Jump Ship To Freedom Part 1

Jump Ship to Freedom.

James Lincoln Collier.

and Christopher Collier.

For Cricket.

1.

I crept up the cellar stairs in the dark, with the bundle of hay in my arms, going as quiet as I could. I figured it was about four in the morning. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, and it was black as black could be, but I'd gone up and down those cellar stairs thousands of times, and I knew them like my own hand.

I had a plan to steal my daddy's money back from Mrs. Ivers. Mrs. Ivers wasn't scared of much, but she was sure scared of fire. She'd talk back to anybody as nasty as could be when she felt like it-the minister, Captain Ivers, anybody. I even saw her talk back to Mr. William Samuel Johnson, who was our delegate to Congress. But she wouldn't talk back to a fire. She was deathly afraid of it, always shrieking at me to be careful with the candles lest I set the curtains on fire and burn the house down or some such. So knowing that, I figured if she thought the house was on fire, she'd run outdoors as fast as she could go, and I'd be able to steal my daddy's money back.

I reached the top of the stairs and laid my hand on the door, just to make sure where it was. The wood was cool on my palm. Even though it was June, it was cool at night down in the cellar where I slept with Mum.

I ran my hand along the wood until I hit the latch, and lifted it up. Then I pushed on the door. It gave a little squeak. I wished I'd thought to grease the hinges the night before with a little tallow or bacon fat. If I wasn't so ignorant I might have thought of it. Probably a white boy would have. But I was black and wasn't as smart as white folks. Leastwise, that's what Mr. Learning, the minister, always said, although when you got down to it, my daddy was pretty smart, and he was black.

Anyway, I wished I'd thought of greasing the hinges, but there was no help for that now. I had to open the door before I could go through it. So I pushed a little more until it squeaked again, and stopped; and pushed some more, and stopped; and finally I had it open about a foot and I squeezed through into the kitchen.

It was clouded over and there wasn't any moonlight or starlight at all out in the yard. But there was still a few bits of wood glowing in the fireplace, so the hearth was lit up a little-just enough light so I could make out the shapes of the chairs and tables round about the room. For a moment I stood there by the cellar door, back out of the light from the hearth, listening. A couple of times I thought I heard Mrs. Ivers move around in her sleep, but I wasn't sure. Her room was just off the kitchen, backed up against the fireplace. Usually Captain Ivers would have been in there, too, but he was down at the harbor on the brig.

My daddy's money was in the bedroom. Actually, it wasn't real money. It was in soldiers' notes. My daddy got them for fighting in the Revolution. They was worth six hundred dollars-leastwise they would be if Congress voted to pay them off.

A few weeks back, when we found out that my daddy drowned at sea, Mum went and got them out of his safe box. We hadn't hardly come back from the funeral when Mrs. Ivers made Mum give them to her. She said it was for safekeeping, but we knew better than that. Mum should never have let Mrs. Ivers know she'd got them out of my daddy's safe box. My daddy would never have given them over to Mrs. Ivers, but Mum and me belonged to the Iverses and had to do as we was bidden.

I slipped over to the fireplace, moving as quiet as I could, dropped down to my knees on the hearth, and set the bundle of hay down. There was some warmth coming off the fireplace bricks, and it felt good in the cool of the June night. I was plenty scared, though. My arms felt weak and my belly was cold.

My daddy's soldiers' notes was hidden in Mrs. Ivers's Bible, which she kept by her bedside so as to pray over it before she went to bed. It was a stroke of luck for us to find them. A couple of days before, Mum was coming out of the cow shed with the milk. Mrs. Ivers was in the kitchen with Captain Ivers. Just as Mum got up to the door, she heard Captain Ivers say, "Where are they?" and Mrs. Ivers told him, "I put them in the big Bible." Right away Mum knew what they was talking about.

I wished I'd been able to think up a safer plan for stealing them back, though. If I'd have been white, I might have. But there wasn't nothing I could do about that. I knew that black folks were supposed to be more stupid than white folks; that was G.o.d's way, the minister said. Black folks were meant to do the work, and white folks the thinking. If G.o.d had made black folks smart, they'd have got restless about doing the hard work. Although truth to tell, it never seemed to me that I liked doing the hard work no more than white folks did.

But it was too late to worry about whether my plan would work. I picked up the bundle of hay, and just then I heard a b.u.mp from Mrs. Ivers's bedroom. I dropped the hay and jumped up and stood there all scared and frozen. It came to me that maybe I ought to forget about stealing my daddy's money back and all, and creep on back down the cellar before Mrs. Ivers got out of bed and caught me. There probably wasn't much use in it, anyway. The soldiers' notes wasn't going to be worth nothing if Congress didn't vote to change them for real money.

But when I'd got about that far along in my thoughts, a picture of my daddy came into my head. I saw him standing there, tall and stern, and about the bravest man there was until he got drowned at sea, and when I saw him in my head looking down at me there wasn't any way I was going to creep back down those cellar stairs to my bed.

So I listened for a bit, and when I didn't hear anything more from Mrs. Ivers's room, I took a soft breath and knelt down on the hearth again. The first thing I did was to divide the bundle of hay in two. I shoved one piece of it up the chimney to block off the smoke from going out. The other bunch I dropped on the glowing coals. The hay cut off the light, making it near pitch dark. I was glad of that, for I felt safer in the dark. Then I leaned forward and began to blow down into the hay to where the coals were, so they'd flare up a little and make the hay catch fire. I kept my mouth down real low and close to the hay so I could blow soft and not make any noise.

The hay began to catch. I didn't want it to flame up, just smolder and give off a lot of smoke, so I reached my hand into the fireplace and clumped it together. By the light from the coals I could see the smoke start to ooze out of the hay in milky curls. I leaned back a little and waved with my hand. The smoke began to waver out into the room. Some of it went up my nose. It burned a little in my throat. I stood up and backed off from the fire, so as not to choke and start coughing. I didn't want to wake up Mrs. Ivers yet.

Mum was down in the cellar, waiting for me to shout. I wondered what she was thinking. For us, those soldiers' notes of my daddy's was freedom. That was the idea of it. My daddy, he got his freedom for fighting in the war, and he figured he'd use his soldiers' notes to buy me and Mum our freedom, too. But the way it turned out, the soldiers' notes wasn't going to be worth anything until Congress decided to give gold or silver for them. So my daddy went to sea to save up some money to buy us free. And then he got drowned, and the only hope we had was the soldiers' notes. Mum figured if we took them down to New York, where Congress was, maybe we could get something for them. We figured Mr. William Samuel Johnson would know what to do, being as he was our delegate and lived here in Stratford.

The smoke was beginning to fill the room pretty good. It was stinging my nose and my lungs a lot, and I knew that in a moment I'd start coughing. So I waited, and held back on the coughs, and then when the room was filled with smoke I let go a good cough as loud as I could. Then I headed across the room, b.u.mping into chairs, and began to bang on Mrs. Ivers's door. "Mrs. Ivers," I shouted. "Wake up, the house is afire."

There came a b.u.mping and a banging, and about two seconds later the door jerked open, and there was Mrs. Ivers with a candle in her hand and her nightcap all twisted on her head. "What's this noise, Daniel?" Then she smelled the smoke. She gave a shriek and busted past me out through the kitchen door into the barnyard.

I slid into her bedroom, waving my arms in front of me so as not to b.u.mp into the furniture. I swung around where I figured the bed was, but I guessed wrong and smacked my leg on something. It smarted pretty good.

Outside I could hear Mrs. Ivers tearing around the house to the road, shouting "Fire, fire," to wake up the men down on the brig. I knew she wouldn't come back into the house until she got somebody with her, but the way she was hollering and shouting, she'd wake the dead, and it wouldn't be long before the men on the brig would come running up.

I felt for the bed with my hand and then worked my way around it to the bedside table. The Bible was there. It was big and heavy. I ran my fingers across the pages, and in a minute I hit a crack in them. I flipped the Bible open and felt between the pages, and in a moment I had the notes tucked down under my shirt. Then I felt my way around the bed again and made my way back through the door into the kitchen.

The smoke was pretty thick, making it hard to breathe. My heart was thumping and my hands felt weak and shaky. The hay was beginning to burn now, making that white smoke shine red. I jumped over to the fireplace, pulled the bunch of hay out of the chimney, and dropped it on the fire. Then I grabbed the poker and stirred the hay up to loosen it. In a minute it was flaming up good, and the smoke was being sucked out of the room up the chimney.

I heard somebody say, "Daniel." Mum was standing at the top of the cellar stairs with the door partway open, peeking out. I reached my hand under my shirt, pulled out the notes, and gave them to her. "Good boy," she said. She took the notes, pulled the door closed, and went on down the cellar stairs.

I went outside to clear my lungs. "Mrs. Ivers," I shouted. "Mrs. Ivers, it's all right. The house ain't on fire."

She came up through the dark and peered past me into the house. "Thank G.o.d," she said. She was breathing hard, so I knew she was pretty scared. "I was near frightened to death. What on earth happened?"

"It wasn't nothing," I said. "Just an old bird's nest fell down the chimney and begun to smolder."

"My heart's still pounding," she said.

"It wasn't nothing," I said. "Just an old bird's nest.

2.

My name is Daniel Arabus. I was born in 1773, which made me fourteen in 1787. My daddy was born in 1747. His name was Jack Arabus, and he was a great hero. Once during the war he helped George Washington cross a stream. The way it happened was General Washington was riding along and he came to a stream that had got flooded and risen pretty high and was cutting along fast and muddy over the bottom. The officers figured they'd better dismount and wade across, in case the horses lost their footing.

General Washington, he was about to climb down off his horse, but my daddy was right there and he said, "Sir, I know this stream, it ain't as deep as it looks." He took General Washington's horse by the bridle and led it across the stream. General Washington didn't get so much as his feet wet. When they was on the other side, General Washington said to my daddy, "Good work, soldier." And my daddy saluted, and General Washington saluted back.

Honest, it really happened. I heard my daddy tell about it lots of times. George Washington signed my daddy's discharge himself, that's how much he thought of him. I know, because I've seen the discharge myself.

Oh, my daddy, he knew lots of famous men. One of them was Black Sam Fraunces. Mr. Fraunces was a victualler for the army during the Revolution. He bought food for the men. My daddy met Black Sam Fraunces at the Battle of Trenton. They got to be friends. The funny thing was, n.o.body was sure if Black Sam was a darky or wasn't. He came from the West Indies and spoke French, and he went around bold as you please, the way most darkies wouldn't do. But still, he was black, my daddy said. And he said that someday, after he'd bought my freedom, we'd sign on to a ship headed for New York and he'd take me to meet Black Sam. Black Sam was his friend and would be glad to see him.

There was another reason why I wanted to meet Black Sam Fraunces. That was because my Aunt Wilhelmina, she run off a few years ago. It was Captain Ivers was trying to make her a slave, after she'd been set free by her master. She told us she was going down to New York, and we figured she'd have gone to work for Mr. Fraunces. Maybe he would know where she was, at least.

Anyway, it was because of my daddy fighting in the Revolution that he got his freedom from Captain Ivers. Leastwise, that was supposed to be the idea of it. But when the war was over, Captain Ivers didn't want to give my daddy up. He wanted him to come back and be his slave some more. My daddy wouldn't stand for that. He ran off, but he got caught and put into jail over in New Haven. So he got a lawyer and sued Captain Ivers in court. The judge said that my daddy was right, and Captain Ivers was wrong. If Daddy fought in the War for the country's Independence, he got his own freedom, too.

But he couldn't get Mum and me free. I never did exactly understand why his soldiers' notes wasn't worth anything after him fighting so hard for all those years. Why would Congress do that to all those soldiers-white and black-who'd fought and lots of them got killed and their widows and children needing the money?

Anyway, now Mum and me had the notes. After I stole them back from Mrs. Ivers, Mum hid them down in the cellar under her pallet. When she went out to milk the cow, she wrapped them up in a piece of oilcloth, took them out to the cow shed, and hid them in the hayloft, way deep down in the hay. The Ivers never had nothing to do with the cow, except to drink the milk. Mum and me was the only ones who ever went up into the hayloft. The Iverses wouldn't think of going up there and getting themselves covered with dust and cobwebs.

I went out with her. It was just barely daybreak. We stood in the half-light amongst the tools and dusty barrels, with the cow crunching away on its hay, and talked about it. "The hard thing to know is if we should sell them off now for what we can get for them, or hang on to them in hopes that Congress votes to pay off the whole value of them."

"When are they likely to vote, Mum?"

"I don't rightly know," she said. "It ain't just the Congress at New York. There's them other men meeting in Philadelphia. They got to decide something about it first."

I didn't know much about it, either. They had formed a convention in Philadelphia to fix up the government of the United States, but being as we wasn't but black folks, n.o.body told us much about it. "We should ask Mr. Johnson," I said. "He'll know."

William Samuel Johnson was the most important man in Stratford. He was our delegate to Congress. I'd been in his house lots, because my Aunt w.i.l.l.y worked for him. Her name really was Wilhelmina, and she was Mum's little sister. Mr. Johnson's house was a real fancy place, hip-roofed instead of plain gabled like most of them around Stratford. It had three stories and big dormer windows. When I'd go into the kitchen to see my daddy, I could peek into the dining room. There was such a sparkling gla.s.s chandelier hanging over the table as you couldn't believe, and a big cupboard just stuffed with silver dishes and mugs and things.

"Yes," Mum said. "He'll help us. He was sorry about your daddy being drowned, and he said to ask him if we needed anything. The only thing is, Mr. Johnson's down in New York at the Congress."

"He comes back sometimes," I said.

"He might not come back for months," she said. "It could be too late."

I knew what she meant by that. There was a lot of talk going around Connecticut about doing away with slavery. A lot of people thought slavery was wrong. Most ordinary white folks didn't own slaves and didn't care one way or another anyway. But the ones that did own slaves, like Captain Ivers, was pretty worried about all that talk. Oh, there wasn't much hope that the legislature would suddenly turn us slaves loose. Slaves was property, and the General a.s.sembly wasn't about to take property away from people-white people, anyway. Slaves was different-they'd already had themselves taken away from themselves. But there was a lot of talk about preventing new slaves from coming into Connecticut, and not letting old ones be sold off South to work in the sugar-cane fields. And any babies that come along now was to be free when they grew up-anyway, that was the law in Connecticut. And naturally that started the white folks who had slaves to thinking that maybe they'd better sell us off while they still had the chance. Mum and me, we knew we was likely to be sold off South. Mum always keeps an ear open to the Iverses, and she'd heard them talking about it.

''Well, I know it might be too late," I said, "but there ain't much we can do about it."

She sighed. "No," she said. "I guess not."

"How soon do you reckon it'll be before Mrs. Ivers finds them notes is missing?"

Mum shook her head. "Tonight, most likely, when she says her prayers."

"Do you figure they'll know it was us who took them?"

"Oh, they'll think so."

"What'll happen?"

She shook her head again. "I just don't know."

Then Mrs. Ivers hollered out that I was to go down to the brig and help with the loading. The part of Stratford I lived in was called Newfield. It was just a few houses, two wharves, and Captain Ivers's warehouse, an old wooden building about thirty feet long, with hardly any windows. The main part of Stratford was bigger-lots of houses, and the church where we went on Sundays.

I walked in the dawn down to the landing. The sky in the east was coming up yellow. I liked being in the harbor. I liked the smells of it-the smell of tar and paint and salt.w.a.ter and fish all mixed together. As I came along, I heard the water lapping quiet against the piles of the wharf where the brig was tied up, its masts as tall as trees and still in the calm water.

I stood there for a minute, looking at it all.

Pretty soon I'd have to go aboard, and after that I'd work steady, most likely down in the hold stowing things, where it would be hot as a skillet by eight o'clock in the morning, and half the time you couldn't stand up straight but would have to work bent over or down on your knees, with the boards cutting into your skin.

What I wanted to see was the sun come up out of the sea over across Stratford Point. I always liked that. Standing up there on land, it seemed like when the sun first started to rise up out of the water, you were higher than it. I mean most of the time you think of the sun as being high in the sky, but when you see it rise up or go down in the sea, it seems like it's below you. It gave me a funny feeling, to be higher than the sun.

So I waited, and watched, and in a minute the rim of the sun edged up into sight. Slowly it rose, and gulls wheeled up into the light, shining red and gold, and I stood there in the smell of the tar and paint and salt.w.a.ter, thinking about nothing but just catching the feeling of it all, and then suddenly I realized that it was plain daylight and I'd better get on board before Captain Ivers came on deck and saw me.

Captain Ivers's brig was called the Junius Brutus. It was maybe seventy-five feet long and pretty broad, about twenty or twenty-five feet across. For cargo you want a broad ship with plenty of room below decks. It was a pretty sight, painted black with a gold band around it. It had two masts, with horizontal yards for the square sails and gaffs and booms for the fore and aft sails. And there were lines going every which way, like a great nest of cobwebs.

Much as I hated Captain Ivers, I sure wanted to sail on the Junius Brutus sometime. I wanted to go to sea like my daddy did, and do brave things in storms and such. I used to ask Captain Ivers if I could go as the boy, which was the lowest job, sometime; but he always said no, and I quit asking. If I ever got my freedom, that's what I was going to be-a sailor like my daddy. But there wasn't no use in asking Captain Ivers anymore, so I walked down the wharf and climbed over the rail onto the ship.

The first person I met was Birdsey Brooks, who was Captain Ivers's nephew. He was my age, and we'd gone to school together, except him being white, they figured he was smarter than I was and stayed in school after I stopped so's he could study mathematics and learn navigation. Of course they wouldn't have let no darky study navigation anyway. Still, it made me sort of sore to think that one day Birdsey would be master of a ship, and I would never be no more than a deckhand, even if I was free. My daddy worked on Captain Ivers's ships for years before the war, and he never got to be nothing at all, even though he knew everything about those brigs and could handle one himself in any kind of weather. I knew that, because some of the sailors told me so.

Birdsey was leaning on the rail, eating a chunk of corn bread with mola.s.ses on it. "Uncle's been wondering where you was," he said.

"Don't give me none of that, Birdsey," I said. "The sun just come up."

"Well, he's been over at the warehouse cursing you out for near half an hour."

"He'd have cursed me out if I'd got here an hour ago," I said. "Where'd you get the corn bread?"

"Down below. The crew is eating. I come up here to see the sun rise."

I thought of telling Birdsey about the feeling I got when the sun was just coming out of the sea and I was higher than it, but I decided not to. I was afraid that if I said it out plain, it would sound real stupid.

We walked forward to the crew's foc's'l hatchway. The crew's quarters were at the forward end of the ship. At the other end, the stern, the deck was raised up about four feet, and underneath was the captain's quarters, where Captain Ivers and the first mate lived. In between was the big storage hold.

We climbed the ladder down to the crew's quarters. There were double bunks along the wall, some cupboards for stowing gear, and two great anchor chains going straight up from the floor and through the deck above. The men were sitting at a board table eating corn bread and drinking mugs of beer. I was surprised to notice that one of them was Big Tom, a black man who usually sailed out of Stratford. I'd never seen him around Newfield Harbor before. He had muscles in his arms like straps of leather. He'd got a scar running right across his forehead just over his eyebrows, like somebody had tried to slice the top of his head off, and a lot of his teeth was missing. I wondered if he'd been in the Revolution like my daddy, or just got into a lot of fights.

"This here is Uncle's n.i.g.g.e.r," Birdsey said, pointing to me. "He ain't had any breakfast."

They gave me some of the corn bread and mola.s.ses and I went over to a corner and stood there eating it. I knew better than to sit down with the men, even if there was a black man there. Then after a bit the mate hollered down that time was awasting, and we set to work loading the brig.

The way Captain Ivers did business was, he'd buy stuff from farmers in the countryside around and store it in his warehouse until he had a good shipload to trade somewheres-New York or Philadelphia or even the West Indies. Most of the time it was New York. He knew lots of people there he could trade with. He'd trade in anything-peas, corn, apples, cider. A big part of his business was in livestock, like oxen, horses, cows, hogs, and such. He kept them in pens at the side of his warehouse.

Loading them on the Junius Brutus was the worst job of all. There was a big boom which was attached to one of the masts. It had a canvas-and-rope sling at one end and a heavy weight at the other. The idea was to strap a horse or an ox or something into the sling, and heave down on the weight at the other end. The ox would rise right off the ground, kicking and bellowing. Then by swinging the boom around you'd get the ox over the aft hatchway and you could lower it down into the hold. Oh my, the oxen didn't like it at all. They'd thrash around so it was worth your life to get them unstrapped from the sling and hitched to the rings along the side of the storage hold.

Captain Ivers made me and Birdsey work in the hold. We stayed down there all morning, ducking and dodging around those oxen and getting hot and sweaty and stuck up with the hay we were feeding the oxen. By noontime we were pretty tired. We ate our bread and cheese and apples up on the deck in the shade of the quarterdeck over the captain's quarters, feeling the June breeze and watching the sunshine dance on the slow waves coming in across Long Island Sound.

Being with Birdsey made the work go easier. He was a pretty good friend to me, at least as much as a white man can be a friend to a black man. We'd gone to school together and worked a lot together, and climbed the Iverses' apple trees and played hoops and marbles together, only of course I didn't have marbles of my own, they was all Birdsey's, and if I won any I'd have to give them all back at the end. But I didn't mind; he was my friend and it wasn't his fault I didn't have marbles. Working with him made it seem more like I wasn't a slave. Of course Birdsey was going on the ship. He'd already gone on two trips. He was learning to be a sailor.

"I wished I was going with you, Birdsey," I said.

"I wished you was, too," he said. "If you wasn't a slave, you could."

"I'm not always going to be a slave. I'm going to buy me and Mum free."

"Oh come on, Dan," Birdsey said. "That'd cost near a hundred pounds."

"More than that, Birdsey."

"More than that?" he said. "How much do you figure you're worth?"

"Well, my daddy reckoned I'd cost somethin' like eighty pounds to buy."

"Eighty pounds? You're worth eighty pounds?"

"Sure I am," I said. "And Mum probably sixty, because a woman ain't worth as much as a man." That was one thing about being black: I was worth something in pounds and shillings. Most white people, near as I could figure out, wasn't worth much of anything at all. I mean you take a free white man, he was worth maybe twenty shillings a month in wages, and here I was worth about eighty times that just sitting there. "That's why we're worried about getting sold."

"Sold? Why, Uncle wouldn't sell you, Dan." He looked a little uneasy, though, and I could tell he wasn't exactly sure.