The big-hearted Scotchman smothers the gratitude on the lips of young Jack Paul, and hands him out the door. As the latter goes down the stair, Shipowner Younger calls after him with a kind of anticipatory crow of exultation:
“And, lad! if ye get ever to Lunnon, come doon to Westminster, and see me just passin’ the laws!”
The John O’ Gaunt lies off the Guinea coast. The last one of its moaning, groaning, black cargo of slaves has come over the side from the shore boats, and been conveyed below. The John O’ Gaunt has been chartered by a Bristol firm to carry three thousand slaves from the Guineas to Kingston; it will require ten voyages, and this is the beginning of the first.
The three hundred unhappy blacks who make the cargo are between decks. There they squat in four ranks, held by light wrist-chains to two great iron cables which are stretched forward and aft.
There are four squatting ranks of them; each rank sits face to face with its fellow rank across the detaining cable. Thus will they sit and suffer, cramped and choked and half-starved in that tropical hell between decks, through those two-score days and nights which lie between the John O’ Gaunt and Kingston.
Captain Denbigh keeps the deck until the anchors are up. The wind is forward of the beam, and now, when its canvas is shaken out, the John O’ Gaunt begins to move through the water on the starboard tack. The motion is slow and sulky, as though the ship were sick in its heart at the vile traffic it has come to, and must be goaded by stiffest gales before it consents to any show of speed. Captain Denbigh leaves the order, “West by north!” with second mate Boggs, who has the watch on deck; and, after glancing aloft at the sails and over the rail at the weather, waddles below to drink “Prosperous voyage!” with his first mate and fellow owner, young Jack Paul.
He finds that youthful mariner gloomy and sad.
The cabin where the two are berthed is roomy. At one end is a case of bottles—brandy and rum, the property of Captain Denbigh. At the other is a second lock-fast case, filled with books, the sailing companions of first mate Jack Paul. There are text-books—French, Spanish, Latin and Greek; for first mate Jack Paul is of a mind to learn languages during his watch below. There are books on navigation and astronomy, as well as volumes by De Foe and Richardson. Also, one sees the comedies of Congreve, and the poems of Alexander Pope. To these latter, first mate Jack Paul gives much attention; his inquiring nose is often between their covers. He studies English elegancies of speech and manner in Congreve, Pope and Richardson, while the crop-eared De Foe feeds his fancy for adventure.
As Captain Denbigh rolls into the cabin, first mate Jack Paul is not thinking on books. He has upon his mind the poor black wretches between decks, the muffled murmur of whose groans, together with the clanking of their wrist-chains, penetrates the bulkhead which forms the forward cabin wall. Captain Denbigh never heeds the silence and the sadness of his junior officer and partner, but marches, feet spread wide and sailorwise, to the locker which holds his bottles. Making careful selection, he brings out one of rum and another of sherry.
“You not likin’ rum,” explains Captain Denbigh, as he sets the sherry within reach of first mate Jack Paul.