The Slave Dancer Read online

  “We’ve a perfect right to sell and trade our goods,” said Purvis indignantly. Then he laughed. Once, he said, a real African king had come aboard—“Then they do have kings,” I said broodingly. “Well, naturally, they have kings,” exclaimed Purvis. He went on with his story, telling me the king and the Captain had got so drunk that when dawn rose, the Captain had clambered over the side, ready to make off and rule the tribe and leave the black king in command of the ship.

  “Drink turns people round,” commented Purvis somewhat importantly.

  “It’s not drink,” I protested. “It’s the kidnapping of these Africans that turns everyone round!” And I looked with growing fear toward that shore which lay behind the turbulent waves whose ghostly white crests were visible in the darkness. I thought of the pyre of the barracoon, empty beneath a moonless sky that now and then let drop a brief weak fall of rain. I thought of the African kings setting upon each other’s tribes to capture the men and women—and children for all I knew—who would be bartered for spirits and tobacco and arms, who would, any night now, be dropped into the holds of this ship. And all at once, I saw clearly before me, like a shadow cast on a sail, the woman in the garden in New Orleans, Star, standing so quietly in the doorway. The world, I told myself, was as wicked a place as our parson had said, although he was a great fool. I turned to Purvis, wanting to tell him about the woman in the garden.

  He was staring down at me as though I was a cockroach, his jaw hanging loose, his hand raised above my head in a way I could not mistake. I ducked.

  “Don’t say such things!” he bellowed. “You know nothing about it! Do you think it was easier for my own people who sailed to Boston sixty years ago from Ireland, locked up in a hold for the whole voyage where they might have died of sickness and suffocation? Do you know my father was haunted all his days by the memory of those who died before his eyes in that ship, and were flung into the sea? And you dare speak of my parents in the same breath with these niggers!”

  “I know nothing about your father and mother,” I said in a voice that trembled. “Besides, they were not sold on the block.”

  “The Irish were sold!” he cried. “Indeed, they were sold!”

  “They are not sold now,” I muttered. But he raved on, and I sank to the deck, covering my ears with my hands. How could he object to one thing and not another? It made no sense at all! But my speculations were cut short. Purvis delivered a kick on my shin. I howled. As though he were cursing me, he said, “Get those buckets in the hold. Hurry up about it, you nasty piece of business!”

  “What buckets?” I asked, wiping my tears away, for he had really hurt me.

  He grabbed me up off the deck, and pointed to a row of buckets lined up nearby.

  “What for? Why? Where shall I put them?” I asked, sobbing.

  “They’re latrines for the blacks,” he replied, thunder echoing in his voice the way it does in a heat storm. “Put them where your fancy strikes you. It won’t matter to them.”

  We did not say one word to each other the next day, and when he had an order to give me, he had Claudius Sharkey pass it on. But the next night’s event ended our quarrel as well as the drinking of the crew.

  At midnight, or thereabouts, I heard a sound as though a thousand rats were scrambling up the hull of The Moonlight. I sprang from my hammock, found myself alone in our quarters, and raced up the ladder to the deck.

  In the clear sky, a great white moon hung poised above the mainmast, striping the deck with pale unearthly rays. The crew stood silently, their pistols in their hands, their backs against the port rail. Spark and Captain Cawthorne were at attention near the starboard rail. The carronade had been moved and was pointing its muzzle at a spot not far from the two officers.

  I heard the cold dead clang of metal striking wood.

  I heard one piercing scream. My teeth began to chatter.

  Then a very small brown face rose above the rail as though it had flown up from the sea. It continued to rise slowly until its brown bare chest was visible. Then I saw dark hands around its waist. The hands lifted, the little naked girl’s legs flew out, and I saw the head of the young man who had been carrying her.

  For a second, she sat on the deck, looking all around her, her eyes huge with amazement, then she crawled and jumped toward the rail but was forced back by the forward propulsion of the man who tottered over the rail, unable, it seemed, to bring his body any further. The child hugged the young man’s neck frantically and buried her face in his hair. At that moment, Nicholas Spark bent his thin length and gripped the man’s back as though he were gathering up cloth, and yanked him altogether over, the chains around his ankles striking the deck with a violent clanging.

  The clanging never ceased as one after another of the captives struggled over the rail and were dropped or dragged onto the deck. How long did it all take? I’ll never know. None of us moved.

  Later, after the thud of bodies and the rise and fall of the sobs of the children had stopped, a group of nearly naked individuals sat hunched up beneath the tarpaulin we had rigged up. The Captain was aft, speaking in low tones to the cabociero who, this time, was accompanied by a tall black man carrying a whip. Spark stood close to the blacks, his pistol in his hand.

  Although many were silent now, some continued to lament. I prayed they would stop for I had not drawn a true breath since the child’s face had appeared at the railing, and I wondered, gasping, when I would again.

  “Purvis!” cried Spark suddenly. “Get to that one!”

  Sparks pistol pointed at a man who squatted by himself, somewhat apart from the others. His knees were tight against his chest; his head lolled in a strange way. Purvis ran to him, lifted him up, yanked him back and forth, punched his arms and threw him about so violently I was sure they would topple overboard.

  The other blacks, except for the little girl who had been the first over the rail, turned away from the sight. But she ran crying toward the young man.

  “Grab her, Stout!” called Spark. Stout stepped forward and took the child by her hair, shoving her back among the others. He came back to where we were standing, smiling vaguely and rubbing his hand against his shirt.

  “Get a measure of rum, Jessie!” Purvis shouted to me.

  I fetched it from the galley and ran to Purvis who by now had backed the young man up against the rail.

  “Pour it in his mouth,” Purvis said.

  “His mouth is shut,” I said in a whisper.

  “Open it!”

  “How?”

  “Here,” said Stout, suddenly appearing next to us. He took the cup from my hands, lifted it, then shoved it forcefully against the man’s clenched lips, grinding it back and forth like a shovel teasing hard earth, until trickles of blood dripped down the brown skin and onto Stout’s fingers. I was aware the other blacks had all grown silent. The only sound was the muttering of the Captain aft, and the crunch of cup against teeth until the spilling moonlight revealed rum and blood mixed upon the deck.

  When, that night, I lay awake in my hammock, I saw again and again my arm reaching up to the young man’s dazed face, the rum dripping over the rim of the cup because of the trembling of my hand. I heard, hardly muffled by the timbers which separated me from them, the blacks groaning and crying out in the hold, and the world I had once imagined to be so grand, so full of chance and delight, seemed no larger and no sweeter than this ship. Before my tightly closed eyelids floated the face of the child who had, after that one glance at us all, seemed to comprehend her whole fate.

  I wished Purvis was nearby, but he was on extra duty above the hold. I heard Gardere snoring a few feet away from me. I could not bear the silence. I woke him. He grumbled threateningly and cursed me for a troublesome rat.

  “Why was that man treated that way?” I asked, ignoring his complaints.

  “What man?”

  “The one who was forced to drink the rum?”

  “Man?”

  “That Purvis was flingin
g about so …”

  “You mean the nigger!”

  “Him,” I said.

  Gardere sighed and pointed at his sea chest. “Get me some tobacco and my pipe, will you, lad?”

  I handed him the articles he’d asked for. He took a long time lighting up. Then, expelling a cloud of smoke, he said, “When they sit that way, their heads on their knees, not moving at all, you must get them on their feet and distracted, by flogging sometimes. They will die if left in that condition.”

  “But die! How?”

  “I don’t know how. I’ve seen it happen though, I swear! They have no poisons since they could not conceal them, being naked as they are. But, somehow, they die. Try holding your breath, you’ll see the difficulty. I tried it myself once after the first time I saw it happen. It bothers me to this day. It’s a mystery. They ain’t like us, and that’s the truth.”

  For four nights, the long canoes slid alongside The Moonlight, giving up their burdens of blacks, those from the bottom of the boats half-conscious from the press of the bodies of their fellow captives, some bleeding from the ankle shackles which, as a consequence of the way they had been forced to lie, had bruised and broken their flesh.

  Each night the crew, after loading the canoes with rum and tobacco and a few rusty weapons, gathered on the deck. In silence, we watched the blacks drag themselves beneath the tarpaulin, at least those who were not kicked under it by Spark’s boots. The cabociero observed the arrival of his merchandise with unconcealed self-importance. Next to him stood the tall black man with his whip whose expression seemed to me to be one of utter loathing for white and black alike, as though there was not a race of men he would claim as his own. Once only, Cawthorne shoved a man toward the cabociero.

  “A macaroon!” cried Cawthorne. “You dishonest heart! To try and trick me with inferior goods after all the concessions I’ve made you!”

  Purvis explained to me that a macaroon was a black too old for any use, or one with physical defects of some kind.

  “What will happen to him?” I asked.

  “It’s none of our affair,” growled Purvis, giving me a warning look. I had guessed by now that any interest, much less concern, I showed about the blacks meant to Purvis that I was demeaning his mother and father. It was as though there was a connection in his mind, unknown even to himself, between our living cargo and those Irish folk long dead, the story of their voyage a lingering and bitter glory in his memory.

  Our holds were pits of misery. Two men were found dead the second morning, and Stout dumped their bodies over the side as I dumped waste. Curry cooked up messes of horse beans on deck. Many of the slaves spat them out. They were given yams, a store of which had been brought aboard by the cabociero. These seemed to suit them better. But the yams, I learned, were only doled out while we were still in sight of land. Once at sea, they were doomed to a diet consisting largely of the beans with an occasional piece of salt beef taken from our own stores. Along with their two daily meals, they received a half pint of water.

  “More than we’ll get,” Purvis said. “When the supplies run low, it’s us who’ll go without. There’s no loss to Cawthorne if we starve to death or die of thirst.”

  On our last morning, the little girl—the first to be brought aboard The Moonlight—was carried to the rail by Stout. He held her upside down, his fingers gripping one thin brown ankle. Her eyes were open, staring at nothing. Foam had dried about her mouth. With one gesture, Stout flung her into the water. I cried out. Ned smacked me across the face with such force I fell to the deck. When I got up, I saw a boy close to my own age, staring at me from among the group of silent slaves squatting beneath the tarpaulin. I could not read his expression. Perhaps he was only looking past me to the shore of the land from which he’d been taken.

  The Captain had picked up a piece of news during one of his earlier sorties ashore. One of the two American cruisers known to be patroling the African coast had been sighted from Cape Palmas off the Windward Coast. With nearly 100 slaves in our holds, the Captain was in a fever lest some word had been gotten to the Americans by the British. You would have thought the whole of the British Navy had only one purpose in mind—to prevent Cawthorne’s pursuit of his “God-given trade.”

  It had grown fearfully hot, the sun blasting us with its rays from its first rising. Our water ration had been reduced again, and I went about my duties with a mouth as dry as ashes. I no longer searched the holds for rats. I had a new job—to empty the bucket latrines as they were handed up to me by Benjamin Stout who, moving across the recumbent bodies in the holds, went about his work as though stepping on cobblestones.

  It was with relief, a strange feeling after these days, that I learned we were to set sail for São Tomé, a Portuguese-held island to the south where we would take on water and food.

  After that, our direction would be toward the west, along the equator, then northwest as for as the Cape Verde Islands.

  It was there, Claudius Sharkey told me, that we would make speed, for we could catch the northeast trade winds, and be in the waters of Cuba in three weeks—with luck, after a thousand miles where the doldrums might hold us captive for days.

  My heart sank.

  I had believed that half this journey was over. But now, it seemed, it was at its true beginning.

  Nicholas Spark Walks on Water

  “… and then, one by one, each slave and each member of the crew went blind,” Purvis related, “and the Captain and the officers hid in their quarters for fear they would catch the horrible disease. But they ran short of food and water and were forced out. Then the First Mate went blind, and one by one, the officers lost their sight. Blind, they roamed the decks. Blind, they found no drink or food. The Captain determined to escape the ship in the small boat. But he was so desperate, he broke his arm trying to disengage the boat and lower it to the water. And so he was alone with the dead and the dying beneath the blazing sun. And the ship was loose upon the sea, flung here and there as the sea wished, and no one has seen it to this day.”

  “But how is it known that the Captain broke his arm?” I asked.

  “Ah …” sighed Seth Smith, “we just know.” The weak light from the oil lamp cast shadows shaped like spoons on the faces of the men. Gardere had shut his eyes tight as though blinded by Purvis’ story.

  “Other ships passed it by before it disappeared,” Purvis said to me in that tone of absolute conviction I’d heard before in the men’s voices when they’d told tales that were more invention than truth. “And a certain Captain swore he saw the small boat hanging at such an angle from its davits that it was clear the Master of that ship had made an unsuccessful attempt to lower it and harmed himself.”

  I could not follow Purvis’ reasoning at all, yet there was a sense of truth about the story, at least about the horror of it.

  “Is there no cure for such a disease?” I asked.

  “None,” replied Ned. “No more than there’s a cure for man himself.” I stared at him, still wondering why he’d given me such a blow when I’d cried out at the sight of the dead child. I hoped he’d been trying to protect me. I knew now how the crew responded to any sign of my distress at the plight of the blacks.

  “Never mind that, Ned,” said Gardere sulkily, opening his eyes wide. “You’re not a saint, you know.” Gardere’s voice was thick as though his throat was full of honey, and his words were faintly slurred. All the men had been drinking heavily ever since Gardere and Purvis had come off watch. Even though it was so late, they had not, as was their habit, flung themselves instantly into their hammocks.

  We had weighed anchor and sailed that evening so the slaves would not see the shore of their homeland disappearing, and a fresh land wind was bearing us along smoothly. But the men were not eased by our progress; their mood was restless and shadowed by gloom. All day, they’d been telling each other stories of lost ships although none so dreadful as the one I’d just heard.

  But the stories did not drown out the
sounds from the holds. Not all the gabble of the sailors, the sustained flow of the wind that drove us on, could mask the keening of the slaves as they twisted and turned on the water casks, or struggled to find an edge of one of a handful of straw pallets upon which to rest their shackled ankles. I dozed. I woke. Never to silence. Would it go on this way to the end of our voyage? Sharkey claimed they would settle down. Settle down to what?

  It seemed that Benjamin Stout was to be in charge of the slaves. Next day, he raced from one task to another. Although I had grown to dislike the slowness of his walk and gesture, I found his energy even more repulsive. He saw to the water rations, to Curry’s activities with the huge cauldron. Frequently, he hung over the holds, shouting down a few words of the African language. I asked Ned if he, too, could speak African. He told me there were as many languages in Africa as there were tribes but since none of them were Christian he would not corrupt his tongue by learning a single word from any of them. Did he know, I asked him, what people we carried on our ship? Ashantis, he’d replied with disgust, probably captured in tribal wars with the Yoruba.

  “But the children don’t battle, do they?” I asked.

  “The chiefs kidnap the children,” he replied. “The slavers give good trade goods for them because they fetch such high prices in the West Indies.” He looked contemptuously toward the now distant shore, more like a low-lying cloud than land. “The African was tempted and then became depraved by a desire for the material things offered him by debased traders. It’s all the Devil’s work.”

  I looked at him curiously. “But you’re a slaver, ain’t you, Ned?”

  “My heart’s not in it,” he said flatly. I wondered about his heart, imagining it to be something like one of the raisins Curry used to slip into the duff.

  We hadn’t had such a good thing to eat as duff in many weeks. Being on a ship and eating from its stores was like a man burning down his house to keep warm.

  I had not yet been seriously afflicted with the thing called sea-sickness. But early the next morning, we hit a strange turbulence in the sea so that The Moonlight pitched forward, then rolled sideways in such rapid alternation that my stomach did likewise. I took only a swallow of water. I felt that if I didn’t keep my mouth tightly closed, I should be turned inside out like a garment that was to be laundered.