Walter Besant

This was indeed the truth: I had parted with my money on the word of a villain; I put myself into his power by telling him the whole of my sad story; and, on the promise of sending me by ship to my cousins in New England, he had entered my name as a rebel sold to himself (afterwards I learned that he made it appear as if I was one of the hundred given to Mr. Jerome Nipho, all of whom he afterwards bought and sent to the Plantations), and he had then shipped me on board a vessel on the point of sailing with as vile a company of rogues, vagabonds, thieves, and drabs as were ever raked together out of the streets and the prisons.

When I came to my senses the Captain gave me a glass of cordial, and made me sit down on a gun-carriage while he asked me many questions. I answered him all truthfully, concealing only the reason of my flight and of my visit to Taunton, where, I told him truly, I hoped to see my unhappy friend Miss Susan Blake, of whose imprisonment and death I knew nothing.

'Madam,' said the Captain, stroking his chin, 'your case is indeed a hard one. Yet your name is entered on my list, and I must deliver your body at St. Michael's Port, Barbadoes, or account for its absence. This must I do: I have no other choice. As for your being sold to Mr. George Penne by Mr. Jerome Nipho, this may very well be without your knowing even that you had been given to that gentleman by the King. They say that the Maids of Taunton have all been given away, mostly to the Queen's Maids of Honour, and must either be redeemed at a great price or be sold as you have been. On the other hand, there may be villainy, and in this case it might be dangerous for you to move in the matter lest you be apprehended and sent to jail as a rebel, and so a worse fate happen unto you.'

He then went on to tell me that this pretended merchant, this Mr. George Penne, was the most notorious kidnapper in the whole of Bristol; that he was always raking the prisons of rogues and sending them abroad for sale on the Plantations; that at this time he was looking to make a great profit, because there were so many prisoners that all could not be hanged, but most must be either flogged and sent about their business, or else sold to him and his like for servitude. 'As for any money paid for your passage,' he went on, 'I assure you, Madam, upon my honour, that nothing at all has been paid by him; nor has he provided you with any change of clothes or provisions of any kind for the voyage; nor hath he asked or bargained for any better treatment of you on board than is given to the rogues below; and that, Madam,' he added, 'is food of the coarsest, and planks, for sleep, of the hardest. The letter which you have shown me is a mere trick. I do not think there is any such person in Boston. It is true, however, that there is a family of your name in Boston, and that they are substantial merchants. I make no doubt that as he hath treated you, so he will treat your friends; and that all the money which he has taken from you will remain in his own pocket.'

'Then,' I cried, 'what am I to do? Where look for help?'

''Tis the damnedest villain!' cried the Captain, swearing after the profane way of sailors. 'When next I put in at the Port of Bristol, if the Monmouth scare be over, I will take care that all the world shall know what he hath done. But, indeed, he will not care. The respectable merchants have nothing to say with him—he is now an open Catholic, who was formerly concealed in that religion. Therefore, he thinks his fortune is at the flood. But what is to be done, Madam?'

'Indeed, Sir, I know not.'

He considered a while. His face was rough and coloured like a ripe plum with the wind and the sun; but he looked honest, and he did not, like Mr. Penne, pretend to shed tears over my misfortunes.

'Those who join rebellions,' he said, but not unkindly, 'generally find themselves out in their reckoning in the end. What the deuce have gentlewomen to do with the pulling down of Kings! I warrant, now, you thought you were doing a grand thing, and so you must needs go walking with those pretty fools, the Maids of Taunton! Well; 'tis past praying for. George Penne is such a villain that keelhauling is too good for him. Flogged through the fleet at Spithead he should be. Madam, I am not one who favours rebels; yet you cannot sleep and mess with the scum down yonder. 'Twould be worse than inhuman—their talk and their manners would kill you. There is a cabin aft which you can have. The furniture is mean, but it will be your own while you are aboard. You shall mess at my table if you will so honour me. You shall have the liberty of the quarter-deck. I will also find for you, if I can, among the women aboard, one somewhat less villainous than the rest, who shall be your grumeta, as the Spaniards say—your servant, that is—to keep your cabin clean and do your bidding. When we make Barbadoes there is no help for it, but you must go ashore with the rest and take your chance.'

This was truly generous of the Captain, and I thanked him with all my heart. He proved as good as his word, for though he was a hard man, who duly maintained discipline, flogging his prisoners with rigour, he treated me during the whole voyage with kindness and pity, never forgetting daily to curse the name of George Penne and drink to his confusion.

The voyage lasted six weeks. At first we had rough weather with heavy seas and rolling waves. Happily, I was not made sick by the motion of the ship, and could always stand upon the deck and look at the waves (a spectacle, to my mind, the grandest in the whole world). But, I fear, there was much suffering among the poor wretches—my fellow-prisoners. They were huddled and crowded together below the deck; they were all sea-sick; there was no doctor to relieve their sufferings, nor were there any medicines for those who were ill. Fever presently broke out among them, so that we buried nine in the first fortnight of our voyage. After this, the weather growing warm and the sea moderating, the sick mended rapidly, and soon all were well again.

I used to stand upon the quarter-deck and look at them gathered in the waist below. Never had I seen such a company. They came, I heard, principally from London, which is the rendezvous or headquarters of all the rogues in the country. They were all in rags—had any one among them possessed a decent coat it would have been snatched from his back the very first day; they were dirty from the beginning; many of them had cuts and wounds on their heads gotten in their fights and quarrels, and these were bound about with old clouts; their faces were not fresh-coloured and rosy, like the faces of our honest country lads, but pale and sometimes covered with red blotches, caused by their evil lives and their hard drinking; on their foreheads was clearly set the seal of Satan. Never did I behold wickedness so manifestly stamped upon the human countenance. They were like monkeys for their knavish and thievish tricks. They stole everything that they could lay hands upon: pieces of rope, the sailors' knives when they could get them, even the marlinspikes if they were left about. When they were caught and flogged they would make the ship terrible with their shrieks, being cowards as prodigious as they were thieves. They lay about all day ragged and dirty on deck, in the place assigned to them, stupidly sleeping or else silent and dumpish, except for some of the young fellows who gambled with cards—I know not for what stakes—and quarrelled over the game and fought. It was an amusement among the sailors to make these lads fight on the forecastle, promising a pannikin of rum to the victor. For this miserable prize they would fight with the greatest fury and desperation, even biting one another in their rage, while the sailors clapped their hands and encouraged them. Pity it is that the common sort do still delight themselves with sport so brutal. On shore these fellows would be rejoicing in cock-fights and bull-baitings: on board they baited the prisoners.

There were among the prisoners twenty or thirty women, the sweepings of the Bristol streets. They, too, would fight as readily as the men, until the Captain forbade it under penalty of a flogging. These women were to the full as wicked as the men; nay, their language was worse, insomuch that the very sailors would stand aghast to hear the blasphemies they uttered, and would even remonstrate with them, saying, 'Nan,' or 'Poll'—they were all Polls and Nans—''tis enough to cause the ship to be struck with lightning! Give over, now! Wilt sink the ship's company with your foul tongue?' But the promise of a flogging kept them from fighting. Men, I think, will brave anything for a moment's gratification; but not even the most hardened woman will willingly risk the pain of the whip.

The Captain told me that of these convicts, of whom every year whole shiploads are taken to Virginia, to Jamaica, and to Barbadoes, not one in a hundred ever returns. 'For,' he said, 'the work exacted from them is so severe, with so much exposure to a burning sun, and the fare is so hard, that they fall into fevers and calentures. And, besides the dangers from the heat and the bad food, there is a drink called rum, or arrack, which is distilled from the juice of the sugar-cane, and another drink called "mobbie," distilled from potatoes, which inflames their blood, and causes many to die before their time. Moreover, the laws are harsh, and there is too much flogging and branding and hanging. So that some fall into despair and, in that condition of mind, die under the first illness which seizes on them.'

'Captain,' I said, 'you forget that I am also to become one of these poor wretches.'

The Captain swore lustily that, on his return, he would seek out the villain Penne and break his neck for him. Then he assured me that the difference between myself and the common herd would be immediately recognised; that a rebel is not a thief, and must not be so treated; and that I had nothing to fear—nay, that he himself would say what he could in my favour. But he entreated me with the utmost vehemence to send home an account of where I was, and what I was enduring, to such of my friends as might have either money to relieve me from servitude or interest to procure a pardon. Alas! I had no friends. Mr. Boscorel, I knew full well, would move heaven and earth to help me. But he could not do that without his son finding out where I was; and this thought so moved me that I implored the Captain to tell no one who I was, or what was my history; and, for greater persuasion, I revealed to him those parts of my history which I had hitherto concealed, namely, my marriage and the reason of that rash step and my flight.

'Madam,' he said, 'I would that I had the power of revenging these foul wrongs. For them, I swear, I would kidnap both Mr. George Penne and Mr. Benjamin Boscorel; and, look you, I would make them mess with the scum and the sweepings whom we carry for'ard; and I would sell them to the most inhuman of the planters, by whom they would be daily beaten and cuffed and flogged; or, better still, would cause them to be sold at Havana to the Spaniards, where they would be employed, as are the English prisoners commonly by that cruel people, namely, in fetching water under negro overseers. I leave you to imagine how long they would live, and what terrible treatment they would receive.'

So it was certain that I was going to a place where I must look for very little mercy, unless I could buy it; and where the white servant was regarded as worth so many years of work; not so much as a negro, because he doth sooner sink under the hardships of his lot, while the negro continues frolick and lusty, and marries and has children, even though he has to toil all day in the sun, and is flogged continually to make him work with the greater heart.

Among the women on board was a young woman, not more than eighteen or thereabout, who was called Deb. She had no other name. Her birthplace she knew not; but she had run about the country with some tinkers, whose language she said is called 'Shelta' by those people. This she could still talk. They sold her in Bristol; after which her history is one which, I learn, is common in towns. When the Captain bade her come to the cabin, and ordered her to obey me in whatsoever I commanded, she looked stupidly at him, shrinking from him if he moved, as if she was accustomed (which was indeed the case) to be beaten at every word. I made her first clean herself and wash her clothes. This done, she slept in my cabin, and, as the Captain promised, became my servant. At first she was not only afraid of ill-treatment, but she would wilfully lie; she purloined things and hid them; she told me so many tales of her past life, all of them different, that I could believe none. Yet when she presently found out that I was not going to beat her, and that the Captain did never offer to cuff or kick her (which the poor wretch expected), she left off telling falsehoods and became as handy, obliging, and useful a creature as one could desire. She was a great, strapping girl, black-eyed and with black hair, as strong as any man, and a good-looking creature as well, to those who like great women.

This Deb, when, I say, she ceased to be afraid of me, began to tell me her true history, which was, I suppose, only remarkable because she seemed not to know that it was shameful and wicked. She lived, as the people among whom she had been brought up lived, without the least sense or knowledge of God; indeed, no heathen savage could be more without religion than the tinkers and gipsies on the road. They have no knowledge at all; they are born; they live; they die; they are buried in a hedgeside, and are forgotten. It was surprising to me to find that any woman could grow up in a Christian country so ignorant and so uncared for. In the end, as you shall hear, she showed every mark of penitence and fell into a godly and pious life.

My Captain continued in the same kindness towards me throughout the voyage—suffering me to mess at his table, where the provisions were plain but wholesome, and encouraging me to talk to him, seeming to take pleasure in my simple conversation. In the mornings when, with a fair wind and full sail, the ship ploughed through the water, while the sun was hot overhead, he would make me a seat with a pillow in the shade, and would then entreat me to tell him about the rebellion and our flight to Black Down. Or he would encourage me in serious talk (though his own conversation with his sailors was over-much garnished with profane oaths), listening with grave face. And sometimes he would ask me questions about the village of Bradford Orcas, my mother and her wheel, Sir Christopher and the Rector, showing a wonderful interest in everything that I told him. It was strange to see how this man, hard as he was with the prisoners (whom it was necessary to terrify, otherwise they might mutiny), could be so gentle towards me, a stranger, and a costly one too, because he was at the expense of maintaining me for the whole voyage, and the whole time being of good manners, never rude or rough, or offering the least freedom or familiarity—a thing which a woman in my defenceless position naturally fears. He could not have shown more respect unto a Queen. The Lord will surely reward him therefor.

One evening at sunset, when we had been at sea six weeks, he came to me as I was sitting on the quarter-deck and pointed to what seemed a cloud in the west. 'Tis the island of Barbadoes,' he said. 'To-morrow, if this wind keeps fair, we shall make the Port of St. Michael's, which some call the Bridge, and then, Madam, alas!'—he fetched a deep sigh—'I must put you ashore and part with the sweetest companion that ever sailed across the ocean.'

He said no more, but left me as if he had other things to say but stifled them. Presently the sun went down and darkness fell upon the waters; the wind also fell and the sea was smooth, so that there was a great silence. 'To-morrow,' I thought, 'we shall reach the port, and I shall be landed with these wretches and sent, perhaps, to toil in the fields.' But yet my soul was upheld by the vision which had been granted to me upon the Black Down Hills, and I feared nothing. This I can say without boasting, because I had such weighty reasons for the faith that was in me.

The Captain presently came back to me.

'Madam,' he said, 'suffer me to open my mind to you.'

'Sir,' I told him, 'there is nothing which I could refuse you, saving my honour.'

'I must confess,' he said, 'I have been torn in twain for love of you, Madam, ever since you did me the honour to mess at my table. Nay, hear me out. And I have been minded a thousand times to assure you first that your marriage is no marriage, and that you have not indeed any husband at all; next, that since you can never go back to your old sweetheart, 'tis better to find another who would protect and cherish you; and thirdly, that I am ready—ay! and longing—now to become your husband and protector, and to love you with all my heart and soul.'

'Sir,' I said, 'I thank you for telling me this, which indeed I did not suspect. But I am (alas! as you know) already married—even though my marriage be no true one—and can never forget the love which I still must bear to my old sweetheart. Wherefore, I may not listen to any talk of love.'

'If,' he replied, 'you were a woman after the common pattern you would right gladly cast aside the chains of this marriage ceremony. But, Madam, you are a saint. Therefore, I refrained.' He sighed. 'I confess that I have been dragged as by chains to lay myself at your feet. Well; that must not be.' He sighed again. 'Yet I would save you, Madam, from the dangers of this place. The merchants and planters do, for the most part, though gentlemen of good birth, lead debauched and ungodly lives, and I fear that, though they may spare you the hardships of the field, they may offer you other and worse indignities.'

I answered in the words of David: 'The Lord hath delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear: He will deliver me out of the hand of the Philistines.'

'Nay; but there is a way; you need not land at all. It is but a scratch of the pen, and I will enter your name among those who died upon the voyage. There will be no more inquiry, any more than after the other names, and then I can carry you back with me to the Port of London, whither I am bound after taking in my cargo.'

For a space I was sorely tempted. Then I reflected. It would be, I remembered, by consenting to the Captain's treachery towards his employers, nothing less, that I could escape this lot.

'No, Sir,' I said, 'I thank you from my heart for all your kindness and for your forbearance; but we may not consent together unto this sin. Again, I thank you, but I must suffer what is laid upon me.'

He knelt at my feet and kissed my hands, saying nothing more, and presently I went to my cabin, and so ended my first voyage across the great Atlantic Ocean. In the morning when I awoke, we were beating off Carlisle Bay, and I felt like unto one of those Christian martyrs, of whom I have read, whom they were about to lead forth and cast unto the lions.