“Well,” replied Jack, “that’s better than being killed and stuffed.”
“Mayhap it is,” replied Mesty, “I tink very different now dan I tink den—but still, its women’s work and not suit me.
“They put me with others into a cave until the ship came, and then we were sent on board, put in irons, and down in the hold, where you could not sit upright—I wanted to die, but could not: others died every day, but I lived—I was landed in America, all bone, and I fetched very little money—they laughed at me as they bid their dollars: at last a man took me away, and I was on a plantation with hundreds more, but too ill to work, and not intending to work. The other slaves asked me if I was a fetish-man; I said yes, and I would fetish any man that I did not like: one man laughed, and I held up my finger; I was too weak to get up, for my blood had long boiled with fever, and I said to him, ‘you shall die;’ for I meant to have killed him, as soon as I was well. He went away, and in three days he was dead. I don’t know how, but all the slaves feared me, and my master feared me, for he had seen the man die, and he, although he was a white man, believed in fetish, and he wished to sell me again, but no one would buy a fetish-man, so he made friends with me; for I told him, if I was beat he should die, and he believed me. He took me into his house, and I was his chief man, and I would not let the other slaves steal, and he was content. He took me with him to New York, and there after two years, when I had learned English, I ran away, and got on board of an English ship—and they told me to cook. I left the ship as soon as I came to England, and offered myself to another, and they said they did not want a cook; and I went to another, and they asked me if I was a good cook: everybody seemed to think that a black man must be a cook, and nothing else. At last I starve, and I go on board man-of-war, and here I am, after having been a warrior and a prince, cook, steward and everyting else, boiling kettle for de young gentlemen.”
“Well,” replied Jack, “at all events that is better than being a slave.”
Mesty made no reply: any one who knows the life of a midshipman’s servant will not be surprised at his silence.
“Now, tell me, do you think you were right in being so revengeful, when you were in your own country?” inquired Jack.
“I tink so den, Massa Easy, sometimes when my blood boil, I tink so now—oder time, I no know what to tink—but when a man love very much, he hate very much.”
“But you are now a Christian, Mesty.”
“I hear all that your people say,” replied the negro, “and it make me tink—I no longer believe in fetish, anyhow.”
“Our religion tells us to love our enemies.”