June 11th, 1776
This evening, in our fly, word that the rebels bruit abroad that they shall proclaim the independency of the Colonies. I feel in my soul only a weariness at the continual braying of their vanity, their outrage at small sufferings when greater are to hand.
Tonight, I observe the fires of the rebels upon the shore. We all call their camp Cricket Hill, because they swarm so many. As I watch them, I think of a tale taught me by Dr. Trefusis in those days following my first whipping, when he tutored me upon antique slavery and its discontents.
When the pirate-king Sextus Pompeius led a force like ours, of slaves who had thrown off their shackles of bondage, his raids were productive of such terror that the very rulers of Rome sought to treat with him; but he would not walk upon the land to meet with them, for fear that his people should be taken and returned to slavery. The water and the shifting waves, that element most known for its mutability and treachery, was to him the sturdiest and most familiar field of operation; the land, immutable, was the site of betrayal and uncertainty.
And so when the rulers of Rome sought to parley with Sextus Pompeius, he demanded they do so thus: each party situated upon a floating platform, shouting to each other across the waves.
I think upon this when I view the activity of our enemy, so close across the bay that we might hail them with barely a raising of the voice.
I watch their fires, the sound of them upon the hillside like locusts; I look out at the Dunmore, the seat of our Governor, floating serenely amidst its city of ships, and I think of the pirate-king and the rulers of Rome upon their buoyant platforms. Is it not ever thus, the attempts to parley between master and slave, and perhaps between all men — is it not always words shouted across the shifting flood, torn away by wind? Each hath his element; each is wary of brigandage; and a gulf roils between us all.