Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 06

by Unknown

Here her tears could no longer be suppressed; nor could we restrain ours; yet no one spoke to interrupt her grief. William alone uttered a few execrations against the aunt and nephew.

The weather continued rough, and the wind contrary, and we suffered much for a few days from the pitching of the vessel. We were still confined to the hold by the captain’s orders; yet we had no other cause of complaint, for the mate supplied all our wants in abundance. The captain, who had continued very ill from the wound in his foot, at length fevered, and his life was in danger; at his request, the lady left the hold and waited upon him. He begged forgiveness for the insult he had offered her; we were all allowed the freedom of the vessel; and she continued to nurse and watch over him with all that care and assiduity that belong to women. After a tedious passage of nine weeks, we arrived off Baltimore, in the State of Maryland; the captain, who recovered, being still very lame, though able to come upon deck. As soon as we cast anchor off the mouth of the harbour (for we did not enter) a message was sent to the town by the captain; and, on the following day, a regular market was held upon our deck, when we were put up to sale, and knocked down by an auctioneer to the highest bidder. William and Peter brought large sums, being expert tradesmen, and their time of service was short, compared with the rest. The others, like myself, were fit only for field work, and our time, to make up the sum of forty pounds, which we averaged, was three years. We all thought the captain would have given the injured lady her liberty, and a present, for her care of him; but avarice was his ruling passion, and stifled gratitude. He had paid her unprincipled husband a large sum for his victim, and was determined to reimburse himself. All the favour he conferred upon her was, that he did not dispose of her with the same regardlessness as to who was the purchaser, but kept her on board several days, while he made inquiries as to an eligible situation. Those who knew him gave him little credit for his endeavours, and did not scruple to say that he was as anxious to drive a good bargain for himself as to find a good master for her. Whatever was his motive, it turned out very fortunate for her, as I heard afterwards; for a rich shipowner of the city, whose wife had died a few months before, satisfied the captain’s cupidity, and took her to his house as a governess to his children, three of whom were daughters. Before I left Maryland, I heard that she had learned, through the English papers, which her master regularly got, by one or other of the many vessels that traded to this port, that her unprincipled husband had been condemned and executed for robbing his aunt of a large sum of money, and forging an order upon her banker, not many weeks after we had left Scotland. Many years afterwards, I learned, in Edinburgh, from William, who had returned, after a long stay in Baltimore, with a considerable sum of money, and had commenced builder, that before he left the city, she had married her master, and was as wealthy and happy as any lady in the province. But what struck me most forcibly was, the just retribution that had taken place in her singular fortunes. Her stepmother was, when he left, actually living an humble dependent upon her bounty, in Baltimore. It appeared that, after she had succeeded in forcing her stepdaughter into the fatal marriage with her nephew, and obtained the object she plotted for—possession of the whole property—she herself fell a victim to a husband nearly as bad—a gambler and adventurer, of a most prepossessing figure and address; the consequence was, that all she possessed was lost by him at play, or squandered in dissipation. Both had been living in London in extreme want, when he was detected in swindling transactions to a considerable amount. Whether guilty or innocent of the fraudulent acts of her husband, there were many suspicious circumstances which she could not explain to the satisfaction of a jury, and both were convicted and banished to the plantations. By good fortune for them, the vessel that brought them out, bound for Norfolk, in Virginia, had suffered much in a storm, put into Baltimore in a leaky state, and there landed the convicts, handing them over to the governor of Maryland. Eliza’s husband, who was in the magistracy of the city, got the list of their names when they were transferred from the ship to the prison. Several of them had died on the voyage, from bad fare, confinement, and harsh treatment; mostly all were sickly, more or less; and Marian was very ill. From her manners and appearance, Eliza’s husband became interested in her; and, to save her life, had her removed from the hospital in the jail, to his own house. You may form your own conjectures of the astonishment of both when they met. Eliza was the most forgiving and gentle of creatures, as she had shown in her attention to the captain after his bad usage of her; and, at her request, her husband got from the governor a grant of their services, during the term the law had condemned them to serve. The husband ran from the country a few months after his arrival, and had not been heard of when William came away; but the wife remained under the protection of her she had attempted to ruin.

To return to myself after this long digression, I and other two of the young Aberdeen lads were purchased by a farmer, and removed that afternoon to his home, about twelve miles from Baltimore. A more pitiable figure, as regards dress, never landed on any shore. I had still the same remnant of clothes with which I had left Edinburgh; but now they scarcely held together, and were besmeared with tar; my feet and legs were clean, but shoes or stockings were a luxury I had been long unused to. My long yellow hair hung down my back, but covering I had none for my head. My heart was light and joyous, as was that of my companions. Our three years of bondage, we thought, would soon pass away, and the golden period commence. During our ride over the rough and ill-made road, in a waggon in which our master had brought a load of tobacco to town, our whole conversation was of our future golden prospects; but, alas! we were soon awakened from our pleasant dreams—for, upon our arrival at the farm, which was not until some time after nightfall, we were placed in a dark out-house, and the door barred upon us. Our master was a sour-looking, taciturn man, who had scarcely spoken to us all the way, save to inquire our ages, and what kind of work we could best perform. For some time we stood close by the door, unable to speak from surprise and fear. So dark was the place where we were confined, that we could not see our own hands, even when they touched our faces. After standing thus, melancholy and terrified, the bars were withdrawn, and our master entered with a lanthorn and a basket, in which was abundance of pork and Indian corn, boiled whole, and still warm, to be eaten as bread. In a surly manner, he ordered us to take our supper quickly, that we might be ready to turn out in the morning to work. Young and hungry, we were not long in dispatching our meal, when, pointing to a quantity of dry grass at one end of our prison (for I can call it by no other name), he lifted his lanthorn, and left us to ruminate upon our melancholy situation and dreary prospects under such a taskmaster. None of us felt inclined to speak; yet it was some time ere any of us could close our eyes, in consequence of the noise made by the bull-frogs in a swamp near the farm. If we had not heard them as we approached the place, and inquired what caused the, to us, strange sounds, we would have been terribly alarmed. Tired nature at length prevailed, and I sank asleep. Before sunrise next morning, the harsh voice of our master, whip in hand, roused us from repose. We started up, and followed him into the enclosure in front of his barn and house.

This was an oblong square, enclosed with stout wooden paling, very thickly set, on the banks of a beautiful stream. At one side were the buildings, composed entirely of wood—the forest, which extended as far as the eye could reach, was at no great distance in the rear—everything around indicated the greatest plenty of all that was necessary for the enjoyment of life, as far as food could administer to it; there were several cows and horses, sleek and fat, feeding under a shed; brood sows, with numerous progenies; and fowls actually swarming around. The morning was beautiful; the air, filled with a thousand grateful odours from the fields, imparting to our young minds a buoyancy we had been strangers to since we had left our own native shores. Our hasty survey was made in a few minutes, while we stood waiting further orders. Our master, who had entered another part of the building, returned, accompanied by two of the most miserable-looking men I had ever seen—as wretchedly clad as I was myself, with the exception that they had broad straw-hats upon their heads. Misery and they seemed to have been long intimates; my heart sank within me at their appearance; both had wooden clogs, consisting of a cut of about a foot long from the branch of a tree, chained to their right leg at the ancle; and this they carried over their arm. In addition, one of them had a stout collar round his neck, from which projected three iron hooks, about a foot from his head. We burst into tears, thinking we were to be similarly equipped, and would have fled, had flight been possible; all the riches in the world we would have counted a mean reward to the person who would have transported us from the tyrant’s farm-yard to the beautiful hills and valleys of Scotland. As they came to where we stood gazing through our tears, three tall, bony, sallow-looking lads, sons of the proprietor, issued from the principal building, with implements upon their shoulders, one of which was given to each of us, and we were now to begin our work. Before we proceeded, our master said to us, in his harsh manner—

‘Mind ye, lads, you are my bound servants for three years, to do my will—mayhap for more. If you offer to run away, I will catch you again; and, besides punishment, dress you so—and he pointed with malicious triumph to his victims—to prevent your running; and, mark me, for every day you are absent, you serve me two.’

In spite of his threat, I believe there was not one of us who did not resolve to make his escape from him the first opportunity. Had he treated us kindly, we would have obeyed him with pleasure, nor thought of anything but completing our period of service; but humanity was foreign to his nature, and short-sighted avarice alone possessed all his thoughts. He had himself been a convict in his youth; but had for many years been free, and had purchased, when it was yet part of the forest, the lot of land he now cultivated. All had been the creation of his own labour, and he was proud of it to excess. When in good humour, which was seldom the case, his feats against, and escapes from, the Indians, and praises of his lands, were the only things upon which he was loquacious.

We soon learned that our two companions in misery were government convicts, and very bad characters; both had been guilty of many crimes, and were so hardened that nothing but the strictest surveillance and coercion could keep them in subjection. They were like tigers in chains, and threatened the most fearful revenge, as soon as the period of their servitude expired. This they did openly to his face; and not a day passed without an altercation, or without some punishment being inflicted upon them, when they would threaten again until they were tired, and wish that the Indians might give us a hot wakening before morning, and yield them an opportunity of making tobacco pouches of the scalps of the master and his sons.

I often wondered how he kept his temper; he seemed to treat them with scorn—for his cool, calculating mind had so long been familiar with the perils of his situation, that he heeded them not so long as he conceived himself secure. To us three youths, who trembled at his voice, he was not excessively cruel, further than working us almost beyond our strength. From sunrise to sunset, we were allowed no intervals but a few minutes to swallow our food, of which we had abundance and to spare.

‘Eat well, work well,’ he used to say, ‘is American fashion.’

I had been with him about six months, and was literally naked; my skin had become hard and brown as an Indian’s; all my clothing consisted of some pieces of sheep skin I had contrived for winter wear, and a straw hat of coarse enough manufacture, which I had plaited and made for myself on the Sabbath-days, to screen me from the intolerable glare and heat of the sun. Our appearance gave us no concern, for we were completely excluded from all intercourse with human beings, except those upon the plantation; and strangers were seldom seen in our neighbourhood. At the time I speak of, our master had been down to Baltimore, with a waggon load of produce, consisting of pork and salted beef, &c. He had made an excellent market, and returned in a fit of good humour; at our return from labour, he called us three into the house, as we were passing to our prison, to be locked up for the night. We were surprised at the invitation, for we had never been within the walls of the dwelling-house. As soon as we entered, he inquired if we would purchase any clothing from him, seeing we were so much in want of them. Scarcely could we believe our ears and eyes, when, opening a box, he displayed canvas jackets, trousers, and check shirts.