Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [8]
Rev. Stevens concluded that, ‘Perhaps his character is not tempered as well as the other missionaries, but know that his soul is devoted, and trust in him and the Lord we have.’
27 September 1834
Gathered for our second and final farewell, we depart Portsmouth, and finally England. She will be within view for some time yet, but the feel of her beneath my feet has gone. With the tearful children of the Rev. Lilywhite waving goodbye until they were but specks upon the harbour wall, the leaving of land seemed all the more emotional than the choral fanfare of Blackwall. Several eyes watered on-board, including reverends and hardened sailors. I also had to use my sleeve to quell a tear, as though I were at the wake of a good friend, or even a family member, I would never see again.
The briefing from Rev. Stevens about Rev. Thomas proved most invaluable, as our introduction was a most awkward misunderstanding. When the Rev. Thomas reached the foot of the gangplank, the porters set down his luggage to be stowed by the crew. My name had been lost in the melee of greetings with the other reverends and their wives, so when the Rev. Thomas turned to see my dark hand held out for shaking, he snapped, ‘Put your hand upon my case, boy! Not my palm.’
There and then I had not the courage to correct the rev. and properly introduce myself as translator of the mission expedition, and quickly did as I was told, carrying two cases to his room before the Rev. Stevens had us formally acquainted.
The Rev. Thomas is a large, ruddy-faced and portly man, puffing his chest and gasping for air as though each breath were his last. His ‘apology’ consisted of a lecture on how to introduce oneself in a correct manner, and the confession that my ‘dusky hand’ had been the first ‘neither white, nor olive’ he had ever been offered, taking him somewhat by surprise.
Tonight I pray that I am wrong about the Rev. Thomas, for he seems the kind of man who would immediately wash after shaking hands with a man of my skin.
1 October 1834
With much shame I answered the Rev. Lilywhite with an untruth when asked upon whether I was regularly keeping this journal. The rev., no doubt suspecting my falsehood, replied, ‘It is a daily record, Mr Baba, not the meanderings of our hand given to whim.’
The excuse was that upon departing the damp isles of Great Britain, again watching the wind unravel in the billowing sails and feeling the deck creak beneath my shoeless feet, I was quite overcome with joy. Once more I could rise and fall with the rhythm of the sea, breathe the same sweet breeze that blows across the waves, and not choke on the chimney smoke or fetid stench of a London street.
Though the Mission Society has secured my passage, requiring me to do little more than sit and wait for the shores of Lakemba, I am not a man to rest my limbs while others labour. As a boy apprentice on-board the Fortune, I learned the rigging well enough to haul sails with the crew, and now this time with the men of the Caroline.
But the Rev. Thomas, as many a white man who considers himself greater than his peers, believes physical labour, including the skilled and brave toil of our intrepid sailors, is only fit for those without words, the ‘uneducated and illiterate’, and while shinning down the mizzenmast I was scolded like a disobedient child and ordered that I put my shoes back on. ‘If you want to be regarded as a gentleman, not a savage, then you must behave so.’
Many times, cut with comments that would start wars between chiefs and tribes in our respectful kingdom, I have held my tongue before the white man and his twisted wisdom. As I listened to the reverend lecture on the mind before the arm, forbidding my ‘labour among the commoners’, contented myself with the blood-rush of exertion pulsing in my limbs.
2 October 1834
Today