In the meantime Mr. Block had made all preparations for landing, and had the boats lowered and ranged alongside, with sufficient rice to last the blacks a week or ten days. The men and boys were sent first. When they were called up from the hold and ordered into the boats not one of them moved. They evidently divined what had been going on and dreaded leaving the vessel, though our Kroomen tried to explain that they would be safe and free on shore. The explanation was without effect, however, and they refused to move. The could only understand that they were changing masters, and they preferred the present ones. Sending three or four men down, I told them to pass up the negroes one at a time. Only a passive resistance was offered, such as one often sees exhibited by cattle being loaded on the cars or on a steamer, and were silent, not uttering a word of complaint. By noon the men were all on shore, and then we began with the girls. They were more demonstrative than the men, and by their looks and gestures begged not to be taken out of the vessel. I was much moved, for it was a painful duty, and I had become interested in these beings, so utterly helpless, so childlike in their dependence on those around them. And I could not help thinking what their fate would be, thrown upon the shore hundreds of miles from their homes, and among a people strange to them in language.
Even Mr. Block was deeply stirred. "He had not shipped," he said, "for such work." I went to my cabin and left him in charge. In the course of an hour he reported, "All ashore, sir." I told him to have the gig manned and I would go on shore with Colonel Royal, and get a receipt from Governor Marshall for my late cargo. The colonel declined to accompany me, alleging sickness and requesting me to get the necessary papers signed. No doubt he felt safer on board than within reach of King George.
We landed through the surf on a sandy beach, on which the waves of the Atlantic were fretting. Near by was a thick grove of cocoanut trees, under which in groups of four and five were those who had just been landed. They were seated on the ground, their heads resting on their knees, in a position of utter abnegation, surrounded by three or four hundred chattering savages of all ages, headed by the king. With the exception of him and a few of his head men, the clothing of the company would not have covered a rag baby. They were no doubt discussing the appearance of the strangers and making their selections.
I found the governor's house and the houses of the few settlers some distance back on a slight elevation. The governor was comfortably, though plainly situated, with a large family around him. He gave me a receipt for the number of blacks landed, but said it would be impossible for him to prevent the natives from taking and enslaving them. I agreed with him, and said he must repeat to the king what I had told him. Then bidding him good-by I returned on board, sad and weary as one often feels after being relieved of a great burden. At the same time I wondered whether the fate of these people would have been any worse if the captain of the slaver had succeeded in landing them in the Brazils or the West Indies. Sierra Leone being a crown colony, the English could land all their captives there and provide for them until they were able to work for themselves. In this respect they had a great advantage over us.
Getting under way, I proceeded to Monrovia to land Colonel Royal, and then to Porto Praya, our squadron's headquarters. There I found Commodore Gregory in the flagship corvette Portsmouth, and reported to him. Soon after the Porpoise came in, and I joined my old craft, giving up my command of the captured slaver rather reluctantly.
MR. CHARLES W. CHESNUTT'S STORIES by W. D. Howells
The critical reader of the story called The Wife of his Youth, which appeared in these pages two years ago, must have noticed uncommon traits in what was altogether a remarkable piece of work. The first was the novelty of the material; for the writer dealt not only with people who were not white, but with people who were not black enough to contrast grotesquely with white people,—who in fact were of that near approach to the ordinary American in race and color which leaves, at the last degree, every one but the connoisseur in doubt whether they are Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-African. Quite as striking as this novelty of the material was the author's thorough mastery of it, and his unerring knowledge of the life he had chosen in its peculiar racial characteristics. But above all, the story was notable for the passionless handling of a phase of our common life which is tense with potential tragedy; for the attitude, almost ironical, in which the artist observes the play of contesting emotions in the drama under his eyes; and for his apparently reluctant, apparently helpless consent to let the spectator know his real feeling in the matter. Any one accustomed to study methods in fiction, to distinguish between good and bad art, to feel the joy which the delicate skill possible only from a love of truth can give, must have known a high pleasure in the quiet self-restraint of the performance; and such a reader would probably have decided that the social situation in the piece was studied wholly from the outside, by an observer with special opportunities for knowing it, who was, as it were, surprised into final sympathy.
Now, however, it is known that the author of this story is of negro blood,—diluted, indeed, in such measure that if he did not admit this descent few would imagine it, but still quite of that middle world which lies next, though wholly outside, our own. Since his first story appeared he has contributed several others to these pages, and he now makes a showing palpable to criticism in a volume called The Wife of his Youth, and Other Stories of the Color Line; a volume of Southern sketches called The Conjure Woman; and a short life of Frederick Douglass, in the Beacon Series of biographies. The last is a simple, solid, straight piece of work, not remarkable above many other biographical studies by people entirely white, and yet important as the work of a man not entirely white treating of a great man of his inalienable race. But the volumes of fiction ARE remarkable above many, above most short stories by people entirely white, and would be worthy of unusual notice if they were not the work of a man not entirely white.
It is not from their racial interest that we could first wish to speak of them, though that must have a very great and very just claim upon the critic. It is much more simply and directly, as works of art, that they make their appeal, and we must allow the force of this quite independently of the other interest. Yet it cannot always be allowed. There are times in each of the stories of the first volume when the simplicity lapses, and the effect is as of a weak and uninstructed touch. There are other times when the attitude, severely impartial and studiously aloof, accuses itself of a little pompousness. There are still other times when the literature is a little too ornate for beauty, and the diction is journalistic, reporteristic. But it is right to add that these are the exceptional times, and that for far the greatest part Mr. Chesnutt seems to know quite as well what he wants to do in a given case as Maupassant, or Tourguenief, or Mr. James, or Miss Jewett, or Miss Wilkins, in other given cases, and has done it with an art of kindred quiet and force. He belongs, in other words, to the good school, the only school, all aberrations from nature being so much truancy and anarchy. He sees his people very clearly, very justly, and he shows them as he sees them, leaving the reader to divine the depth of his feeling for them. He touches all the stops, and with equal delicacy in stories of real tragedy and comedy and pathos, so that it would be hard to say which is the finest in such admirably rendered effects as The Web of Circumstance, The Bouquet, and Uncle Wellington's Wives. In some others the comedy degenerates into satire, with a look in the reader's direction which the author's friend must deplore.