Queen by Alex Haley Page A

and frustrated him. He was overawed
        by the huge numbers of ships in the harbor, which had journeyed from every
        comer of the earth, bringing with them strange and exotic cargoes. He
        smelled the scent of spices he had never known, and watched in wonder the
        unloading of the chests of tea from India and silks from China and cotton
        from Madras, sheets of raw cork from Portugal, and oranges from Spain. He
        loved being among the community of seafaring folk, the hardy and colorful
        sailors, rings in their ears and tattoos on their arms, who walked with a
        rolling gait, as the rolling sea had taught them. He saw small brown men
        from the Malacca Straits, and blond descendants of the Vikings, giants to
        him, and heard strange languages that were beautiful and others that grated
        on his ears. He loved the women of the dockside, raw and lusty creatures,
        who cheered when the ships docked and wept when they left, and he spent
        days in tiny smoky taverns by the water, hearing tall tales of the seven
        seas, and Africa and Madagascar, the Azores and the Caribbean, Araby and
        Siam.
    And he saw a black boy, the first he had ever seen.
        A well-dressed woman came to the docks to greet her returning husband, a
        captain. Behind her trotted a little black boy, elegantly appareled in
        velvet and a turban, and around his neck was a long silver chain, with
        which his mistress led him. Like a pet dog, James thought, and watched as
        they passed by, fascinated by the ebony child. He had heard of these
        African creatures, niggers as they were called, heathen sava-es, who ran
        around naked in their native jungles, bloodthirsty warriors, licentious
        animals.
        He heard of the slave ships that sailed from England to Africa with cargoes
        of iron or manufactured goods, and from Africa to America with cargoes of
        naked savages, and from America back to England with raw cotton, or
        tobacco, or rice. He had heard of the calls for abolition of the slave
        trade from
    52 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
     
    some of the church people, and the furious opposition to that abolition,
    for the slaves were apparently the most lucrative of all cargoes, and some
    of the planters in America claimed they could not survive without the
    labor. He had no special feelings about it, for it was not part of his
    life. The fate of these odd and alien creatures did not matter to him, one
    way or the other.
        He grew impatient as his days of waiting wore on, for he longed to be at
        sea himself, to experience some of what he had heard about, off on his
        own great adventure. He lost a little money to a prostitute and a little
        more to a pickpocket. He avoided the city itself and stayed near the
        docks, for he quickly discovered that his Irish accent caused him to be
        disparaged among people whose own dialect seemed primitive and guttural
        to him.
     
    When he boarded his ship at last, the cramped spaces belowdecks surprised
    him, and he banged his head several times on overhead beams, before
    leaming to duck, as the sailors did, as naturally as breathing. He shared
    his cramped and crowded cabin with five others, Englishmen who loved their
    country and couldn't wait to leave it. Good-humoredly, they denigrated the
    Americans as ungrateful and troublesome colonists, but were anxious to be
    of their number. They baited him for a bog-Irish peasant, and he took
    their jokes in good part, but they wearied him, and sometimes he had
    trouble controlling his temper. The tiny cabin was claustrophobic, and the
    natural human stench of his fellows reminded James of his time in prison.
    He talked with the first officer, and they gave him a hammock, and on the
    pleasanter nights, he slung that hammock up on deck, with the sailors,