“Yours affectionately,
“Herbert Vaughan.”
Whatever effect the reading of the letter may have had upon Kate Vaughan, it certainly did not produce indignation. On the contrary, an expression of sympathy stole over her face as she mastered the contents or the epistle; and on finishing it, the phrase, “poor fellow!” dropped as if involuntarily, and just audibly, from her lips.
Not that she knew anything of Herbert Vaughan, more than the name, and that he was her cousin; but the word cousin has an attractive sound, especially in the ears of young people, equalling in interest – at times even surpassing – that of sister or brother.
Though uttered, as we have said, in a tone almost inaudible, the words reached the ears of her father.
“Poor fellow!” he repeated, turning sharply to his daughter, and regarding her with a glance of displeasure, “I am surprised, Kate, to hear you speak in that strain of one you know nothing about – one who has done nothing to deserve your compassion. An idle, good-for-nothing fellow – just as his father was before him. And only to think of it – coming over here a steerage passenger, in the very same ship with Mr Montagu Smythje! ’Sdeath! What a disgrace! Mr Smythje will be certain to know who he is – though he is not likely to associate with such canaille. He cannot fail to notice the fellow, however; and when he sees him here, will be sure to remember him. Ah! I must take some steps to prevent that. Poor fellow, indeed! Yes, poor enough, but not in that sense. Like his father, I suppose, who fiddled his life away among paint-brushes and palettes instead of following some profitable employment, and all for the sake of being called an artist! Poor fiddlestick! Bah! Don’t let me hear you talk in that strain again!”
And as Mr Vaughan ended his ill-natured harangue, he tore the wrapper off the newspaper, and endeavoured, among its contents, to distract his mind from dwelling longer on the unpleasant theme either of the epistle, or him who had written it.
The young girl, abashed and disconcerted by the unusual violence of the rebuke, sat with downcast eyes, and without making any reply. The red colour had deepened upon her cheeks, and mounted to her forehead; but, notwithstanding the outrage done to her feelings, it was easy to see that the sympathy she had expressed, for her poor but unknown cousin, was felt as sensibly as ever.
So far from having stifled or extinguished it, the behaviour of her father was more likely to have given it increase and strength: for the adage of the “stolen waters” is still true; and the forbidden fruit is as tempting now as upon the morning of creation. As it was in the beginning, so will it ever be.
Volume One – Chapter Five
The Slaver
A hot West Indian sun was rapidly declining towards the Caribbean Sea – as if hastening to cool his fiery orb in the blue water – when a ship, that had rounded Pedro Point, in the Island of Jamaica, was seen standing eastward for Montego Bay.
She was a three-masted vessel – a barque – as could be told by the lateen rig of her mizen-mast – and apparently of some three or four hundred tons burden.
As she was running under one of the gentlest of breezes, all her canvas was spread; and the weather-worn appearance of her sails denoted that she was making land at the termination of a long ocean voyage. This was further manifest by the faded paint upon her sides, and the dark, dirt-coloured blotches that marked the position of her hawse-holes and scuppers.
Besides the private ensign that streamed, pennon-like from her peak, another trailed over her taffrail; which, unfolded by the motion of the vessel, displayed a blue starry field with white and crimson stripes. In this case the flag was appropriate – that is, in its stripes and their colour. Though justly vaunted as the flag of the free, here was it covering a cargo of slaves: the ship was a slaver.
After getting fairly inside the bay, but still at a long distance from the town, she was observed suddenly to tack; and, instead of continuing on towards the harbour, head for a point on the southern side, where the shore was uninhabited and solitary.
On arriving within a mile of the land she took in sail, until every inch of canvas was furled upon her yards. Then the sharp rattling of the chain, as it dragged through the iron ring of the hawse-hole, announced the dropping of an anchor.
In a few moments after the ship swung round; and, drifting till the chain cable became taut, lay motionless upon the water.
The object for which the slaver had thus anchored short of the harbour will be learnt by our going aboard of her – though this was a privilege not granted to the idle or curious. Only the initiated were permitted to witness the spectacle of which her decks now became the theatre: only those who had an interest in the disposal of her cargo.
Viewed from a distance, the slaver lay apparently inert; but for all that a scene of active life was passing upon her deck – a scene of rare and painful interest.
She carried a cargo of two hundred human beings – “bales,” according to the phraseology of the slave-trader. These bales were not exactly alike. It was, as her skipper jocularly styled it, an “assorted cargo” – that is, one shipped on different points of the African coast, and, consequently, embracing many distinct varieties of the Ethiopian race. There was the tawny, but intelligent Mandingo, and by his side the Jolof of ebon hue. There the fierce and warlike Coromantee, alongside the docile and submissive Pawpaw; the yellow Ebo, with the visage of a baboon, wretched and desponding, face to face with the cannibal Moco, or chained wrist to wrist with the light-hearted native of Congo and Angola.
None, however, appeared of light heart on board the slaver. The horrors of the “middle passage” had equally affected them all, until the dancing Congese, and the Lucumi, prone to suicide, seemed equally to suffer from dejection. The bright picture that now presented itself before their eyes – a landscape gleaming with all the gay colours of tropical vegetation – was viewed by them with very different emotions. Some seemed to regard it with indifference; others it reminded of their own African homes, from which they had been dragged by rude and ruffian men; while not a few gazed upon the scene with feelings of keen apprehension – believing it to be the dreaded Koomi, the land of the gigantic cannibals – and that they had been brought thither to be eaten!
Reflection might have convinced them that this would scarcely be the intention of the Tobon-doo– those white tyrants who had carried them across the ocean. The hard, unhusked rice, and coarse maize corn – their only food during the voyage – were not viands likely to fatten them for the feast of Anthropophagi; and their once smooth and shining skins now exhibited a dry, shrivelled appearance, from the surface coating of dandruff, and the scars of the hideous cra-cra.
The blacks among them, by the hardships of that fearful voyage, had turned ashy grey and the yellows of a sickly and bilious hue. Males and females – for there were many of the latter – appeared to have been alike the objects of ill-usage, the victims of a starved stomach and a stifled atmosphere.
Some half-dozen of the latter – seen in the precincts of the cabin – presented a different aspect. These were young girls, picked from the common crowd on account of the superiority of their personal charms; and the flaunting vestments that adorned their bodies – contrasting with the complete nudity of their fellow-voyagers – told too plainly why they had been thus distinguished. A horrid contrast – wantonness in the midst of woe!
On the quarter-deck stood the slave-skipper – a tall, lathy individual of sallow hue – and, beside him, his mate – a dark-bearded ruffian; while a score of like stamp,