The covenant, p.56
The Covenant, page 56
When the box was fixed, Vera thanked the young man, four years her junior, and then talked with him about conditions belowdecks. She was by no means a philanthropist, as those seeking always to do good for others were called in Englandthose busybodies who were agitating against slavery in Jamaica and child labor in Birminghambecause families like hers in Salisbury were too sensible for that. But she was interested in whatever was occurring on this tedious voyage, and on subsequent days she visited various parts of the ship with Carleton, and one night about half after ten the captain who occupied the bunk closest to the dividing wall in Richard's cabin whispered, 'I say, Saltwood! I think something interesting's going on next door.'
'Mind your business,' Richard said, but any chance of sleep was destroyed, so toward three in the morning, after assuring himself that the captain was asleep, he peered into the night and saw young Thomas Carleton, he of the glib tongue, slipping out of the next-door cabin and down the ladder to his proper place below.
The next weeks, half of March and half of April, were a dismal time for Richard Saltwood; it was apparent that Vera Lambton was entertaining the young man from belowdecks three and four times a week. During the day their behavior was circumspect. They spoke casually if they chanced to meet each other as he pursued his duties, but they betrayed no sign of intimacy. On one very hot day after the Cape Verdes had been passed and the ship was heading sharply southeastward, the ship's captain summoned both Saltwood and the young officer to assist him in a court-martial; the accusing official was young Carleton, who, as an officer in charge of maintaining discipline belowdecks, had brought charges against a pitiful specimen who on four different occasions had been caught stealing.
When the court learned that he had been shipped aboard after a chain of similar offenses in London, there could be only one logical verdict: 'Twelve lashes.' And Thomas Carleton was charged with bringing on deck all the passengers so that they could see for themselves how crime was punished. When all were in place, ship's officers led the convicted on deck, where he was stripped to the waist, tied with his arms about the mast, and lashed with a club from whose end dangled nine cattails of knotted leather. He made no sound till the fifth stroke, then cried pitifully and fainted. The last seven lashes were delivered to an inert body, after which he was sloshed with salt water. There was no more stealing.
The flogging had a sobering effect upon theft belowdecks; some of the passengers were a sorry lot, but most were from the sturdy and moral lower classes, women and men who would engage in no misconduct, and they rebuked those who did. One man, nearing fifty and with two sons, grabbed Carleton's arm as the young man hurried past one afternoon and pulled him into a corner.
'Laddie,' he said bluntly, 'you're treadin' on very dangerous ground.' 'What do you mean, old man?'
'Meddlin' with a lady of quality, that's what I mean.'
'I'm a man of quality,' Thomas said quickly. 'I am as strong'
'Those men in the cabin next hers, they're officers. They'll shoot you in a minute, laddie.'
'Those men are not involved with the lady, and take your hand down.'
This the older man refused to do. Instead he tightened it, saying, 'Laddie, this is a small ship. If I know, don't you suppose they know?'
For six days the warning deterred young Carleton from visiting Vera, and Richard sighed with relief at having avoided the necessity of intervening where his brother's honor was involved. At night he listened for sounds that would betray an assignation, and was pleased when none came echoing through the thin wall. But on the seventh day he spotted Vera talking intently with the young wagon builder, and that night, about eleven, her door creaked open and someone slipped in.
It was, in many ways, the worst night of Richard Saltwood's life, for the lovers, having been separated for a week, clutched at each other with such passion and noisy delight that the young captain was awakened.
'I say, Saltwood, listen to this! I say, like a pair of goats!'
The noise of love-making could not be masked. There were rumblings of the bulkhead, the squeals of a woman who had waited till her twenty-ninth year for love, and harsh pantings. Without even moving to the captain's bed, Richard could hear the lascivious echoes, and after a long, wild ecstasy in the other room, when the captain said, 'I say, that's prolonged!' confused Richard blurted out, 'And she's going out to marry my brother!'
In Saltwood's room there was silence, broken by the sounds bouncing off the bulkhead, and after a long time the captain asked in barrack-room accents, 'Well, whad'ja goin' to do?'
'What do you mean?' Saltwood asked in the darkness.
'Damnit all, man. Aren't you goin' to shoot him?' And Richard heard the hard clang of a revolver being slammed onto their table.
It was there when daylight came into the cabin, accusing him. He did not shave that morning, nor take any food. The young captain left him severely alone, but at midafternoon he returned, picked up the revolver, and banged it down again: 'Good God, man! It's your duty. Shoot the filthy blighter.' When Richard was unable to respond, the young man said, 'I'll testify. I've heard everything, God knows. If you want to shoot 'em both, I'll testify for that, too.'
But the Saltwoods of Salisbury were not a family that solved problems by shooting. In Parliament, Peter had been challenged to a duel by a foolish city member and had ridiculed the man into retreating. In the wilds of Illinois, young David had refused to gun down an Indian caught trespassing, although his neighbors shot them for much less. And in the South Atlantic, with storms rising as the coast of Africa hove into sight, Richard could not bring himself to shoot a young wagon builder and perhaps the man's mistress as well. Instead he waited till dusk, then told his cabin mate to put away the revolver while he went next door to talk with his sister-in-law, as she had sometimes phrased herself.
'Vera, your behavior's been shameless.'
'What do you mean?' she said, bristling.
'The bulkhead. It's very thin.' She looked at the wall in amazement, tapped upon it and heard nothing. 'We don't make noises, the captain and I,' Richard said. 'We're gentlemen.'
She tapped again, whereupon the captain, lounging in bed, tapped back. It sounded like the explosion of a gun. 'My God!' she said, covering her face.
'Yes. The captain offered me his gun, wanted me to shoot you both.'
This had quite the opposite effect from what he had intended. Vera stiffened, lost any sense of contrition, and faced him boldly. 'I'm in love, Richard. For the first time in my life I know something that you've never known, will probably never know. What it's like to be in love.'
'You're a foolish woman on a lonely ship . . .'
Instead of attempting to defend herself, she laughed. 'Don't you think I know that your poor little Hilary is sadly damaged? That you're desperate to find him a wife ... to get him back on course? I know that. Everyone knows it.'
'Who told you?'
'Simon Keer. The Reverend Simon Keer. Oh, at the public meetings he extolled your brother. So did your mother. But when I spoke with Keer alone, what do you think he said? That Hilary's a bit of an ass. Those were his words. He said I might be able to do something with him, the LMS certainly wasn't able to.'
'He told you that?'
'What else could he tell me, if I asked him in all honesty?' 'But Keer's the reason ... He sent Hilary to Africa.' 'What he said was "Some young men, especially from Oxford . . ."' 'Natural envy from a man without an education.' "'.,. some young men from Oxford take religion too seriously. It addles them."'
'But Keer marches up and down England, lecturing about the missions.'
'He does so for a purpose, Richard. He wants to end slavery. Doesn't give a damn about religion ... in the old sense.'
'What do you mean?'
'And neither do I.'
The blasphemy staggered Saltwood, and he sat down abruptly, whereupon Vera confided in a rush of words that it had been she, not her mother, who was desperate to find a husband. She loathed being a spinster, the afternoon teas, the sober dresses. Hilary, off in Africa, had been a last chance and she had grabbed at him. 'Your mother was so afraid I'd be put off by the long sea voyage.' She laughed nervously. 'I'd have fought my way aboard this ship. It was my last chance.'
Richard had never heard a woman talk this way, had never imagined that a Lambton of Salisbury could. And now the girl was saying, 'The journey's changed everything. You're no longer responsible for me. I'm going to marry Thomas.'
'No minister would'
'Then we'll marry ourselves. When we reach South Africa he'll go to his land, and I'll go with him.'
'But Hilary will be there. Waiting.'
She did not even reply to that. She laughed in a way that caused her shoulders to shake, after which she took Richard by the arm, pulled him to his feet, and helped him out the door. She would discuss the matter no further, and that night both Richard and the captain could again hear rumbles from the adjoining cabin.
'You goin' to shoot 'em?' the captain asked.
'No! No! Stop such questions.'
'Then I will.' And there had to be a scuffle before Richard could wrest the captain's revolver from him. But this did not deter the violent young man, who felt that somehow his honor, and that of his regiment, had been impugned, for he burst out of his cabin, knocked loudly on the adjoining door, and demanded that Carleton go below 'to your proper quarters, damn you.' When the young wagon builder tried to slip past, the captain swung a mighty blow at his head, knocking him down the ladder.
'I hope he broke his neck,' the officer growled as he returned to bed, and after some painful moments of silence he felt compelled to say, 'Salt-wood, I can understand why you had to leave the regiment. You were a disgrace to the uniform.' For two days he refused to speak to his cabin mate, but on the third day, with tears in his eyes, he clasped Saltwood's hand as if they were brothers and said, 'Richard, dear boy, is there anything I can do to help?'
'There is,' Saltwood replied in deep gratitude. 'When we stop at Cape Town, have that miserable blighter thrown ashore. I promised Mother I'd deliver this girl to Hilary, and by God, I shall, damaged or not.'
So when the Alice Grace put in for replenishing, none of the passengers belowdecks were allowed ashore, for they were docketed to Algoa Bay, three weeks more sailing along the coast. But the young wagon builder who had dared to make love to a lady of quality was thrown onto the wharf, with his axes and angles, while the lady of quality wept for him from the railing.
She was rudely dragged away by Richard, who said with fierce determination, 'You must go on to Hilary. As you promised Mother.' And all the time the Alice Grace stayed in Cape Town, she was kept prisoner in her cabin, guarded by the brother-in-law who stood guard outside, relinquishing his position to the captain when sleep was necessary. Even when the governor invited all the captain's guests to a gala, she was not allowed to attend lest she meet with Thomas Carleton and run away.
She remained in her cabin even when the ship resumed its journey, as did everyone else who had one, for a wintry gale blew up, driving the vessel far south, reminding the sailors of Adamastor, the tempestuous giant who guarded the Cape in the time of Vasco da Gama, and of whom Luis de Camoens had written with such brilliance.
Day after day the winds raged, forcing waves so high across the bow of the ship that they flooded cabins. At times the vessel plunged downward in such steep and sickening falls that everyone belowdecks was sent flying in one direction and then another as shrieks and wails competed with the howling winds. Sleep was impossible and food unthinkable; at numerous times, when her wet and lonely cabin shivered as if its bulkhead might splinter, Vera huddled in a corner, fearful of the moment when the voyage would end, terrified of its continuance, but never did she give way to superstition and castigate herself or her actions with Thomas as being in any way the cause of this violent storm. She was glad she had known him, even for just their brief passage through the tropics, and she prayed that in some mysterious way she might meet him again.
Alone, at the heart of a shattering tempest, she changed from being a meek English spinster and became a mature woman with a surprisingly independent mind. She had enjoyed being loved by a strong man and realized that she could never return to the dreamy afternoons of a cathedral town. As for marrying a missionary, that was quite impossible, but what she would do she did not know. Once, as the ship fell sideways in a plunge that could have torn it apart, she clung to her bed to prevent being swept away and cried, 'If we make land, I'm an African.' And she shook her fist in some wild direction, supposing the storm-girt continent to lie in that quarter.
On the seventh day of the storm, when the little barque was well down toward polar waters, passengers began reciting old tales of ships, rudderless and sails gone, being driven relentlessly southward till ice entrapped them, holding them forever in its embrace: 'A graveyard of ships down there, masts erect. Everyone aboard frozen stiff and standing erect till judgment day.' They told also of the Flying Dutchman: 'Captain van der Decken, out of Rotterdam. One of his great-grandsons settled at the Cape years ago. Swore he could round the Cape in a storm like this, swore an oath to do so. He's out there somewhere, still trying to breast the Cape, and will be till the people frozen down there are called to judgment.'
The poor ship was so knocked about that when the storm finally abated and the sun allowed the captain to calculate his position, all were shocked to learn how far south they had been driven; they were indeed on their way to the ice, and now, as they turned north toward Algoa Bay, they were humbled and chastened in spirit, so that even the young captain felt remorse at the way he had wanted to treat the awakened young woman in the cabin next to him, and he knocked on her door to apologize.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
'I'm not,' she replied.
'In the storm,' the captain confided, 'I thought once or twice we must surely sink. And do you know what I thought next?' He smiled at her engagingly, a man much younger than herself, endeavoring to reach understanding. 'I thought how utterly insane I'd been to interfere in your affairs. I wanted to shoot you, you know.'
'I was told.'
'Madam, would you allow me to make amends? I was such an ass. Whom you love makes no difference to others.' And to her astonishment, he fell to one knee, took her handand kissed it.
The scene at Algoa Bay in the winter of 1820 was one of historic confusion, confusion because five ships like the Alice Grace were trying to unload passengers in the open roadstead without a wharf to aid them, historic because a whole new type of person was coming ashore to add a new dimension to South African life.
The confusion was monumental, both in the bay and ashore. Captains endeavored to anchor their ships as securely as possible, but wind and tide tossed them vigorously, so that anyone trying to debark was in peril. Long ropes were led ashore through the water; they would be used to haul the boats to the beach. Women and children, of which there were aplenty, were crowded into the rude boats and taken ashore through the surf. Occasionally a boat broke loose to wander off, passengers screaming, until some stout-hearted swimmer came to rescue it.
Some women, having come seven thousand miles to their destination, flatly refused to debark, trusting neither the frail boats nor the men guiding them, but bellowed orders from the ship's officers usually forced them loose from the railings to which they clung; a few had to be dropped bodily into the tossing boats, and these ran the risk of broken limbs. Some daring children, unable to wait any longer to reach the paradise about which they had been constantly told, leaped gaily into the water as the lighters neared the beach, gasped and spat and spluttered toward shore, screaming their delight. Their mothers watched anxiously till they were lifted out of the water and onto the shoulders of men who would carry them through the surf. Among those who helped the immigrants to safety were some Xhosa who only a year before had flung themselves against Grahamstown.
Ashore the confusion worsened: 'The party from Manchester, over here! Liverpool, over there! Glaswegians, stay by that dune. Please, please! The Cardiff people must come over here to the big man with the top hat!' Dashing from one end of the beach to the other, instructing everyone what to do, was Colonel Cuyler of Albany, New York, now in charge of a much more pleasant task. But even here the energetic man encountered troubles, for the government had appointed him to instruct the immigrants in harsh facts overlooked in England when the glories of South Africa were being extolled: This is not yet a land of milk and honey. It's a land of guns. Never, never go into your fields without your muskets.'
In addition to the scrambling immigrants, the shore was cluttered with Boer farmers who had driven in, from sixty and seventy miles away, in heavy wagons pulled by fourteen or sixteen or twenty oxen, and these men forced hard bargains with the newcomers, offering to cart them and their possessions to their new homes for outrageous prices. But what alternative did the immigrants have? So day after day wagons were loaded, whips were cracked, and teams of stolid oxen began the long journey to the new paradise.
In the waiting crowd ashore was Reverend Hilary Saltwood, come to greet his bride. He was still extraordinarily thin and visibly entering middle age, for he was thirty-five and showed the effects of his hard life. He was certainly not an attractive bridegroom, and few women would have sailed so far to claim him, but when his present duties ended and he could be got back to England for some fattening up, and settled in some quaint rural parish, he might prove acceptable. The outstanding thing in his favor was the gleam that suffused his face: it was the countenance of a man who believed in what he was doing and found constant reassurance in the honesty of his calling. He loved people; his expedition to Grahamstown with the commando had taught him even to love the Boers who opposed him so vigorously, and the fact that he had fought well against the Xhosa warriors had earned him respect, so that the ox wagon that waited to take his bride to Golan Mission had been volunteered by Tjaart van Doorn himself.
