Джон Джейкс - North and South

Swiftly, he began to concoct a scheme. He knew the Indian girl would become pregnant; he would see to it. Once it began to show, he would contrive to keep her in the back country, set her up in a cabin of her own, unseen by anyone except him and perhaps King Sebastian. He would tell her she would be safer that way.

He could then inform Jeanne that he meant to adopt a male child. He never doubted that the Indian girl would deliver a son, just as he never doubted his own ability to withstand and overcome her fury when he took the child away. He was a man, which gave him an advantage; he was white, which gave him another. He could deal with her forcibly, if it came to that. There was little Charles wouldn't do to assure the continuity of his line and the future security of any male who bore his name.

Later, he could pass the child off to outsiders as his sister's orphaned son. The plan excited him, and he couldn't completely conceal the reaction. The girl was walking at his shoulder now. She noticed his sudden hard smile, which just as quickly disappeared.

He saw her questioning look. Gently he touched her arm, gazing at her in a way she took to be reassuring. His fast, noisy breathing slowed. They walked on.

He inquired about arriving ships with Africans for sale. None was expected for three weeks, he learned. The only noteworthy vessel in port was a merchantman out of Bridgetown, a trading vessel carrying a few passengers: Gull of Portsmouth .

Charles passed a group of five young men who seemed fascinated by the sights of the little port. He had seen their kind before. Indentured boys. They had a whipped look — all except one stocky young fellow with heavy shoulders, light brown hair, and eyes that glowed like ice in the sunshine. He moved with a certain swagger.

Going in opposite directions, each took brief notice of the other. The bound boy was curious about the man with the primitive clothing, aristocratic bearing, and sprouting beard. The former slaver and would-be slave owner was wondering how someone could voluntarily consign himself to slavery.

A mate leaned over the merchantman's rail.

"Back on board, lads. The tide's flowing. You'll find grander sights to gawk at in Penn's town."

The indentured boys hurried back to the ship, and the tall aristocrat drifted away in the crowd, his Cherokee woman following with adoring eyes. In the cheerful light of the morning, each man had already forgotten the other.

"Like some help loading that aboard, young sir?"

The stevedore smiled but there was no friendliness in his eyes, only avarice inspired by the sight of an obvious stranger.

A few moments ago the driver of the Astor House passenger omnibus had thrown the travel-battered trunk down at the head of the pier. Orry had picked it up by the one rope handle still unbroken and had dragged it scarcely three feet before the stevedore stepped between him and the gangway.

It was a brilliant, windless morning in June 1842. Orry was already nervous about the day ahead. The stevedore's fixed smile and hard stare only worsened that state, as did the sight of the stevedore's two associates lounging nearby.

Nerves and cowardice were two different things, though; Orry had no intention of letting the former lead to the latter. He had been warned that New York teemed with all sorts of swindlers, and now it appeared he had finally met one. He took off his tall, stylish beaver hat and mopped his forehead with a linen handkerchief from an inside pocket.

Orry Main was sixteen and stood almost six feet two inches. His slimness accentuated his height and lent him a certain grace when he moved. He had a long, plain face with the good color of someone who spent a lot of time in the sunshine. His nose was narrow and aristocratic, his wavy hair brown. His eyes, brown too, were rather deeply set. Fatigue circles tended to appear under them whenever he slept poorly, as he had last night. The rings of shadow gave his face a melancholy cast. But he was not melancholy by disposition. His smile, which appeared frequently, proved that. He was, however, a deliberate sort. He tended to pause and think before taking any important step.

Impatient, the stevedore put a foot on the trunk. "Lad I asked —"

"I heard you, sir. I can handle the trunk myself."

"Listen to that," one of the other stevedores jeered. "Where you from, country boy?" It was Orry's accent that gave him away; his clothes were far from countrified.

"South Carolina."

His heart was beating fast now. The three were mature men, muscular and rough. But he refused to be backed down. He reached for the rope handle. The first stevedore grabbed his wrist.

"No you don't. Either we put it on the steamer or you travel up to West Point without it."

Orry was stunned by the threat and equally stunned by the ease with which he and his destination had been identified. He needed time to think, time to put himself in a better position to deal with these louts. He shook his wrist to signal that he wanted the stevedore to release him. After a deliberate delay the man did. Orry straightened and used both hands to put his hat back on his head.

Three female passengers, two pretty girls and an older woman, hurried by. They certainly couldn't help him. Then a small man in a uniform stepped off the gangway, an official of the line, Orry suspected. A sharp wave from one of the stevedores and the official came no farther.

"How much to load it?" Orry asked. Somewhere behind him wagon wheels squealed and hooves rang on the cobbles. He heard merry voices, laughter. Other passengers arriving.

"Two dollars."

"That's about eight times more than it should be."

The stevedore grinned. "Could be, sojer boy. But that's the price."

"You don't like it," the second stevedore said, "go complain to the mayor. Go complain to Brother Jonathan." All three laughed. Brother Jonathan was the popular symbol for the nation. A rustic, a Yankee.

Orry was perspiring from tension as well as from the heat. He bent at the waist, again reaching for the trunk. "I refuse to pay you a —"

The first stevedore pushed him. "Then the trunk stays here."

A grave look concealed Orry's fear. "Sir, don't put hands on me again." The words provoked the stevedore to do exactly that. He tried to give Orry a clumsy shake. Orry had planned his point of attack and rammed his right fist into the stevedore's stomach.

The official cried, "Stop that," and started forward. Another stevedore flung him back so hard he nearly pitched off the pier into the water. The first stevedore grabbed Orry's ears and twisted. Then he kneed Orry's groin. Orry reeled away, falling against someone who had come up behind him, someone who darted around him and charged the three stevedores, fists swinging.

A young man not much older than himself, Orry saw as he lunged back to the fray. A shorter, very stocky chap who punched with great ferocity. Orry jumped in, bloodied a nose, and got his cheek raked by fingernails. Frontier-style fighting had reached the New York docks, it seemed.

The first stevedore tried to jab a thumb in Orry's eye. Before he hit his target, a long gold-knobbed cane came slashing in from the right. The knob whacked the stevedore's forehead. He yelled and staggered.

"Blackguards," a man bellowed. "Where are the authorities?"

"William, don't excite yourself," a woman exclaimed. The stocky young man jumped on Orry's trunk, poised and ready to continue the fight. Now the official by the gangway was joined by two crewmen from the steamer. The stevedores backed off, calculated the rapidly changing odds, and after some oaths that brought gasps from the two ladies who had just arrived, hurried off the pier and disappeared on the street beyond.