Captain Adam Read online

  The planter came back, and Adam rose to greet him with outstretched hand. But Maitrejean's face was sober.

  "I fear, monsieur, that we cannot complete our deal."

  "Why in tarnation not?"

  "You'll esteem me finical. Yet each must do as his honor tells him. I ought to seize your person, but you're my guest."

  "What's got into you, man?"

  "The news I just received from Gonave."

  "Yes?"

  "Monsieur, your nation and mine are at war."

  The runaways were ankle-deep in water that stung their bare bleeding feet and they were waving to the boat that made for them, when Adam Long hurtled out of the jungle.

  "Ye grease-hellies!"

  He got Peterson with great force in the backside, a kick that fairly seemed to jolt the whole beach. Waters squealed, and dove in time.

  "You swam ashorel Now swim hackl"

  JL J wump!

  There were not many other noises. Bees hummed indefatigibly. From a kiosk made of palmetto thatch came a faint apologetic spickle of glassware, silverware. The bay's unbelievable green met the equally unbelievable blue of the sea at a reef, smothered in foam now, flashing in the sunlight, and this hissed, steaming, mumbling with faraway impotent rage. But for the most part the drums, beaten back in the hills, had the air to themselves.

  WUMP-wump-wump! WUMP-wump-wump!

  Horace Treadway looked up from the paper he had been checking. In his thirties, he could have been fifty.

  "Damned Ashantis," he muttered. "Never should have been brought over. Never did work the way these Angolans I've got now do. Kept slipping away. Scores of 'em up there. And how they breed!"

  "Ain't you afraid of 'em?" asked Adam, wishing that some day some planter would talk about something else besides his slaves.

  "Of course I am! They'll swoop, one of these nights. And then all this"—he moved his head in a circular motion—"won't be here any more."

  He swallowed punch, then dabbed his lips with a Valenciennes-bordered kerchief. There was Valenciennes at his throat, too, as there was rosepoint over his wrists. This man Treadway would have been a head-turning sight anywhere. His coat, the color of cinnamon, was embroidered four or five inches deep with silver lace, and lined with sky-blue silk. There were silver buckles on his shoes, which had red heels. His small clothes fitted him as though they had been painted on. He wielded a toothpick with his left hand, whilst checking figures with the right. He belched elegantly.

  "Oh, and one other thing. Captain. One last little matter."

  Adam's heart went small and cold. He did not trust himself to speak. He sipped his punch, and solemnly bowed his head.

  "Might I ask you to make a delivery in the continental colonies?"

  Adam exhaled again, but a little at a time, in order to make no sound. So that was all? A delivery! He waved his hand.

  "Anything," he murmured.

  "You come from New England, I believe?"

  "Aye."

  "Is New York in that colony?" 48

  "Well, it's near there."

  Treadway nodded. Though they would destroy the papers afterward, he checked everything carefully. They had arrived at a price of four pounds three shillings a barrel, to be paid in molasses; and if these men did not snarl at one another, neither was there any real friendship between them; they came from different worlds. But they respected one another! Adam wondered what Treadway was doing here. The colonies, insular or continental, did not often get his kind. The ones they send us, Adam reflected sourly, are the sweepings, criminals, drunkards, cranks, the whimperers who can't fit in anywhere else, whom nobody wants, not even the Army—not even the Navyl

  "That is agreed, then. Captain?"

  Adam waved.

  "Agreed, sir," he murmured.

  The Englishman was to provide all the labor. He had even provided a lookout, armed with a large glass, who sat on the roof of the plantation house and swept the sea; at his side was a gong, with which to give an alarm if any suspicious sail was sighted.

  Treadway gave another glance, a glance of pure malice, at the hills from whence came the sound of drums—WUMP-wump-wump!—and then returned to the papers. And Adam Long, who conceived it to be his part to look loafy and at ease, his eyes half closed, did exactly this.

  Truly, Adam felt good. The sunshine, the scene, the murmur of bees, and the drowsy creak of the windmill, soothed him. He had a sense of returning, of reaching journey's end, his task completed. There would be another task to take up after that—there always was—but just at the moment he could stretch his legs and enjoy himself.

  There are gardens and gardens. The ramshackleness of Mr. Pendleton's, the flamboyancy of M. Maitrejean's, were not to be compared with this place. The lush vegetation of the tropics had not been permitted to run riot here, but had been triinmed, pruned, trained. An immense amount of work had gone into the making of this establishment; and it was not just the work of slaves either, of bought muscle. A great deal of thought had been needed, and watchfulness. None of the sloth the climate suggested could be noticed. Weeds had been kept at a minimum. The buildings were painted and in perfect condition. The mill, the carpenter shop, the kennels, stables, field hands' quarters were models of careful upkeep. The kitchen garden was a triumph, with the homely French beans and smug heads of cabbage exactly spaced, serried, looking, in this strange setting, positively exotic. Years of skilled and loving care had gone into the making of the orchards. Since it was not utilitarian, though it was customary, the garden in which Adam sat had not known such special attention as the orchards, clearly Treadway's particular

  pride; but the garden was clipped and clean, and here, as everywhere else, things were kept in their places.

  WUMP-wump-wump!

  All the same, he'd be danged if he'd want to live down here, Adam thought. It was too hot. It wasn't healthy. Folks were forever getting fevers; and even the ones without fevers appeared to have forgotten, if they'd ever known, how to step smart. Things dragged.

  Also he did not care for those glowering field hands. It was not only the danger of an uprising; it was also the very idea of slavery. After all, Adam himself was the son of a slave. They called them indentured servants, but it came to the same thing. His mother had fetched six pound ten on the very deck of the vessel that brought her from Home. It was somewhat less than a healthy nigger would have been knocked down for, and of course it included the infant, Adam. She might have fetched more, maybe even seven pounds, if she had not been so haggard and gray-greenish in the face, being still seasick.

  Adam was not crybabying. He had been well treated. Apprenticed to one Mr. Sedgewick, willed by him at death, along with sundry articles of furniture, to his brother, also a joiner, he had learned a trade, had been protected by colonial laws, had not been whipped often—not as often as many a son of free folks he knew—and had been taught his letters, as demanded in the paper. He had been brought up in the fear of God. He'd been given many advantages.

  But he had never had a home.

  This was not anybody's fault, and Adam was not down on the world because of it. But he was conscious of this lack as a deaf man of his deafness, a blind man of his inability to see. He felt that he wouldn't really live, and be whole, until he had a house of his own.

  But it would not be one like this. It would be white and trim, and would have a httle white fence around it.

  Horace Treadway put the paper down. He came around to Adam, his right hand extended.

  "I think we understand one another, Captain."

  "Reckon we do," said Adam, and rose and took the hand.

  Mr. Treadway summoned slaves and ordered more punch, and when overseers and superintendents came, obsequious silent mulattoes, he gave directions for the unloading and reloading of the Goodwill.

  "I make quick decisions," he said when they were alone again, "and I have decided that you are a man who can be trusted. Now about that delivery to New York—"

  "Anythi
ng," Adam said grandly.

  "You will be paid a hundred pounds for the service, if this is satisfactory?"

  Adam, who had been sipping, almost choked.

  It was customary for the planter, after exacting a promise to make a delivery as part of the bargain, to offer to pay for this service, which offer it was customary for the skipper to refuse. No sum was ever mentioned. Certainly no sum like a hundred pounds was even dreamt of.

  What was he being asked to tote—the crown jewels?

  In any event, and rocked though he was, Adam had not the slightest intention of refusing the offer. The money would be his, not to be shared with any of the crew or with the owners; for this sort of service, by clear agreement, was one of the skipper's prerogatives.

  "It'll be enough," he said casually.

  "It would be more convenient to pay you here, leaving it to your honor, in case delivery could not be made, to return the money."

  He was not buttering Adam. He did trust him, though until a few hours earlier, when Adam had put into this little cove on the north side of Jamaica, these two men had never before seen one another.

  "I'll deliver it all right."

  "This is a passenger," Treadway said.

  "Oh."

  That did not make the matter any clearer. Adam assumed that it was a slave he was to transport—a courtesy gift, somebody with some special talent for making something, or doing something, which would appeal to the New York acquaintance. Well, he could be put into the hold, where the incoming molasses would not take up as much room as the outgoing eels had. But what black in all this world would any man be ready to pay one hundred pounds transportation for?

  "I have every confidence, though," Treadway added, "that you will get her there."

  "Her?"

  "Yes," said Treadway.

  Now here was something out of a different bag entirely. Sure, it still could be some fat old black hag who happened to be an expert seamstress, say, or a celebrated cook; but something told Adam that the passenger was younger. A cast-off doxy? Some seductive coffee-colored mustee or mustefino whom it was advisable for private reasons to get plumb out of this part of the world? It sounded like that.

  Not that for one hundred pounds Adam Long would have refused to carry her if she had been Satan's own sister, complete with horns and tail. It was the matter of discipline he was thinking of. Excepting Seth Selden, the hands, he believed, were of tolerably good character; but all the same, a loose woman in the listless heat of the horse latitudes—

  "Is she in good condition? Reason I ask, it might be advisable to keep her below and have the hatch battened down, the whole trip."

  "The person we are talking about," said Horace Treadway, "is my cousin, the Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadvvay-Paul."

  In those days politeness was not obligatory, but it was advisable. Adam leapt to his feet.

  "Say, I'm sorrier'n all outside I—"

  Treadway tossed a languid handkerchief.

  "It is nothing." He rose. "Ah, here she comes now."

  And Adam turned, and saw her, and his heart stopped.

  It was not only that the lady was lovely: it was that she was alive. Most of the white females you saw here in Jamaica looked as if the climate had them licked. They looked pale, drawn, like persons who are suffering inwardly. Nothing stood out about them, everything drooped. The sheen of sweat on their upper lips and on the backs of their hands might have been unavoidable, granted, but assuredly it was not becoming. In short, you felt sorry for them but not impelled toward them. Likely enough they hadn't been any great punkins to start with.

  This lady now was as alive as lightning, darned near as dazzling, too. She had a roundish face, perhaps slightly thick across the cheekbones for the most precious taste, but good, a clean face, and exquisitely tinted. She had a small nose washed with faint freckles. Her eyes were light brown with specks of green in them. Most dizzying of all was her hair. It was not powdered, though it was piled high in the formal fashion and surmounted by a huge "commode," a tower made up of rows of plaited muslin stiffened with wire, one above the other. The hair was dark red. It danced. It glistered. Never for an instant was it still, for its colors shifted constantly, so that it fascinated you like a fire in the fireplace, or the sea.

  "I'm sure you two will get along well together," the planter said.

  Maisie Treadway smiled; and the sun stood still a moment, ashamed.

  "Oh, I'm sure we will," she said.

  PART THREE

  Dangerous Waters

  nShe interfered with his prayers. Adam Long was not one of your foul-weather suppHcators. He preferred to pray whenever he just happened to feel like it and got the chance. He liked to pray alone, prayers made up as he went along: set prayers he regarded as Romish, and anyway how could you expect the Lord to listen when all you did was recite words somebody else had written down for you? Adam would pray in adversity but he preferred to pray in prosperity, where maybe it meant more. By himself he prayed somewhat as a Quaker might; and it was true that he'd long had a sneaking admiration for that sect; but he was seldom moved to pray aloud, in public places. He would join in the Amens at meeting house but he was not a faithful goer. He insisted upon the service each morning on deck rather for the sake of the immortal souls of the others than for any personal spiritual benefit. Regularity in prayer might well have a good effect on the men, he thought. His own greatest satisfaction was derived from prayers that no one else heard, about matters just between himself and his Maker.

  What's more, he did not like to have anybody see him when he prayed. He was not one to mutter a hasty Our Father behind his teeth in a moment of danger. He didn't even like to pray while lying flat in his bunk. He liked to get right down on his knees, the way a man should.

  In the cabin this had been easy. He and Forbes kept it clean, and not often had they both been there at the same time.

  In the forecastle, matters were different. It was a small forecastle in the first place, and Jethro Gardner, Eb Waters, John Bond, Carl Peterson, Abel Rellison, and Eliphalet Mellish had filled it before the unexpected arrival of Seth Selden. Now Captain Long and Mate Forbes were added to this company.

  True, Peterson and Waters for the time being were on deck, for that's where the irons were; but even so, their chests remained in the forecastle.

  The men took it well, at first. They even seemed amused by the spectacle of skipper and mate turned out of their quarters.

  It was all a lark for the lady, and she sought to win the hands to her by circulating and smiling among them; and for a while she did.

  Most of them had never seen anything like her, no more than had Adam Long. Her hair, the flecks of green in her brown eyes, the swift-striking warmth of her smile, the clothes she wore—these, even without her affability, would have dizzied the hands. She was obviously eager to please them, an attitude that flattered. "Lady Maisie" they called her. It could be that a shadow of gawkiness about her, as though she had not yet got used to the length of her own legs, touched their hearts. It certainly touched Adam's. What was she doing here? What was the matter with her friends, that they let her go off to a strange wild land alone? Why did Horace Treadway ofi:er such a thumping sum when he booked passage for her on a small smuggling vessel whose skipper he had only just met? Now and then Adam would catch her when she was not smiling at anybody, not chatting, or even conscious that she was being watched: she'd stare out across the sea, not necessarily toward England, not back over the way she had come, but anywhere, and there would be an expression of unutterable loneliness in her face. She'd look so lost! She shouldn't be here. She ought to be back in London, dancing at a rout, pirouetting, flirting, not zigzagging in the company of colonial louts through some of the most dangerous waters in the world.

  Treadway had come aboard to speak his farewell to her, but it was formal enough. The two had kissed, of course; and they had called one another "cousin"; but Adam, who had steeled himself to witness a tearful leavetak
ing, thought the business downright brusque. Nor had she stayed at the taffrail, waving an idiotic small handkerchief, for more than the few minutes it took to row Treadway ashore; and then she had gone promptly below, where her boxes, baskets, hampers, chests, bottles, bedrolls, and bundles had been put.

  Perhaps an hour later the slide went back and the Honorable Maisie de Lynn Treadway-Paul's head appeared. She tossed Adam a smile.

  "La, Captain! Would you be good enough to dispatch the valet de chamhre to me, pray?"

  He bowed—in part to hide his face.

  "Sure will, ma'am."

  The head disappeared, the slide was closed. Adam and the man at the wheel looked at one another.

  "What in Hell's a valet de chamhre?"

  "There's no need for profanity," Adam said. "It— It's a kind of servant, I think."

  "Didn't know she had a servant with her."

  "Hasn't. Reckon it's up to us to supply one."

  Thoughtful, he went forward. Goodwill carried no regular cook. Just

  abaft the foremast there was a sandbox made of bricks, and anybody who wanted to could cook anything he drew from the larder at any time he wished—subject, naturally, to regulations the captain might announce from time to time. It worked out well enough. Salt pork and Poor John and jerked beef, with bread when they could get it, and fish when they could catch any, made up most of their diet; and these things don't call for a fancy kitchen. It was understood that the skipper, mate and bosun did not have to cook their own food but could order anybody else to do so at any time; but in fact each of these officers took a hand now and then as circumstances suggested. There were no set meal times. They ate when they got hungry, that's all.