Caribbean: a novel Part 19

'I'd like to hear it ... since he's one of my men.'

'On the Dutch slaver that brought him here he was chained belowdecks where something clacked incessantly against the ship's side-right at his head: "Vavak! Vavak!" To keep from going mad, he took the sound into himself. Day and night, he repeated Vavak, Vavak, as if he was in charge, not the ship. So when he staggered off the ship muttering "Vavak, Vavak," they thought that was his name.'

'He must have a real name.'

'Who knows? But this we do know, Pembroke. If he keeps talkin' to my n.i.g.g.e.rs, I'll see him hanged ... or worse.'

Twice Rostgaard had used that ominous phrase 'or worse,' and John was content not to know what particular barbarity was implied, but that Rostgaard intended enforcing it if either his Cudjoe or John's Vavak misbehaved, he had no doubt.

The two slaves identified by Rostgaard as troublemakers were of contrasting backgrounds. Both had been born in Africa, captured by Portuguese slavers, and deposited in barrac.o.o.ns of the big Danish fort, Fredericksborg, located near where the famed Gold Coast (to the east) met the Ivory Coast (to the west). But Cudjoe, Rostgaard's slave, was an Ashanti, from a nearby tribe famed for its warriors who gave infinite trouble when forced into slavery, while Vavak had been captured by black slavers from a far distant tribe, the peaceful and superior Mandingos, and sold to the Portuguese. Each in his own way rotted in slavery and l.u.s.ted for freedom. Cudjoe collected arms and prepared to lead a violent rebellion against the outnumbered whites-208 Danes, Frenchmen, Englishmen and Spaniards versus 1,087 Ashanti, Fante, Denkyira and one Mandingo-while Vavak moved quietly to inspirit his fellow slaves and prepare them for peaceful and in time irresistible pressure against the owners.

Since their plantations were side by side, the two slaves conspired to meet, but the rules against what the owners called 'wandering' were so severe that whenever Rostgaard heard that Cudjoe had strayed even a short distance, he tied him to a tree and gave him twenty lashes. And once in June when he caught Vavak talking among the slaves on his plantation, he took it upon himself to give Pembroke's slave a thorough beating.

When John heard of this he rode over to Rostgaard's big house, a sorry affair kept in permanent disarray, to protest, but the older man was not about to tolerate a lecture from an English intruder: 'If you refuse to discipline your slaves, I'll have to do it for you,' and he vowed to repeat the lashings if Vavak ever again set foot across the borderline between the two plantations.

John, in some confusion, visited the Lemvigs to try to unravel the problems he was having with Rostgaard, but was given little consolation: 'The reason there was a vacancy for you at Lunaberg, Pembroke, was that Rostgaard had terrified all of the young men Poggenberg sent out to run the plantation. The chaps couldn't suffer that man's overbearing ways and fled.'

'What can I do?'

'I'll tell you one thing not to do. Don't intercede on behalf of your slaves. If you do, Rostgaard will turn all the whites on the island against you. After all, he does have the law on his side. The new rules make that clear.' And Elzabet reinforced this counsel: 'Leave him alone. He's a monster.'

The truth of what the Lemvigs had advised was demonstrated in July when Rostgaard captured one of his own slaves who had run away and remained hidden for twelve weeks and one day. Since this rendered the slave guilty under new Rule 5, Rostgaard decided to teach the other slaves in his region a lesson, so a sergeant accompanied by a soldier with a drum went to the two other plantations on the hill, summoning the slaves and their owners to an a.s.sembly in front of Rostgaard's house, and there the bearded owner prepared his punishment.

A small platform built of logs freshly cut was flanked on one side by the sergeant, on the other by the drummer, who kept up a lively tattoo. Up an improvised stairway climbed Rostgaard, accompanied by a slave who carried in his arms for all to see a huge knife, a coil of rope and a saw. When the owner was in position, the runaway was dragged from a hut, brought before the platform, and lashed to a pole, where a white a.s.sistant produced a huge bullwhip, well knotted, with which he applied a hundred and fifty lashes. With each fall of the whip, the drummer beat a flourish on his drum while Rostgaard, from above, counted. Well before the hundredth stroke, the runaway fainted, but the punishment continued.

Finally, the drum halted, and the inert slave was dragged onto the platform, where cold water was thrown over him so that he would be awake for the next and worst portion of his discipline. When he was revived and tied by ropes in a prostrate position, Rostgaard signaled the sergeant, who produced a copy of the new rules, which he read in entirety. 'Listen to that,' Rostgaard bellowed from the platform. 'That's how things are going to be from now on.' And he saluted the soldier, who saluted back, signifying that the Crown of Denmark approved what he was about to do.

From the platform Rostgaard shouted so that all of Lemvig's and Pembroke's slaves could hear: 'This one runaway, stayed away twelve weeks, law says he loses a leg.' And with that, he grabbed the big knife, felt its keenness, and began sawing away on the slave's right leg above the knee. When that cut was made, with blood gushing forth, the slave was turned face up so that the front cut could be made. Almost without stopping, Rostgaard reached for the saw and began screeching through the bone. When the leg was detached, Rostgaard held it aloft for the other slaves to see: 'This is what happens if you ever run away.' And then, to Pembroke's horror, the big Dane launched into a sermonlike speech about how wrong it was for a slave to run away and deprive his master, who really cared for him like a father, of his property: 'When you run away, you steal from your owner what is rightfully his, your work in helping him to make sugar so that he can clothe and feed you.'

The dismembered slave was dragged away and the platform torn down. The sergeant saluted, and the soldier kept beating his drum as they left the field. In the heavy silence Lemvig whispered to Pembroke: 'What in the name of G.o.d can the slaves think who were made to watch that hideousness?'

The two black leaders, each so different from the other, had asked the same question even before the cutting of the leg had begun. While the lashes were still falling, Cudjoe, the wild Ashanti, and Vavak, the patient Mandingo, moved slowly and almost imperceptibly not into contact with each other but close enough to flash eye signals. With extreme self-control, Vavak nodded his head ever so slightly; and Pembroke, who had turned away, unable to watch the grisly sawing, chanced to see the look of horror on his slave's face and the fleeting nod of acquiescence to a signal from elsewhere. Looking quickly in the direction of Vavak's eyes, he saw a dark visage of someone he a.s.sumed to be Rostgaard's troublesome slave Cudjoe.

It was then that the Englishman Pembroke, surrounded by Danish planters, deduced that a slave insurrection of some kind must soon erupt. The scene he had just witnessed was so far from what might have happened at Trevelyan had a runaway been captured that he knew there would have to be some response, and given the hatred he saw on the faces of his own well-treated slaves who had been marched some distance to witness the punishment, he supposed that Rostgaard's brutalized ones must be even more tormented and vengeful.

It was then, in late July, that he launched upon a program of doing everything possible to ameliorate the lot of his Lunaberg slaves. He inst.i.tuted more sensible work routines, fed them a little better, and took special pains to conciliate Vavak, who betrayed no sign that he knew what the master was doing. Not a single reflex indicated that a kind of bond had been established between the two, and when John tried to talk with the slave, Vavak feigned inability to understand the Englishman when he spoke Danish. Nevertheless, John continued trying to communicate, and from time to time caught a fugitive spark of understanding. In this way the critical months of August and September pa.s.sed.

But in October 1733, Rostgaard caught another runaway and preparations were made for one more public dismemberment, with the sergeant and drummer pa.s.sing from one plantation to another, a.s.sembling the slaves to watch the gruesome exhibition. But when the runaway was being hauled to the ugly platform from which he would soon leave a beaten cripple, he suddenly broke away from his captors, ran with fierce speed to the edge of the promontory on which the three plantations rested, and pitched himself in screaming defiance down the great height onto the rocks below, where his corpse, crushed and bleeding, was seen by those crowding the edge.

Rostgaard, deprived of both a mature slave and his revenge, grabbed the bullwhip from the man who was to have administered the hundred and fifty lashings and roared through the crowd of slaves, Lemvig's and Pembroke's as well as his own, flailing at them with the knotted lash and screaming: 'Away, you beasts! Don't look at him! He's dead, and you'll be too if you don't mind!'

He had struck some dozen of Pembroke's men when he saw Vavak, whom he despised, and although the black man stood perfectly still, simply watching this obscene display, Rostgaard lunged at him with special fury, preparing to lash him about the head. John quickly interceded, saying in his broken Danish: 'Not that one, he's mine.'

This obvious interruption by a white man of what Rostgaard considered his justified chastis.e.m.e.nt of a slave, an intrusion seen by all, so infuriated the Dane that he turned his fury on the Englishman, and would have thrashed him with his whip had not John antic.i.p.ated the a.s.sault and grasped the bullwhip near the handle. For a moment the two men were immobilized, each by the other's force, and then slowly Pembroke forced the whip down. Snarling and cursing, Rostgaard moved off to thrash indiscriminately at the other slaves, seeking Cudjoe in particular but not finding him.

During the rest of October and the first two weeks of November, Jorgen Rostgaard circulated among the other Danish plantation owners, warning them that 'this d.a.m.ned Englishman won't be trustworthy when the trouble comes.' He did not carry this message to the Lemvigs because he suspected that they had been contaminated by Pembroke's views on handling slaves, but he did not need to try to frighten Magnus and Elzabet, because, like Pembroke, they were already horrified by what might happen in the weeks ahead. They saw the looks of hatred in the eyes of their slaves; they heard the mutterings; and they knew that Rostgaard's lead slave, Cudjoe, had disappeared, and if that intractable man was plotting something, they expected Pembroke's man Vavak to join him before long.

But October waned and Vavak still labored in Lunaberg's cane fields. Pembroke went out of his way to speak rea.s.suringly to the obviously troubled man, but Vavak did not respond. Nevertheless, John felt certain that his gestures of conciliation were noticed and appreciated, for when a special law came down from the governor's headquarters on St. Thomas, only a few miles distant across placid water, Vavak volunteered to help Pembroke in its enforcement. The new instructions were simple: Every plantation manager, on pain of fine and imprisonment, is to padlock to some tree near the sh.o.r.e any small ship or boat or canoe belonging to his plantation when such vessel is not in use by him. Such action will prevent runaway slaves, when reaching the sh.o.r.e, from stealing a vessel and fleeing over the sea to Spanish Puerto Rico or French St.-Domingue.

Pembroke faced a difficult situation. He had two rowboats and two pad-locks, but he did not have enough chains long enough to go around trees, so he instructed Vavak to mind the locks while he rode off to see if Lemvig, who had no boats, might be able to lend him some chain. He found Magnus gone, but Elzabet was there, pretty as ever in her flaxen braids, and they discussed the new law.

'It's prudent,' John said. 'Boats are an invitation to the runaways.'

'Do you think there'll be trouble? The way the others talk?'

'Cudjoe's gone to the woods. One of my men is missing.'

'Magnus said ...' But now the young Dane appeared to speak for himself, and when he heard that Pembroke had left his locks with Vavak, he showed real fright: 'John! Two of my slaves have gone to the woods. Your man could run off with the locks.' But when the two men galloped their horses down to the seafront, there stood Vavak guarding the boats and holding the precious locks at his side. He watched with interest as the two men prepared the boats for their chains and helped them drag the craft ash.o.r.e, where Pembroke attached the chains in such a way that slaves might tear the boats from their moorings, but if they did, the sh.e.l.l would be broken and the boat would sink. Vavak understood what was being done and why.

At the end of the second week in November, Jorgen Rostgaard, accompanied by two planters like him, toured the island to satisfy themselves that the boat law had been complied with, and they were almost surprised to find that the Englishman had lashed his securely. 'Good job,' Rostgaard said in Danish. 'Keep an eye on things. That Cudjoe is still somewhere in the woods. And Schilderop here has lost two of his slaves.'

One of the other men vowed: 'We'll catch them,' and Rostgaard said: 'When we do, that's it for Cudjoe.' And with his forefinger extended, he made a twirling gesture upward, imitating rising smoke and indicating that this time the slave would be burned alive.

On the night of 23 November 1733, John Pembroke was awakened at a quarter past midnight by distraught hors.e.m.e.n shouting: 'Slaves in rebellion! Plantations burning! Men and women slain!' And before he could question them, they had galloped eastward to alert Rostgaard and others in that direction, but as they left Lunaberg, one shouted back: 'Better look in at Lemvig's. We had no response there.'

After John had armed himself with all the firepower he had sequestered plus a long knife, he ran first to inspect the little shacks occupied by his slaves, and found that every one was empty and that all the knives used for slashing cane were missing too.

With increasing anxiety he ran to the Lemvig plantation, but its slave quarters were also vacant, and he was about to a.s.sume that the two Lemvigs had taken flight when he heard a moan coming from the house. Dashing in, he found only darkness, then a weak whisper from a corner: 'Is that you, John?'

It was Elzabet, and when he made a light he found her crouched behind a table, holding in her bloodied arms the body of her young husband, whose throat had been slashed to the neckbone. 'Oh, Elzabet!' he cried, and when he dragged her away from the corpse she whimpered: 'Our own slaves did it. They'd have killed me too, but your Vavak saved me.'

And down in the lowlands they could see aflame in the night the various plantations in which the white owners lay dead.

The history of the great slave rebellion on St. John in the winter of 17331734 was one of constantly increasing terror. On the first dreadful night, slaves killed all the plantation families they could reach. They made an a.s.sault on Rostgaard's place but were driven off, and for some reason they neither tried to kill Pembroke nor burn his plantation.

Intensive questioning of those slaves who remained loyal to their masters, and there were more than a few, proved what Rostgaard had surmised: 'Cudjoe's in command. Vavak and that other from the east are his lieutenants. It will be h.e.l.l routing them out of those forests.'

He was more than right, because the slaves, with an adroitness and skill their white masters had always predicted they did not have and could not have, mounted an offensive-defensive war of remarkable subtlety. At the end of five days of hit-and-run they had burned some two dozen plantations and ridiculed attempts by their white masters to subdue them or even locate them.

On 29 November, the sixth day of the fighting, an English man-of-war which happened to be in the islands to take on water landed a large contingent of trained soldiers to subdue the rebels, and after marching here and there in fine order, they finally stumbled into a contingent of blacks led by Cudjoe. There was a brief skirmish. The Englishmen were routed after twenty minutes of firing at an enemy they never saw, and they retreated, leaving their wounded to trail along after them.

Rostgaard and his planters were not so easily subdued, though in their rampage they found few of Cudjoe's and Vavak's men. Instead they slaughtered thirty-two noncombatants 'to teach the others a lesson.'

As word flashed throughout the other islands that a rebellion had occurred on St. John, planters and their families were terrified: 'Is this the beginning of the end? Will there be general uprisings on all the islands?' To prevent that, a major expedition was mounted from St. Kitts under an officer named Maddox, who led his men ash.o.r.e on St. John with drums and fife, but after a gallant chase clear across the island during heavy rainstorms, these volunteers had encountered not a single slave they could see but had ended up with three Englishmen dead and eight wounded. The St. Kitts men had had more than enough, and when they retreated to their ship, no drums sounded and the fife was silent.

In the weeks that followed, Pembroke lost any understanding of how the battle against the slaves was going, because his attention was focused on trying to comfort and protect the Widow Lemvig. With her slaves vanished and no white hands to help her maintain her home, she was left terribly alone, and John could not decide how best to a.s.sist her. He visited her daily, took her food which he had prepared himself, for his slaves were gone too, and after much negotiation, arranged for a black woman who had remained faithful to her master on a plantation to the west to stay on the hill with Elzabet, the two of them rattling around in the big house.

The sensible thing would have been for Elzabet to flee by small boat to St. Thomas, where the revolt had not spread, but she refused to quit the only property her husband had left her, their plantation. It would also have been reasonable for her and her black helper to move over to the relative safety of Lunaberg, but her sense of propriety would not permit this. Despite the great crisis, her upbringing as the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman a.s.serted itself, and she asked Pembroke when he suggested the move: 'What would the islanders say?'

He replied harshly: 'What'll they say when they find you one morning with your throat cut?' but this did not relax her att.i.tude, and he had to content himself with aiding her from a distance.

But now the terror in which St. John was gripped spread to the other islands. The French in Martinique, who owned the important island of St. Croix a few leagues to the south of St. John, decided that the black revolt had run rampant too long, so on 23 April 1734 they dispatched a competent, well-armed contingent of more than two hundred local creoles, four trained officers from France and seventy-four colored and black West Indians. The Frenchmen marched with great vigor here and there, but it was many days before they located Cudjoe's men, who had, in the meantime, continued to burn and ravish the Danish plantations. Finally, on 29 April the French pinned the blacks into a defile from which they could not retreat, and a real battle was enjoined. Since the French had every advantage, plus determined leadership, they prevailed, and after chasing the remnants of the slaves for an additional two weeks, they finally captured the black general Cudjoe of the Rostgaard plantation.

Many of the last-ditch rebels were shot during the battle, but some eleven were set aside for what the local officials called 'special attention.' The details of their prolonged deaths at public exhibitions were not recorded, but when Jorgen Rostgaard stormed French headquarters to demand the right to take care of his rebellious slave Cudjoe, the invaders, out of respect for the remorseless fury with which Rostgaard had helped them track the rebels, acceded to his request.

Cudjoe's execution took place on the platform which Rostgaard had used before. The same sergeant stood at one side to read the death warrant, the same drummer marked the hundred and fifty lashes, but now there would be a difference, for the warrant had said 'Racked and Burned,' and Rostgaard was eager to supervise both.

On the platform, enlarged to accommodate the machinery, wheels and levers had been installed, with lengths of thick rope attached, their free ends awaiting their victim. After the lashings, Cudjoe was revived, hauled onto the platform, and stretched out while ropes were attached to his ankles, his wrists and his shoulders and, at a signal from Rostgaard, these ropes were tightened by slow and painful degrees until the joints began to tear apart.

Pembroke, watching the execution with most of the other two hundred surviving whites who were required by rules governing the emergency to be present with such of their slaves as could be a.s.sembled in that area, was outraged by the prolonged cruelty of the rack, but that was only a preamble to the horror that was about to occur, for as the ropes were pulled almost to the breaking point, with the black man insensate from the pain, Rostgaard signaled that slaves should set afire the timbers and shavings a.s.sembled below the platform. Pembroke looked away, unable to watch as the inert body was carried to the fire, but as he gazed at the placid Atlantic, he heard a gasp, and when he looked back he saw the most sickening sight of all. A triumphant Jorgen Rostgaard had taken up a long knife and was approaching the taut body of his slave. With swift cuts through the distended joints he severed arms and legs, throwing them onto the growing fire. 'Now take him down!' he shouted, pouring water as he did so in an attempt to revive the still-living torso, which was thrown into the swirling flames. Cudjoe, the resolute Ashanti, had been taught not to rebel.

When John Pembroke walked with staggering steps back toward the big house he no longer cared to occupy, he realized that Elzabet Lemvig had not been made to attend the execution, so he walked right past his temporary home and kept going till he reached the Lemvig plantation. Eager for the solace of another human being like himself, and not some vengeful monster like Rostgaard who had brought this terror to his community, he shouted: 'Elzabet, where are you?' and when she appeared, wan and thin, he rushed to her, took her in his arms, and cried out: 'Elzabet, for G.o.d's sake, let us quit this hideous place. Start a new life with hope, not despair.'

She tried to respond to what was in effect a marriage proposal, but it came so unexpectedly and on such a wretched day that sensible words were beyond her. Instead, she fell limp in his arms, which was itself a signal that she would now rely only on him.

When he revived her, he led her outside the lonely house and perched her beside him on the porch overlooking the cl.u.s.ter of islands to the west. When she was calm enough to ask in a whisper: 'What did you say in there?' he repeated: 'You and I must leave this blood-soaked place and start a better life elsewhere.'

'I think you are right,' she said, and for the first time since that day sixteen months ago when they became neighbors, he kissed her.

But because life on the islands always seemed urgent, he proceeded immediately to give her strange news: 'Did you ever wonder why those French volunteers from Martinique were so eager to rush their troops over here to help us put down our slave rebellion?' When she said no, he continued: 'They've been wanting for years to sell the island of St. Croix to the Danes. Thanks to their gesture of good will, helping us against our slaves ... well, the sale's gone through.'

'What would that mean to us?'

'The Danish government wants me to move down and establish a big sugar plantation on English principles.'

Very firmly but quietly she said: 'I would not want to live on any plantation where our new rules were in effect. I'll not go with you, John.'

Her words caused him not disappointment but joy: 'Oh, Elzabet! I explained in the minute they made the offer that I'd be returning to Jamaica. I'm taking you to Trevelyan. You'll love it there.'

This time she kissed him, and as the sun sank lower, he said gravely: 'I've one thing more to do on this terrible day.'

With her holding on to his arm, he led the way to where his two boats were padlocked to trees, and when she asked what this was about, he said: 'I've seen signs that Vavak is somewhere in our forest. They've never caught him, you know.'

'He saved my life that night.'

'And mine too, I think. No other reason why they didn't kill me.'

When they reached the boats, John took from his trouser pocket the large key that worked the locks, and while Elzabet watched he carefully unlocked the boats, setting them free for the use of any slaves still hiding in the woods who might want to try the long sail to Spanish Puerto Rico or French St.-Domingue.

As he and Elzabet started back up the path to the house, they heard a rustling in the trees, and from the shadows emerged Vavak and a woman, and it was a fearful moment, because the slave was armed and the master was not. The path was narrow, so narrow that only one person could occupy it, and as the two men walking in front met, each stepped aside to let the other pa.s.s, and the Englishman thought ruefully of another of the new rules: A slave meeting a white person shall step aside and wait until he pa.s.ses; if not, he may be flogged.

They pa.s.sed, and no one spoke, but all knew why Pembroke had released his boats.

John and Elzabet remained hidden by trees as they watched Vavak and his woman test the two boats, choose the better, and set forth on the long and dangerous voyage to the land to be known as Haiti, where their descendants would continue their quiet fight for freedom.

When John Pembroke surprised Trevelyan Plantation by bringing home a Danish wife, reactions were varied. Sir Hugh, at ease now that all his sons were safely married, welcomed Elzabet heartily and a.s.signed the couple a suite of three rooms on the second floor of Golden Hall. John's brothers, Roger and Greville, were relieved that he had escaped the entrapments of Hester Croome, but that young woman, when she learned of the marriage, came running to Trevelyan, rushed up to Elzabet, enclosed her in wide-sweeping arms, and said: 'We welcome you to Jamaica!' after which she broke into uncontrolled sobbing.

John would give his wife no explanation for Hester's amazing behavior, but Roger confided: 'She's a dear girl, Hester. Worth a triple fortune, and she set her lure for landing one of us Pembroke boys. Although heaven knows she didn't need us.' Embarra.s.sed by the unintended frankness of his revelation about a good neighbor, he added: 'She's a grand girl and she'll have no trouble finding herself a husband.' Then, as if compelled to describe Hester accurately, he said: 'When Greville and I married, she adopted our wives. Warmly and honestly. And she'll do the same with you. Not a mean streak in her body.'

And that's what happened. At the big dinners given on the various plantations, the three Pembroke boys, as they were called despite their years, sat with their pretty wives while Hester Croome, big and awkward and ebullient, cried: 'Aren't they the pride of Jamaica, that trio?' And she was especially kind to Elzabet the Dane: 'John brought back a beauty, didn't he?'

The family decided that John and Elzabet should remain at Trevelyan, at least for the first years of their marriage, helping Greville and getting to know the whole of Jamaica and the other British islands. It was a happy time, for it seemed that Jamaica and the Caribbean then stood at the apex of their joint history. Governments were stable. Sugar prices were never higher. And although war seemed always to be raging somewhere, it did not often manifest itself in the islands. John and Elzabet shared in the general euphoria when she became pregnant.

There was, however, one persistent problem across the Caribbean: the proper management of slaves. In later centuries scholars and writers would frequently ask: 'Why were the slaves so pa.s.sive? If they outnumbered the whites six and eight to one, why didn't they rebel?' The truth is they did rebel, constantly, violently, on all the islands, as the chronicle of those years shows: Jamaica, 15 rebellions in all; Barbados, 5; Virgin Islands, 6; Hispaniola, 8; Cuba, 16; every island experienced at least one major rebellion.

In 1737 a shocking affair occurred in a remote corner of Jamaica and it projected the Pembrokes into the middle of the slavery problem. A clergyman of the Church of England sent by foot messenger two reports, one to the capital now at the new town of Kingston, the other to the king in London: It is my grievous duty to inform you that Thomas Job, a member of my church in Glebe Quarter, has by solemn count been responsible for the deaths of more than ninety of his slaves. The facts, widely known among his neighbors, were kept secret from me, but when rumors reached me I confirmed each word of what I am about to report.

Job, this inhuman monster, delighted in stretching his slaves upon the ground, tying down wrists and ankles and beating them constantly for upward of an hour till they expired. He disciplined his female servants by forcing their mouths open with sticks and pouring large amounts of boiling water down their throats. All died. I personally know of one slave who was sent to the woods to recapture some runaways. When he failed, a red-hot iron was jammed down his throat and, of course, he died.

It will, I know, be difficult for you to believe, but on numerous occasions Job grew irritated with pickaninnies and stuck their heads under water till they drowned. Others were tossed into kettles of boiling water. Please, please, do something to restrain this monster.

When news of this appeal reached the governor, he called upon Greville Pembroke, known to be a sensible planter, to take the long trip to Glebe Quarter to investigate the charges, and if they were found to be accurate, to inst.i.tute legal proceedings against Job. 'But,' the governor warned, 'I must remind you that not one bad word has been spoken against Job since I took office. This could be a canard.'

Greville nodded, then suggested: 'Excellency, my duties at the plantation are heavy, but my younger brother John has had more experience than me in slave affairs. I would recommend that he be dispatched.' It was done, and ten minutes after his arrival at Glebe Quarter, John had Thomas Job in the town's improvised jail. Acting upon the governor's written orders, he ordered a jury to be convened, and listened in astonishment as the men, all white, all part of the Sugar Interest, found Job not guilty on the grounds that 'it's difficult to control n.i.g.g.e.rs without stern measures, and in our judgment Thomas did not exceed to any degree the customs of this island.'

When John heard the verdict he was so infuriated that he wanted to organize a hanging party to dispose of Job on the spot, but the clergyman advised against this, and Job went free. Next morning, a.s.suming himself to have not only been vindicated but also authorized to resume his old ways, Job spotted a slave doing some trivial thing that he, Job, did not approve of and beat him to death in the customary manner.

A young Scotsman working for Job had had enough, and when he reported the death to the reverend, the latter summoned Pembroke to hear the details, and by a curious chance the dead slave's name happened to be one commonly used in the islands, Cudjoe. As soon as the name was uttered, John recalled the hideous time when he had been forced to watch when Rostgaard's Cudjoe was 'racked and burned,' and he knew what course he must take.

This trial, a new one dealing with an entirely new case, was going to be different, because now John would have a white man to testify to Job's brutal behavior. The trial was a sensation, but when the young Scot rose to testify, a plantation man in the rear of the court shouted: 'Shoot that b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' and there were many similar displays of support for Job, but the jury, unable to ignore the solid evidence, had to bring in a verdict of guilty.

That afternoon John Pembroke, on his own recognizance, caused a gallows to be erected, and before the sun sank, Thomas Job, master fiend of Jamaica, was hanged.

Late that night Pembroke's small boat slipped out of Glebe Quarter's harbor and made its way homeward with the young Scot as pa.s.senger; it could have been fatal to leave him among the sugar planters, who were seething to think that one of their kind had been hanged for merely disciplining his n.i.g.g.e.rs.

But when Pembroke and the Scot reached Kingston to report on the happenings at Glebe Quarter, they found that a swift horseman had beat them to the capital with a monstrously distorted account of what had transpired. Tempers were high among members of the Sugar Interest, and Pentheny Croome was organizing a gang to thrash the Scot, or worse, but John intercepted him: 'Pentheny, what in the world are you doing?'

'If we let one planter be disciplined for doin' what we all do, revolution's upon us. The slaves'll cut our throats in the night.'

'Pentheny, you said "Doing what we all do." Do you want to hear what he really did? Sit still and listen,' and in dispa.s.sionate tones he recited the hideous behavior at Glebe Quarter. When he had finished recounting the barbarities against the male slaves, the indecent tortures inflicted on the females and the incredible cruelty to the children, he asked quietly: 'Longtime friend of my father's, are you Two Peas in a Pod not well respected in London? Do you not occupy important positions in Parliament? Do you want Thomas Job's behavior to cloud your reputations? And drag down the whole Sugar Interest?'

Pentheny was shaken, even more so when John bored in: 'A copy of my report has gone to the king. When he asks "How did you handle this matter?" are you going to say "We saw nothing wrong in what he did?" Are you going to befoul your own nest?'

Pentheny swallowed hard, and said in a very small voice: 'I'd like to hear from that Scot we were goin' to hang,' and when the tales of horror were elaborated upon, Pentheny rose, moved toward the young man, and embraced him: 'I need a feller like you to mind my plantation while I'm in London,' and a week later Hester Croome was back at Trevelyan, bubbling to the wives: 'Wonderful young man started working for my father. I'm sort of sorry we sail for London on Friday.'

In 1738 young John Pembroke attracted his first favorable attention in London. There had been trouble with a nest of Maroons on the eastern end of Jamaica, and instead of sending an army against them, the governor dispatched Pembroke and a guard of sixteen from the Gibraltar regiment now stationed on the island. 'What we hope for,' the governor said as the men marched off, 'is a repet.i.tion of that lasting peace your father made with the Maroons in his district. Same a.s.surances from us, same promises from them.'

It was a long trek across difficult terrain, and when Pembroke reached the Maroon area the former slaves did not wish to talk, but an adroit mixture of patience and pressure accomplished wonders and finally a truce was agreed upon. In 1739, John was dispatched to western Jamaica with the same commission, and again he achieved what none had been able to accomplish before, a lasting truce. The island was now pacified, and officials in London sent a dispatch to Kingston: 'Advise John Pembroke, well done.'

This led to a surprising a.s.signment, for when a fighting squadron of immense size, some hundred ships in all, anch.o.r.ed in Port Royal Roads under the command of a senior admiral, Edward Vernon, everyone connected with government could see that the British had at last decided to drive the Spanish from the Caribbean.

Already many of the holdings had been lost, Jamaica to the British, the future Haiti to the French, and nowhere in the eastern chain of islands did Spain regain control. At the southern tip of that string, Trinidad was nominally still Spanish, but it was being settled mostly by the French and would soon pa.s.s into British hands. However, rich Mexico and richer Peru were still Spanish, as was the Main, but to protect its hold on even these vital areas, Spain simply had to retain the key port of Cartagena, so naturally the English decided to capture it, and thus imperil all the rest of Spain's holdings in the New World. As so often before, again the fate of the European nations would be settled in the Caribbean.

Excitement rose when English officials revealed the target: 'Vernon will be off to capture Cartagena! Erase the humiliations we've suffered there,' and when the admiral came ash.o.r.e to complete the last-minute preparations, he boasted: 'This time we blast that city off the map.'

He was a colorful sea dog, fifty-seven years old, who was invariably seen in a battered green overcoat made of grogram, a rough fabric woven of silk, mohair and wool. From this he took the name 'Old Grog,' and when in an effort to instill sobriety among his sailors he diluted their traditional rum ration with two quarts of water to one pint of rum, his name entered the dictionary, but in a perverse way, since originally grog meant watered down and not rum.

He had gained a frenzied popularity in 1739 when he boasted that Porto Bello was not invulnerable: 'Give me six good ships and I guarantee I'll capture it.' The government gave him the ships, and he won such a smashing victory, not losing a ship or any men, that bonfires were lit across England and medals struck in his honor. But sailors who had partic.i.p.ated in 'the Great Victory' whispered to anyone who would listen: 'The Spanish didn't try to defend. A few troops, an empty fort.'

Nevertheless, he was the hero of the moment, and immediately he proposed to vanquish Cartagena.

Since he would need officers to a.s.sist him when dictating the terms of peace after the enemy surrendered, he asked the governor of Jamaica for any likely candidates, and John Pembroke's recent heroics commended him. In the capacity of an arbiter he sailed south on 26 January 1742, and shortly found himself facing that formidable collection of islands, fortified headlands, fortress-lined narrows and inland harbor rimmed with cannon that comprised Cartagena. The story was that when King Philip II learned that the equivalent of fifty million dollars had been spent on these fortifications, he went out onto the terrace of his Escorial and looked in the direction of Cartagena: 'With that much money spent, I should be able to see the fortifications from here.'

The siege and battle, one of the most crucial in the Western Hemisphere, was an unfair struggle. Admiral Vernon had collected 170 ships in all, 28,000 men, including large forced levies from ten different American colonies, and innumerable cannon. The Spaniards had only a few small ships-quickly immobilized-and perhaps 3,000 men. But they also had on their side a man known as 'two-thirds of an admiral.'

Don Blas de Lezo, one of the great fighting men of history, had spent a long life battling the British navy, and always losing more than just the battle. At Gibraltar in 1704 he had lost his left leg to an English cannonball; at Toulouse, his left eye to an English sharpshooter; and in a fight off Spain, his right arm. Now, when yet one more battle against the ancient enemy loomed, he jumped about the forts without the a.s.sistance of an aide, inspecting defenses, and he lay awake at night trying to guess what Admiral Vernon with his tremendous superiority might try next. And as he tossed sleepless he sometimes chuckled as if laughing at the extremity in which he found himself: At Gibraltar, years ago when we were both young, Admiral Vernon and I faced each other in battle, and that time he won. But this is another day, another battleground, and this time I have a powerful ally, General Yellow Fever.