Caribbean

  Many of the last-ditch rebels were shot during the battle, but some eleven were set aside for what the local officials called ‘special attention.’ The details of their prolonged deaths at public exhibitions were not recorded, but when Jorgen Rostgaard stormed French headquarters to demand the right to take care of his rebellious slave Cudjoe, the invaders, out of respect for the remorseless fury with which Rostgaard had helped them track the rebels, acceded to his request.

  Cudjoe’s execution took place on the platform which Rostgaard had used before. The same sergeant stood at one side to read the death warrant, the same drummer marked the hundred and fifty lashes, but now there would be a difference, for the warrant had said ‘Racked and Burned,’ and Rostgaard was eager to supervise both.

  On the platform, enlarged to accommodate the machinery, wheels and levers had been installed, with lengths of thick rope attached, their free ends awaiting their victim. After the lashings, Cudjoe was revived, hauled onto the platform, and stretched out while ropes were attached to his ankles, his wrists and his shoulders and, at a signal from Rostgaard, these ropes were tightened by slow and painful degrees until the joints began to tear apart.

  Pembroke, watching the execution with most of the other two hundred surviving whites who were required by rules governing the emergency to be present with such of their slaves as could be assembled in that area, was outraged by the prolonged cruelty of the rack, but that was only a preamble to the horror that was about to occur, for as the ropes were pulled almost to the breaking point, with the black man insensate from the pain, Rostgaard signaled that slaves should set afire the timbers and shavings assembled below the platform. Pembroke looked away, unable to watch as the inert body was carried to the fire, but as he gazed at the placid Atlantic, he heard a gasp, and when he looked back he saw the most sickening sight of all. A triumphant Jorgen Rostgaard had taken up a long knife and was approaching the taut body of his slave. With swift cuts through the distended joints he severed arms and legs, throwing them onto the growing fire. ‘Now take him down!’ he shouted, pouring water as he did so in an attempt to revive the still-living torso, which was thrown into the swirling flames. Cudjoe, the resolute Ashanti, had been taught not to rebel.

  • • •

  When John Pembroke walked with staggering steps back toward the big house he no longer cared to occupy, he realized that Elzabet Lemvig had not been made to attend the execution, so he walked right past his temporary home and kept going till he reached the Lemvig plantation. Eager for the solace of another human being like himself, and not some vengeful monster like Rostgaard who had brought this terror to his community, he shouted: ‘Elzabet, where are you?’ and when she appeared, wan and thin, he rushed to her, took her in his arms, and cried out: ‘Elzabet, for God’s sake, let us quit this hideous place. Start a new life with hope, not despair.’

  She tried to respond to what was in effect a marriage proposal, but it came so unexpectedly and on such a wretched day that sensible words were beyond her. Instead, she fell limp in his arms, which was itself a signal that she would now rely only on him.

  When he revived her, he led her outside the lonely house and perched her beside him on the porch overlooking the cluster of islands to the west. When she was calm enough to ask in a whisper: ‘What did you say in there?’ he repeated: ‘You and I must leave this blood-soaked place and start a better life elsewhere.’

  ‘I think you are right,’ she said, and for the first time since that day sixteen months ago when they became neighbors, he kissed her.

  But because life on the islands always seemed urgent, he proceeded immediately to give her strange news: ‘Did you ever wonder why those French volunteers from Martinique were so eager to rush their troops over here to help us put down our slave rebellion?’ When she said no, he continued: ‘They’ve been wanting for years to sell the island of St. Croix to the Danes. Thanks to their gesture of good will, helping us against our slaves … well, the sale’s gone through.’

  ‘What would that mean to us?’

  ‘The Danish government wants me to move down and establish a big sugar plantation on English principles.’

  Very firmly but quietly she said: ‘I would not want to live on any plantation where our new rules were in effect. I’ll not go with you, John.’

  Her words caused him not disappointment but joy: ‘Oh, Elzabet! I explained in the minute they made the offer that I’d be returning to Jamaica. I’m taking you to Trevelyan. You’ll love it there.’

  This time she kissed him, and as the sun sank lower, he said gravely: ‘I’ve one thing more to do on this terrible day.’

  With her holding on to his arm, he led the way to where his two boats were padlocked to trees, and when she asked what this was about, he said: ‘I’ve seen signs that Vavak is somewhere in our forest. They’ve never caught him, you know.’

  ‘He saved my life that night.’

  ‘And mine too, I think. No other reason why they didn’t kill me.’

  When they reached the boats, John took from his trouser pocket the large key that worked the locks, and while Elzabet watched he carefully unlocked the boats, setting them free for the use of any slaves still hiding in the woods who might want to try the long sail to Spanish Puerto Rico or French St.-Domingue.

  As he and Elzabet started back up the path to the house, they heard a rustling in the trees, and from the shadows emerged Vavak and a woman, and it was a fearful moment, because the slave was armed and the master was not. The path was narrow, so narrow that only one person could occupy it, and as the two men walking in front met, each stepped aside to let the other pass, and the Englishman thought ruefully of another of the new rules: A slave meeting a white person shall step aside and wait until he passes; if not, he may be flogged.

  They passed, and no one spoke, but all knew why Pembroke had released his boats.

  John and Elzabet remained hidden by trees as they watched Vavak and his woman test the two boats, choose the better, and set forth on the long and dangerous voyage to the land to be known as Haiti, where their descendants would continue their quiet fight for freedom.

  When John Pembroke surprised Trevelyan Plantation by bringing home a Danish wife, reactions were varied. Sir Hugh, at ease now that all his sons were safely married, welcomed Elzabet heartily and assigned the couple a suite of three rooms on the second floor of Golden Hall. John’s brothers, Roger and Greville, were relieved that he had escaped the entrapments of Hester Croome, but that young woman, when she learned of the marriage, came running to Trevelyan, rushed up to Elzabet, enclosed her in wide-sweeping arms, and said: ‘We welcome you to Jamaica!’ after which she broke into uncontrolled sobbing.

  John would give his wife no explanation for Hester’s amazing behavior, but Roger confided: ‘She’s a dear girl, Hester. Worth a triple fortune, and she set her lure for landing one of us Pembroke boys. Although heaven knows she didn’t need us.’ Embarrassed by the unintended frankness of his revelation about a good neighbor, he added: ‘She’s a grand girl and she’ll have no trouble finding herself a husband.’ Then, as if compelled to describe Hester accurately, he said: ‘When Greville and I married, she adopted our wives. Warmly and honestly. And she’ll do the same with you. Not a mean streak in her body.’

  And that’s what happened. At the big dinners given on the various plantations, the three Pembroke boys, as they were called despite their years, sat with their pretty wives while Hester Croome, big and awkward and ebullient, cried: ‘Aren’t they the pride of Jamaica, that trio?’ And she was especially kind to Elzabet the Dane: ‘John brought back a beauty, didn’t he?’

  The family decided that John and Elzabet should remain at Trevelyan, at least for the first years of their marriage, helping Greville and getting to know the whole of Jamaica and the other British islands. It was a happy time, for it seemed that Jamaica and the Caribbean then stood at the apex of their joint history. Governments were stable. Sugar prices were never higher. And although war
seemed always to be raging somewhere, it did not often manifest itself in the islands. John and Elzabet shared in the general euphoria when she became pregnant.

  There was, however, one persistent problem across the Caribbean: the proper management of slaves. In later centuries scholars and writers would frequently ask: ‘Why were the slaves so passive? If they outnumbered the whites six and eight to one, why didn’t they rebel?’ The truth is they did rebel, constantly, violently, on all the islands, as the chronicle of those years shows: Jamaica, 15 rebellions in all; Barbados, 5; Virgin Islands, 6; Hispaniola, 8; Cuba, 16; every island experienced at least one major rebellion.

  In 1737 a shocking affair occurred in a remote corner of Jamaica and it projected the Pembrokes into the middle of the slavery problem. A clergyman of the Church of England sent by foot messenger two reports, one to the capital now at the new town of Kingston, the other to the king in London:

  It is my grievous duty to inform you that Thomas Job, a member of my church in Glebe Quarter, has by solemn count been responsible for the deaths of more than ninety of his slaves. The facts, widely known among his neighbors, were kept secret from me, but when rumors reached me I confirmed each word of what I am about to report.

  Job, this inhuman monster, delighted in stretching his slaves upon the ground, tying down wrists and ankles and beating them constantly for upward of an hour till they expired. He disciplined his female servants by forcing their mouths open with sticks and pouring large amounts of boiling water down their throats. All died. I personally know of one slave who was sent to the woods to recapture some runaways. When he failed, a red-hot iron was jammed down his throat and, of course, he died.

  It will, I know, be difficult for you to believe, but on numerous occasions Job grew irritated with pickaninnies and stuck their heads under water till they drowned. Others were tossed into kettles of boiling water. Please, please, do something to restrain this monster.

  When news of this appeal reached the governor, he called upon Greville Pembroke, known to be a sensible planter, to take the long trip to Glebe Quarter to investigate the charges, and if they were found to be accurate, to institute legal proceedings against Job. ‘But,’ the governor warned, ‘I must remind you that not one bad word has been spoken against Job since I took office. This could be a canard.’

  Greville nodded, then suggested: ‘Excellency, my duties at the plantation are heavy, but my younger brother John has had more experience than me in slave affairs. I would recommend that he be dispatched.’ It was done, and ten minutes after his arrival at Glebe Quarter, John had Thomas Job in the town’s improvised jail. Acting upon the governor’s written orders, he ordered a jury to be convened, and listened in astonishment as the men, all white, all part of the Sugar Interest, found Job not guilty on the grounds that ‘it’s difficult to control niggers without stern measures, and in our judgment Thomas did not exceed to any degree the customs of this island.’

  When John heard the verdict he was so infuriated that he wanted to organize a hanging party to dispose of Job on the spot, but the clergyman advised against this, and Job went free. Next morning, assuming himself to have not only been vindicated but also authorized to resume his old ways, Job spotted a slave doing some trivial thing that he, Job, did not approve of and beat him to death in the customary manner.

  A young Scotsman working for Job had had enough, and when he reported the death to the reverend, the latter summoned Pembroke to hear the details, and by a curious chance the dead slave’s name happened to be one commonly used in the islands, Cudjoe. As soon as the name was uttered, John recalled the hideous time when he had been forced to watch when Rostgaard’s Cudjoe was ‘racked and burned,’ and he knew what course he must take.

  This trial, a new one dealing with an entirely new case, was going to be different, because now John would have a white man to testify to Job’s brutal behavior. The trial was a sensation, but when the young Scot rose to testify, a plantation man in the rear of the court shouted: ‘Shoot that bastard!’ and there were many similar displays of support for Job, but the jury, unable to ignore the solid evidence, had to bring in a verdict of guilty.

  That afternoon John Pembroke, on his own recognizance, caused a gallows to be erected, and before the sun sank, Thomas Job, master fiend of Jamaica, was hanged.

  Late that night Pembroke’s small boat slipped out of Glebe Quarter’s harbor and made its way homeward with the young Scot as passenger; it could have been fatal to leave him among the sugar planters, who were seething to think that one of their kind had been hanged for merely disciplining his niggers.

  But when Pembroke and the Scot reached Kingston to report on the happenings at Glebe Quarter, they found that a swift horseman had beat them to the capital with a monstrously distorted account of what had transpired. Tempers were high among members of the Sugar Interest, and Pentheny Croome was organizing a gang to thrash the Scot, or worse, but John intercepted him: ‘Pentheny, what in the world are you doing?’

  ‘If we let one planter be disciplined for doin’ what we all do, revolution’s upon us. The slaves’ll cut our throats in the night.’

  ‘Pentheny, you said “Doing what we all do.” Do you want to hear what he really did? Sit still and listen,’ and in dispassionate tones he recited the hideous behavior at Glebe Quarter. When he had finished recounting the barbarities against the male slaves, the indecent tortures inflicted on the females and the incredible cruelty to the children, he asked quietly: ‘Longtime friend of my father’s, are you Two Peas in a Pod not well respected in London? Do you not occupy important positions in Parliament? Do you want Thomas Job’s behavior to cloud your reputations? And drag down the whole Sugar Interest?’

  Pentheny was shaken, even more so when John bored in: ‘A copy of my report has gone to the king. When he asks “How did you handle this matter?” are you going to say “We saw nothing wrong in what he did?” Are you going to befoul your own nest?’

  Pentheny swallowed hard, and said in a very small voice: ‘I’d like to hear from that Scot we were goin’ to hang,’ and when the tales of horror were elaborated upon, Pentheny rose, moved toward the young man, and embraced him: ‘I need a feller like you to mind my plantation while I’m in London,’ and a week later Hester Croome was back at Trevelyan, bubbling to the wives: ‘Wonderful young man started working for my father. I’m sort of sorry we sail for London on Friday.’

  In 1738 young John Pembroke attracted his first favorable attention in London. There had been trouble with a nest of Maroons on the eastern end of Jamaica, and instead of sending an army against them, the governor dispatched Pembroke and a guard of sixteen from the Gibraltar regiment now stationed on the island. ‘What we hope for,’ the governor said as the men marched off, ‘is a repetition of that lasting peace your father made with the Maroons in his district. Same assurances from us, same promises from them.’

  It was a long trek across difficult terrain, and when Pembroke reached the Maroon area the former slaves did not wish to talk, but an adroit mixture of patience and pressure accomplished wonders and finally a truce was agreed upon. In 1739, John was dispatched to western Jamaica with the same commission, and again he achieved what none had been able to accomplish before, a lasting truce. The island was now pacified, and officials in London sent a dispatch to Kingston: ‘Advise John Pembroke, well done.’

  This led to a surprising assignment, for when a fighting squadron of immense size, some hundred ships in all, anchored in Port Royal Roads under the command of a senior admiral, Edward Vernon, everyone connected with government could see that the British had at last decided to drive the Spanish from the Caribbean.

  Already many of the holdings had been lost, Jamaica to the British, the future Haiti to the French, and nowhere in the eastern chain of islands did Spain regain control. At the southern tip of that string, Trinidad was nominally still Spanish, but it was being settled mostly by the French and would soon pass into British hands. However, rich Mexico and ri
cher Peru were still Spanish, as was the Main, but to protect its hold on even these vital areas, Spain simply had to retain the key port of Cartagena, so naturally the English decided to capture it, and thus imperil all the rest of Spain’s holdings in the New World. As so often before, again the fate of the European nations would be settled in the Caribbean.

  Excitement rose when English officials revealed the target: ‘Vernon will be off to capture Cartagena! Erase the humiliations we’ve suffered there,’ and when the admiral came ashore to complete the last-minute preparations, he boasted: ‘This time we blast that city off the map.’

  He was a colorful sea dog, fifty-seven years old, who was invariably seen in a battered green overcoat made of grogram, a rough fabric woven of silk, mohair and wool. From this he took the name ‘Old Grog,’ and when in an effort to instill sobriety among his sailors he diluted their traditional rum ration with two quarts of water to one pint of rum, his name entered the dictionary, but in a perverse way, since originally grog meant watered down and not rum.

  He had gained a frenzied popularity in 1739 when he boasted that Porto Bello was not invulnerable: ‘Give me six good ships and I guarantee I’ll capture it.’ The government gave him the ships, and he won such a smashing victory, not losing a ship or any men, that bonfires were lit across England and medals struck in his honor. But sailors who had participated in ‘the Great Victory’ whispered to anyone who would listen: ‘The Spanish didn’t try to defend. A few troops, an empty fort.’

  Nevertheless, he was the hero of the moment, and immediately he proposed to vanquish Cartagena.