jezebel was the only one of the colbert negroes who had come from africa. all the others were, as they proudly said, virginians; born and raised on the dodderidge place or on the estates of their loudoun county neighbours. but jezebel was brought over from guinea, that gold coast of the slave-traders, in the seventeen-eighties — about twenty years before the importation of slaves became illegal. she was sold to her first master on the deck of a british slaver in the port of baltimore.
her native village in africa lay well inland, some four days’ journey from the sea. it was raided and destroyed by a coast tribe which early in the history of the traffic had become slave-hunters for the slavers. that night of fire and slaughter, when she saw her father brained and her four brothers cut down as they fought, old jezebel now remembered but dimly. it was all over in a few hours; of the village nothing was left but smoking ashes and mutilated bodies. by morning she and her fellow captives were in leg chains and on their march to the sea.
when they reached the coast they were kept in the stockade only long enough to be stripped, shaved all over the body, and drenched with sea water. an english vessel, the albert horn, lay at anchor out in the gulf, with nearly a full cargo of negroes stowed on board. the wind was good, and the skipper was waiting impatiently for the booty of this last raid.
jezebel and the other captives were rowed out in small boats and put on board in leg chains; they came from a fierce cannibal people, and had not been broken in by weeks of discipline in the stockade.
when the albert horn was under sail, and the blue lines of the inland mountains began to grow dim, the fetters were taken off the female captives. they were not likely to make trouble.
the albert horn, built for the slave trade, had two decks. the negroes were stowed between the upper and lower decks, on a platform as long and as wide as the vessel; but there was only three feet ten inches between the shelf on which they lay and the upper deck which roofed them over. the slaves made the long voyage of from two to three months in a sitting or recumbent position, on a plank floor, with very little space, if any, between their bare bodies. the males were stowed forward of the main hatch, the women aft. all were kept naked throughout the voyage, and their heads and bodies were shaved every fortnight. as there was no drainage of any sort, the slaves’ quarters, and the creatures in them, got very foul overnight. every morning the “‘tween decks” and its inmates were cleaned off with streams of sea water from the hose. the captain of the albert horn was not a brutal man, and his vessel was a model slaver. except in rough weather, the males, ironed two and two, were allowed out on the lower deck for a few hours while their platform was being scrubbed and fumigated. at the same time, the women were turned out on the lower after deck without chains.
on the first night after the albert horn got under way, the sailors gave jezebel the name she had borne ever since. when the two hands detailed to watch the after ‘tween decks had seen that all the females were lying in the spaces assigned to them, they put out their lanterns and went on deck to take the air. a little later the second mate, hearing shrieks and screams from the women’s quarters, ran down from his cabin to find the guards flogging a girl they had dragged out from a heap of rolling, howling blacks.
“it’s this here jezebel made all the row, sir,” one of the men panted.
the mate made a dash and drove at her throat to throttle her, but she was too quick for him. she snapped like a mastiff and bit through the ball of his thumb.
next morning the mate felt an ominous throbbing in his hand. he reported the fracas to the captain, saying he didn’t see anything for it but to throw the female gorilla overboard. she could never be tamed.
the skipper feared his mate might be in for a bad infection; but he had a third interest in the cargo, and he wasn’t anxious to throw any of it overboard. he thought he would like to see a girl who could stand up against two men and the cat.
“clean her off and put a bridle on her, and bring her up,” he told the mate. himself, he never went near the slave deck; he couldn’t stand the smell.
jezebel was brought up in heavy irons for his inspection. her naked back was seamed with welts and bloody cuts, but she carried herself with proud indifference, and there was no plea for mercy in her eyes. the skipper told the seamen in charge to loosen the noose round her neck. as he walked up and down, smoking his pipe, he looked her well over. he judged this girl was worth any three of the women, — as much as the best of the men. anatomically she was remarkable, for an african negress: tall, straight, muscular, long in the legs. the skipper had a kind of respect for a well-shaped creature; horse, cow, or woman. and he respected anybody who could take a flogging like that without buckling.
he gave orders that jezebel was not to go back between decks. she was to be kept on the upper deck in all weathers, fastened with a light chain to the deck rail. she was to be given a sailor’s jacket to cover her wounds, and at night she was to be provided with a tarpaulin.
after she was thus isolated, the girl gave no more trouble, — though she always laughed aloud when the second mate passed with his arm in a sling. the voyage was long and rough. jezebel was knocked about and drenched by heavy seas, and was sometimes seasick, but she made no complaint. when the seamen hosed out the scupper, she took off her jacket and invited the stream of salt water over her body. except for a few long scars on her back and thighs, there was nothing now to show what had happened the first night she came on board.
when the albert horn at last reached baltimore, her skipper kept her out at anchor until buyers from maryland and virginia could be notified and arrive. jezebel, he noticed, regarded the water line of the city with lively curiosity, quite different from the hopeless indifference on the faces of her fellow captives.
“she’ll make the best sale of the lot,” he told the mate.
in the first boat-load of purchasers who came out to inspect the skipper’s cargo, there was a dutch dairy farmer. he brought with him the country doctor of his neighbourhood. the dairyman and his friend, the doctor, were in no hurry. they looked over a great number of negroes. to jezebel they gave a searching physical examination, talking together in the low dutch vernacular, and asking no questions of the skipper. the dairyman called attention to the whip scars on her body, and beckoned the second mate.
“disposition?” he asked.
“the niggers who captured her did that. she put up a fight. strong as an ox.”
the dutchman himself looked very like an ox, but the doctor looked kind and shrewd. he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a deerskin pouch, from which he took two squares of maple sugar. one he put in his own mouth, and smacked his lips. the other he offered to jezebel with a questioning smile. she opened her jaws. at this the second mate, standing by, looked the other way. the doctor put the sugar on jezebel’s tongue. she crunched it, grinned, and stuck out her tongue for more. the doctor gave his friend the deciding nod. the dutchman paid the skipper’s price, took jezebel into baltimore, and stowed her in the heavy wagon in which he had come to town.
when he reached home, he set about breaking in his new wench. on the journey from baltimore he had discovered that her personal manners were too strong for even a dutch farmer’s household, so he lodged her in the haymow over the cow barn. she learned to milk the cows and to do all the stable work, but she was kept in the barn and was never allowed to touch the butter. the dairy farmer died in an outbreak of smallpox; his widow promptly sold jezebel. she had been owned by several masters and had learned some english before the dodderidge farm steward bought her. she went to the dodderidges the year that sapphira was born, and had been in the family ever since.
until jezebel was eighty years old, sapphira had entrusted her to oversee the gardens at the mill farm. as late as last spring she still got out to sit in the sun and watch the boys who did the shrubbery and shaped the hedges. in wintertime she stayed in her cabin, sewed carpet-rags, and patched the farm-hands’ shirts and breeches. she meted out justice by giving a slack boy a rough seat in his breeches, and a likely boy a smooth seat. when manuel, since dead, had come to her whining that “his pants wasn’t comf’able,” she gave him a scornful look and said:
“you ain’t no call to be comf’able, you settin’ down de minute a body’s back’s turned. i wisht i could put dock burs in yo’ pants!”
