December 22nd, 1775
I believe the presence of Pro Bono — or as I should perhaps call him, Private Williams — shall change much for me upon the Crepuscule. He is known to many of the men of my Company, having been present before the Regiment was formed, in those months when the Governor’s black forces were smaller, before that body were divided into distinct corps. Both his affability and his harshness compelled others as they did me; and he hath been admitted into a great variety of circles of friendship and amity that remain generally closed. His art in greeting, in laughing, in commiseration, in knowing when to speak and when to keep silent, is prodigious, and causes men to admire his practicality and sturdiness, and women to enjoy his ease, wit, and scurrility. He was, in short, a favorite among our number instanter, and continues so.
Over the month since my arrival in this distressed Colony, I have, as might well be supposed, been sensible of a whole realm of social niceties, rivalries, and alliances in our Company about which I understand little. These, Bono illuminates for me in asides, and for the first time, I fully comprehended the magnitude of human story in our endeavor and the intricacies stashed like clockwork behind the regularity of our uniforms.
Yesterday, I witnessed an argument between two of the men of our Company. At dinner, an old man burst out yelling in his tongue; the object of these expostulations being one of Bono’s friends, Charles. Charles would not face the old man, but turned his back to him. He would not meet the elder’s eyes, but, even in these cramped quarters, swiveled and contemplated the walls furiously. The old man snatched at his shoulder, importuning him still in a language unknown to me. Charles remained in his situation, unmoving.
I asked Bono if he knew the reason of this altercation; and he answered, “The reason for this altercation? The reason for this altercation is once you lose your teeth from old age, you wish especially to bite people.” When I inquired further, he explained, “They’re both of the Ibo nation, Charles and the old article, Better Joe. Charles, he been here in the Colonies since he was eight or nine years. But Better Joe was already old when he was took. He was some species of wizard in Africa. He was the captain of some spirit club up in the Ibo highlands.
“So they join this Regiment and meet each other, and Better Joe sees from Charles’s scars he’s an Ibo, and he thinks, ‘Now, here’s somebody going to pay me some mind.’ For three months, he been saying he wants to be Charles’s teacher, show him mysteries. But Charles don’t even want to think about any of that. He already saw his gods beat once when he was a child. They didn’t do a single thing to help him when he was took and then they forgot him entirely when he and his family was on the ship. So he don’t want to see some creaky baggage who gets whipped and spit on — some addled, sad old dotard who can’t shave without he cuts himself — saying he’s the voice of the sky or the dead or all powerful or such. The old man just reminds him of defeat.”
These things, Bono explained to me.
And he continued the chain of stories, explaining that Charles could not abide the looks or Efik speech of yet another man, Jocko; for Jocko, sharp and sleek, had been employed in one of the great Canoe Houses of Old Calabar, which had sold Charles, and Better Joe, and countless thousand others, to the white men whose ships lay out in the bay. Charles recalled too clearly the cruelty of his Efik captors, taunting him and his father, telling them that the white men had sharp teeth and purchased slaves to eat them soulless. When, rowed out to the slave-ship, they first saw the white men peering over the gunwales, Charles’s father had despaired, cried a prayer, lifted up his hands, and made a valiant attempt to strangle his son with their chains, that he might end the boy’s agony before the slaughter to come; that his son’s spirit might remain, at least, in Africa and find its way back up into the hills.
“His father had his arms and the chains round his neck,” said Bono. “They pulled the father off.”
I could not speak for horror.
“The father died a few weeks later at sea. So now Charles can’t abide an Efik.”
“He told you this?” I asked with some incredulity.
“This is a time for speaking,” said Bono. “All of us, we come here, and we been nobody for a long time; and so we want to tell a tale.”
“Did you tell them yours?”
He shrugged. “I told them enough,” he said.
Many of our number have never known the Africk shores, but tell the tales of parents removed decades before, who were attached for debt, or taken in adultery, or captured on slave-runs made in the name of warfare, some petty difference elevated to conceal the greed for human chattels — for when a nation needs despoil another to produce captives, they find a reason.
They speak what they have heard of the warrior-women of Dahomey, or the child-soldiers of Morocco; of the great Mohammedan universities of the north; of the wise men of Islam, the marabouts and mallams, fabled throughout the continent for the sorcery of script, who write charms to be rolled in amulets, and who sew on the tunics of warriors sorcerous sigils of protection to keep them safe. They speak of the travado clouds which darken the Gold Coast; of the fierce harmattan winds, which boreal blasts itch and turn black men white; they tell of the mangrove marshes of the Windward Coast, where stand ancient stone circles, and where the canoe-men hunt their human chattels. They tell of the great herds of the Fulani, who peddle their hides even upon the Slave Coast, whence my mother was dispatched. They speak of small things: the intoxication of kola nut, or how no food hath tasted right for these twenty years without palm oil.
These tales of Africa I remember best, because of their strangeness; but most of our Regiment have never seen the country, and remember it only as a place of legend. Thus, there are many stories of the Colonies, too. One man learned the art of furniture-making from his master, and thereafter assisted in his master’s shop, which was a great pleasure to him. He speaks of the glories of joinery and its satisfactions. He talks of how Christ was a carpenter, and how he is blessed to follow in the same profession.
Another man was apprenticed to a farrier, that he might save his master the expense of having his horses shod; but his apprenticeship ended when two white farriers, angry at the loss of custom occasioned by the training of slaves in this art, threatened to kill him, did he continue to learn the trade; and his master deemed it prudent to withdraw him, and place him instead in the field.
There are tales of escape, many as wily as Bono’s own. Three men who set off together for Dunmore’s force, fearing detection, bound one of their number and led him on a rope; those passing by upon the road presuming that the slave thus bound had escaped and been recaptured by the other two. White men jeered as they rode by. When the bound man was fatigued, the three shifted the rope to another of their number, and so made their way over days to Hampton and Lord Dunmore.
So, tale after tale. Indeed, they are tales of hardship, but notable even more for their bravery. For every man, every woman, every child upon these ships, there is by necessity a romance of adventure and flight; this ship a book of stories; every one has his heroism, her ingenuity; all their close escapes and desperate relief.
So doth Christ in His mercy often supply courage and industry equal to adversity, that His creations might meet their travails.
I set these stories down so that the deeds of our Company may be remembered; and more, so that as we sit here, raging at our leisure, despising our impotence, awaiting the order to attack those who mock us from the shore, we may recall what we have already undergone — and we may remember our enemy in preparation for marching out against him. And I record them because when we or our forebears passed over the water on ships, we lost our names and our stories; and now, in these ships, moving upon these waters, we shall regain them.