence, and then Spring flung the cat overboard.