The Saint on the Spanish Main (17 page)

He opened the bottle again and poured a few
drops on
his own wound, then on the Saint’s. Then they drank
again.
Each of the other men solemnly shook the Saint’s
bloody hand, and
drank from the bottle. After that the
bottle was empty.

The Commander pulled out a clean handkerchief
and
tore it in
half. He gave one half to Simon and bound the
other
half around his own hand.

“All right,” he said. “We go
back outside.”

He motioned Simon to go first.

The return to sunlight was briefly blinding. While the
others were climbing down from the tunnel and
replac
ing the stone across the entrance, Simon wiped his hand and
inspected the cut in it. It was reassuringly small and
had almost stopped bleeding. He fastened the cloth
around it again and forgot it. Considering various
aspects of the rite he had been through, a hypochondriac
would undoubtedly have been screaming for mouth-
wash, penicillin, and tetanus antitoxin; but the
Saint had
a sublime contempt for germs which may have given
nervous breakdowns to innumerable hapless microbes.

He looked up and saw the Commander standing
before him,
with Johnny a little behind.

“Now you is a Maroon, and you is mi
brother. What
you
goin’ do ‘bout Cuffee?”

“Well, said the Saint thoughtfully,
“first of all, is
there any chance of finding the other
Colonel? If we
produced him, at least Cuffee’s election might be
washed
out, and we could have another.”

The Commander gazed at him with bright
searching
eyes and put an arm around his shoulders.

“Come.”

He led the Saint only a little way off the
trail, where
the fast-growing jungle had already almost obliterated
the traces of something heavy
being dragged through it.
The Saint guessed
even then what he was going to see, before the sickly-sweet stench and the
buzzing of dis
turbed flies made it a certainty, before the final
pathetic
travesty of swollen glistening
flesh confirmed it without
need of the
words which were still inevitably spoken.

“Das de Colonel,” the Commander
said.

6

It was the Commander who had found the body,
Simon
learned—driven by rebellious unsatisfied curiosity,
guided by
atavistic sense that no civilized white man could hope to understand even if
the Commander had
been able to discourse professorially about them. The
other
elders represented there had been informed, but
had been helpless to
decide what should be done with
the information, and afraid even to reveal
their knowl
edge outside their own circle. The recent Colonel had
been
murdered, but they had no evidence to point from
his body to the killer.
The Commander might just as
easily have been accused himself. And if the
real killer
had felt himself in serious jeopardy, anyone who ap
peared to
threaten him might well be found in the same
condition as the
luckless ex-Colonel.

All this took some time to establish, much
less con
cisely; and Simon could probably have deduced as much
by
himself more quickly, but courtesy obliged him to
listen.

“It sounds just like in the States, when
the gangsters
knock
someone off,” Johnny said.

Simon nodded.

“Only here the gangster is also the
Chief of Police and
the Mayor too. But he can’t be the Judge as well. Or is
he? Don’t
you have any Constitution?”

They looked at him blankly, and he tried
again slowly
and simply.

“Is he a dictator? Can the Colonel do anything
he
likes?”

“De Colonel is de head man,”
Robertson said.

“What does the Treaty say?”

One of the others stepped forward, the man
who car
ried the cardboard mailing tube which had puzzled the
Saint
intermittently since the day before. He held it out.

“See de Treaty yah, sah.”

The Saint took it and stared at it. It gave
him a
strange
feeling to be holding that much-discussed docu
ment at last, after all he had heard about it. It seemed extraordinary,
now, that this moment had been so long
delayed; and yet he had not
realized before what an es
sential element
had been lacking.

“Well I’m damned,” he said; and
then another thought
rebounded. “Where did you get this
copy?”

“De new Major is mi gran’son, sah. Him
is a very wil’
bwoy. Him keep it fe Cuffee. A tek it las’ night while
him was sleepin’.”

Simon carried it to a convenient rock and sat
down.
He lighted a cigarette, and then carefully extracted the scroll from the
tube and as carefully unrolled it. Johnny
had followed him, and
was peering over his shoulder.

The parchment was yellowed and stained with
age and the antique angular script often hard to decipher.
But the
following is an exact transcription; and if there
are any skeptics who still doubt the
authenticity of these
chronicles, I should
like to say that they can see the orig
inal in Kingston whenever they
care to go there. I make
no apology for
quoting it at such length, for it is a real
historical curiosity.

At the Camp near

Trelawny Town

March 1st 1738

In the name of God Amen.

Whereas Captain Cudjoe, Captain Accompong,
Cap
tain Johnny, Captain Cuffee, Captain Quaco, and several
other
negroes their dependants and adherents, have been in
a state of
war and hostility for several years past against
our
Sovereign Lord the King and the inhabitants of this
Island;
and whereas peace and friendship among mankind
and the preventing
the effusion of blood is agreeable to
God consonant to
reason and desired by every good man;
and whereas his
Majesty George the Second, King of
Great Britain, France
and Ireland and of Jamaica Lord
&c. has

“King of France too?” said the
Saint. “That’s a new one
on me.”

has by his letters patent dated February
25th 1738 in the
twelfth year of his reign granted full power
and authority
to John Guthrie and Francis Sadler, Esquires
to negotiate
and finally conclude a treaty of peace and friendship
with
the aforesaid Captain Cudjoe, the rest of his captains
adherents and his men; they
mutually, sincerely and
amicably have
agreed to the following Articles:

1st. That all hostilities shall cease on
both sides for ever.

2nd. That the said Captain Cudjoe the rest of
his Captains, adherents and men shall be for ever hereafter in a
perfect
state of freedom and liberty, excepting those who
have been
taken by them or fled to them within two years last past if such are willing to
return to their said masters
and owners with full pardon and
indemnity from their said masters or owners for what is past; provided always
that if
they are not willing to return they shall remain in
subjec
tion to Captain Cudjoe and in friendship with us
according
to the form and tenor of this treaty.

3rd. That they shall enjoy and possess for
themselves
and posterity for ever, all the lands situate and lying
be
tween Trelawny Town and the Cockpits to the amount of
1500 acres bearing north west from the said Trelawny
Town.

There followed paragraphs defining the rights of
farming, marketing, and hunting, and binding the
Maroons to join the Governor in suppressing other
rebels or repelling foreign invaders. Then:

8th. That if any white man shall do any
manner of injury
to Captain Cudjoe his successors, or any of
his or their
people they shall apply to any commanding officer or
Magistrate
in the neighbourhood for justice and in case
Captain Cudjoe or
any of his people shall do any injury to
any white person he
shall submit himself or deliver up such
offenders to
justice.

9th. That if any negroes shall hereafter run
away from
their master or owners and fall into Captain Cudjoe’s
hands they shall immediately be sent back to the Chief
Magistrate
of the next parish where they are taken; and those that bring them are to be
satisfied for their trouble as the legislature shall appoint.

10th. That all negroes taken since the
raising of this
party by Captain Cudjoe’s people shall
immediately be re
turned.

“That seems to settle Cuffee’s idea of
taking all the other colored people in Jamaica into the Maroons,” Si
mon
remarked.

“But they aren’t slaves any
longer,” Johnny said. “So
how could they be returned?”

“It’ll give the lawyers something to
haggle with, any
way,” said the Saint. “But Cuffee’s a lawyer
himself. I’m
looking for some law we can use now.”

* * *

11th. That Captain Cudjoe and his successors,
shall
wait on His Excellency or the commander in chief for the
time
being once every year if thereunto required.

“And that’s a big help.”

12th. That Captain Cudjoe during his life,
and the Cap
tains succeeding him shall have full power to inflict
any
punishment they think proper for crimes committed by
their men
among themselves, death only excepted; in
which case, if the Captain thinks they
deserve death he shall be obliged to bring them before any Justice of the
Peace, who shall order proceedings on their trial
equal to
those of other free
negroes.

13th. That Captain Cudjoe with his people,
shall cut,
clear and keep open large and convenient roads——

“God burn it,” said the Saint in disgust, “it just
starts to get somewhere and then it veers off again. And there
are only a few lines left.”

14th. That two white men to be nominated by His Ex
cellency or the commander in chief for the time
being shall
constantly live and
reside with Captain Cudjoe and his suc
cessors in order to maintain a
friendly correspondence with the inhabitants of this Island.

“That’s an item that somebody seems to
have
overlooked,”
Simon observed. “It might be some help,
but
it isn’t exactly a lightning solution.”

The excitement with which he had started
reading was
beginning
to drag its tail. The lift of a couple of false hopes had only made the
subsequent let-downs more discouraging. The Treaty, although its simplicity and
straightforwardness could have been studied
with ad
vantage by the architects of
more modern pacts, left vast
areas
untouched. The only regulation it set up for the
internal affairs of the Maroons was that they should not
execute each other. How otherwise they should
organize
their freedom seemed to
have been wholly outside the
scope
of the agenda.

There was only one clause left; and the
Saint’s heart
sank as the first words foreshadowed its stately ir
relevance.

15th. That Captain Cudjoe shall during his
life, be Chief Commander in Trelawny Town; after his decease the command to
devolve on his brother Captain Accompong, and in
case of his
decease to his next brother Captain Johnny; and failing him, Captain Cuffee shall
succeed; who is to be
succeeded by Captain Quaco——