Outalissi; a Tale of Dutch Guiana

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Chapter V. The Slave Captain.

‘Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.’
      Burns.

Besides Mr. Cotton and one of his blank officers (as they are called) or directors of the name of Hogshead (a dreadful looking mixture of' gluttony, remorseless cruelty and craft) and Mr. Bentinck, the dinner-party at Anne's Grove consisted only of two others, one of them was a man about forty, of light figure and complexion, soft eyes, expressive rather of good nature, and a vive-la-bagatelle disposition, with a little something perhaps of treachery and sudden fire, and some irony in the lines about the mouth, but no expression of deliberate cruelty or indeed of any prevailing direction of sentiment; there was nothing particularly coarse even about his hands, which were not quite like those of a dandy, neither were they

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like those of a clown, but like those of a merchant, or man of business, or any other plain man. The expression of the other's countenance was one of fixed and irreversible solemnity and circumspection, it was lighted sometimes by a smile of great benevolence, but there seemed to be an incapacity to laugh, not an abstraction from external or near objects, but a concurrent and paramount attention to some introspective or distant ones; like that of a general whose commanding elevation enables him to see the movements of approaching or cooperating forces, that are quite invisible or indistinct to others, an intimate and sleepless apprehension of surrounding danger, with an expression of resolved and calm self-devotion to the service in which he was engaged, a complete supercession of passion, pride and egotism by the overbearing importance of some more comprehensive interests, and the severe responsibility of their defence. His eye was one of steady fire without the blaze,

‘There was no worldly feeling in his eye,
The world to him was as a thing gone by -’

gone by, that is, not as a field of duty but a source of reward; - in the world but not of it, like Moses on Mount Nebo, he seemed distressed for want of adequate power to communicate to all his species

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his own glorious view, and their danger if they delayed to follow him, of being rapidly overtaken by some intervening enemy, that would cut them off from it for ever.

‘I suppose,’ thought Edward Bentinck, as he prepared to return to Anne's Grove, ‘I need not be very particular in my dress to-day; Miss Cotton, I am afraid, will not have recovered her fright, and if she has, her father will scarcely allow her to be present with this slave captain whom she hinted I should meet, some farouche looking ruffian, who doesn't waste much time upon his toilette I'll be bound.’ When therefore on his joining the party Mr. Cotton introduced him to his two visitors; ‘Mr. Bentinck! Mr. Schwartz! Captain Légere!’ he was a little surprised to see in the former an almost saintly benevolence of countenance, and the dress and appearance of a Moravian missionary, and in the latter nothing more than an ordinary Frenchman. Still there was so much singularity and novelty to him in the incongruity of characters assembled, that he could not help feeling considerable curiosity to see how they would amalgamate in conversation. The first subject naturally was the occurrence of the morning, ‘I hope, sir,’ said Edward Bentinck addressing himself to Mr. Cotton, ‘that Miss Cotton will not suffer materially from

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her fright this morning, with which doubtless she has acquainted you?’

‘No,’ said her father, ‘she is now tolerably composed again, and will perhaps make her appearance with the coffee, especially as my friend Mr. Schwartz here is I know one of her particular beaus; but it was a most outrageous conduct on the part of the seamen, I have requested Captain Légere to rebuke them severely, and if he gives them a round dozen it will be scarcely more than they deserve.’

‘Surely,’ said Edward, ‘if the unhappy man dies they'll be guilty of murder, will they not?’

‘By all the laws of Christendom,’ said Mr. Schwartz.

‘O! you mistake me,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘what I complain of, is their shooting at random in that way through a thin screen of foliage into an open walk close to a dwelling house; as for the man, if he would not stop when they desired him, and they could not otherwise overtake him, I don't see what else they could do very well.’

‘He could hardly expect,’ said Mr. Légere with a sardonic grin, ‘after taking the trouble of bringing him across the Atlantic Ocean into the rational and civilized world here, that he was to give us the slip in that way, before he had paid us

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for his passage; but,’ added he, ‘I will take care to rate them soundly for their want of caution. Sacre! ils ne peuvent jamais discriminer - they're so accustomed in Africa to use their fuzils, as they would in a German shooting match, that they keep me in constant hot water whenever they are on shore any where else.’

‘You give one an encouraging idea of your employment, Mr. Légere,’ said Edward.

‘Il faut que tout le monde vive,’ said Légere, shrugging his shoulders.

‘There are different modes of conducting all employments,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘Captain Légere, for example, never stows above three mules ^* to a ton, or loses more than a third of his cargo on the voyage, and his decks are as clean nearly as those of a man of war. I will not however deny, that it would be desirable to avoid even such a waste of valuable life and muscle as that, but the risk and penalties are now so heavy as to compel the traders, like smugglers, to make the profits of one successful voyage cover the loss and expences of three, and if that precious little humbug, Mr. Wilberforce, had been content to regulate instead of abolishing the trade, there might have been something to be said for him.’

* The slang term for slaves. - Note by the Author.

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‘But,’ said Edward, ‘don't you see that it would have been impossible by any regulations to bring such a trade within the pale of humanity, because any restrictions that at all proportioned the numbers to the tonnage of the vessels employed, would have so enhanced the price of legally imported slaves, as to make the profits upon smuggling a sufficient temptation to practise it with at least as much, if not more, disregard to waste of life than prevails at present?’

‘I can't see,’ said Mr. Hogshead, ‘what right Mr. Wilberforce had to trouble his head about the matter for my part, with Ireland and the press gang under his nose.’

‘It's rather hard upon Mr. Wilberforce too,’ said Edward, ‘or indeed any man, to condemn him for doing any thing because he could not do every thing. What he has achieved has cost him the labour of his whole life; and looked at seriously, and in all its remote and probable consequences, a most glorious achievement it is; he has rescued the profession of Christianity from its foulest blot, and by his single moral pertinacity, with the divine authority of revelation in his support, he has done more towards the recognition of the rational rights of man than the whole infidel sect of the Illuminati, and all the

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physical force employed in the French revolution to boot.’

‘I confess,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘if you appeal to Christianity, the West Indian case has not a leg to stand upon, if Mr. Schwartz therefore will not allow me to dispute the truth of that, I throw up my brief.’

‘And if I thought,’ said Mr. Schwartz, ‘that Christianity was not true, I confess candidly I should be disposed to throw up mine; my charge against the system of slavery, as it has hitherto prevailed in the West Indies, is that it is incompatible with the inculcation of the doctrines and duties of Christianity upon eight hundred thousand or a million souls, if those doctrines and duties are of fabulous origin, of course my charge drops to the ground; otherwise, for instance, how painful, and in general I'm sorry to say, how vain is it for me to call upon the slaves to abstain from promiscuous intercourse upon pain of incurring the heavy displeasure of their Maker, whilst not only is no facility given, but every possible obstacle opposed to their contraction of marriage, the great hinge upon which all the charities of life, and consequently all advances in civilization and moral refinement depend; and the most frightful example is set them by the whites of contempt for that

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institution; and if I do succeed in impressing the minds of the slaves with a sense of the truth and obligations of Christianity, how can I do so without proportionally lessening their respect for their masters, who live in open derision and defiance of all its restraints, and the spirit as well as letter of its directions?’

‘To be sure you can't,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘therefore I say an acquaintance with Christianity cannot be extensively introduced amongst the slaves without the greatest danger. I have given way to my daughter's importunity upon the subject, but depend upon it without a reform of the whole social system (as it exists in this colony at least) upon Christian principles, to expect you to teach Christianity without impairing our security, is to expect you to light a candle in a magazine of powder or gas without danger of explosion.’

‘It is difficult,’ said Mr. Schwartz, ‘to deny that there is danger, but the danger, remember, does not result from the nature of the light, but of the element into which it is introduced, and if there were any assimilated principles or institutions in general observance amongst the planters to act like a safety lamp in a mine and prevent the directness of the contact, the danger would be

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little or none. Nor is it from Christianity (which expressly forbids all violence) that any danger can fairly be said to result after all, that is, no danger can ever attend the diffusion of Christianity that is not common to the diffusion of general information and intelligence; or rather, I should say, whatever is peculiarly Christian in the light circulated, has nothing in it but humility, temperance, industry, docility, gentleness, peace, charity, self-sacrifice, and social love; but the same light by which I inculcate these duties, must also convey a variety of other truths, philosophical as well as moral, and who can say that impetuous spirits will not sometimes act upon the light and reject the discipline?’

‘That Christianity has a levelling tendency in one sense,’ said Edward, ‘I should think it would be impossible to deny; but its great value is, that whatever alteration in the condition of the world it is designed ultimately to accomplish, it is emphatically a religion of tendencies, while it instructs its disciples to wash each other's feet, to disclaim all titles of inflation or inequality, and shows that no condescension which they can practise towards each other can approach the example of their benignant and divine Master himself in His mystical incarnation and atonement; it strictly

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forbids the violent employment of the physical force of a little finger in advancement even of its own designs; so that it seems to comprise the only means that were ever offered of effecting what has been considered as a desideratum by the best and wisest of all ages, (viz. a reduction of the great inequalities in the conditions of men,) without the confusion, and anarchy, and bloodshed that have always attended and defeated the employment of all others.’

The reader who has never lived within six degrees of the equator, might perhaps wish that I should give him some description of an equatorial dinner, as well as the general conversation that prevailed there, but the truth is, that except perhaps in rather a greater profusion, although a general inferiority of materials, there is so little difference either in the composition or serving up of the dinner^* of a Surinam planter, or the costume of the company, from the dinner of any opulent man in Europe, that if it were not for the heat of the atmosphere, any one might suppose himself dining with a London family who kept

* The flesh, fish, and fowl of Surinam are all inferior to those of London, and what will surprise the reader still more, the fruit exceedingly so, both in flavour and variety. - Note by the Author.

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half a dozen black servants. The only peculiarity in a house where there are ladies is the naked feet,^* which is a little repulsive at first, but after a few weeks residence, no one would either observe it, or feel the least inconvenience from it. Upon the plantations sometimes, indeed, and even in Paramaribo, in the houses of the Jews and low Dutch, the nudity is not confined to the feet, but you are waited upon by boys and girls of eight and ten years old as naked as they were born; but my reader need not be informed that in any family presided over by a lady in the European sense of that term, (although I am sorry to say that ladies of that description in Dutch Guiana are not very numerous; one great source of social evil in the West Indies, as in Ireland, being absenteeship,) this is not and cannot be the case.

Adjoining the room at Anne's Grove, whore Mr. Cotton had ordered tea and coffee to be prepared, was a long gallery or balcony into which it opened, this latter again terminating in a door of painted and plate glass, which opened into two long parallel walks formed by three unusually fine and lofty rows of the elegant leafed tamarind trees, and resembling with great accuracy the double aisle

* By a colonial regulation at Surinam, the slaves are prohibited from wearing shoes. - Note by the Author.

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of a Gothic cathedral. Having thrown her bonnet loosely over her head to be ready for the wing on the least alarm of foot-steps, and that volume which every heart of human mould endears, into her lap, Matilda Cotton had been sitting here sometime waiting for a message from her father to make tea; but the moment she heard the approach of one of the party from the dining-room, off she was like a shot. Unfortunately Mr. Bentinck, who was first in the procession from the dinner table, saw her before she left her chair, and her father just caught a glimpse of her fine form as she sprang into the tamarind walk from the balcony. ‘Matilda, my dear Matilda!’ said her father, following her, ‘give us some tea!’

‘Pray excuse me to-night, papa!’ said Matilda, as she came running gently back to him when she heard his voice, ‘after what happened this morning I cannot bear the sight of that odious Frenchman.’

‘My dear Matilda,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘if by word or look that odious Frenchman, as you call him, ever insults you, no consequences of his resentment to myself should save him from my horsewhip; but you know that as I am completely in his power, it's as well not to offend him.’

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‘But if I go back, papa! I shall very likely say something that will -’

‘No! no! my love,’ said Mr. Cotton, ‘he knows your opinions very well, and will not be near so likely to take offence at any thing you say as at your absence - besides, there's your friend Mr. Schwartz there, and it's hard if we can't keep this Frenchman in order between us; he is, like many others of his countrymen, half monkey, half tiger, but he will certainly never display either of these qualities offensively in my presence to you, and it cannot contaminate you to sit in the same room with him for half an hour.’

‘Well, papa, I will go to the devil with you, you know,’ said Matilda playfully.

‘No! my darling girl, you shall not go to the devil with me,’ replied her father with emotion; ‘you have already one parent in a better place, and you shall meet her again.’

‘O! papa, we!’ said Matilda, as they returned to the drawing-room.

‘So, sir,’ said Mr. Légere, as Mr. Cotton re-entered the room with his daughter, ‘you've recovered the fair fugitive! in my country, mademoiselle! we soon stop the flight of young ladies that make too free a use of their wings!’

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‘You shoot them, I suppose, sir?’ said Matilda.

‘No; we've cages called convents,’ said Mr. Légere.

‘And iron rings, bolts, leg locks, and handcuffs, to confine them to the bars, I suppose, sir?’ said Matilda.

‘O,’ said Mr. Légere, I see where I am now. I am exceedingly sorry, Miss Cotton, for the fright you received this morning, but I promise you I'll read all my fellows such a lecture when I go on board, as shall prevent the recurrence of such an accident. As for the man that was wounded, whose name is Outalissi, although the wound is merely a graze across the ribs, it would have served him right if the bullet had scuttled his knob; he has given me more trouble since his embarkation, than almost any man I ever took on board: twice he jumped overboard, once he attempted to scuttle the ship, and latterly he refused all sustenance, and would have died if we had not had an unusually short passage; and yet he has nothing to regret in Africa, for, by the account of Askens, one of my men, who undertook to guide the surprise party to his village, of which he seemed to be the head, they did not leave a hearth to shel-

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ter, or a dog to live in it to miss him, and he's quite a young man, not older than Mynheer Bentinck, so that he may do just as well here, if he would but think so.’

Matilda changed countenance, and giving a look to Edward Bentinck, that seemed to say, ‘You are a man, rebuke him,’ left the room.

‘Morbleu!’ said Mr. Légere. ‘Do the Surinam ladies think it's possible to carry on a slave trade with rose water?’

‘I am not,’ said Edward Bentinck, ‘a Surinam lady, or quite a stranger to military carnage, and am not startled by the sight of honest blood; but your business seems to begin, proceed, and end in wholesale treachery, cruelty, and murder, robbery, and crime of every sort;^* and, if I were governor of this colony, I would take good care, Mr. Légere, that this should be your last visit.’

‘Ah, ah!’ said Légere, ‘then you would not be long governor, for the planters would tell some lie against you or another, and get you recalled, or make the colony too hot to hold you. The members of the court of policy, as they call it here, (which is the court of criminal justice,) are all planters; and even if the governor was to prosecute,

* See Note A.

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they would never condemn, because they know they are all obnoxious to the same charge; and as for religion, pity, compassion, philanthropy, and all that humbug, who ever heard or met with a Dutchman out of Vaderland who would sacrifice a stiver to any one of them?’

‘Frenchmen, I suppose,’ said Edward, looking sternly at Mr. Légere; for he did not think it worth while to take up more seriously the championship of his country with the captain of a slave ship. ‘Messieurs de la grande nation, of that description of character, are never to be met with out of La belle France.’

‘Ah, monsieur!’ said Mr. Légere, with a grimace of momentary pensiveness; and either only hearing the last words of the observation addressed to him, or in his intense national and personal conceit overlooking its irony, ‘Je sais bien qu'il n'y a qu'une France!’

‘But, Mr. Légere,’ continued Edward, ‘after having done every thing to exasperate your unhappy victims, do you never try to soothe their feelings when you get them on board?’

‘O yes, every thing,’ said he. ‘We physic, flog, and iron them; and sometimes, if there is much smother, we throw a dozen or two overboard to make room for the rest to breathe.’

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‘Every thing but mercy, humanity, and kindness,’ said Edward; ‘and that last act which you mentioned must often be one of the greatest of them. May I ask if it is alive or dead that you throw them overboard when you are too crowded?’

‘Ah, c'est égal,’ said Mr. Légere, ‘qu'importe cela? But,’ said he, suspecting that Edward was laughing at him, ‘Outalissi, who now belongs to Mr. Cotton, speaks very good English; he was accustomed, I believe, to attend when he was a boy, and latterly to conduct, on his own account, a little sort of commercial caravansera from the interior to Sierra Leone, and he will tell you more about it. He's a fine subject, Mr. Schwartz, for you to try your hand upon, and I have brought some blue parrots for mademoiselle, that I believe I must first place under your care, to break them of the bad language they have learned on board the Harpy.’

Mr. Schwartz made no reply to this stroke of raillery, but being engaged to sleep at a plantation within a hundred yards of the military post, challenged Edward to accompany him home; and their host, who seemed absorbed in his own reflections since his return into the room with Matilda, merely wished them a good night, and they departed.