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Watership Down Enterprises - Richard Adams

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106 pages

English

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Description

Born into the most desperate circumstances in slave-quarters in the deep South at the end of the nineteenth century, Daniel grows up a slave on a cotton plantation in the US. It seems he will remain there for the rest of his life, but things take a darker twist when he is sold as a consequence of killing the white overseer who his threatening his beloved sister. With his sinister new owner, Daniel embarks on a journey which will span continents, test his courage and endurance to the limit, and ultimately lead him to William Wilberforce and the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade.

Sujets

Historical fiction

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Publié par	Watership Down Enterprises
Date de parution	05 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783015887
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

2014 Richard Adams
Richard Adams has asserted his rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Watership Down Enterprises
First published in eBook format in 2014
ISBN: 978-1-78301-588-7
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Acknowledgments
I acknowledge with gratitude the help I have received from Professor David Richardson, University of Hull, and from Mitch Upfold, and from my secretary, Mrs Liz Aydon.
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PART I
PART II
PART III
Richard Adams
Daniel
To Juliet, with much love from Dad
PART I
In the half-lit, foetid shack the new-born baby, slippery with blood and with part of the caul adhering to its head, was received by grimy hands and laid down, wauling, among the rubbish on the earth floor - vegetable peelings, a rag damp with dirty water, a few crushed insects, an old, shredded blanket, and the entrails of a drawn fowl.
From outside came faint sounds of splashing in the trench that ran the length of the hovels backs, where a boy was stabbing with a pointed stick at the floating body of a rat. From further off sounded, for a moment or two in the still air, the falling twitter of a gaze-finch perched on a clump of laurels. Nearby, a tethered horse continually tossed its head, tormented by the flies. In the blazing, noonday sunshine, a sudden gust of wind stirred the glossy laurel leaves and slammed to and fro the shack s broken shutters, banging them against the unglazed window frames.
On the floor where the baby had been born, black bodies, both men s and women s, lay this way and that; mostly alive, and a few dead, while some, blinking and twitching, might have been either dying or recovering, there being no one near enough to tell which; or care, for the matter of that. Some backs and shoulders were marked with weals of whipping - good for the flies, these - while others, sweating and unscarred, shone smooth as the laurels.
The baby wauled again, an angry, frustrated cry. The same dirty hands picked him up and dandled him back and forth for a few moments.
Ay boom-a-boom, Ay boom-a-boom, baby.
Dis baby gwine to live, gwine to live, boom-a-boom.
How you tell? Mostly dey dies. You knows dat.
Ay boom-a-boom, Ay boom-a-boom - pause.
Then, Hey, Missus Mudder, here he is, yore baby boy. You take him now.
Speechlessly, straining, the mother half-raised her gaunt body, bending forward clumsily; her skeletal arms took the baby and pressed his mouth to a dry nipple. She wept, trembling. One of the two women beside her was just in time to snatch the baby as the mother fell backwards.
No milk? The other woman nodded corroboratively and then called, Sam! You Sam!
Outside a boy, aged perhaps eight, came running, pressed his shoulder against the door which grated across the threshold, stepped over one body, then another and took the baby as the first woman held it out to him.
You Sam, you knows Missus Ethel? (She pronounced it Heffle .)
He nodded, wiping the baby s sticky body with an open hand.
Know where she at?
He nodded. She work, dey all workin tobacco.
You take baby. Ax Massa Janny, say O.K. she give the baby milk.
Miz Heffle gettin milk?
Ay does she. The woman gestured impatiently. Go long now.
Sam spat on the floor, split his black face in a grin of white teeth and was gone.
Outside, among the short shadows, the boy in the trench had succeeded in spearing the dead rat and waved it triumphantly at Sam as he jumped across. Sam paused.
Gwine eatim?
Cookim. Beamy Boy gettin fire dis evenin , let me cookim.
No eatim now?
Beamy Boy got knife. E skin im, cut off no-good bits. Den cookim e good.
Sam nodded and began pushing himself a short cut through the laurels in the direction of the dirt path leading to the tobacco fields. The boy shouted after him, Snake in dere!
Fuck snake.
Maybe snake fuck you.
Without replying, Sam dragged himself forward, clutching at the laurels, and at length emerged on the open path. From here he could see the tobacco fields and the long line of slaves, each with a wicker basket on his arm, stooping to tug at a bush, then straighten up and drop his handful into the basket. They worked deftly, with a weary, practised skill.
The baby was still crying; a good sign, thought Sam. He splashed into a narrow stream, stooped to drink, and then began to run towards the white overseer, hoping to give the impression that he had run all the way. As he came up, the overseer turned to face him, one hand on the leather whip at his belt.
Whose baby is this?
Miz Barb Brown baby, Massa.
She still alive?
Tink so, Massa. Only she sick very bad. No got milk. Missus Kathy at infirm ry, she tell me tote baby ere, say Miz Heffle got plenty milk. He fidgeted with his bare feet. I go now and ax her, Massa?
The overseer made no reply. He took the baby from Sam, silenced it by giving it a finger to suck and then turned it round and upside down, examining it from all sides.
E big fine baby, Massa Janny, sir! He gwine make you damn good nigger.
Johnny nodded, returning the baby.
O.K., you take him to Missus Ethel. Not take too long time, tell her. Again he put his hand on the whip.
When baby finish feed, Massa, I take ,im back ome?
No, he ll sleep. You keep him in the shade, under those trees.
He pointed. I ll tell you later when Miss Ethel s to feed him again. You watch baby and you work, see? You know how to plait thin sticks for baskets?
Yes, Massa.
There s a pile of thin sticks under the trees. If I see you not working, I ll whip you, understand?
Yes, Massa.
Sam carried the baby to Miss Ethel in the line. She saw him coming and, guessing the nature of his errand (to which she was not unused), put down her basket and opened her torn, dirty blouse. No other slaves stopped working.
Massa Janny, he say O.K. for milk? She grinned.
He say you milk not too long. Den I keep him here for next time milk.
Miss Ethel put the baby to her breast. Massa Janny must reckon baby make damn good nigger, else he not say do dis.
A sudden thought struck her. Who mudder?
Miz Barb Brown.
Ethel stared, wide-eyed. She not near time. Baby come too quick?
Not know, Missus.
No one tell you?
No, Missus.
The sweat stood on Ethel s forehead and across her broad face. Great drops ran down her breasts in runnels and fell to the ground. There was a long pause, as though the heat had struck them both voiceless. Finally, as though with an effort, Ethel said, Miz Barb Brown - she die?
Not know, Missus. But she lookin terrible bad.
The silence returned, until the overseer shouted angrily across to them. Ethel, if you don t want a damn good whipping, you get back to work.
Sam took the baby, asleep now, and carried him across to the dark shade under the trees. Here he found two stacks of wide, flat baskets, covered with cloths; the slaves evening meal.
There was a smell of warm, ground maize. Sam s mouth began to water. Looking carefully all about him and making sure of a tree trunk between himself and the overseer, he pushed his fingers under the nearest cloth, drew them back covered with maize mash and quickly sucked them clean. Then, making a show of searching here and there for the best spot, he laid the naked baby in a hollow in the thin grass, picked up a handful of withies from the nearby pile and set to work plaiting, only pausing now and then to brush away the flies.
* * *
Baby, Thou Child of Joy! My heart is at your festival. It is only a few hours since your sleep and your forgetting. Before, you were one and indivisible with God, in that imperial palace whence you came to us, trailing clouds of glory. Those clouds are still about you. They envelop you; my eyes cannot pierce them. I see only the clouds and must believe that you lie at their heart.
What are these trailing clouds, Baby, lingering, leaving their traces, their wisps from the centuries behind as you are pressed helplessly forward, drawn second by second into your life, your indiscernible future? Among them, as they momentarily part, are revealed glimpses of what once comprised reality - all manner of folk, creatures and material things inhabitant of the past; your past, Baby, whence you have so newly come.
Between the clouds for an instant is revealed one Antam Gonsalves, a Portuguese of long ago, a captain who captured some Moors and was ordered by Prince Henry the Navigator to return them to Africa. In exchange he received not only gold but also ten black men. They, as it turned out, were forerunners. Portuguese forts sprang up along the coast of Africa, whence consignments of blacks were brought into Spain and Portugal, the nucleus of a new trade to the western colonies, where many were set to work in the mines.
The clouds merge, the disclosure vanishes. Baby, we peer into thick darkness. Some huge, amorphous bulk is coming to birth, obscene and vile, dispersing the clouds, blotting out all but itself.
O Cruelty, impregnable, all-conquering, be thou adored for ever! Already we had perceived thine envoys here and there about the world; but they were mere trifles. How could we have conceive