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Page 9
My own acquaintance with Philip Nolan began six or eight years after the
War, on my first voyage after I was appointed a midshipman. It was in
the first days after our Slave-Trade treaty, while the Reigning House,
which was still the House of Virginia, had still a sort of
sentimentalism about the suppression of the horrors of the Middle
Passage, and something was sometimes done that way. We were in the South
Atlantic on that business. From the time I joined, I believe I thought
Nolan was a sort of lay chaplain,--a chaplain with a blue coat. I never
asked about him. Everything in the ship was strange to me. I knew it was
green to ask questions, and I suppose I thought there was a
"Plain-Buttons" on every ship. We had him to dine in our mess once a
week, and the caution was given that on that day nothing was to be said
about home. But if they had told us not to say anything about the planet
Mars or the Book of Deuteronomy, I should not have asked why; there were
a great many things which seemed to me to have as little reason. I first
came to understand anything about "the man without a country" one day
when we overhauled a dirty little schooner which had slaves on board.
An officer was sent to take charge of her, and, after a few minutes, he
sent back his boat to ask that some one might be sent him who could
speak Portuguese. We were all looking over the rail when the message
came, and we all wished we could interpret, when the captain asked Who
spoke Portuguese. But none of the officers did; and just as the captain
was sending forward to ask if any of the people could, Nolan stepped out
and said he should be glad to interpret, if the captain wished, as he
understood the language. The captain thanked him, fitted out another
boat with him, and in this boat it was my luck to go.
When we got there, it was such a scene as you seldom see, and never want
to. Nastiness beyond account, and chaos run loose in the midst of the
nastiness. There were not a great many of the negroes; but by way of
making what there were understand that they were free, Vaughan had had
their hand-cuffs and ankle-cuffs knocked off, and, for convenience'
sake, was putting them upon the rascals of the schooner's crew. The
negroes were, most of them, out of the hold, and swarming all round the
dirty deck, with a central throng surrounding Vaughan and addressing him
in every dialect, and _patois_ of a dialect, from the Zulu click up to
the Parisian of Beledeljereed.
As we came on deck, Vaughan looked down from a hogshead, on which he had
mounted in desperation, and said:--
"For God's love, is there anybody who can make these wretches understand
something? The men gave them rum, and that did not quiet them. I knocked
that big fellow down twice, and that did not soothe him. And then I
talked Choctaw to all of them together; and I'll be hanged if they
understood that as well as they understood the English."
Nolan said he could speak Portuguese, and one or two fine-looking
Kroomen were dragged out, who, as it had been found already, had worked
for the Portuguese on the coast at Fernando Po.
"Tell them they are free," said Vaughan; "and tell them that these
rascals are to be hanged as soon as we can get rope enough."
Nolan "put that into Spanish,"--that is, he explained it in such
Portuguese as the Kroomen could understand, and they in turn to such of
the negroes as could understand them. Then there was such a yell of
delight, clinching of fists, leaping and dancing, kissing of Nolan's
feet, and a general rush made to the hogshead by way of spontaneous
worship of Vaughan, as the _deus ex machina_ of the occasion.
"Tell them," said Vaughan, well pleased, "that I will take them all to
Cape Palmas."
This did not answer so well. Cape Palmas was practically as far from the
homes of most of them as New Orleans or Rio Janeiro was; that is, they
would be eternally separated from home there. And their interpreters, as
we could understand, instantly said, "_Ah, non Palmas_" and began to
propose infinite other expedients in most voluble language. Vaughan was
rather disappointed at this result of his liberality, and asked Nolan
eagerly what they said. The drops stood on poor Nolan's white forehead,
as he hushed the men down, and said:--
"He says, 'Not Palmas.' He says, 'Take us home, take us to our own
country, take us to our own house, take us to our own pickaninnies and
our own women.' He says he has an old father and mother who will die if
they do not see him. And this one says he left his people all sick, and
paddled down to Fernando to beg the white doctor to come and help them,
and that these devils caught him in the bay just in sight of home, and
that he has never seen anybody from home since then. And this one says,"
choked out Nolan, "that he has not heard a word from his home in six
months, while he has been locked up in an infernal barracoon."
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