The Story of Paul Jones. Alfred Henry Lewis
My kinsman Jones owns slaves; and I can see, too, that they have safer, happier lives with him than could fall to their lot had they remained savages in the wild Guinea woods. But owning slaves by the Rappahannock, where you can give them kindness and make them happy, is one thing. This carrying the tortured creatures —chained, and mad with grief!—to Jamaica is another.”
Captain Denbigh refreshes himself with more rum.
“It wards off the heat,” he vouchsafes, in extenuation of his partiality for the rum. Having set himself right touching rum, he takes, up the main question: “What can we do?” he asks. “You know we’re chartered for ten v’yages?”
“I’m no one to argue with my captain,” responds first mate Jack Paul. “Still less do I talk of breaking charters. All I say is, it makes me heart-sore.”
“Let me see!” responds Captain Denbigh, searching for an idea. “Your brother William tells me, the last time we takes in tobacco from the Jones plantation, that old William Jones is as fond o’ you as o’ him?”
“That is true. He wanted me to stay ashore with him and William, and give up the sea.”
“An’ why not, mate Jack?”
First mate Jack Paul shrugs his shoulders, which, despite his youth, are as broad and square as his captain’s.
“Because I like the sea,” says he; “and shall always like the sea.”
Captain Denbigh takes more rum; after which he sits knitting his forehead into knots, in a very agony of cogitation. Finally he gives the table a great bang, at which the rum bottle jumps in alarm.
“I’ve hit it!” he cries. “I knowed I would if I’d only drink rum enough. I never has a bright idea yet, I don’t get it from rum. Here, now, mate Jack; I’ll just buy you out. You don’t like the black trade, an’ you’ll like it less an’ less. It’s your readin’ books does it; that, an not drinkin rum. Howsumever, I’ll buy you out. Then you can take a merchant-ship; or—an’ you may call me no seaman if that ain’t what I’d do you sits down comfortable with your brother an’ your old kinsman Jones by the Rappahannock, an plays gentleman ashore.”
While Captain Denbigh talks, the trouble fades from the face of first mate Jack Paul.
“What’s that?” he cries. “You’ll buy me out?”
“Ay, lad! as sure as my name’s Ed’ard Denbigh. That is, if so be you can sell, bein’ under age. I allows you can, howsumever; for you’re no one to go back on a bargain.” Having thus adjusted to his liking the legal doubt suggested, Captain Denbigh turns to the question of price. “Master Younger puts your sixth at a thousand pounds. If so be you’ll say the word, mate Jack, I’ll give you a thousand pounds.”
Countenance brightened with a vast relief, first mate Jack Paul stretches his hand across the table. Captain Denbigh, shifting his glass to the left hand, grasps it.
“Done!” says first mate Jack Paul.
“An’ done to you, my hearty!” exclaims Captain Denbigh. “The money’ll be yours, mate Jack, as soon as ever we sees Kingston light. An’ now for another hooker of rum to bind the bargain.”
CHAPTER III—THE YELLOW JACK
At Kingston, Captain Denbigh goes ashore with first mate Jack Paul, and pays over in Bank of England paper those one thousand pounds which represent that one-sixth interest in the John O’Gaunt. While the pair are upon this bit of maritime business, the three hundred mournful blacks are landed under the supervision of the second mate. Among the virtues which a cargo of slaves possesses over a shipment of cotton or sugar or rum, is the virtue of legs. This merit is made so much of by the energetic second officer of the John O’Gaunt, that, within half a day, the last of the three hundred blacks is landed on the Kingston quay. Received and receipted for by a bilious Spaniard with an umbrella hat, who is their consignee, the blacks are marched away to the stockade which will confine them while awaiting distribution among the plantations. Captain Denbigh puts to sea with the John O’Gaunt in ballast the same evening. A brisk seaman, and brisker man of business, is Captain Denbigh, and no one to spend money and time ashore, when he may be making the one and saving the other afloat.
First mate Jack Paul, his fortune of one thousand pounds safe in the strong-boxes of the Kingston bank, sallies forth to look for a ship. He decides to go passenger, for the sake of seeing what it is like, and his first thought is to visit his brother William by the Rappahannock. This fraternal venture he forbears, when he discovers Kingston to be in the clutch of that saffron terror the yellow fever. Little is being locally said of the epidemic, for the town is fearful of frightening away its commerce. The Kingston heart, like most human hearts, thinks more of its own gold than of the lives of other men. Wherefore Kingston is sedulous to hide the plague in its midst, lest word go abroad on blue water and drive away the ships.
First mate Jack Paul becomes aware of Kingston for the death-trap it is before he is ashore two days. It is the suspicious multitude of funerals thronging the sun-baked streets, that gives him word. And yet the grewsome situation owns no peculiar threat for him, since he has sailed these blistering latitudes so often and so much that he may call himself immune. For him, the disastrous side is that, despite the Kingston efforts at concealment, a plague-whisper drifted out to sea, and as a cautious consequence the Kingston shipping has dwindled to be nothing. This scarcity of ships vastly interferes with that chance of a passage home.
“The first craft, outward bound for England, shall do,” thinks first mate Jack Paul. “As to William, I’ll defer my visit until I may go ashore to him without bringing the yellow jack upon half Virginia.”
While waiting for that home-bound ship, first mate Jack Paul goes upon a pilgrimage of respect to the tomb of Admiral Benbow. That sea-wolf lies buried in the parish chapel-yard in King Street.
As first mate Jack Paul leaves the little burying-ground, he runs foul of a polite adventure which, in its final expression, will have effect upon his destiny. His aid is enlisted in favor of a lady in trouble.
The troubled lady, fat, florid and forty, is being conveyed along King Street in her ketureen, a sort of sedan chair on two wheels, drawn by a half-broken English horse. The horse, excited by a funeral procession of dancing, singing, shouting blacks, capsizes the ketureen, and the fat, florid one is decanted upon the curb at the feet of first mate Jack Paul. Alive to what is Christian in the way of duty, he raises the florid, fat decanted one, and congratulates her upon having suffered no harm.
The ketureen is restored to an even keel. The fat, florid one boards it, though not before she invites first mate Jack Paul to dinner. Being idle, lonesome, and hungry for English dishes, he accepts, and accompanies the fat, florid one in the dual guise of guest and bodyguard.
Sir Holman Hardy, husband to the fat, florid one, is as fatly florid as his spouse. Incidentally he is in command of what British soldiers are stationed at Kingston. The fat, florid one presents first mate Jack Paul to her Hector, tells the tale of the rescue, and thereupon the three go in to dinner. Later, first mate Jack Paul and his host smoke in the deep veranda, where, during the cool of the evening, Sir Holman drinks sangaree, and first mate Jack Paul drinks Madeira. Also Sir Holman inveighs against the Horse Guards for consigning him to such a pit of Tophet as is Kingston.
Between sangaree and maledictions levelled at the Horse Guards, Sir Holman gives first mate Jack Paul word of a brig, the King George’s Packet, out of China for Kingston with tea, which he looks for every day. Discharging its tea, the King George’s Packet will load with rum for Whitehaven; and Sir Holman declares that first mate Jack Paul shall sail therein, a passenger-guest, for home. Sir Holman is able to promise this, since the fat, florid rescued one is the child of Shipowner Donald