’Twas after dinner that Pomp came to tell me my presence was required upon the upper deck. Upon ascending, I was confronted by the most welcome of spectacles: Dr. Trefusis and Bono both having just come aboard, conferring with Serjeant Clippinger. As I approached, I saw that my dear philosophe spake in terms of remonstration to the Serjeant, which officer protested their presence on the ship. Trefusis, however, had procured a letter from Lord Dunmore which approved my lessons in philosophy and language should continue; and a letter of commission that transferred Bono to my company. The latter is a great cause for rejoicing, though perhaps of little surprise: The white officers generally account our sable troops as number without face or footprint, and approach questions of our regulation with indifference and irritable neglect.

So soon as Serjeant Clippinger was dispatched, and retreated with a scowl little calculated to welcome, Dr. Trefusis and Bono made merry in quiet tones at our reunion. Dr. Trefusis had sought out Bono in the morning and sent him a letter to inquire whether a transfer should be an agreeable and desirable circumstance for my friend; and had encountered nought but approbation for the scheme.

I was rejoiced at this prospect, for, in truth, I have now together in one place all of those who remain most dear to me; though this I cannot say out loud, for fear Bono should note the absence of one inestimable being from that roster of tenderness.

We betook ourselves below and sate ourselves with great satisfaction. The pleasantries being accomplished, Bono asked of news. Dr. Trefusis replied that there was no news but starvation — so many of the Loyalist citizens upon their ships having prepared inadequately for a stay offshore. Bono then inquired how Dr. Trefusis himself was accommodated; to which the philosopher replied that though he was ill fed, he wished we could reside with him in his space upon the Betsey brig, which delightful little chamber had been vacated for him so soon he made mention of his hearty jests with Frederick the Great. Following this, Dr. Trefusis pressed Bono to hear of his adventures, and of what had transpired since last we had seen him — the doctor having last seen him bundled off to Salem for shipment a full year before.

“I should be pleased to tell you the story of my travels,” said Bono smartly, “really I should, and a cracking fine tale it is too, sir, but I beg your pardon, you has work to do. Teaching Prince O. And reading and such.”

Dr. Trefusis importuned him to recount his adventures — to which my own wishes ardently assented — but Bono offered only theatrical refusal, saying he knew Trefusis had a letter from Dunmore that said we should be philosophizing, and we didn’t want to disappoint our Serjeant there.

Nodding, Dr. Trefusis asked me to fetch my Locke; which I did, receiving a baleful interrogatory look from Clippinger. When I returned, Dr. Trefusis was sat with his arms around his thin legs, as I remembered him so oft sitting in the school room in the College of Lucidity, laughing at some witty chaff of Bono’s.

Trefusis took the book and searched it, explaining that today’s lesson was on travel, location, place, and the relative nature of motion; which, said he, would be illuminated by an excellent example of alteration in location by Private William Williams.

“Read it now,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Later this evening, transcribe it for better understanding.”

I stared down at the page; and well can it be imagined how little I perceived of the meaning of Mr. Locke’s disquisition on space and place; though I shall transcribe and seek to understand. What I recall of our evening is not the words of that most eminent of rationalists, but the sensibility that those dearest to me, the supports of my childhood and instructors of my youth, were gathered again in company with me, and that there was great comfort annexed to sitting there idle — together — crouched upon the stooped lower deck of the Crepuscule, hearkening to Bono’s tale while others played cards or muttered or slept, and Vishnoo clambered along the planking, seeking his insect meal.

And Bono, beginning, spake thus: “I was sold to one Colonel Clepp Asquith of Burn Acres. I served him as a valet. You know Colonel Asquith?” he asked Dr. Trefusis.

“I was never gratified with a personal introduction,” said Dr. Trefusis. “I saw many letters by his hand regarding the finances of the College.”

Bono nodded with impatience. “He’s a — what can a person say? Mr. Asquith is one of them men who’s like a tipped-over scuttle, see? He has one of the pointy, low guts that a gentleman can have. And a face like that too, a pointy, low round face. That didn’t make it no easier when you saw how many of the little Negro babes on the plantation had his pointy, low little nose and little mouth. Or maybe that was just in my fancy. I started to see his pointy, low self everywhere I looked.

“First I got there and he had me as just another house servant, but then one day he saw me look over his shoulder at a newspaper that had some word of a Negro uprising and he was sensible that I seen the matter and understood it; so he had me whipped for knowing the science of reading — ten lashes — and then elevated me to his valet.”

(And I read, without much marking:)

I shall begin with the simple idea of SPACE. I have showed above that we get the idea of space both by our sight and touch; which, I think, is so evident, that it would be as needless to go to prove that men perceive, by their sight, a distance between bodies of different colours, or between the parts of the same body, as that they see colours themselves: nor is it less obvious, that they can do so in the dark by feeling and touch.

“So if you never met him, how much you know about Clepp Asquith?” Bono asked Dr. Trefusis.

“The impressions he made upon me suggested he was not of the sagest, nor of the most excellent of men.”

“Sir, he may have paid for some of the College, but he hated it, too. Surely, he employed me to write him notes and to read some small correspondence, but it raised up his ire devilish — devilish — that the College had taught me to read; just as it raised up his ire that the College done experiments on time and the soul and such instead of on crops and metal and baking and such. That and everything else got him storming, on a general head — that there ain’t enough respecting of degree in the North, and that up yonder, barbers and bootmen — he always said that, ‘barbers and bootmen’ — that up yonder, barbers and bootmen sat next to the first men of the Colonies and talked to them like brethren. Sweet Jesus, he would yell and curse about the Northerners and their fool leveling Puritan ways and they were a lot of sickly old schoolmarms, didn’t understand a single thing regarding the nicer points of business.

“And after a while, I started to remark that whenever there was some talk of the North — one of the mobs done something he didn’t like, or a reverend arguing for schools, or some Negro gents presenting a petition in Boston for their freedom, or (murder!) that book of poems by the Negress — he’d start all fulminating: Oh, the meddling scoundrels in New England! Their leveling! Their freaks!

“And then, he search out some reason for to whip me.

“Every time. I looked over the top of his head to the hall clock, and the longest it took was one hour and thirty-three minutes. Some fool reason. They wasn’t the right shoes or the candle is burnt down too low, boy, or just for having a look. He said I had a certain look. And he order me outside and whip me hisself and all the while asking me if I was clever, if my dear sweet College ever taught me to read stripes. And I kept quiet and bided my time.

“He had a daughter, I mean a white daughter, name of Fanny. She was — sweet mercy in a firkin — she was a gruesome little baggage. You know, sir, I love the dear darling squat children, especially when they’re spruce things that either answer smart or that stare in a long-lashedy kind of way, like our minikin Prince O. here used to be before he a-muscled himself up — but this damn thing was some imp out of Hell. Maybe ten or eleven. I knew her and the truth of her from one of the first days I was there, when I seen her playing with some little girls — six or seven years, these girls — they was the daughters of a neighbor planter. She brought out her dolls for their games, and one of the dolls was a black doll made from rags that was given her when she was a little girl by her maid, who’d suckled her, her mother being too tender to do so herself. Fanny and these neighbor girls, see, were at play, and one of the small girls took a white doll in a dress and began having fits yelling at the black doll, making all this chastisement in some high, squeaky voice. ‘You breaked another plate, Masie, and you ain’t fit to serve in a respectable house’ and such-like. Like she must hear her mommy or her dada say.

“And Fanny — who could tell her halt, that ain’t what a lady does — instead Fanny breaks off a stem of grass, and gives it her, and puts it in the doll’s hand, and together, they make the little white doll whip the black one.

“And Fanny puts on some African accent, and starts begging mercy — ‘Oh, de missus whip me some! Oh, missus!’ and such-like. And these tiny girls, they start to laugh and whip the doll harder to urge the whole jest longer.

“It made my heart sick, and I could not barely stand in that yard without fleeing. That’s when I knew sweet Fanny was a species of demon.

“Now, I don’t know rightly what made Fanny fascinated with my person, and longing always to hurt me special, what called her eye to me, but I warrant it was due to me being a wondrous handsome brute. That’s a burden that a man has to carry upright, sir, and I may suffer — I may suffer awful, boys — but weep me no tears.”

“You have,” said Trefusis, “made your peace with your Maker.”

“And gentlemen, I myself cry no tears for me. No, sir, I don’t. Because it crunches up the features. Detracts from the regularity.”

“I can see that if we allow the slightest divagation on the subject of your charms, we shall never have time to hear the tale of your escape.”

“Sir, the shape of my jaw alone could furnish enough talk for a whole of your symposiums.”

“Symposia. Doubtless.”

“Look ye, Prince O. actually almost smiles.”

(Bashfully, I returned my gaze to Locke.)

SPACE AND EXTENSION.

Space, considered barely in length between any two beings, without considering anything else between them, is called DISTANCE.

Bono continued his tale: “So, as I say, Fanny, she conceived a great hate for me specific. I don’t rightly know why; but that girl enjoyed tormenting me, and so, oft when her father was in a ranting state because of the fools of New England, his reasons for whipping, they come from Fanny.

“I can recall . . . Here, sir, one example: One day, it was beastly hot, a devilish hot rainy day, and Miss Fanny didn’t want to go above-stairs to her chamber to change her dress, because her paint might melt. So her father says to me to go up and fetch down the gown the maid left out on the bed. Now, her maid is there, sirs; she is present in the chamber. Miss Fanny’s maid is the correct one to fetch her dress. But I bow and say, ‘An’t please your honor,’ and I step up the stairs and fetch the dress down and ask where they wish me to lay it, that she might change into it and such.

“Fanny says, she says, ‘That ain’t the gown I am to wear for supper; I wish for the gray. That ain’t the one I asked for.’

“I apologize, and say this is the one I found on her bed.

“She says, ‘You got the wrong one.’

“I says to Colonel Asquith, ‘My apologies, sir. An’t please your honor, this was the dress was laid out.’

“‘That was laid out earlier,’” says Colonel Ass. ‘Before the rain started. Now she wishes for the gray. She wears always the gray, boy, when it rains. Always.’

“At this I cannot forbear, and I say, ‘When it rains, sir?’

“And he says, ‘Don’t be an impertinent fool, boy.’

“And I can’t forbear — because I am an impertinent fool — saying, ‘I was to guess her mind from the weather, sir?’

“And he calls that insufferable vanity, and swears that I am a black scoundrel, and I say, ‘Sir, begging your honor’s pardon, sir, I beg your honor’s most gracious pardon, but I have a nation of trouble knowing people’s thoughts by looking at the clouds, me being a gentleman’s valet and not a old Roman prophet.’”

Bono ceased his speaking.

“Lord Jesus,” he swore; and for a moment there was silence. I looked up, and found he was almost in tears. “Lord Jesus,” he repeated. “I still have them scars.”

We sat soberly; we none of us could speak.

After a time, Bono resumed his tale. “Now, people was always at the house, talking sedition, just as up at the College. Colonel Ass and his friends might proclaim that the Boston mob is a danger, but they applauded all that talk of liberty. I presume, sir, from what I could tell, that they was wound up in that same scheme to purchase Indian land —”

“Indeed,” said Dr. Trefusis. “Mr. Asquith was one of the foremost investors in that scheme.”

“That same scheme. So they was always making plaints about Parliament and the King’s Ministers being no respecters of property and how government was builded to protect the natural right to own what you own and how there was rumors — mark you — rumors that Lord Dunmore even spake of freeing the slaves if the spirit of rebellion came to Virginia.

“It was that last that I heard. I knew my master and his crew was preparing for a stand — they had recipes from you at the College for gunpowder, and they was making experiments in getting nitre from the floors of their tobacco houses. They was setting up a factory to make the powder. They was ready to fight; and I said, ‘If they’re ready to fight Lord Dunmore, time may come when I am ready to join him.’

“And not too long after, that time, it come.”

FIGURE.

This the touch discovers in sensible bodies, whose extremities come within our reach; and the eye takes both from bodies and colours, whose boundaries are within its view.

Thus did I read in counterfeit of study; but I could not comprehend its meaning, so bent were my ears to Bono’s tale:

“So it happens that Mrs. Asquith is having a grand ball. Her particular acquaintance is come for overnight, and then the next night, there is a full ball with all the neighboring houses. There was among that crowd several especial friends of the little Asquith imp, and Miss Fanny was ever so delighted they was visiting. The first night, Miss Fanny and her friends are in the parlor, and Colonel and Mrs. Ass and their guests are out visiting at another house for the evening. Before the Asquith Seniors take leave, they says to me, the Ass Seniors, ‘Bono, you make sure the girls got everything they wish,’ and though that ain’t my watch, I bow and says, ‘As it pleases your honor.’

“I spend some time, a part of an hour, polishing my master’s shoes, and then I hear screams and laughs from the parlor and I bethinks me it is time to see whether the ladies require any little thing. I introduce myself into the parlor and they’s all giddy, and I inquire if there is any way in which I may be of service; that the kitchen is at their command and such.

“One of them says that I has polished manners, and I bow, but Miss Fanny is bellowing over it all like Captain Stormalong that she wishes me to fetch them her mother’s diamonds — Peruzzi diamonds some of them — corsages and aigrettes and such — so the girls can dress like ladies and romp.

“Now, this is a surprise. I express my regrets that I cannot oblige her, but I aver that should she wish anything within the compass of my et cetera, surely I shall speed to et cetera.

“She says, ‘You will get us diamonds or be whipped as you were for the gown.’

“Once again — and now my ire was rising, but I was most cool — I say that I regret I can’t oblige an indulgence that her father should find wanton and improper in a young lady and et cetera, and she says softly, ‘You will oblige us.’

“At this, there wasn’t no course but insolence, so I says, ‘Miss Fanny, I tell your father that you and your friends played flying duchess skip-jump with the diamonds on, and you gets a greater whipping than ever I will.’

“There was silence then — this terrible silence — and she stood up and smiled at me. She said — very soft now — she said, ‘You are my djinni. You are my magic spirit. You will get me whatever I wish.’

“I did not reply.

“So she said, ‘Otherwise, I shall tell mon père that you touched me.’

“She delivered that word, then she stared with all this hate; and I stared right back; and our eyes . . .” He couldn’t finish the sentence, but said, “And my heart retreated, and I went and fetched them down some gauds; bethinking the whole while that I should be whipped for touching the jewelry, but that if I didn’t give her the diamonds, and she delivered her message of me touching, the Asquith Seniors would be tripping over theyselves as to whether I should be burnt first or hanged.

“I delivered the jewelry boxes, and she smiles again and says, ‘Now you may give me a kiss.’

“It was death. It was death, sir. I could not do a thing in one way or in another. It was death. I ain’t got no thing to say to her, no witty thing, and no . . . No thing. I ain’t got no thing. So I bow and I left the room. I heard them cackling behind me.

“And I knew then that I must flee. I must needs flee or I was soon dead.”

(And I read, without apprehending:)

In our idea of place, we consider the relation of distance betwixt anything, and any two or more points, which are considered as keeping the same distance one with another, and so considered as at rest. For when we find anything at the same distance now which it was yesterday, from any two or more points, which have not since changed their distance one with another, we say it hath kept the same place.

“I knew I had to run, and I knew it was Lord Dunmore or nothing. I reckoned that I could make my way during the ball, there being confusion and many servants, all comings and goings. And I should have just fled — but I couldn’t forbear revenge. I could not forbear revenge.”

“Revenge,” said Dr. Trefusis, smiling widely and stretching his hands around his knees, as he could not be more delighted by this welcome turn in the narrative.

“Now. All night, I lay and I bethought myself — how to leave so I won’t be forgot? And behold.”

“Ecce,” said Dr. Trefusis.

“Look ye. Now, when I was at the College, one of the experiments I assisted at — it was an experiment with paint. Metallic paint. Lead and bismuth. You recall, sir? We all wore cloths over our mouths?”

“I recall it. Paint for the ladies.”

“For the ladies, as you say. For their cheeks. An excellent complexion in a gallipot. And I remembered Mr. Gitney telling me that what you was all laboring at was an old problem: that the bismuth, or mayhap the lead, acted with any sulphureous exhalations in the air —”

“Ye gods, you are so far at present from being comprehensible —”

“Hark and shhh. That sulphur in the air acted on the paint and turned it black.”

“Indeed. ’Tis a thorny problem.”

“So in the morning, I went down to Mr. Asquith’s gunpowder house, where there was two men concocting the powder, and I delivered a message that Mr. Ass was desirous of a sample of liver of sulphur. I recalled particularly, that’s what we used in the experiment at the College. Liver of sulphur.”

“Indeed.”

“I told them Mr. Ass was observing his own experiments up at the house with his guests, some crook-bonneted scheme sent down by those Collegians up north. They laughed and they gave me the liver of sulphur in a sack, and when I asked, some vitriol oil, too.”

“You carried oil of vitriol knocking about in a sack? It is infinitely dangerous, my boy.”

“Dangerous? Oh, I quaffed swigs, sir. Washed my teeth with it. Sang, ‘Hey, nonny, no.’”

“I’m sure. Continue.”

“So I take the liver of sulphur up to my quarters, up where they stash us in the top of the house, and I begin crushing it with a stone. You have never seen any single thing crushed so fine as I crushed that powder. I reckon I spent an hour in the crushing. That was my preparation.

“Then come the ball, all the ladies are giving their courtesies, and the young gents, looking so fine, and Miss Fanny, she’s demure. No little lady who threatened destruction to a man the night before.

“So there are the excellent gentry, all smiles and blushes, stepping their measures. First they have the minuets, then the reels, then the country-dances. And I take one last look at the young miss whispering to her friends and clapping, and her father in his fopperies, and I turn from the hall and go up the creak-crack old stairs to my quarters and move the bowl of powder to a closet near the dance-hall, where I know there will be a good draft going past. I hide the bowl in there and I pour in the oil of vitriol. The whole pot, it starts to smoke and it smells so awful and sulphurish I can’t barely breathe. The smoke is all spreading. When I seen that, I know I don’t have long, so I close the door to the closet and I bolt through the servants’ door and I run on out of the house, quick as I can.

“I’m at the woods when I hear the shrieks. Because there was a devil of a stink, first, and I fancy that the young gents held their noses. And then there was louder screams, shouts. Because all the fine ladies, all the girls sweet-eyeing their beaux, have just turned black. All their face-paint. First dingy, I reckon, then smutty, then to rotting, then to coal, then to midnight. All of them.”

We, his auditors, were enthralled — swept away in awe. “Bono,” said Dr. Trefusis, “will you be my bride?”

“So I run through the little wood —”

At this interesting juncture, Serjeant Clippinger appeared. “This don’t sound like any lesson, sir,” he said to Dr. Trefusis. “On philosophy.”

“Serjeant, we yet discuss mutability. Private Williams is providing us with an excellent example. He demonstrates how change occurs, and how the senses remark upon change.”

Said the Serjeant with sarcasm, “As when you don’t smell and then you do smell.”

“You recall our conversation of the other day. Indeed. Though that, methinks, was not precisely my example at the time. Rather, when one smells constantly — of old age, say — one should no longer be able to mark the smell until it alter; or when there are objects hung long on a wall, the eye ceases to see them, until something is shifted. Or if one regards an officious myrmidon too lumpen to move for long periods of time, one ceases even to note him until he actually motivates himself and speaks.”

“A myrmidon.”

“Indeed.”

“What is a myrmidon?”

“An ant.”

“A speaking ant. I’ll warrant y’art being cute.”

“I’ll warrant I have a warrant, ha ha.”

“He has the letter, Serjeant,” said Bono.

“The letter!” exclaimed Dr. Trefusis, producing it from his coat. “I do indeed have the letter. From John, Earl of Dunmore, Baron Murray of Blair, of Moulin and Tillimet, Lieutenant and Governor-General of His Majesty’s Colony and Dominion of Virgina, and Vice-Admiral of the Same, ‘Sir: It is my wish that Dr. John Trefusis shall be granted —’”

“Indeed, sir. I read the letter. I will hope that there is no treasonable intelligence exchanged here, as I don’t hear no philosophy.”

“I avow, Serjeant, we shall commit ourselves wholly to philosophy without a grain of intelligence intermixed.”

“You ain’t witty,” said the Serjeant, turning away. “Y’art just an old man who can only find Negroes to laugh with him.”

He left, pacing the deck, and Bono inquired, “What is a myrmidon?” to which Trefusis rapidly replied, “Good God, sir! Continue!”

“I run through the woods, at once applauding myself for my wit —”

“Well deserved, sir. Well deserved.”

“And at the self instant, I am grinding my teeth because I am a vain, proud, revenging idiot and shall be run down because of it. Certain, they knows I’m gone within fifteen minutes, I reckon. Soon I can’t hear the protests at the hall no more, but I can hear the dogs. They’ve let the dogs out.

“I can hear them approaching. I tears through the woods — knees up — and over some fields. I know the general way. But there are horses on the roads and I’ll warrant alarums.

“It’s not another twenty minutes before the dogs are on me.

“I can hear them a-crashing through the leaves. And thrashing. And I see torches through the trees, and I hurry quick and hide me in the bushes. But no avail. They going to find me.

“Then — it’s now I smell a thing. Not just the sulphur on me. Sirs, with my sulphur, I am attracting the curiousness of a skunk. Walking through the bushes to me as bold as Sunday.

“Every inch of me wants to run. Its stink is prodigious — my eyes is near watering — and the hounds is coming — by God — what does a body do?”

“Indeed.”

Bono rose. “Sir, I reckon our time is over for today. My deepest apologies, an’t please Your Honor.”

“Sit! Plautan varlet! Speak!”

“Oh, me, sir?”

“Sit!”

“Do you order me, sir?”

“Speak!”

“By your grace, sir.” He sat. “So the dogs is coming close and the skunk is already there and I’m shivering with fear and my eyes is burning and the skunk, he sees me, he sees my bulk, and spang — afeared. He lifts up his tail and sprays me and run off.”

Dr. Trefusis made a noise of great disgust.

“I — it’s what I can do, just not to vomit. My eyes are burning. I tell this all as a jest, but it was — I was wracked, sir. I was in the bushes, wracked. And death to retch. Death to make any solitary sound. All curled up, and can’t move. And the vomit in my mouth. Can’t move, but — oh, Lord, sir. It was horrible.

“The dogs, they sniffing closer, and the men calling out, ‘Something here! Something here!’ And I’m in the bushes praying to keep still. It’s too dark to see. I can’t see a thing. The whole pack was coming straight for me. That I could hear, and I put my head under my arms and prepares for the biting.

“But then, the dogs — the dogs smelled the spray. They smelled it and started whimpering back. The men behind them, they shouting, ‘It’s a damn skunk! Call ’em back! It’s a skunk!’

“I wait and I wait, and every few minutes, the burning again, and all down my throat, and — sweet Jesus, there’s no smell like as . . . I can’t even say how deep that skunk smell is. You can keep falling through parts of that smell and there are other parts, whole other rooms and wings you ain’t known about. That is one devilish power of a smell.”

He smiled with some satisfaction in the rapt attitudes of his hearers; for both of us could not have been more attentive, though I, for empty shew, flipped the pages of my Locke.

“That smell, gentlemen, is what brought me here today. That smell is my salvation. The next week, I walk along the riverbank, walking all night. And where I hide, nobody wants approach me. No farmers, no magistrates, no slave patrollers. One breeze and they keep their distance. No way they’s coming into the bushes after that.

“After a day, I got famished, and so I killed a sheep and took him to a barn I reck’d would be safe and lit a little fire to cook part of it. Some slaves saw the light and come in and I say I’m Richard Richards and this here was my sheep and did they wish a leg? For a while, they eats and I eat and we are all genial; them asking me questions and me telling them stories as to how I’m a honest Dutchman new come from the Antilles. Then I see that they is waiting for us to finish before attacking me and turning me over to their master, so they is fussing with rope and one has a machete. It was then or never, so I burst for the door and there was a scuffle and I take a firebrand and swing it around and push them down, and I throw the burning stick into the hay and run, and I believe that barn burned behind me. They was running down the slope after me, and there’s the river in front of me.”

“By God,” said Dr. Trefusis.

“Prince O., you recall when we was up at Lake Champlain?”

I answered, “It was a most gratifying time.”

“That it was, sure. And I watched you close while Lord Cheldthorpe taught you to swim. You out there a-wiggling your little twig arms.”

“You said there were channels to cross.”

“So there were, Prince O. I knew then that when some tries to flee through the woods or such, they come to a river, and it’s a wall; but for me, I wanted it to be a road. I wanted it to be the very gate wide open. And that’s what it was, now. Rivers don’t stop me. I swum in Boston Harbor. I swum out in Canaan. And now I swum in Virginia.”

I saw the Serjeant’s eye upon me from across the room, and dropped my own gaze to the page, where I helpless took in several incomprehensible paragraphs regarding place, chess pieces, ships, and substance. While my eyes were thus burdened with the page, however, my ears were free, and followed Bono’s tale.

“I swim, I walk, I swim.

“Long last, I get near Williamsburg. Hide in the bushes. Every day I been bathing in the river. It’s not so much my skin that smells still, more my clothes. They have a reek. That last day, I washed there again in the James and saw the laundresses mashing the clothes and talked real sweet to them and offered to do some wringing. They says thank you kindly, and ain’t I a good fellow; and so soon as I got my hands on some breeches and a shirt, I sink them under the water and put a stone on them with my feet and then keep wringing, and then the women smells my own clothes and it’s, ‘You ain’t no man to be doing laundry!’ and ‘What you play at?’ and them cursing me. I laughed and they takes the rest of their clothes and frumps off down the riverbank. I wait a few minutes and get the breeches and shirt out from under my feet and go to dry them.

“That evening, I present myself at the Palace. I guess I speak to a factotum. It seems His Lordship is not at home; he’s fled on board a ship, but if I wish, the factotum says, I can sleep in the stables with another little crowd of Negroes awaiting His Lordship’s pleasure. Eleven or so of us who’d fled, hearing rumors.

“Since then, I served Lord Dunmore. I served on the first ship, the Fowey man-of-war; and then back to the Palace, where I stood as a picket guard when the population was got all restive. Then when he fled again, there was more of us — and we went with him, and you know then. We drifted up and down the river. We was sent out on nights to catch some poultry from farms. We steal cows so the Marines can eat. Other times, we pay for forage, if it’s Loyalist. We hope.

“For months, I been on the river, up and down. I was with His Lordship for our first skirmishes, when the rebels all run away. I can’t tell you, Prince O. — I can’t tell you the fine sensation of victory. When you run on their heels — and they fleeing, like we always fleeing — they running before you — scared — and you chasing — when those boys caught their own master in that swamp — sweet dicker of mercies — I ain’t a praying man, but that night, I fell on my knees. I fell on my knees under the stars and thanked the Lord who delivered me out of all distresses.

“That was Kemp’s Landing. Then I was posted on garrison near Great-Bridge. We heard the Proclamation read. And Prince O. — Prince, we seen some terrible things — we seen that battle — we seen things that chill the blood — but there’s one thing, still: We is free. That’s the great change. In all legality, we is free now.”

I believe the eyes of both auditors now were full, though Bono would not admit of tears himself; and that excellent and ingenious man, so like a brother to me, voice tremblant with his passions, said, “This is the war where we change. This is the trickster war. It’s where we disappear, just like they desire us disappear. I spoke it you before: They wish us blank,” he said, gesturing without thinking at Dr. Trefusis, who was the nearest exemplar of the white race. “They want us with no history and no memory. They want us empty as paper so they can write on us, so we ain’t nothing but a price and an owner’s name and a list of tasks. And that’s what we’ll give them. We’ll give them your Nothing. We’ll give them my William Williams and Henry Henry. We’ll slip through and we’ll change to who we must needs be and I will be all sly and have my delightful picaresque japes. But at the end of it, when it’s over, I shall be one thing. I shall be one man, fixed, and not have to take no other name. I shall be one person steadily for some years.”

He took my shoulder. He shook me. “This is why we got to win,” he said. “We only lost one battle. We got to win, Prince O. If we ever wish to be one person, we got to win.”