The bargemen, those swaggering apes with the snub guns, all remarked upon what a bad time of year it was to be transporting red-leggers. Their conversations were the sort that farmers have as they worry over their crops.
"They never seem to draw in the centimes like an autumn run will," huffed Buehl, the senior of the three men stationed to work Billister's barge.
Billister remained shackled to a stubby post for the entire four-day sail to the mainland. Quickly he was reminded of the origin of the term red-legger: the skin under his irons was becoming inflamed, itching.
The only slave among them to be freed of the manacles was a woman about fifty years old. She had passed out on the second day of baking exposure. Buehl produced a key from his trousers, snapped the unconcious woman's cuffs open, and rolled her off the edge of the barge.
On the third day, amid much grumbling, the three bargemen erected a makeshift shelter over most of their captives, a few tarpaulins lashed together and hoisted atop teetering poles. Then Captain Bull, hollering from the lead tug, ordered the other two barges to erect coverings as well, to protect the cargo. This prompted even more resentful bickering.
They puttered into Chautown resembling a chain of seaborne circus tents.
Billister had expected the mainland to seem more. . .main. There was a harbor not remarkably larger than Thomas Island's. The meandering coast misted out of sight north and south and easily could have belonged to an island instead of a continent. Somehow, Billister wanted to see towering cliffs, mountains looming beyond—a cumbersome chunk of land.
In the last hour of the trip the wind picked up, as if tranquility were verboten here even for the weather. The stubby tugboat out front sliced into the low swells, and the three barges bobbed after it obediently like quarter-acre ducks following Mama. The sky had turned gray, a shade lighter than the sea. The tarpaulins snapped and sputtered in the wind. Billister nodded sadly, pegged to this large raft, and watched the sea spray spatter his leg irons to a grimy black.
Near port, the tug's engines died to a low cough. Captain Bull marched in and out of the pilot house shouting commands inaudible over the wind and splash. They gurgled past a battery of rust-eaten cannons, impotent reminders of ancient times, then eased up to a crumbling concrete dock rimmed by fairly recent creosote pilings.
Billister briefly forgot his circumstances in his awe of Chautown. At dockside he could see avenues of elegant residences, pre-war matrons crouched behind their iron grill-work fences. Intermingled were the utilitarian touches of the modern age: artless stonework, corrugated steel roofs rusting under the salt breath of the ocean.
Even more astounding to Billister were the motor vehicles murmuring over the pavement. He had heard of them, of course, but only a handful of the two-wheeled varieties had made their way to the islands. Here they lumbered irritably, all of them the same beaten four-wheeled, Government-issue gray. Open-topped personnel carriers, produce wagons, one- or two-passenger cars for Government officers or honored citizens.
Billister found himself again chained with the others single file, front to back, walking awkwardly on numb legs that moved like ghostly crutches up the roped gangplank. The younger in front of him twisted around and opened his lips furtively to say something, but Buehl was there instantly punching him in the kidney. It was a wound that would not show—important on sale day.
At the top of a concrete ramp, dozens of the open-air trucks waited. The red-leggers were loaded in, freed of all restraints but the wrist cuffs, the leg irons laid carefully in growing piles by the tailgates. A guard with a heavy pistol hopped onto the tailgate when the truck's engine started. His clothes were almost a uniform—light gray cotton, pressed, the trousers belted with polished black leather and a matching holster. The guard seemed easygoing, even a bit of humor in his eyes. This was a mainlander, a bona fide Government man.
They were saying goodbye to the barges.