So honour was satisfied, both sides, but Spring and Sanchez took no chances. The Balliol College's nets were rigged, and her twelve and nine-pounders shotted, while Sanchez's pickets guarded the jungle trails and the river. All remained peaceful, however, and the business of loading the slaves went ahead undisturbed.
With our second mate dead and our third apparently dying, I found myself having to work for a living. Even with men who knew their business as well as these, it's no easy matter to pack six hundred terrified, stupid niggers into a slave deck; it's worse than putting Irish infantry into a troopship.
First Spring and Murphy went through the barracoons, picking out the likeliest bucks and wenches. They were penned up in batches of a hundred, men and women separate, a great mass of smelling, heaving black bodies, all stark naked, squatting and lying and moaning; the sound was like a great wailing hum, and it never stopped, day or night, except when the tubs of burgoo were shoved into the pens, and they shut up long enough to empty the gourds which were passed round among them. What astonished me was that Spring and Murphy were able to walk in among them as though they were tame beasts; just the two of them in that mass of cowed, miserable humanity, with a couple of black guards jerking out the ones selected. If they'd had a spark of spirit the niggers could have torn them limb from limb, but they just sat, helpless and mumbling. I thought of the Amazons, and wondered what changed people from brave, reckless savages into dumb resigned animals; apparently it's always the way on the Coast. Sullivan told me he reckoned it was the knowledge that they were going to be slaves, but that being brainless brutes they never thought of doing anything about it.
Those who were selected were herded out of the barracoons into a long railed place like a sheep pen, all jammed together with three black guards either side, armed with whips and pistols. There was a narrow gate at the other end, just wide enough to let one slave through at a time, and the two biggest guards were stationed there. As each nigger emerged they seized him and flung him face down beside an iron brazier full of glowing coals, and two of Sanchez's Dago pals clapped a branding iron on his shoulder. He would squeal like blazes, and the niggers in the pen would try to crowd back out the other end, but the guards lashed them on, and another would be hauled out and branded the same way. The screaming and weeping in the pen was something to hear; everyone who could was on hand to watch, and there was much merriment at the antics of the niggers, blubbering before they were burned, and hopping and squealing afterwards.
Spring was there for the branding of the wenches, to see that it was done lightly, just below the ankle on the inside, in the case of the better-looking ones. "Who the d—-l wants a young wench with scars on her backside?" he growled. "Even if we ain't selling fancies, the less marking the better; the Legrees tell me the Southern ladies don't want even their field women burned these days.22 So have a care with those irons, you two, and you, doctor, slap on that grease with a will."
This was to Murphy, who sat beyond the brazier with a huge tub of lard between his feet. As each branded nigger was pulled forward one of the black guards would thrust the burned shoulder or ankle under Murphy's nose; he would take a good look at it and then slap a handful of the lard on the wound, crying either, "There's for you, Sambo", or "That'll pretty you up, acushla"; he was half full of booze, as usual, and from time to time would apply himself to his bottle and then cry encouragement to the niggers as they came through, or break into a snatch of raucous song. I can see him now, swaying on his stool, red face glistening, shirt hanging open over the red furze on his chest, plastering on the grease with his great freckled hand and chanting:
"Al-though with lav-ish kind-ness
The gifts of Go-od are strewn,
The heath-en in his blind-ness
Bows down to wood and sto-one."
When he was done with them the heathen were pushed through a series of wooden frames set up close by the Balliol College's gangplanks. One was six feet by two, another slightly smaller, and a third smaller still. By means of these the slaves were sized, and sent up one of three gangplanks accordingly; the biggest ones were for the bottom of the slave deck, the middle-sized for the first tier of shelves, and the smallest for the top tier, but care was taken to separate men and women — a tall wench or a little chap could have got in among the wrong sex, and Spring wouldn't have that. He insisted that the women should be berthed forward of the first bulkhead and the men all aft of it, and since they would be chained up they wouldn't be able to get up to high jinks — I didn't see why they shouldn't, myself, but Spring had his own reasons, no doubt.
Once up the planks, though, the really hard work began. I didn't know much about it, but I had to work with the hands who stowed the slaves, and I soon picked up the hang of it. As each slave was pushed down the hatch, he was seized by a waiting seaman and forced to lie down on the deck in his allotted place, head towards the side of the ship, feet towards the centre, until both sides of the deck were lined with them. Each man had to go in a space six feet by fifteen inches, and now I saw why there had been so much argument over that extra inch; if they were jammed up tight, or made to lie on their right sides, you could get ever so many more in.
This was the hard part, for the slaves were terrified, stupid, and in pain from their branding they wriggled and squirmed, on the deck and wouldn't be still, and the hands had to knock them about or lay into the most imruly ones with a rope's end. One huge buck, bawling and with tears streaming down his face, made a dash for the hatch, but Sullivan knocked him flat with a hand-spike, threw him into place, and terrified the others by shaking a cat-o'-nine-tails at them, to let them see what they might hope to get if they misbehaved.
When they were placed, a shackle was clapped round each right ankle, and a long chain threaded through it, until they were all stowed, when the chain was made fast to the bulkheads at either end. Soon there were four lines of niggers flat on the deck, with a space up the middle between them, so that the seamen could stand there to pack the later arrivals into the shelves.
It's not that I'm an abolitionist by any means, but by the end of that day I'd had my bellyful of slaving. The reek of those musky bodies in that deck was abominable; the heat and stench grew by the hour, until you'd have wondered that anything could survive down there. They howled and blubbered, and we were fagged out with grabbing brown limbs and tugging and shoving and mudging them up with our feet to get the brutes to lie close. They fouled themselves where they lay, and before the job was half done the filth was indescribable. We had to escape to the deck every half hour to souse ourselves with salt water and drink great draughts of orange juice, before descending into that fearful pit again, and wrestle again with wriggling black bodies that stunk and sweated and went everywhere but where you wanted them. When it was finally done, and Sullivan ordered all hands on deck, we climbed out dead beat, ready to flop down anywhere and go to sleep.
But not with John Charity Spring about. He must go down to inspect, and count the rows, and kick a black body into place here and tug another one there, before he was satisfied. He d––d our eyes for letting 'em soil the deck, and ordered the whole place hosed down, niggers and all; they dried where they lay in no time, of course, and the steam came out of the hatches like smoke.