The Slave Dancer Read online

“Do you know why you are employed on this ship?”

  “To play my fife for kings,” I answered.

  “Did you hear that, First!” the Captain cried. “That’s Purvis-talk, ain’t it? I’d know it anywhere. It was Purvis told you that, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, Captain,” I said.

  “Purvis is an Irish bucket,” the thin man said reflectively as though he’d only just thought of it himself.

  “Well, now, listen, you miserable pygmy!”

  “I will, Captain.”

  Without a word of warning, the little man snatched me up in his arms, held me fast to his chest and bit my right ear so hard I screamed. He set me down instantly, and I would have fallen to the deck if the thin man hadn’t yanked me up by my bruised arm.

  “He answers too fast, Spark,” said the Captain, “but that may teach him!”

  The thin man gave me a shake and let me loose, saying, “Yes, Captain, he answers much too fast.”

  “We are sailing to Africa,” said the Captain, looking over my head, in a voice altogether different from the one with which he had been speaking. He was suddenly, insanely, calm. I wiped the blood from my neck and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

  We were sailing to Africa, the Captain repeated with a lofty gesture of his hand. And this fast little clipper would keep us safe not only from the British, but from any other misguided pirates who would try to interfere in the lucrative and God-granted trade of slaves. He, Captain Cawthorne, would purchase as many slaves as possible from the barracoon in Why dah, exchanging for them both money, $10 a head, and rum and tobacco, and returning via the island of São Tomé to Cuba where the slaves would be sold to a certain Spaniard. The ship would then return to Charleston with a hold full of molasses, and the whole voyage would take—with any luck at all—four months.

  “But what is wanted is strong black youths,” the Captain said excitedly, slapping Spark on his shoulder. “I won’t have Ibos. They’re soft as melons and kill themselves if they’re not watched twenty-four hours a day. I will not put up with such creatures!” Spark nodded rapidly like a chicken pecking at corn. Then the Captain scowled at me.

  “You’d best learn to make yourself useful about this ship,” he said. “You’d best learn every sail, for you ain’t going to earn your way just by playing a few tunes to make the niggers jig!” He suddenly sighed and appeared to grow extremely dispirited. “Ah … you finish, Spark.”

  Spark finished, but what he said I’ll never know. I had ceased to listen for I was thinking hard upon the one fact I’d understood. I was on a slaver.

  Sometime later, Benjamin Stout showed me the quarters I was to share with the seamen. Tween decks, he called it, and you wouldn’t have thought a few boys could find room in the tight airless space, much less a crew of grown men. Stout took some garments from his sea chest and handed them to me.

  “They’ll be too big for you,” he said, “but they’ll do when you’re soaked to the skin and need a change.”

  I stared up at the hammocks slung from the beams.

  “You’ll get used to them,” Stout assured me. “Come along. I’ll show you where we go for the needs of nature.” I followed him to the bow of the ship. Just below was suspended a kind of platform with a grating for a floor. Two rope ends swept gently against the grating as the water shifted the ship about. “It’s bad there in a heavy sea,” Stout said, “but you’ll get used to that, too.”

  “I’ll not get used to anything,” I replied, touching my ear now caked with dried blood.

  “You have no idea how much you can get used to,” said Stout.

  Hungry and miserable as I was, I fell asleep in a hammock which curled about me like a peapod. I never did get entirely used to the hammock, but in time, I learned how to keep myself from falling out of it, or twisting it so I couldn’t free my limbs. And although at first, upon waking, I always cracked my head against the deck above, I developed the habit of passing from deep sleep to full attention in an instant. After a few days, I had stopped clinging to the hammock like a wounded crab clings to a bit of weed.

  But that first afternoon, the crack against my skull that I suffered as I sat up removed any doubts I might have had that I was dreaming. The first object my eyes rested upon was crawling idly along my leg as though I was a yard of bread. The insect was no stranger to me for we had them in all sizes at home. But I’d never thought a cockroach was a sea-going creature. I didn’t care for the breed. Still, I found it a touch comforting that such a familiar land thing was making itself at home on me.

  Enough light filtered through the door joints for me to see I was alone in this hole with its swaying hammocks. The smell of the place, nourished by darkness, protected against cleansing air, was terrible. I was able to distinguish sweat, soured cheese, tobacco, musty cloth and damp timbers and binding it all together, a trace of that vile smell that had forced me to my feet after I’d fallen to the deck. I heard wood creaking as though it was close to splitting. I wondered what was making my stomach so uneasy.

  I brushed off the cockroach, escaped from my hammock and went up the ladder and out onto the deck. The sky was full of sunlight, and the ship’s great white sails were stiffened by wind. I drew a deep breath of fresh air, which went straight to my foggy brain, and felt such a violent pang of hunger I pushed my fist against my teeth. I staggered as I moved, perhaps because I didn’t know where to go, but most likely because I had never walked on the deck of a moving ship. There were several sailors near me engaged in various tasks which they didn’t interrupt to even glance my way. A hand touched my shoulder. I found Ben Stout standing next to me, holding out a thick piece of bread.

  “Go below to eat it,” he said. “I let you sleep because you had such a harrowing night of it, but you’ll be put to work soon enough.”

  “Thank you!” I cried gratefully, and would have spoken further with him, but he waved me away. “Don’t let anyone see you eating on deck. Get below at once. I’m on the watch now. Move!”

  Just before I ducked down to our quarters, I caught sight of Purvis, his hands on the helm, his feet spread wide apart, his huge face as serious as I had seen it.

  I wolfed down the bread in the dark, then, unable to postpone any longer what Stout had called the needs of nature, I found my way back to that dreadful platform hanging above the water. I was so frightened, I held on to both ropes and shut my eyes tight as though by not actually seeing my circumstances, they would not exist. I heard a loud snort of laughter. Mortified, I opened my eyes at once to see who was observing me, for I assumed the laughter was at my expense. I looked up and saw four men, among them Purvis, leaning on the rail, their teeth bared in grins, watching me closely. I managed to gain the bow with only a scrape or two on my shins and turning my back on the jeerers, faced the shore along which we were sailing. I pretended great interest in what I saw. Soon, I grew interested in fact, for I observed that all the trees were pointing in one direction as though they’d been planted crookedly.

  “Come along,” Purvis said. “Stop that sulking.”

  When I didn’t reply, he stooped over me quickly and seeing that I was gazing determinedly at the shore, he too looked in that direction.

  “You’d never manage it,” he said.

  “I was only wondering why the trees are so bent,” I said coolly.

  “Prevailing wind,” he answered. “Now stop being so high and mighty!”

  “I suppose the ship is steering herself,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could heave up at the brute.

  He turned me straight about and gripped my head so I was forced to look at the helm. “My time’s done,” he said. “That’s John Cooley who’s helmsman now.” Then he turned me once again.

  “This is Jessie, our music man,” he said to the other three seamen who stood looking at me. “And that’s Isaac Porter and Louis Gardere and Seth Smith.”

  “Play us a tune,” said Isaac Porter cheerfully.

  I shook my head at which Pu
rvis seized my sore arm and led me away. “There’s some more you haven’t met, not counting Cook. There’s eight in the crew, excepting Cook, Ned, Spark and the Master. That means there are thirteen of us now, all because of you, so watch your step for if something goes wrong, it’ll be your fault. Don’t forget Jonah and what happened to him, only you shall land up in the belly of a shark—”

  “Pleasanter than this …” I muttered.

  Purvis ignored my remark. “You’ll have some grub with me now,” he went on. “I saw Saint Stout pass you that bread, and if I fancied I could have him flogged for that. I’m the only one beside Spark and Stout who’s sailed with the Captain before, and I could tell you stories about him that would melt your ribs. A word to the wise—he likes to eat well, and he likes to beat men. The only good in him is that he’s a fine seaman. Terrible, terrible with his crews, and only a little less so with the blacks. But he wants them in good health to make his profit. But God help the sick nigger for he’ll drop him overboard between the brandy and the lighting of his pipe!”

  By this time, he’d led me to a hatchway. We descended to what Purvis called the galley. There, stirring up a huge pot of lentils with a wooden ladle as though he was rowing a boat against the tide, was the thinnest man I’d ever seen. His skin was the color of suet except for uneven salmon-colored patches along the prominent ridges of his cheekbones.

  “Give me my tea, Curry,” demanded Purvis.

  Curry slowly turned his head without ceasing his ladling, and gave Purvis such a furious look that I expected him to attack him physically. Purvis nicked my neck with his finger and announced, as if Curry was deaf, “Cooks are all like him, though Curry is worse than some. It’s the smoke that maddens them, and whatever good humor they start with is fried to a crisp by the heat.”

  Curry suddenly abandoned his ladle, darted about a minute or two, then slammed a bowl of tea in front of Purvis, and a square biscuit that banged on the table like a stone. Purvis took a filthy rag from under his shirt, wrapped it around the biscuit, then let his fist fall upon it like a hammer.

  “I should like to find out who makes these things,” he said pensively, as his fist fell, “for I would do the same to them as I am doing to this biscuit.”

  He rose and hunted about in the greasy dark smoke that surrounded Curry like a cloak, returning with something in his hand which he tossed at me. It was the driest curl of sorry looking meat I’d ever seen. Then he pushed his bowl of tea toward me. “Take a bite of the beef, then a swig of tea. Hold them both in your mouth until the beef softens.”

  As I sat there on the narrow little bench, breathing in the close clay-like smell of lentils, and drinking tea from Purvis’ bowl, I felt almost happy. When I remembered the wretchedness of my situation, I wondered if there was something about a ship that makes men glide from one state of mind to another as effortlessly as the ship cuts through water.

  John Cooley and Sam Wick were the last members of the crew I met. Cooley did not even glance at me, and Wick laughed foolishly and observed that my feet were too large for the rest of me. I joined Purvis on the bench he’d brought from some place below, and I watched him mending a sail. “Sews like a lady,” shouted Claudius Sharkey as he passed us by.

  Porter and Wick and Sharkey were topmen, Purvis told me, responsible for the masts, while the rest of the crew worked the lower sails and took turns at the wheel. As for him, he said proudly, he was a sail-man, and knew all there was to know about sails which was “as good as knowing the gospels straight through, and takes a lot more thought.”

  I was still afraid of Purvis, for I thought him as unpredictable in his moods as a frog is in the direction of its jumps. In some ways, Purvis resembled a very large frog. But he seemed to have taken a sort of fondness for me, and that evening, I learned a good deal my eyes alone could not have taught me.

  Purvis was never idle, nor were the other sailors unless they’d just come off watch. I saw that day, and didn’t forget, that a ship must be tended to day and night as though it was the very air one took into one’s lungs, and that to neglect it for a second was to risk dangers which, at that time, I could only imagine when Purvis recounted tales of storms at sea, masts split like twigs, crews swept overboard by giant waves, men caught in flying anchor cables and flung, broken, into the churning water. There was no way to leave off the work of a ship.

  I hadn’t noticed the man way up near the top of a mast until Purvis pointed him out.

  “There’s always someone stationed on the foretop sail-yard,” he said. “And if a sail appears, the Captain must look through his spyglass to make sure what it is.”

  Then he spoke of pirating, especially in the waters near the islands of the West Indies. When I asked him why Captain Cawthorne had spoken of the British he looked both sly and angry.

  “They’re worse than the pirates, Jessie!” he cried. “Why, they try to board our ships as if we still belonged to them. But there’s laws against that, and those laws give us the right to sink them if they try anything. Oh, but they do make trouble for us, blockading the African coast, and sniffing about Cuba.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “They’ve different laws than us. They’ve entirely stopped the slave trade in their own country—the worse for them—and would like us to copy them in their folly. Why, the trade is the best trade there is! Black Gold, we call it! Still, there’s one way they help us. The native chiefs are so greedy for our trade goods, they sell their people cheaper than they ever did to tempt us to run the British blockade. So we profit despite the damned Englishmen.”

  Later, he spoke of the arms The Moonlight carried, but gave me no details of them, nor would he explain what he meant when he mentioned flags from various countries which the Captain kept in his quarters.

  At first the wind had been a tight fist, shoving us on, but now it was an open hand pushing us before it at such a rousing clip I felt my own arms had become wings as we flew across the water. Ben Stout called out to me that the ship was speaking. He pointed down at the wake that purled and foamed behind us as though a razor had slit the dark surface of the sea and allowed its mysterious light to shine through.

  I had often noticed the gait of sailors about the river front in New Orleans, and understood it better now as I made my way about the ship. Although our progress was smooth that day, one of my legs always felt shorter than the other. You had to keep a kind of balance as though you were walking along the back of a cantering horse.

  Except for Purvis and Ben Stout, the rest of the crew barely noticed me. They did not speak much among themselves, going about their work in a hard relentless fashion.

  Ben Stout showed me a wooden pin that fitted into a hole in the rail. It had several purposes, he explained, one of which was to make fast a rope by winding it on a cleat, another, to knock an unruly seaman on his head, and still another, to kill rats. This last concerned me. Rat hunts were part of the ship’s routine, he said. They’d eat up everything if they weren’t kept down. I must learn to seek them out, kill them and toss them overboard.

  There were other crawling and creeping things, beetles and worms and such like, but they were as much a part of a ship as its timbers and, he said, could be killed for pleasure, not out of necessity. He removed a hatch cover and showed me the hold where the drinking water was stored in wooden casks. “You’ll have to be spry to run after the rats down there,” he said. “They’re as smart as the Devil himself.”

  “And if I’m bit?” I asked, pretending by my tone I was only making a joke.

  “Bite them back,” he replied. “And when it rains, you’ll help set out the casks for fresh water. The worms and the beetles can make off with our stores—we can survive a storm with broken masts, but without water, we’re a dead ship.”

  He told me then that we must all share one bucket of water a day for our washing, and the longer the voyage took, the less drinking water we would be given. “The Mate doles it out once a day, not a drop more than the
Captain allows.”

  “And does the Captain get rationed too?”

  Ben snorted. “The Captain of this ship would drink your blood before he’d go without. Haven’t you noticed his chicken coops? The boxes of vegetables he’s got growing there aft?” I shook my head. I had no wish to go near the Captain. My ear was still sore. Ben gestured at the hold.

  “That’s where the slaves will be stowed,” he said, “right on those casks, and in the aft hold when we’ve unloaded the rum.”

  “But there’s not room for a dozen men!” I exclaimed.

  “Captain Cawthorne’s a tight packer,” Ben said.

  “I’m what!” roared a voice.

  We turned from the hold to discover Cawthorne himself standing not two feet away.

  “Sir,” said Stout smartly. “I was explaining his work to the boy.”

  “Were you indeed? I thought you was describing my work to Bollweevil here. That’s your name, ain’t it, lad? Yes. I’m a tight packer, as neat as a pin, stack them up like flannel cakes, one top of the other. Ah—it’s the British who’ve forced me to be so ingenious, Bollweevil, for we must have speed before all else, and speed means a ship without the comforts, stripped down, a ship like a winged serpent. You see—” he held out his arms, and I ducked, thinking he meant to mark my other ear, but he dropped them to his sides almost at once, shook his head, and muttering something about studding sails, stomped off aft.

  I sighed mightily.

  Ben Stout said, “You can’t never tell about him …”

  He was about to replace the hatch cover, when, perhaps because of some slight change of wind, I caught a powerful whiff of that ugly smell mixed with something else. I sniffed, thinking to myself what a comical human habit it was—how often I’d observed someone who, offended by an odor and proclaiming loudly how awful it was, continued to sniff away as though, in fact, he was smelling a rose.

  “That’s chloride of lime,” Ben said.

  “What’s that?”

  “What we sprinkled in the hold after our last cargo of slaves was unloaded.”