I was the first Robertson to rebel; I had been educated in England. On my way home I stopped at Jamaica, fell in love with your mother, and, without realizing the hell I was bringing her to, married her. Tom came with us to New Patmos.
I considered myself something of a radical in those days. When I learned of conditions here, I demanded that my father free our laborers. The old man—he died a few months later—merely shrugged and declared they were free. "Their unending toil and inbreeding have made machines of them," he said. "They are helpless now. You must care for them, my son; you can never leave the island again lest they starve."
God help me, I tried my best to make men and women of them again. You will see what success I had. Try in your turn if you must. It will be useless, but the effort will permit you to sleep. The centuries have dug a rut too deep for the creatures to climb out of. They have become like my canaries, poor....
The letter ended as if the hand of death had snatched pen from paper.
For a long while Jonathan stared at the pages. The singing of the canaries—their cages occupied every corner of the bedroom—finally roused him.
"Tom!"
"Yes sir." The old man had been waiting outside the door.
"Turn all these damned birds loose."
"But you'll need them to test the air in the mine, sir; the gas gets bad at times."
"Turn them loose, I said. At once!"