SLAVE SHIP
The Shame & Glory Saga: Book I
by
Jerrold Mundis
Other Books Available as Ebooks
NOVELS
- In the Shame & Glory Saga -
Slave Ship
Slave
(March 2012)
The Long Tattoo
(April 2012)
Helbottom
(May (2012)
Running Dogs
(June 2012)
Several more to come by March 30th 2012, including:
Best Offer
Gerhardt’s Children
The Dogs
& More
NONFICTION
Earn What You Deserve: How to Stop Underearning and Start Thriving
-
(The title below is currently available in print only)
How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously
SLAVE SHIP
Jerrold Mundis
Copyright © 1969 by Jerrold Mundis
(Originally published under the pseudonym Eric Corder)
* * *
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you would like to share it. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
* * *
Publication History
Hardcover edition:
McKay, New York, 1969.
Paperback edition:
Pocket Books, New York, 1970.
Ebook edition:
www.jerroldmundis.com, New York, 2012.
* * *
For Fredi
and for Ron and Laura
with love
* * *
Table of Contents
Slave Ship (The Shame & Glory Saga: Book I)
Other Books by Jerrold Mundis Available as Ebooks
Money? Why, I’d plow the sea to porridge to make money.
—Simeon Potter (Rhode
Island shipowner and
slave merchant)
The Negro is a beast, but created with articulate speech, and hands, that he may be of service to his master—the White man.
—Charles Carrol (author)
We shall have our manhood. We shall have it or the earth will be leveled by our attempts to gain it.
—Eldridge Cleaver (black militant and author)
BOOK I
THERE WAS A SCREAM—a dog, a colicky child, something dying shrilly in the forest; Osai Adoko stirred on his woven sleeping mat. The scream was worth no more.
But the second one was, and he came fully and instantly awake, lunged up and toward the corner of the room where the long spears stood and the heavy-bladed sword rested on twin pegs of wrought gold. His right hand seized the handle of the sword, his left closed around the shafts of two spears. He ran into the night.
It was not dark. A three-quarter moon washed pale light down through thin black clouds. But more, there was a thick yellow glow rising from the home of Okomfo Kenoyo. The thatched roofs of the small buildings were burning fiercely.
Osai Adoko slashed empty air with his sword. The Ashanti were king. When they fought, when they made war, which was often, it was the Ashanti who dictated the time and place. No one attacked an Ashanti village, even one this small and this far from the center of the nation. Osai Adoko would more readily have believed that a household slave would relieve himself upon the personal fetish of the Asantahene of all Asantahenes. Both acts were equally unthinkable.
The brightness of the spreading fires overwhelmed the moonlight and Osai Adoko saw figures struggling in silhouette. He raised his sword and raced to battle on long, well-muscled legs. They would pay, whoever they were. They would pay with their blood and with the blood of their children and with the blood of their cousins and of their cousins’ cousins. They would pay with their bound bodies delivered over to the white slavers, and the foul-smelling ships. They would pay with their severed heads on flat stones, with their slaughtered animals left for the carrion scavengers, with their homes reduced to dust and ashes. They would pay until nothing remained to prove that they had ever lived.
Osai Adoko saw the sons of Okomfo Kenoyo and that good man’s slaves. They were well armed and they were fighting intelligently, banding together, presenting solid resistance to the superior numbers of the enemy. Shouts from behind told Osai Adoko that his own brothers and the slaves of his father had reacted as quickly as he, and, in mid-stride, he bloomed with joy and pride and easy, vengeful confidence.
He could see the invaders now. Fanti, treacherous pigs! They were near brothers of the Ashanti, sharing a language and customs whose difference was no more than that in the sound produced by striking a drum slightly left of center, then slightly right. Brothers did not enslave brothers, not, at least, among the Ashanti and Fanti.
A musket boomed and one of the raiders somersaulted backwards. Adoko’s great rashness, to the thinking of his fellows, was that though he valued firearms for others, knew fully that no tribe, no nation, could survive, much less triumph, without them, he preferred wood and cutting edges; and he had won much glory because of it.
A group of Fanti were closing a circle around a party of Ashanti. Adoko came lightly to a halt, cocked his arm, bellowed, and skewered one of the enemy through the back. The man fell, breaking off the iron head and the few inches of wood that had ripped through his chest, then quivered on the ground, dying, sending tiny vibrations through the shaft that rose from between his shoulder blades.
Half a dozen raiders whirled and rushed Adoko. He thrust left-handed with his remaining spear and opened the stomach of the first man. He took out the eye of the second man in the same fashion. Then his sword whistled down and lopped off an arm at the elbow. His other assailants leaped upon him, and he fell under their combined weight. His head and chest were struck heavily. Someone was trying to drive a knee into his groin. His weapons were useless in such quarters. He let them slip from his hands. He began to bite and claw and squeeze. His fingers plunged into a mouth; he hooked them and pulled. The man atop him shrieked, his cheek ripped apart nearly to the ear.
The bodies lifted suddenly and blood spilled warm upon him.
“Up, Adoko, up!” A hand jerked him to his feet. It was one of his brothers. Two of the household slaves were with him, red with the life juice of the Fanti lying dead at their feet.
Adoko rejoined the fight. Yellow and orange light flickered and glimmered on faces and sweat-sheened bodies as the fires spread. The hot air was difficult to breathe, and pounding feet raised clouds of dust that scraped and spasmed the lungs. The Ashanti had one advantage. The raiders were forced to curtail their use of deadly force; corpses could not be sold. The Ashanti labored under no such restraint. They could and they did kill freely, striking with ferocity at any man within range. They held their ground for several vicious minutes, but then sheer numbers began to batter them down and they were forced to draw back. Grudgingly.
Something rolled across the ground and bumped against Adoko’s foot. He looked down and saw the head of Okomfo Kenoyo. Blood was draining from the neck. The lined face of the venerable old man was scratched and bruised. The eyelids fluttered, opened wide, then closed. The mouth tightened, and Okomfo Kenoyo’s head became garbage for the pigs.
Adoko was driven to the buildings of his father’s house. He saw one of his sisters spitted as she tried to wield a sword much too heavy for her. Adoko felt pride. There would be few slaves taken tonight. He split open the face of an oncoming Fanti. A thrown club caught him on the temple. He went to his knees. A raider came howling at him. Adoko thrust with his spear. The point went into the man’s open mouth, cut upward, and penetrated his brain. The butt of the spear was wrenched from Adoko’s grasp when the man fell. Adoko regained his feet and gripped his sword with both hands. His back was against the wall. He spun to parry a blow from his left. He saw his son, Osai Tola, who was five years old and one of the most wiry and clever of the village children. Tola’s lips were pulled back from his even white teeth. He held a ceremonial dagger over his head and tried to drive the blunt ornament into the back of a Fanti who was clubbing a fallen man. The Fanti sent the boy sprawling with a backhanded slap.
Adoko was smashed in the kidney by a musket stock. He twisted with pain. He was kicked in the stomach. He swung his sword; bone crunched. He was tripped with the shaft of a spear. They were on him before he fell. Strong hands locked his wrists, pinned his ankles together. Choking fingers dug into his throat. He bit. His teeth went through flesh and muscle and joined each other. He shook his head like a dog, tearing. There was a crack on the top of his skull, and brilliant white fingerlets fractured his vision. He bit again. His head exploded twice more. The fourth time the club struck, Adoko raged at his own weakness, and then he knew nothing more.
THE CORPSES WERE HEAPED into three large careless piles, An equal number of heads, young and old of both sexes, lay on the blood-sodden earth a few feet away. The executions had begun at dawn, as soon as there was sufficient light for the Fanti to weed out captives so severely wounded that the white slavers would not purchase them. There were many, but the victors were efficient and the process consumed little more than an hour.
Adoko, who had awakened with ringing ears, chained, saw his father brought forward. The Osai of the house, the father of the family’s fathers, the Osai of the village’s four Fathers, shook off the hands he found so offensive, walked without faltering, as if the two deep and crusty wounds in his chest were of no concern and the foamy blood hemorrhaging on his lips were natural, and then—refusing to go to his knees—dropped to sit cross-legged, inclined his head, and said, “Strike, land snails!”
Two cuts of the sword were needed. The head finally fell into the Osai’s own lap. He sat erect, ludicrously, headlessly, until a Fanti kicked him over. Adoko watched in expressionless silence. He prayed briefly for his father. Then a sense of anxiety rose in him. The family was now fatherless.
Something should be done. His brothers and sisters should consult. A new Osai should be selected. A family needs its father. Under other circumstances he would have been his kinsmen’s choice. This was not pride, but simple recognition of fact. Osai Adoko was without peer in valor. Osai Adoko, in the interludes of peace, made the family business, the merchanting of the stimulating kola nut, prosper in a way equaled only by his father. Osai Adoko was frequently sought by his brothers and sisters and others of the household for counsel.
Because it was necessary, Osai Adoko, sitting in chains, took it upon himself to become the Osai of his family. It was a question of survival.
“Get up! Get moving!” The Fanti were using sticks and leather straps to rouse their captives and set them on the march. There were groans and the clinking of chain links.
A supple rod stung Adoko’s shoulders. He clenched his jaw and pushed himself to his feet. His body ached; there was a sharp pain in his skull. He accepted. Pain was something to be borne. Standing, he looked at his manacled wrists. A ring was set in one of the cuffs and through it ran a heavy chain that fastened Adoko to the other males in the coffle. Iron round his flesh! He shook his hands furiously and strained against the metal until the muscles of his shoulders and arms threatened to rupture.
In moments he gave it up and consciously relaxed himself. Action now was futile. The time would come, perhaps soon, more likely not, but it would come, eventually, and then he would act. Not before.
The coffle started forward. The Fanti had taken only some eighty prisoners, including women and children. That from a village of more than three hundred. Adoko felt satisfaction. Ashanti were not slaves. He searched the women, who, like the men, were nearly all of them naked, the attack having jerked everyone in the village from sleeping mats. The women were shackled in pairs, right wrist to left wrist, and were not joined together by a chain. Adoko filed this away; it might later prove crucial. Only one of his two wives was among them—Tui, barely out of girlhood, her belly just beginning to swell with his seed, like a new flower bud. Her eyes were dull and sick. He held them steadily, the only answer he could offer her silent plea, until some light kindled in them again, until her shoulders straightened and her step firmed, and then he looked away, because there was nothing else he could do for her now.
Eama, his first wife, was dead, then. Some, a handful or two of the women and probably a few servants, would have escaped into the forest. But not Eama. Her character was not such. Adoko entered a period of formal sorrow. He hoped she had died without ignominy. Perhaps later he could find someone able to tell him.
There were only a dozen and a half children. They were tied to each other with a light cord, which was circled in a noose around each little neck. His son Tola was there. The boy, his oldest, Eama’s child, was walking with his back straight, his face stony. Adoko was proud. Clasping Tola’s hand and waddling alongside with her thumb in her mouth was Lianu, Adoko’s first child from Tui. She was the youngest in the coffle, and her presence was surprising; the price she would bring was hardly worth the effort of carrying her along. Maybe she had been spared because of her chubby health, a profitable item after all. Or one of the raiders might have softened with his sword suspended above her. That did not seem likely. No others her size had survived. And all the infants, including two that were Adoko’s flesh, had either been massacred or had burned, helpless where they lay, when the flaming roofs collapsed upon them.
Four dead from the seven that had been his own small family . . . He swept the coffle again, counting. His father’s family, with thirteen slaves, had numbered eighty-four. He found, including himself and his two children, only nineteen. He mourned the many dead. Then he exulted in the courage the house of his father had shown.
Instinctively he embraced all the captives as his new family. It was natural. It was essential.
Should this family, in time, elect someone other than him to be their Osai, he would abandon the responsibility and give all support and loyalty to the new father. For now, though, he must act, feel, and think solely for their benefit.
There were two dozen Fanti guarding the coffle, all heavily armed. Ordinarily, less than half that number would have been sent to shepherd so few slaves. But these were Ashanti and could be expected, if they thought they had the slightest chance of success, to fight even though chained. That most would die would not deter them. The only real safeguard was to provide so many warriors that no attempt would be made. The majority of the guards carried muskets along with their swords and daggers; a few had unwieldy large-bore pistols, as well. Many wore rings and bracelets and robe ornaments of worked gold which they had stolen from the conquered village. But they were glum and sour-faced. The attack had cost them dearly, and several had begun to think of the consequences. They treated their prisoners with increasing harshness, trying as their confidence slipped to reassert their supremacy, their sense of control.
The Ashanti suffered the sticks and straps and the occasional flesh-ripping bite of a whip in silence. But when a guard shouted insults at one of the captives, the man began an angry reply.
Adoko called sharply, “That is not to our good. Hold your words.”
The Fanti, because of their uneasiness and growing fear of retribution, misunderstood, interpreting Adoko this way: Quiet, defy them and you will only worsen the treatment they give us. The acquiescence relieved them.
But the rebellious Ashanti knew instantly what Adoko meant, and he shut his mouth. It is unforgivable to antagonize an enemy, particularly one holding the superior position, for no reason other than personal satisfaction. Such behavior only heightens his alertness and therefore diminishes your chances of success. One taunts an enemy only when such insults might move him to an anger which will cause him to act rashly, carelessly.
They were marching south, toward the coast, but also swinging wide to the west, away from Ashanti territory. The Fanti wanted no chance encounter with the tribesmen of their captives. Adoko studied the guards carefully. They were all strong, blooded warriors, and they worked with smooth efficiency under a leader who was vigilant and perceptive. Every man’s musket was charged; hammers rested at safety cock. Swords looked clean and well cared for and were in easy reach. If the Fanti were weary from last night’s fighting, they displayed no sign of it. The guards were heaviest around the male captives, close enough to move in and strike quickly, yet not so near that they could be grabbed by a sudden lunge. Adoko could find no vulnerable point.
For the moment.
The column halted when the sun was a little past its peak. The guards had the women build small fires. Yams and plantains were cooked, and after the Fanti had eaten, small potions were doled out to each captive. Slight murmurs, like soft breezes in a growth of ferns, swept over the prisoners. No one spoke aloud. There was only the shifting and rearranging of posture, a few whispered syllables, barely perceptible gestures. But information was being gathered. It began when one of Adoko’s brothers looked at him with his features saying: What do we do? Adoko leaned forward to pick a piece of hot yam from a palm leaf and said, “Weapons?”
The question was passed through the Ashanti ranks, to the women, too, and the answer came back negative. Adoko then sent out a request for any weaknesses that had been noted in their captors.
None.
Are anyone’s bonds defective? Is there a chance of single escape to bring help?
No.
Is anyone seriously wounded?
A daughter of Okomfo Kenoyo. She is hemorrhaging up blood from her lungs. But she is swallowing it to keep the pigs from knowing.
Help her as you can.
Adoko assimilated what he had learned. There was nothing that could be done. But they had turned to him. They had accepted him as their Osai without hesitation. He was responsible for them.
He said: We must—
The Fanti began kicking and rod-lashing the captives to their feet. There were several groans, for the rest had caused bruised muscles and joints to stiffen anew.
“Your tongues will feast insects! Your skulls will gleam on trees!” Besu, one of Adoko’s older brothers, hurled himself at a guard. The chain caught him up short, dragging the men before him and behind him to the ground, but his straining fingers still managed to bunch up the Fanti’s robe. Besu and the guard sprawled down together. Besu butted the top of his skull into the man’s chin. He raised his manacled hands for a nose-crushing blow, but the butt end of a spear chunked against the back of his head and he pitched to the side, stunned. The chained Ashanti line shifted forward.
“Back! Get back, or you all die here!” the Fanti leader cried.
The guards brought their muskets to bear pointblank on naked chests. Fingers curled around triggers.
The line hesitated.
Adoko breathed once, deeply. He took a step backward, then another.
The Ashanti sighed, and followed him.
The guards remained poised while three of their number freed Besu. He was too dazed to comprehend, and he stumbled drunkenly as they hauled him off the trail. He muttered to himself while they tied his hands with a rope. The other end was tossed over a branch. Two of them pulled on the free end, jerking his arms up sharply and lifting him a few inches off the ground. The pain returned his senses to him. He looked at his kinsman and his captors, his face vacant.
The Fanti leader signaled. A guard uncoiled a long black whip with a splayed end and paced off a few feet from Besu. The Fanti’s arm swung forward, snapped back at just the right moment. The whip doubled on its own arc, too fast for the eye to follow.
Crr-rack!
A red line split Besu’s back.
The guard was expert. In a few moments six raw wet wounds had been cut into Besu, each deep and each separated from the others by an inch or two of unmarred skin. The slash across Besu’s shoulders had exposed muscle. The muscle was gray. At a second signal Besu was cut down and led back to the coffle.
No sound had passed his lips; his expression had not changed. But his face was plagued by little tics, and he walked unsteadily because his legs were trembling. There was admiration in Adoko, but it paled in the face of his anger. Besu had failed his family on three counts. First, he had made the taking of the guards by surprise that much more difficult. Second, he had caused his own strength to be reduced, and that strength was necessary to the community, was the property of the community. Third, his failure and punishment might well have demoralized those among them of wavering resolve.
When Besu had been rechained, Adoko sent out the message: We must wait for the right time. All else is folly. Had it not been Besu, no rebuke would have been necessary. This was typical of his brother; Adoko should have foreseen it. Though unarguably courageous and a brother deserving of love, Besu had always been impulsive to the point of danger, had never fully mastered the self-restraint a man should have.
The Fanti leader addressed them. “No one will attempt such foolishness again. The penalty will be death. Slow and humiliating death.”
It was the prospect of humiliation that gave major impact to the threat.
The march was continued. The Fanti used their rods and straps liberally; every captive paid for Besu’s assault.
There was this problem: By tomorrow’s nightfall the coffle would have arrived at the coast. There the Ashanti would truly become slaves. And no matter whether they were loaded directly onto a ship or locked into barracoons, escape would be many times more difficult.
The move should be made as soon as possible. But there was no opportunity. Each step jarred Adoko’s aching head. Wait. Wait.
In the late afternoon they came to a small stream. The guards had water bags, but the only moisture the Ashanti had tasted during the long, hot day had been that in the yams and plantains and whatever spittle they could work up by chewing leaves into green pulp. Now they were allowed to go down on their hands and knees and scoop drinks from the stream. Tiny white creatures darted with mindless panic in the water Adoko’s hands cupped. He drank. It was cool. It tasted good.
They marched in deepening darkness for some time after the sun set. Then they made camp. Adoko went to sleep immediately. If the guards grew lax, they would do so in the early hours of the morning. There was no point in staying awake now.
He opened his eyes a few hours later, orienting himself in the first moments of consciousness. His head hurt terribly, but he had slept deeply and his body felt stronger. Pools of moonlight spilled through holes in the twisted green canopy above them and whitened small patches of the ground. Two fires were burning. Some of the guards were asleep around them. Others were sitting up, talking and gambling, glancing at the sleeping captives every few moments, weapons close at hand. Small movements in the shadows on the periphery of the coffle told him there were guards there also.
It was useless.
He lay on his back, flexing his arms to dissipate the stiffness brought by the manacles. A swift night-bird cut through the air on whirring wings.
He prayed to his ancestors and to the Obosoms favored by his house. Then he prayed to the Supreme Spirit from whom all lesser divinities flowed.
You, Odomankoma, I honor you:
Who created the Thing,
Hewer-Out, Creator,
You created the Thing.
What did you create?
You created Order.
You created Knowledge.
You created Death
Which is the quintessence.
You, Odomankoma, I honor you.
You who made Death eat poison.
And he prayed to Onyame, who was another part of Odomankoma.
Onyame, the Earth, the Mother,
You need not be pointed out to your children.
You are the end as well as the cause
Of All things.
You need not be pointed out.
There is no escaping Onyame’s destiny.
Onyame, the Earth, the Mother,
You are the end as well as the cause.
And he prayed to Nyankopon, who was another part of Odomankoma and Onyame.
Nyankopon, drink for thirst,
Food for hunger,
I look up and cannot see you,
Yet you are here.
If living man empties my goblet of wine
Or my body of blood,
You will refill it.
Should all things conspire
To destroy you,
You will not perish.
If all men suffer you,
You will suffer them to suffer nothing else.
Nyankopon, I look up and cannot see you.
I am falling downward.
Catch me in your strong arms!
He felt better for having prayed. He had a sense of continuity, and some peace was his, some comfort. Awake, he rested. Someone among the women was moaning softly. He worried about the girl with the injured lungs. His listened more carefully. No, there were two voices, not one. That was good, the guards would pay less attention. Some of the children were whimpering in their sleep. That also was good. Most were too old to permit such sounds to pass their lips when they were awake. Yet the whimpers were within them, and in the darkness, in their sleep, they could express themselves without shame.
A while later he heard retching sounds. A guard swore and went to the women. He shouted. The Fanti headman and three others rushed over. Adoko sat up. The guards dragged two women away from the others. Both were in pain and were vomiting profusely. “Clay,” Adoko heard the headman say. “The bitches ate clay.” He kicked one. A guard went to the side of the fire and returned with a pouch. The headman took something from the pouch and forced it past the lips of each girl. He held their mouths locked shut until they had swallowed. The purgative was strong. They would have rid themselves of the clay without it, but now their stomachs heaved with massive violence. When, some minutes later, it was over, they lay exhausted and sobbing. The headman turned two of the guards loose on them with straps. The beating went on for a long time.
THE CAPTIVES WERE TOLD at dawn they would be allowed no water today. An explanation was not necessary. All the Ashanti knew of the attempted suicides. The two women were haggard, and their bodies were welted and bruised.
The headman was true to his word. Smarting under blows, the captives were made to run across the three shallow streams they encountered that morning, feet splashing up droplets which glinted brilliantly in the bright sunlight, and stirring clouds of grainy sediment that eddied in the slow current, ribboned, then vanished.
At a little after midday one of the captives cried out in surprise. The guard nearest him called a halt, unsheathed his sword, and lunged forward. He chopped the earth, then impaled something on the sharp point and raised it into the air. The decapitated body of an emerald-colored snake twisted and coiled around the sword. The Fanti’s face screwed up in disgust. He flung the creature into the brush. The Ashanti had been bitten. The headman took out a knife and slashed a deep X across the twin punctures. Then he tied a thong tightly around the man’s leg, a little below the knee.
Adoko knew it was not going to work. The man knew it, too. His eyes said he was already dead, and on his mouth, just faintly, there was an intimation of happiness.
The afternoon meal was again plantains and yams, which had been cooked the previous day. This time they ate without stopping. The journey was taking longer than expected, but the Fanti still hoped to reach the coast by nightfall. The man who had been bitten could not hold his food down. He was beaded with perspiration, and his breathing was difficult. His eyes were taking on a yellowish hue.
The afternoon lengthened. They were nearing the coast. Trails became more frequent, and they were better used, easier to travel than they had been farther inland. The Fanti headman ordered the coffle into a paced run. The guards were happier now that their goal was within reach. They did not strike their captives except to hurry along laggards.
The man dying of snakebite stumbled, slowed the line, then was dragged several yards when the guards whipped the men ahead of him on. He regained his feet only when the man behind him, running, seized him under the shoulders and helped him up. His arms flapped raggedly at his sides, his feet tangled in themselves, and he lost his balance frequently, but somehow he managed not to fall. For a while.
The second time he went down, a whip was used on him, and it cut the arms and chest of the man who again helped him. The third time was the last. The Fanti headman gave a command. The nearest guard unsheathed his sword without breaking stride and hacked through the man’s arms between wrists and elbows.
He rolled to the side of the trail. The coffle ran by, the severed forearms bobbing in their manacles.
Adoko considered slaughter. He ached with the need of it. That he and his kinsmen should live, was that of real importance? What joy there would be, even in death, ripping the Fanti apart. What ecstasy. He made fists of his hands. The iron that bound him was heavy. It could crush skulls. And the long chain could garrote, brutally. But even as he thought about this, he was watching Besu, afraid his brother would launch an attack and knowing that this time the others would probably follow. And as he watched he realized that he would not give the signal. It was not yet time. So he forced the images of vengeance from his mind. Since he could not act, he was only tormenting himself.
They came at last to a river. It was broad and swift. Water leaped and crashed around great rocks. Logs and bits of flotsam spun crazily in cross-currents. The coffle trekked a mile upstream to a fording place. Here the bottom was gravel and the water no higher than a man’s knees. But the current was strong and crossing was not easy. A handful of guards helped the women. A few more uncoiled a rope to which the children clung. One guard swung Lianu, Adoko’s small daughter, up on his shoulders. The child laughed wildly. She thought it was a fine game. Water broke against legs and surged in white foam up to waists. Pebbles were torn from beneath feet. A hundred strong and insistent hands tugged at ankles and calves. Many of the captives and a few of the guards stumbled and disappeared momentarily. The slaves were beaten and kicked until, sputtering and gasping, they regained their feet.
Adoko had nearly reached the opposite shore when Lianu screamed. He turned and saw the guard upon whose shoulders she was riding finish his headlong pitch into the water. The man was up in an instant, spitting water and shaking his head. Lianu was no longer on his back.
“There she goes! Get her!” another guard shouted.
The man scanned the water, spotted Lianu, who was being carried speedily downstream, fat little legs and arms thrashing above the surface, and started after in a sluggish, shambling parody of a run. He was cursing. He fell, went under, came up again with a furious scowl, and continued the chase. Lianu was far ahead of him, and the gap between them increased each moment. The dark little body was rolling over and over across the surface, approaching the deeper water. A rock loomed in front of her. Water geysered angrily over its top. Lianu was flung up hard against it and pinned there several moments. Then the water worked beneath her unmoving body and lifted her up and over. She was a brief black flash on the swirling surface, then she disappeared. The guard who had pursued her made a gesture of tired capitulation.
Adoko closed his eyes. When the moment came, there was much to be repaid.
At the end of another hour the forest began to thin. The sky, increasingly more visible, was turning scarlet. There was a sound like distant, muted thunder. The guards were jubilant. The pace of the run was increased. It was grueling. The undergrowth disappeared. Trees grew farther apart. And the thunder became ever louder. Then, in one abrupt and disorienting instant, the forest was behind them and the full dome of the sky, fired by the setting sun, rose over them while, lower, lay the limitless expanse of the sea, only slightly less red than the sky.
The guards danced and clapped each other on the back.
They were on high ground overlooking a beach of yellowish-white sand. At the forest’s edge was a cluster of weathered buildings. Great white-capped breakers were booming in; near deafening. Farther out, two ships stood at anchor. And behind them, in the distance, the sails of a third could be seen.
Some of the guards fired muskets into the air. The Fanti laid into their captives and the coffle went streaking to the beach, slaves tripping and falling, dragging each other down, whipped to their feet again. Figures moved out from the buildings and walked toward the approaching column in a casual, leisurely fashion. It was difficult running in the sand. Adoko fell, and when he rose there was a sharp grittiness in his mouth. He saw that three men had come to meet them. One was a white, flanked by a pair of huge broad-shouldered blacks who carried whips.
Two other men were wheeling a small cannon a little way onto the beach. They positioned it with its muzzle pointing out to sea. Boooom!
“COME IN,” HORNEBY SAID.
A seaman opened the door. He remained in the companionway holding his cap deferentially in both hands. “Begging your pardon, sir, but we’ve had a signal from shore.”
“Good!” Horneby pushed back his chair from the table. “What about the frigate?”
“She’s moving in again, sir.”
The captain grunted. The British warship had appeared three days ago. He had ordered the Stars and Stripes run up, as had Lockwood, the captain of his sister ship. The British had left Horneby and Lockwood alone, but had boarded and searched the Portuguese slaver anchored nearby. Finding no slaves, the frigate drew back. She stood out to sea through the day, then, as night fell, moved in close enough to observe any loading that might be attempted under cover of darkness. She retired again at dawn. It was mostly harassment, which had meant nothing to Horneby. But now with the coffle arrived it became irritating. “Tell Mr. Knye to lower a boat and stand by. I’ll be there directly.”
“Aye, sir.”
Still standing, Horneby dregged out the last of his wine, then wiped his lips with a linen napkin. “Mr. Wilkes, Mr. Petersen. When you’ve finished, be so good as to report to me topside. I want to get this settled tonight.”
The Chief Surgeon and his assistant nodded.
To his first mate Horneby said, “Mr. Meredith, detail two men to my cabin to transport the money. Issue them arms.”
“Yes, sir. Are we going to fight?” He sounded hopeful. “She’s only five guns and a small crew. We could send her to the bottom in pieces.”
“No.”
“Very good, sir.” Meredith said, and left.
Horneby stared at the bulkhead and lightly stroked his jaw. He did that often when he was thinking. Sometimes he touched his forehead or his cheek, softly, as a woman would if she wanted to comfort without intruding. It was an incongruous habit. He was a tall, sharp-featured man whose face was furrowed rather than lined—so deep were the depressions—and whose thin lips were perpetually drawn tight. If anyone found anything humorous in this caressing hand, he had never mentioned it to Horneby. People sensed anger in the renegade English captain, savagery. But they were wrong. Horneby was indeed a lethal man and capable of wreaking great destruction. But he was rarely angry. If insulted, Horneby might well crush the offending party, yet only because he had a very clear sense of the order of things and had interpreted the assault as a dissonance. Some dissonances had to be removed because they threatened equilibrium and structure, but others were simply curios, irrelevant, and could therefore be ignored. No one, not even Captain Horneby, could predict which he would view as irksome and which as irrelevant. This made him all the more intimidating.
While the captain stood and thought, the men remaining in the officers’ mess sat in uncomfortable silence, looking wistfully at their food.
After several minutes Horneby said, “You’ll excuse me, gentlemen. Please don’t rise.”
He went to his cabin and removed the strongbox from the wall locker at the head of his bed. He began counting out enough gold to purchase one hundred slaves. One hundred Ashanti, which meant, of course, that the price per head would be substantially higher than that he’d paid for the Ibos, some two hundred of whom were already stretched out on the slave decks.
Horneby’s ship was the Jubilation. During her eight years as a slaver, though, neither her bow nor her stern had borne any name. She would answer to the name Jubilation if her American papers of registry were presented. She would also, according to either her Spanish or Portuguese papers, answer equally well to the name Jubilación. And on her Danish papers was a name Horneby could barely pronounce, but which, he supposed, was the Danish equivalent of Jubilation. He didn’t know if any of the registrations were legitimate. But his crew was predominantly American and the capital behind the ship was American, and so, for Horneby, the Jubilation was American.
He could not tolerate the sophistry of which his New England employers were so fond.
Meredith had been correct. They could easily send the frigate to the bottom. Horneby was one of the perhaps two dozen fighting captains left on the slave run. Earlier, sea battles had been common with pirates and with other slavers, who looked upon hijacking as a cheaper and speedier way to fill their holds. Then the British interdicted the trade and there were the warships of His Majesty’s African Squadron to contend with. But in the next three decades the emphasis shifted from armament to speed. The British ships were slow, and it seemed much more sensible to most funding combines to outrun the patrols than to stand and fight. There was also this benefit: The faster you made the trip from the shores of Africa to Brazil, to the West Indies, to Cuba or to the illegal depots in Texas, Florida, and the South Carolina coastal rivers, the fewer the slaves who died en route. And the fewer black bodies tossed overboard, then obviously the larger the profit. This was the kind of logic that Yankee merchants found irresistible. Profit was everything. So a new kind of sleek-hulled vessel with smartly raked masts began to appear on the slaving lanes. They had been designed in Baltimore and were called clippers, and now, for every one engaged in legitimate trade, there was another slicing westward and home, the stench of its black cargo carrying an easy two or three miles downwind.
But the British managed, with three ships, to box and capture the streamlined clippers often enough to cause some slavers to question their advantage. And design made them impractical to arm. Horneby wanted no part of clippers. The Jubilation was a good, solid three-masted ship of traditional design, one of the best he had ever seen, and certainly the best he had ever commanded. With a fair wind and a full spread of canvas she could show her heels to nearly any ship—excluding the clippers—who wanted to try her. She was sturdy, too. In bad weather, with light sail and a good hand at her helm, she could plunge through seas like a bull through a canebrake.
If Horneby could outdistance the patrols, fine. If not, then he would fight. Twice, once as a mate and once as a captain, his ships had been overhauled and taken to the Prize Court at Sierra Leone. The tribunal condemned both ships. Since neither was judged fit for appropriation, the vessels were burned. Their frightened cargoes were turned loose in Freetown, to be supported by the British government for a year, then left to shift for themselves. As a mate, Horneby had been fined and then languished on the coast six months, nearly dying of fever, before he found a loaded slaver ready to return to Cuba and in need of an extra hand. As a captain, the heavy fine destroyed most of his savings, and he spent a year in a damp and fetid prison cell.
He did not intend to let the British rob him again. Nor did he intend to surrender his body to them for imprisonment behind stone and iron. He no longer accepted commissions on ships that were not armed, and over twelve years he had fought five times, twice with privateers turned pirate and three times with ships of His Majesty’s African Squadron. He had sunk one pirate and beaten off the other and the three warships. The Jubilation had been armed at his direction when he took command of her four years ago. She carried nine guns, four six-pounders, four eight-pounders, and a murderous carronade swivel-mounted on the quarterdeck. Instead of a gun deck, which would have consumed a disproportionate amount of valuable space, the cannons were sunk into pits cut into the topdeck. They squatted on platforms whose backs were unenclosed, over which the guns could slide in snubbed recoil, and under which slaves could be jammed. Firing ports were worked into the bulwarks. They would not be noticed until they were raised. The keynotes were economy and concealment. Horneby had achieved both. He had yet to fight the Jubilation, but her readiness afforded him a certain necessary peace of mind.
Only the carronade, which was always kept loaded, had been fired. Once. Horneby had been asleep in his cabin. The ugly, stubby-barreled monster ripped apart his dreams with a tremendous roar. He leaped to his feet, grabbed pistol and cutlass, and raced up the stairs. A melon-breasted black girl shrieked in his abandoned bed, and in her terror she urinated on Horneby’s sheets. Naked, the captain burst into the cool night air. Armed members of the watch were rushing toward the forward hatch. The bosun came down from the quarterdeck at the stern. He was pale and he was trembling.
“I—I had to do it, Captain. They were boiling out like ants. There wasn’t time for anything else.”
Horneby walked several yards forward, to the hatch. Maybe twenty blacks were sprawled around it. All were mutilated, most dead. A few, dying, groaned their agony. Blood and pieces of gore were everywhere. The deck and mainmast were gouged. Some of the lower rigging had been shot away. The two sailors guarding the hatch had been stuporously drunk and the slaves had somehow worked loose their shackles and forced the hatch cover. They had butchered the drunken sailors and taken their muskets and cutlasses. Then they’d seized handspikes, boathooks, and barrel staves, anything they could reach. Someone had shouted an alarm. The bosun took in the scene with one quick glance and made his decision. He primed the carronade and yanked the lanyard. The short-range battering gun, bored for a thirty-pound shell, was loaded with bolts, nails, and junk metal. It had butchered the rebels, killed one seaman and wounded two others.
Loud, hollow wailing was issuing from the hold when Horneby arrived. He ordered the slaves quieted. Seamen beat on the hatch grating with musket stocks and the flat sides of cutlasses, shouting. They accomplished nothing.
“Pour hot water on them,” Horneby said. “Not scalding, mind you—you don’t want to damage their hides—but hot. They’ll understand soon enough.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
He walked aft with the bosun. “You did well, Mr. Prentiss. You most likely prevented a massacre.”
The man was immensely relieved. “I’ll find out how those men got into the rum, sir. And if anyone else was involved, you’ll have their names.”
“Yes, you do that. Good night, Mr. Prentiss.”
“Good night, Captain.”
Horneby stopped. “Oh. I’ll speak to the owners when we make port. You deserve a bonus for tonight’s work, Mr. Prentiss.
“Thank you, sir!”
Horneby went below. His groin was throbbing by the time he reached his cabin. It had nothing to do with the girl quailing in the comer of his bed in wide-eyed fear. It sprang from death, from the grinning skeleton who had stalked the deck with his sharp scythe, sniffing Horneby’s blood. It sprang from the defeat of death, who had clattered into a pile of harmless bones because an essentially simple man had retained enough presence of mind to fire a carronade. It had nothing to do with the black girl who watched the captain approach, who saw his aroused sex and took hope from it, feeling secure in the familiar and knowing that this, at least, would not hurt her.
He hovered over her. She licked her lips and opened her arms and her thighs to him. A piercing, multi-voice screech came from the slave decks. The girl jerked, but was reassured when Horneby lowered himself and penetrated deeply and easily. The wailing diminished, but did not stop, and minutes later there came a second screech. The wail was not resumed. But by this time Horneby was focused only on the hard root of his masculinity as it slid in the warm, yielding wetness. He rode the girl with exhilaration. He was embuggering Death, whom he had rendered helpless. That was triumph.
AFTER SETTING ASIDE the money to buy the Ashanti, Horneby returned the strongbox to the locker and changed into his dress uniform—tight white breeches, knee-high well-polished boots, a linen shirt starched to stiffness, a scarlet ascot and a long coat of matching color whose tails were flared, whose cuffs were wide and whose brass buttons gleamed. He cut a severe and impressive figure as he came onto the topdeck. Immediately behind him was an armed seaman with a leather carrying bag, heavy with gold, slung over his shoulder. Following was another sailor, musket at port arms. The longboat was already in the water, manned by eight seamen. They held their oars aloft, waiting for the captain. Horneby paused at the head of the Jacob’s ladder and looked out to sea, at the British frigate looming larger, moving in to her night berth.
He watched several minutes, and he stroked his jaw.
WHEN THE SIGNAL PENNANT was hoisted, an hour after dawn, the first of the loading canoes put out from shore and moved to do battle with the terrible surf. Virgil Dunbar was high above the deck, bare feet on the catline beneath the arm of the fore topgallant sail. He was bent forward, stomach resting on the stout arm itself. He and three others were shaking out the canvas.
He paused and looked at the canoe. It rose and pitched, he wrote in his mind, as must the slim spar to which Odysseus so desperately clung while the wild and cruel sea, whipped to a frenzy by the angry Poseidon, raged about him. However, nothing daunted the strong backs and sure paddles of these savages, these consummate overlords of the pounding breakers, who are called Krumen. On they flew, straight as the loosed arrow, with their hapless cargoes . . . .
“Aiiii!” He cried out in terror as the catline twanged viciously beneath his feet, destroying his balance. He clawed at the arm, got purchase and hung there, heart pounding and stomach twitching.
Eight feet away, Jamey O’Brien laughed with huge guttural roars. O’Brien was a black-bearded pillar of a man with tight curls of hair matting his chest, arms, shoulders, and back. He had stomped the catline intentionally. On the opposite side of the mast, their two companions on the yardarm looked on with mild curiosity. Dunbar flopped and twisted until he regained his position.
“You’re learning, boyo,” O’Brien said. “If I’d thought to do that a month ago, you’d o’ been squashed flat dead on the deck.”
Dunbar said nothing. He couldn’t, even if he’d been able to think of a reply; his throat was constricted. He wanted to weep. The fear was that strong. This last week he had begun to think they were going to leave him alone. But they weren’t, they weren’t!
VIRGIL DUNBAR WAS NOT his real name. That was Virgil Carey, and it was familiar to thousands of Americans. He doubted when he had undertaken this trip that anyone on board would have recognized it, but certain precautions did have to be taken. It had been dramatic then to think he might be murdered if his true identity or his intent were known. It was no longer so. No one knew who he was, but he was liable to be killed anyway . . . simply because the crew saw him as a fledgling seaman, and a poor one at that. They hazed him as a matter of course, the way upperclassmen hazed freshmen at colleges and universities. But their brand of harassment could prove lethal, a fact that didn’t concern them at all.
Dunbar, for that is the way he would continue to think of himself until he was safely off this ship, trembled for his life.
He was a journalist whose literary reports on the Black Hawk War, in which the Fox and Sauk tribes had been crushed and butchered across two states and one territory, had thrilled the eastern seaboard. Some of his more colorful passages were quoted by politicians, clergymen, and society matrons. Barely out of his teens, he found himself famous. Everyone thought he was quite grand, and he believed them. He struck out to the frontier and did moody, semi-heroic pieces on mountain men and buffalo hunters. He returned to New York in time to cover the great hospital scandal. His personality sketches of the major figures involved in the Panic of 1837 secured his position as one of the top freelance journalists in the country.
He was the perfect choice for the New England Abolition Society.
Ezra Pearson was the man who, in a rather severely appointed office in Boston, completed the arrangements. Pearson was a short man with milk-white skin. But his handshake was firm, his tone brusque, and his manner indicated that he had little patience with frippery.
He came directly to the point. “Basically the situation is this. Despite its illegality, the slave trade is still rampant on the west coast of Africa. And unfortunately a very large part of it is financed by American investors. More than three decades have passed since the British, ourselves, and most other nations outlawed the trade. But only the British have made any real attempt to suppress it. Are you a religious man?”
The journalist shifted uncomfortably. He was not, but obviously Pearson was. “I imagine I’m about as religious as the next man.”
“I am quite religious,” Pearson said. “And as Thomas Jefferson wrote, I tremble for my country when I realize that God is just. However, as I’m sure you’re aware, man often perverts religion, even God Himself. There is in this country a general sentiment that the United States of America is a direct inspiration of God. Any question of our right to do exactly what we please is considered sacrilegious. If some country views us askance, we rattle our swords and begin growling war, war.”
Dunbar was not convinced of this, but he thought it politic to agree, so he nodded.
“This penchant is of no special concern to me,” Pearson said, “except as it relates to the slave trade. There are now in existence literally hundreds of treaties between Great Britain, ourselves, and the other major powers, and each one qualifies, amends, supersedes, or even contradicts the others. The British African Squadron is greatly restricted. If an officer violates any of these complicated agreements, his punishment may range from heavy fine to revocation of his commission and dismissal from the service.
“Now, the most debilitating restriction is the one that we have imposed. What it comes down to is: if you fly the Stars and Stripes you are safe. You may have slaves stacked on the deck like cords of wood and more lashed to the masts and still more hanging from the bowsprit, but the British cannot touch you. In fact, without very good reason, they cannot even request you to heave-to and present your registry papers. The only way to take into custody a ship sailing under the aegis of our colors is to apprehend that ship in the actual process of loading slaves.”
“That’s difficult to believe.”
“Mr. Carey, human beings are difficult to believe. We have filled half a warehouse with documentation. You may examine the material any time you so desire.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Carey said, a little offended. But then, lest the abolitionist think he was offering an apology, he added, “For the moment, at least.”
Pearson shrugged. “As you will.”
“What is it, exactly, that you want from me?”
“For you to sign on a slaver, sail to Africa, load a cargo of slaves, and return with them. Then commit your observations and experiences to a book-length manuscript, which we will publish and distribute.”
“Why me?” Carey knew, but he wanted to hear the words.
“Because you have ability to sway people, to arouse them. They are deaf to the lamentations of hundreds of thousands of black voices crying out from the slave decks, but they will listen to your voice—because you are their darling, because you entertain them, and because you are white.”
Carey bristled and began a retort, but checked himself. He had written nothing spectacular for a year and he was beginning to fret; his name was not mentioned in the appropriate circles as often as he would have liked. And he recognized that here, in the right hands, his hands, was an assured cause celebre. He allowed himself to go this far. “I sympathize with you, Mr. Pearson, but regrettably my sympathies alone would not be sufficient recompense for the time I’d have to spend on this project.”
“Naturally,” Pearson snapped. “We are prepared to pay you an outright fee of five thousand dollars. And for each book we distribute we will pay you a royalty of one-half dollar. If your literary rendering is up to its usual standard, we project a distribution of some one hundred thousand copies within the space of two years. Your earnings, as you’ll see by a simple process of arithmetic, will be considerable.”
Carey said nothing. The money was incredible.
“What is your answer? I must know now. If you decline, I will begin other arrangements.”
“I accept.”
“Good.” Pearson rose, came around the desk, and when Carey stood, took the journalist firmly by the shoulder and guided him to the door. “You will see my assistant, Mr. Hastings, tomorrow morning. He will have the contract for your signature and will explain all the necessary particulars.”
Carey decided he would be quite happy if he never had to face this man as an enemy. He shook the hand Pearson proffered. “I must say that you don’t very much resemble other abolitionists I’ve known.”
“When you are fighting a war, Mr. Carey, you accept aid from whatever quarter it is offered.”
“A variation on “The end justifies the means’?”
‘*Not really. Good day, Mr. Carey.”
The journalist found himself on the street. And he admitted to himself that he was relieved to be out of Pearson’s office.
So Virgil Carey, journalist, became Virgil Dunbar, apprentice seaman, and off he went to South Carolina with the fervent hopes and blessings of Mr. Hastings, who was an efficient but nervous and naive man, an earnest embodiment of all that the journalist considered worst in moral crusaders. You accept aid from whatever quarter it is offered, Pearson had said. Well, that must explain Hastings.
Hastings had told him that finding a slaver would be as easy as falling off a log. He was wrong. It was easier. There were nine ships in the Charleston harbor, two of them slavers. The astonishing thing was that everyone knew they were slavers, and no one cared. The largest, the Jubilation, a three-master with a black hull, was sailing within the week. Virgil Dunbar, apprentice seaman, made inquiries and discovered that there were still a few berths open aboard her. After buying drinks for a red-haired, foul-mouthed fellow who was the Jubilation’s first mate and who was too drunk to stand alone, Dunbar went on board and was given ship’s articles to sign.