the cloth around his waist. It might yet be useful; at any rate, he would have it with him wherever he was to go.
The boat was loaded with beef cattle, pigs, poultry, corn whisky, and other merchandise. Three white men were hired to handle the boat. Henson said goodbye, perhaps forever, to his family and stepped aboard. He was the only Negro, and was, therefore, forced to stand more watches than all the rest, but this turned to his advantage, for he quickly learned all that there was to know about handling the boat. Very soon, he could shoot by a “sawyer,” land on a bank, avoid a snag or a steamboat in the rapid current of the Mississippi as well as the captain himself. The latter seemed to have developed some disease of the eyes and actually became blind. Henson took over. He was, in fact, the master of the boat, although he did not have any more idea of what lay around the next bend than did the others, for none of them had ever been down the river before. They had to halt at night and travel by day.
At night someone had to keep watch. They were in danger of river pirates and bands of escaped Negroes who, until they were captured or killed, lived as marauders in the wilds along the river’s banks. These Negroes lived in a sort of primitive freedom, frequently attacking such boats as were tied up for the night, killing and robbing.
At one stop, a curious incident took place. This was at Vicksburg, where Henson got permission to visit a plantation a few miles inland. It might have been gossip from the Big House, the grapevine, or a chance remark made by young Amos Riley which told him that it was to this place that his former fellow-slaves and charges had been sold. It was the saddest visit he ever made. He found his friends old and broken after only four years in this malarial climate. They worked long hours, half-naked, in the marshes under the burning sun, ill-treated and ill-fed; they were tortured by mosquitoes, horseflies, and black gnats, and thought only of death as a deliverance. At first sight of Josiah they cried, and when he told of his own predicament they felt sorry that he was to be subjected to the same fate to which they were condemned. They seem to have felt no resentment toward him for the part which he had played in their betrayal. The very fact that he went to visit them would seem to show that he expected none. Yet the memory of that wretched group was to haunt him until his death. He had sold them, and now he could cry over them, and pray and roll his eyes to heaven.
The boat drifted on down the great river. To his eye everything in man and in nature looked evil. He saw nothing but the wretched slavepens beside sullen, smelly, stagnant waters which harbored the bloated carcasses of drowned horses and oxen. These were covered with swarms of green flies that blew in clouds through the sticky atmosphere. From time to time huge turkey buzzards wheeled in the burning sky or fed on the half-putrid carcasses. The water extended for miles on either side, in broad steely sheets, bordered by half-dead, gaunt trees hung with funereal moss. Nothing was noble, nothing grandiose; he saw only the fate that awaited him. The world was ruled by whites and every white hand was against him. As he paced the deck during the nights of his long watches, he thought of the treacherous brothers, his masters. Here the son of one of them lay asleep in the cabin. In his power. He would kill him. It was only just.
“If this is to be my lot, I cannot survive it long. I could not live through what I saw on the plantation at Vicksburg. I am not so young as they are. Two years would kill me. Yes, death would free me. Sweet death. But why wait. They don’t even suspect me. I am all smiles and ‘yes, Massa; no, Massa.’ They cannot see the tiger in my heart. Why should I not prevent this wrong? For it is wrong. Wrong that I should be sold and go there, after all that I have done for them. They would repay me with wickedness. One should prevent a wrong that is not yet done. They don’t suspect; they don’t know that I know. I could prevent it. Yes, but prevent it with an axe. That axe there. Then I would escape to freedom. I would be justified. I should be free. My Christian friends said I should be free. I could prevent them all from committing this wickedness. Tonight is dark, no one could hear me in this rain. I can wait no longer. We will be in New Orleans in a day or two and it will be too late to prevent this wickedness. This axe ….”
But he could not do it. His hand had slid along the smooth handle of the axe as he moved silently into the cabin where, by the dim light of a swinging lamp, he could see the sleeping form of young Amos. His hand had been raised to strike the blow, when the thought came to him, “What! Commit murder? And you a Christian?”
A thousand elements of irresolution weakened the arm that held the axe. Young Master Amos had done him no harm. He was only obeying the orders of his father. Josiah turned as silently as he had come and went out into the rain. He washed his hands and let them trail a long time in the night-cold current, for they were covered with imaginary blood which he alone could see. He shrank back into his old shape after his moment of murderous exaltation and now he was desperately afraid that the rage and hatred, the expression of his heart, might show in his face. He roused no one to take over the watch, but remained on the rain-swept deck the night through, alone. No one ever knew; no one ever guessed the tiger that had risen in the night and died away in his heart at its first encounter with his Christian feelings. The next day the four white men saw only old ’Siah, old Uncle Tom. “Yes, Massa. Right away, Massa.” They never guessed.
A few days after this crisis, the boat reached New Orleans with what remained of the cargo aboard. They had sold the greater part of the load at the stops along the way, and now the three men who had been hired to handle the boat were discharged, as they had contracted for a one-way trip. Now that everything was sold, with the sole exception of the most domestic animal, the young master threw off all disguise and spoke openly of auctioning off Josiah as the only thing left to do before he broke up the boat for lumber, sold that, and took passage on a steamboat back to the Riley plantation.
Several planters and dealers came aboard to look Josiah over. He was sent on some hasty errand to fetch and carry that they might see how fast he could run…. Lift that box; bring me that whip. Quick now, let the gentlemen see your points…. Josiah was talked up as a bright fellow, but, perhaps because his arms were crippled, no one would meet the price that young Riley had been told to ask for him.
He had promised Josiah that he would try to sell him into a good position as a coachman or house servant, but as time went on he made no effort to fulfill his promise. He was getting impatient to be off and any sale would do. Josiah begged for his life. Young Riley sought to avoid him, for while he had been brought up in the ethic of slavery to think of a slave not as a man, but as chattel, mere property which had no rights and was thought of as possessing no feelings, yet his conscience troubled him. Josiah reminded him of things in their common past and sought to touch him by telling him of the plight of those other slaves in Vicksburg. At times he seemed so moved by the plea Josiah made that he was close to tears, yet again, when he felt too closely pressed in his inner conflict, he would curse and strike out at Josiah.
It was the month of June, when the terrible summer climate of New Orleans hung over the bayou and the last hot night seemed interminable to Josiah. He could not sleep, for he had been told that young Riley had booked a passage on the up-river paddle steamer and intended to leave the following evening at six, after having sold Josiah for whatever price he would bring. This then was the end; there was little hope now that he would ever be free or ever see his family again. He was a man of forty and could not long survive work in the fields or in the rice swamps.
The next morning Master Amos said that his stomach was disordered, and by eight o’clock, as the full heat of the day began to strike into the cramped cabin, he was utterly prostrate with a raging fever. Now it was another song: “I’m dying, ’Siah. It’s the river fever. People in the city are dying of it. You are my only friend. Stick to me, ’Sie. Don’t leave me. I’m sorry I was going to sell you. I didn’t mean it. It was just a joke. You must stick by me now. Get on the steamer and get me home. I must go home.”
It was quite a change; Josiah was no longer property, a beast to be bought and sold, but his master’s only friend amidst strangers. Riley was now the suppliant, in fear of death, as he lay writhing in the shade of a sailcloth.
“Take
