All that afternoon, through the dingy windows of the old building, I could see the snow falling soft and steadily, covering the countless roofs of the city, and fancying the multitude of comfortable happy homes which these white roofs hid, and the sweet-tempered, gracious women there, with their children close about their knees. I thought I would like to bring this little live baby back to the others, with its strange, pathetic story, out of the buried years where it has been hidden with dead people so long, and give it a place and home among us all again.
I only premise that I have left the facts of the history unaltered, even in the names; and that I believe them to be, in every particular, true.
On the 22d of August, 1696, this baby, a puny, fretful boy, was carried down the street of Port Royal, Jamaica, and on board the "barkentine" Reformation, bound for Pennsylvania; a Province which, as you remember, Du Chastellux, a hundred years later, described as a most savage country which he was compelled to cross on his way to the burgh of Philadelphia, on its border. To this savage country our baby was bound. He had by way of body-guard his mother, a gentle Quaker lady; his father, Jonathan Dickenson, a wealthy planter, on his way to increase his wealth in Penn's new settlement; three negro men, four negro women, and an Indian named Venus, all slaves of the said Dickenson; the captain, his boy, seven seamen, and two passengers. Besides this defence, the baby's ship was escorted by thirteen sail of merchantmen under convoy of an armed frigate. For these were the days when, to the righteous man, terror walked abroad, in the light and the darkness. The green, quiet coasts were but the lurking-places of savages, and the green, restless seas more treacherous with pirates. Kidd had not yet buried his treasure, but was prowling up and down the eastern seas, gathering it from every luckless vessel that fell in his way. The captain, Kirle, debarred from fighting by cowardice, and the Quaker Dickenson, forbidden by principle, appear to have set out upon their perilous journey, resolved to defend themselves by suspicion, pure and simple. They looked for treachery behind every bush and billow; the only chance of safety lay, they maintained, in holding every white man to be an assassin and every red man a cannibal until they were proved otherwise.
The boy was hired by Captain Kirle to wait upon him. His name was John Hilliard, and he was precisely what any of these good-humored, mischievous fellows outside would have been, hired on a brigantine two centuries ago; disposed to shirk his work in order to stand gaping at Black Ben fishing, or to rub up secretly his old cutlass for the behoof of Kidd, or the French when they should come, while the Indian Venus stood by looking on, with the baby in her arms.
The aged man is invariably set down as chief of the company, though the captain held all the power and the Quaker all the money. But white hair and a devout life gave an actual social rank in those days, obsolete now, and Robert Barrow was known as a man of God all along the coast-settlements from Massachusetts to Ashley River, among whites and Indians. Years before, in Yorkshire, his inward testimony (he being a Friend) had bidden him go preach in this wilderness. He asked of God, it is said, rather to die; but was not disobedient to the heavenly call, and came and labored faithfully. He was now returning from the West Indies, where he had carried his message a year ago.
The wind set fair for the first day or two; the sun was warm. Even the grim Quaker Dickenson might have thought the white-sailed fleet a pretty sight scudding over the rolling green plain, if he could have spared time to his jealous eyes from scanning the horizon for pirates. Our baby, too, saw little of sun or sea; for, being but a sickly baby, with hardly vitality enough to live from day to day, it was kept below, smothered in the finest of linens and the softest of paduasoy.
One morning when the fog lifted, Dickenson's watch for danger was rewarded. They had lost their way in the night; the fleet was gone, the dead blue slopes of water rolled up to the horizon on every side and were met by the dead blue sky, without the break of a single sail or the flicker of a flying bird. For fifteen days they beat about without any apparent aim other than to escape the enemies whom they hourly expected to leap out from behind the sky-line. On the sixteenth day friendly signs were made to them from shore. "A fire made a great Smoak, and People beckoned to us to putt on Shoar," but Kirle and Dickenson, seized with fresh fright, put about and made off as for their lives, until nine o'clock that night, when, seeing two signal-lights, doubtless from some of their own convoy, they cried out, "The French! the French!" and tacked back again as fast as might be. The next day, Kirle being disabled by a jibbing boom, Dickenson brought his own terrors into command, and for two or three days whisked the unfortunate barkentine up and down the coast, afraid of both sea and shore, until finally, one night, he run her aground on a sand-bar on the Florida reefs. Wondering much at this "judgment of God," Dickenson went to work. Indeed, to do him justice, he seems to have been always ready enough to use his burly strength and small wit, trusting to them to carry him through the world wherein his soul was beleaguered by many inscrutable judgments of God and the universal treachery of his brother-man.
The crew abandoned the ship in a heavy storm. A fire was kindled in the bight of a sand-hill and protected as well as might be with sails and palmetto branches; and to this, Dickenson, with "Great trembling and Pain of Hartt," carried his baby in his own arms and laid it in its mother's breast. Its little body was pitiful to see from leanness, and a great fever was upon it. Robert Barrow, the crippled captain, and a sick passenger shared the child's shelter. "Whereupon two Canibals appeared, naked, but for a breech-cloth of plaited straw, with Countenances bloody and furious, and foaming at the Mouth"; but on being given tobacco, retreated inland to alarm the tribe. The ship's company gathered together and sat down to wait their return, expecting cruelty, says Dickenson, and dreadful death. Christianity was now to be brought face to face with heathenness, which fact our author seems to have recognized under all his terror. "We began by putting our trust in the Lord, hoping for no Mercy from these bloody-minded Creatures; having too few guns to use except to enrage them, a Motion arose among us to deceive them by calling ourselves Spaniards, that Nation having some influence over them"; to which lie all consented, except Robert Barrow. It is curious to observe how these early Christians met the Indians with the same weapons of distrust and fraud which have proved so effective with us in civilizing them since.
In two or three hours the savages appeared in great numbers, bloody and furious, and in their chronic state of foaming at the mouth. "They rushed in upon us, shouting 'Nickalees? Nickalees?' (Un Ingles.) To which we replied 'Espania.' But they cried the more fiercely 'No Espania, Nickalees!' and being greatly enraged thereat, seized upon all Trunks and Chests and our cloathes upon our Backs, leaving us each only a pair of old Breeches, except Robert Barrow, my wife, and child, from whom they took nothing." The king, or Cassekey, as Dickenson calls him, distinguished by a horse-tail fastened to his belt behind, took possession of their money and buried it, at which the good Quaker spares not his prayers for punishment on all pagan robbers, quite blind to the poetic justice of the burial, as the money had been made on land stolen from the savages. The said Cassekey also set up his abode in their tent; kept all his tribe away from the woman and child and aged man; kindled fires; caused, as a delicate attention, the only hog remaining on the wreck to be killed and brought to them for a midnight meal; and, in short, comported himself so hospitably, and with such kindly consideration toward the broad-brimmed Quaker, that we are inclined to account him the better-bred fellow of the two, in spite of his scant costume of horse-tail and belt of straw. As for the robbery of the ship's cargo, no doubt the Cassekey had progressed far enough in civilization to know that to the victors belong the spoils. Florida, for two years, had been stricken down from coast to coast by a deadly famine, and in all probability these cannibals returned thanks to whatever God they had for this windfall of food and clothes devoutly as our forefathers were doing at the other end of the country for the homes which they had taken by force. There is a good deal of kinship among us in circumstances, after all, as well as in blood. The chief undoubtedly recognized a brother in Dickenson, every whit as tricky as himself, and would fain, savage as he was, have proved him to be something better; for, after having protected them for several days, he came into their tent and gravely and with authority set himself to asking the old question, "Nickalees?"
"To which, when we denied, he directed his Speech to the Aged Man, who would not conceal the Truth, but answered in Simplicity, 'Yes.' Then he cried in Wrath 'Totus Nickalees!' and went out from us. But returned in great fury with his men, and stripped all Cloathes from us."