Harry Turtledove - Liberating Atlantis

Hardtack and salt pork weren't inspiring-Stafford had already discovered how inspiring army rations weren't. But having enough of them was better than not. And having enough munitions was literally a matter of life and death. Unfortunately, that also held true for the insurrectionists. What they'd hijacked would keep them fighting for some time to come.

And what they'd hijacked would also let them-did also let them-expand the insurrection. More white refugees began streaming out of the north, most of them with nothing but the clothes on their backs and perhaps a musket or an eight-shooter clenched in one fist. The stories they told made Stafford's blood boil.

"How can you stand to listen to these people without your heart's going out to them?" he demanded of Leland Newton.

"I'm not saying it doesn't," his colleague answered. "But my heart also goes out to the Negroes and copperskins these same people have been mistreating for generations, while yours is hard as a stone toward them."

Stafford only stared. "How anyone could care about those savages… How anyone could say they are mistreated when they gain the benefits of Atlantean civilization…"

"The lash, the shackles, the ball and chain, the auction block, the unwelcome summons to the master's bedchamber," Newton said dryly.

"You have entirely the wrong attitude," Stafford said.

"If I do, then so does most of Atlantis north of the Stour," the other Consul replied. "And so does almost all of Europe. The font of what you call Atlantean civilization thinks little of what has sprung from it."

"I care nothing for what Europe thinks. We needed to get free of Europe, by God. Or would you rather we still flew the Union Jack and bowed down to Queen Victoria?" Stafford said.

"You must know I would not," Newton said, which was true enough. "But I would also rather that we did not bow down to injustice here."

"Nor do we," Stafford declared.

His colleague sighed. "More and more people-of all colors-think we do."

A couple of dozen white men had holed up on a plantation. They held the big house and the nearby barn. Frederick Radcliff decided they showed enough determination to make a rush more expensive than he cared for. He approached the big house holding as large a flag of truce as he could carry.

He'd barely got to hailing distance before a white man inside the house yelled, "Hold it right there, nigger! Flag or no flag, ought to shoot you down like the mad dog you are."

"Go ahead," Frederick answered. "See what happens afterwards." He feared that what would happen was that the uprising would fall apart. But that wasn't what he wanted the white man to think about. And he hadn't named himself, so the desperate whites couldn't know they had the leading insurrectionist in their sights.

"Well, say your say, then," the white man told him grudgingly. "We'll see how much manure you pack into it."

"Got no manure," Frederick said. "What we got is, we got enough men to kill the lot of you. You think we won't use 'em, you're crazy." He didn't want to use them. How many eight-shooters did the white defenders carry? Those were the guns that made a difference when things came to close quarters.

Their spokesman jeered at him: "Likely tell, black boy! You're tryin' to scare us out on account of you ain't got the balls to drive us out. Probably another dozen skulkers back there behind you, and that's it."

"Think so, do you? You'll see." Frederick had looked for some such response from the whites. Because he'd looked for it, he'd got his own men ready for it ahead of time. When he turned and waved, they knew what to do.

Black men and copperskins with shouldered, bayoneted rifle muskets marched out of the woods to one side and into the trees on the other side. Frederick's force did greatly outnumber the fortified whites. He made it seem even larger by having the men hurry through the trees where the whites couldn't see them and then march out into the open again.

He finally waved again, this time for the parade to stop. "Well?" he called. "Have we got the men we need, or what?"

No one answered him for some little while. He could guess what that meant: the defenders were arguing among themselves. Some had to think they couldn't hold off the rebels, while others would be more hopeful. At last, the leather-lunged spokesman bawled, "Well, if you don't want to fight, what do you want?"

"Come out. You can keep your guns, but come out," Frederick answered. "You don't want to stay in the Free Republic of Atlantis, you can march away. Long as you don't shoot at us, we won't shoot at you. You do start shootin', you're all dead. You stay in there, you're all dead, too. That'd hurt us some, but it sure wouldn't do you any good."

Another pause. Then the white man asked, "How do we know we can trust you? We come out, you got us where you want us."

"You're in deep water any which way, and you know it," Frederick said. "Have you ever heard of the Free Republic of Atlantis makin' a deal like this and then going back on it?"

"No, but if you murder everybody who comes out we wouldn't've heard about it, would we?" The white man had his reasons for being suspicious. Frederick made himself remember that. The fellow was dicing for his life with enemies he hated.

"Killing everybody ain't that easy. Somebody plays pigsnake or something," Frederick said. Everyone in southern Atlantis knew about pigsnakes. They weren't poisonous. When they got into danger, they puffed themselves up and hissed and snapped-and then they rolled onto their backs and played dead. Frederick went on, " ' Sides, some of us'd brag if we did that kind of thing. People run their mouths, no matter what color they are, and that's a fact."

He waited again. He didn't know what the white men would decide. He didn't know what he would have done himself in a mess like that. He was glad he wasn't the one who had to figure it out.

"Time's a-wasting," he called, hoping to speed things up.

He didn't, though, or not very much. He stood there in the hot sun till the front door to the big house finally opened. "All right," the spokesman shouted. "We're coming out. You lied to us, we'll kill as many of you bastards as we can."

Some of the whites carried muskets, others pistols. They all looked wide-eyed and jumpy, as if they were dealing with so many ferocious wild animals. Like as not, they thought they were. And they seemed to get even jumpier as they moved away from the cover of the house and barn.

Frederick waved encouragingly. "Go on. Nothing's gonna happen, not unless you start it."

They came up to him. "You got nerve, nigger," the spokesman said.

"Maybe you got nerve, too, trustin' me," Frederick answered. He almost said trustin' a nigger, but he couldn't make himself call himself by that name to a white man, even if he sometimes used it among his own people.

The white studied him with disconcertingly keen gray eyes. "You're a smart fellow, ain't you?"

Frederick shrugged. "Anybody who brags on bein' smart really ain't."

Ignoring that, the white went on, "I wouldn't tell you this if you didn't already know, but I reckon you do. We get out of here, we'll join up with the soldiers first chance we find."

"I suppose so," Frederick said. "You reckon that, just as soon as your bunch comes in, they'll have enough people to whip us up one side and down the other?"

"I-" The white man paused and sent him another sharp stare. "You are a smart fellow. No, I don't figure we'll make the difference all by our lonesome."

"In that case, we may as well let you go, long as you don't kick up trouble," Frederick said.

As the white man walked on with his comrades, he got off one last verbal shot: "Some smart fellows, they come to grief on account of they ain't as smart as they think they are."