The covenant - James A. Michener [88]
Van Riebeeck was waiting when the ship's boat drew alongside the jetty his men were constructing, and as soon as the captain jumped smartly ashore the good news was announced: 'Off Angola we ran upon a Portuguese merchant ship headed for Brazil. Short fight. We captured her. A little gold, a little silver, but scores of fine slaves.'
Van Riebeeck could not believe the words; for years he had been imploring his superiors in Java for slaves to work at the Cape, and now the captain was saying, 'We found two hundred and fifty on the Portuguese ship, but seventy-six died in our holds.' Many of the others were seriously ill, and some were boys and girls, of whom Van Riebeeck complained, 'They'll be of little use for the next four or five years.'
'Fetch the big one,' the captain cried. 'You'll want him for yourself, Commander.' Then, lowering his voice: 'In exchange for extra beef?'
When the boat returned, there standing in the bow, shackled heavily, stood the first black from Africa that Willem and the other Dutchmen had ever seen; all previous slaves had been private acquisitions from Madagascar, India or Malaya.
This man must have come from a family of some importance in Angola, for he had what could only be called a noble bearing: tall, broad-shouldered, wide of face. He was the kind of young man a military leader promotes to lieutenant after three days in the field, and as soon as Van Riebeeck saw him he decided to give him an important assignment. He seemed destined to be the leader of the thousands of future slaves who would soon be joining the community.
'What's his name?' he asked, and a sailor replied, 'Jango.' It was an improbable name, corrupted no doubt from some Angolan word of specific meaning, and Van Riebeeck said, in the Portuguese dialect used by all who worked in the eastern oceans, 'Jango, come with me.' And as the tall black, hefting his chains, followed the commander to the fort, Willem thought: How majestic he is! More powerful than two Malays or three Indians.
For the next few days Commander van Riebeeck was occupied with assigning tasks to his new slaves, reserving eleven of the best for the personal use of his wife, and with the arrival of blacks in force he judged that he had better tidy up the status of the slaves already at the Cape. So he summoned Willem to his quarters and asked, 'Van Doorn, what are we going to do about this girl Deborah?'
'Van Valck wants to marry his Malaccan girl. I want to marry Deborah.'
'That would be most unwise.'
'Why?'
'Because you're the brother of an important official in the Compagnie.'
'She's to have another child.'
'Damn!' The preoccupied little man strode back and forth. 'Why can't you worthless men control yourselves?' He had brought his wife with him, and two nieces, so that he felt no lack of feminine companionship; he believed that men like Van Doorn and Van Valck should wait until suitable Dutch women arrived from Holland, and if this took nine or ten years, the men must be patient.
'I'm thirty-three,' Willem said. 'And I feel I must marry now.'
'And so you shall,' Van Riebeeck said, whipping around to face his vintner. Reaching out his hands, he grasped Willem's and said, 'You'll be married before the year's out.'
'Why not now?' Van Doorn asked, and he saw Van Riebeeck stiffen.
'You're most difficult. You spoil everything.' And from his desk he produced the copy of a letter he had sent some ten months before to the Lords XVII in Amsterdam, requesting them to find seven sturdy Dutch girls, no Catholics, and send them south on the next ship. Names of the intended husbands were given, and at the head of the list stood: 'Willem van Doorn, aged thirty-two, born in Java,