Authors: Edward Cline
The second memory was of Redmagne’s remarks in the caves after he had completed
Hyperborea
: “Oh! Wild imagination! Suppose our colonies in America did such
a thing? Can you imagine them nullifying their numbing bondage? Revoking their
oath of loyalty to the king? Not petitioning
him
for protection from
Parliament? What an outlandish miracle that would be! Perhaps too far-fetched!
The parable of the loaves and fishes is much more credible a tale!” Jack heard
all the words spoken by Redmagne on that occasion, and they were put on paper.
“...
My
Hyperboreans are something like the Houyhnhnms, only much pleasanter
to know…. They live on an island in the frigid climes, but their greatness warms
the earth and makes it habitable….”
When he reread these thoughts in the chilly air of his library, Jack sighed
in sadness for their inadequacy. Yet, he did not gainsay Redmagne and Skelly
for anything they had said or believed. They had lived the truth of their statements
as closely and honestly as they knew. In the scheme of things, that meant living
in outlawry. And when they stood on the gallows in Falmouth that last day, their
entire beings were embraced by the calming angel of moral certitude.
In the scheme of things, thought Jack…meaning that they had not been willing
to hold piecemeal convictions — that was what Hugh had once called the mode
— as were their fellow men, not to live and watch some malign power corrupt
themselves and everything about them, absorbing and dissolving their convictions
one by one, until it engulfed and consumed everything — but to remove themselves
completely from all contact and compromise with the phenomenon. To remain cleanly
and proudly whole, in body and mind.
John Ramshaw, on one of his visits to Morland years ago, had asked him why
he thought Skelly and Redmagne had not tried to escape the night the army began
to encircle the Marvel caves.
After a moment of reflection, Jack answered, “I think there comes a time in
such a man’s life when he refuses to run or hide, when he tells his pursuers,
‘Stalk me no more. You will die here, or I. I assert my right to live without
you or what you represent.’” Jack paused. “I think they both had reached that
apex in their lives then, when defiance is no longer profound enough an action,
but transfigures into revolt, or a supreme kind of assertion…. And at that point,
one must be finally satisfied with the way one has conducted one’s life, satisfied
in some summary way that demands a final, summary action, and the prospect of
death or imprisonment no longer frightens or taunts one.”
The captain of the
Sparrowhawk
puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and
studied his young protégé for a moment. “You have given the matter some close
attention, I see.”
“It intrigued me for some time, John, as it did you. As I grew older, I understood
it better, and understood it enough that I could find the words for it. It ceased
to be a paradox.”
“A paradox? Rather, it seems a dilemma that confronts tired men.” “A dilemma?
No, not a dilemma. Not for long. Any man possessed of trimmed sails and an unwormed
keel is capable of it. My friends were capable of it, as was I. Yes. I have
given it close attention. But I cannot predict the time when I will undertake
that risk. And that risk, John, I can assure you will not come from tiredness,
nor will it necessarily guarantee death or defeat.”
Sitting alone now in his library, Jack paused again to reread what he had recorded.
There were three instances when Skelly had bequeathed to him the honorable task
of understanding what moved men to such heights. The third time was from the
Falmouth gallows, when the man looked directly at him and paraphrased the last
words of an anthem: “This Briton will never be a slave.” He understood, but
had yet to find the words. That they existed and could be found, he was certain.
And now there was another man who had glimpsed those heights, and who called
them “Olympus”: Hugh Kenrick. Jack was certain, too, that his new friend was
moved by the same quest. He packed and lit a pipe, and sat back to rest from
his labors. He was pleased with this rivalry.
T
wo factors beyond their control and powers of prediction governed the prosperity
and happiness of the planters and farmers: the market, and the weather. The
rains of 1760 seemed to portend a bright, undisturbed future for the planters
of Queen Anne County. Tobacco, rye, barley, corn and even hemp were harvested
that year in bounteous quantities, with little spoilage or waste. Commerce between
Britain and her colonies, and between the colonies themselves, boomed and was
not much affected by the war at sea. Tobacco, lumber, and raw materials for
Britain’s infant industrial economy were traded for credit; lumber and foodstuffs
were traded with the West Indies for sugar, molasses, and French spices. Arthur
Stannard, the English agent, happily dispatched vessels groaning with hundreds
of hogsheads of tobacco to London and the custody of Weddle, Umphlett and Company,
and just as happily extended credit on their sales to large and small planters
alike. Ian McRae, representing Sutherland and Bain of Glasgow, extended little
credit, but bought most of his customers’ hogsheads outright in exchange for
farm implements, cloth, and household goods from his warehouse. He did a particularly
good business that year in salt, for he had made special arrangements with entrepreneurs
on the Eastern Shore who boiled sea water and collected bundles of salt, which
were loaded onto coastal vessels and sent to Caxton. “Salt for the cellar, sir,
or salt for the cattle? Refined, or by the gross?” were questions he asked several
times a day of his customers.
In the next year, the rains would not come, except in brief, miserly showers
that would moisten only leaves and the surface of topsoil. Then the sun would
reappear and burn off the moisture, drying and often browning the unnourished
leaves and baking the soil back to dust or dry, cracked clay. Masses of dark,
heavy clouds would form over the county, only to drift away to favor other counties
with steady downpours. The York River, too, taunted planters and farmers, for
it never fell, fed as it was by faraway rivers and streams and buttressed by
the sea level of the great Bay into which it flowed.
The plantations and freeholds of most property owners were too vast to water
by conventional means, which was to organize brigades of slaves, tenants, and
itinerant laborers to lug water bucket by bucket from the river, although some
ambitious planters and farmers resorted to this inefficient expediency for lack
of any other alternatives.
At balls, suppers, and in the course of occasional visits, Hugh had listened
to other planters’ tales of woe and tribulation caused by past droughts. Poor
crops, late plantings and harvests, and insect pests that seemed always to accompany
every dry spell and ravage especially the tobacco, all meant short credit on
bad terms, postponed improvements, a tightening of budgets and spending, and
ulcerous tempers.
The only planter who did not complain of past droughts and had no tales of
woe to tell, was Jack Frake. He showed Hugh how he dealt with such weather.
He had had built by his coopers several oversize hogsheads — four of them —
and on the top of each was a hole in which to pour water. At the side of each
was a tap. These four enormous barrels were each filled with about a hundred
of gallons of river water as they sat in a wagon, which was then hauled up to
and through his fields by a team of oxen. Jack’s tenants would then fill buckets
from the taps and water each tobacco or cornstalk, usually twice. Hugh marveled
at the idea, and was also astonished that no other planter emulated his neighbor’s
practice.
Jack told him the winter before the drought, “Otway’s place is crowded by a
little inlet, from which he’s built a narrow, shallow canal. It’s about a quarter
mile long and comes right up to his main field. His people get their water that
way, when necessary, and also fish in it.”