Thus ends my narrative. I cannot say whether it contain wisdom or
folly; nor what moral lies therein. I know only that I wished to
recount it, and to speak of those whom I have known and who have
striven for virtue and have perished.
I sought Rebellion, and found grim Authority engirded there; I mustered in the ranks of Royal Authority, and found there only Chaos fighting in straighter lines. And so when we reached New-York docks in the Crepuscule, and were set at liberty there, we determined we must find a new route which should secure us from the ire and indifference of both England and Colony. In a crowded ordinary we found one who spake of a different place, and we returned the next night to receive instructions, that we might be conducted there. When I leave this place, I shall make my way to that fastness, and, God willing, shall there be reunited with several of my Regiment, Pro Bono and Nsia Williams first among them. When I see them again, they shall have taken new names of their own devising.
I fear I shall be apprehended, or they shall; but if we do not meet in that place, then, my brother, my sister, who have voyaged with me upon those great rivers of the South, I shall meet you again beyond that last, that profoundest river, the river of Jordan. A river is not a wall, but a gate through which we might pass to freedom.
O my friends, now gone, who have traveled by my side and dropped away, I have told your tales; let me be thy praise-singer, though I, living last, live least: Morenike, called Cassiopeia, most dazzling of mothers, mistress of the mask; Richard Sharpe, who sought profit even in the skies; Pompey Lewis, called Pomp, gentle teller of horrors; Slant Croak, mild Slant, who witnessed the ravages of kindness; Olakunde, lost, who drummed gods into being; and John Trefusis, who loved mankind so fiercely he could not do other than despise it. I sing your tales so that none of this shall pass from remembrance; so our fleet shall always be sailing, shall always be populated by the brave, anxious for fight; and shall never reach its destination.
Heraclitus saith that “War is the father of all things,” for we could not subsist without strife within us and unease. I lament that I can see no flaw in this bitter axiom. I have seen men strive for rectitude, and in the end, take off the vizard of right to discover only self there. And yet Olakunde speaks of ashe, and the vow that doth change all of who you are. We have vowed we shall be different from either of these lumbering powers we have witnessed; and setting out thus into a land where we might discover new bonds of amity and social union, perhaps we shall keep those vows. But winter is long, and need is great, and we know not whether we travel to join the ranks of Edenic vision or guilty brigandage. Yet we have made the vow; and though no other human generation hath done other than despoil, perhaps we shall be the first.
There are some who believe that the mind is a blank tablet, on which experience is writ until the page be full, and the cryptic world is known; but I see rather that my own life hath been one long forgetting, the erasure of what was drawn, a terrible redaction; til all that remains is blank white and comfortless.
I know not what we have been; I know not what we are; but I know what we might be.
And so I light out for the unknown
regions.
OCTAVIAN NOTHING
November 4th, 1776