The Slave Dancer (14 page)

It rolled! I felt the ship rocking ever so slightly. At the same instance, I felt a breeze.

“Look!” howled the Spaniard. All dancing stopped at that loud cry. The dazed sailors stared off in every direction. The Spaniard's servant was waving his hands slowly back and forth. His mouth was open, forming a dark circle.

“He sees a sail!” the Spaniard cried.

“A sail …” said someone.

“Stout!” called the Captain.

Stout staggered to the starboard side of the ship. I could see with what effort he was holding himself upright. The breeze suddenly doubled in force. I saw Purvis rise from where he'd been lying and look about himself as though mystified.

“An English ship,” Stout declared. “I know her. She won't bother us in these waters.”

“Get that Spanish flag down, Cooley,” ordered the Captain.

At that moment, I heard Porter cry out from aloft, “A sail! Starboard side!”

The Captain looked straight up at the heavens. The scorn in his face would have singed a harder man than even he was. “Indeed, Porter!” he said softly. At that moment, one of the black men began to spin slowly on the deck, his arms held out like wings, turning, turning, until he fell and lay as if dead. Cawthorne said to me, “Stay by the children,” and started aft. “Stout,” he called over his shoulder. Stout stumbled after him. “I want the American flag hoisted.”

“I know that ship, Captain,” protested Stout. “She won't bother us.”

“Cease!” snarled Cawthorne. “Do you hear that, you drunk hog?”

Stay by the children? I looked around wildly for Purvis. The breeze was becoming a wind which rose out of the darkness, then fell like a wave and scattered itself to every part of
The Moonlight.

I heard Cawthorne say, “I don't trust your judgment, Stout, any more than I'd trust the British to do what they're supposed to. Get the niggers to the rail!” He sniffed the air. “There's something coming up that isn't English,” he said.

“The hatch covers must go over,” Stout said thickly. “And the leg restraints.” A great moan suddenly went up from the slaves, and I saw Curry dumping the cauldron over the side.

What happened next took place so quickly that afterwards I could recall only fragments like pieces of dreams that sometimes haunt my waking hours. Through it all, most of the crew worked on the sails, and I glimpsed them from time to time as they climbed and clung to the rigging like great ragged moths. The American flag was hoisted. The Spaniard snatched up the Spanish flag from the deck where it had fallen. Stout, who had vanished for a moment, reappeared, his hands full of shackles which he flung into the sea. Then Isaac Porter, down from his lookout perch, began to cry urgently in words that were not clear for the wind suddenly intensified its force, the sails smacked into position and the clatter of the anchors drowned out nearly everything. I saw the Spaniard raise his hands in apparent protest as the ship, with a great lurch got underway. And his servant's hat suddenly blew off and spun away into the black night. Then Porter cried out again. “Boats!” I heard.

I saw Cawthorne rush to the rail, Stout at his side.

“By God!” Cawthorne thundered. “I see the ship! I see it.
It's American!
You disaster, Stout! You've murdered me! Get the slaves over! Get them over!”

I cried out in terror myself as I saw the luminous crest of a wave in the darkness, and right behind it on the next crest, a number of small boats coming directly at us, the rowers bent against the wind. At that moment, Sam Wick picked up a black woman and simply dropped her over the side. With hardly a pause, he then kicked over two men.

Now the slaves, aware of their mortal danger, sank down, piling themselves up on one another as though in this way they could protect themselves. They scratched the deck frantically as the seamen ran among them, grabbing them up and shoving them to the rail. I saw Cawthorne himself seize a small woman, lift her up and drop her into the sea. As he turned from the rail, three black men moved unsteadily toward him, flailing the air with their arms as though he were a wild animal. Cawthorne instantly drew his pistol and fired it directly into the face of one of the blacks. I fled to the bow, the shot echoing in my head. The storm suddenly broke, the sails tautened, and the ship gave a mighty shake. I could no longer see the small boats from the American ship. I could make out the Captain now standing by Purvis at the helm while all around them the seamen whipped the blacks over. I began to wail like a demented person, pleading with the small boats to catch up with us, to seize us. Then I heard children weeping. They were only a few feet away from where I stood, clinging to the young black boy who looked at me with such defiance I flung up my arms and shook my head violently to show I meant no harm. I heard running feet. Seth Smith passed me as I squeezed myself against the cathead. He found the children. The black boy struck him with his fists and his feet, but Smith ignored the blows and picked up the little ones and flung them off the bow. I screamed. Smith turned a mad face to me, his eyes glittering.

“Get to it!” he shouted crazily. I thought I saw pale giant sails suspended off the starboard side like a curtain dropped from heaven, but
The Moonlight
lurched forward again, and the sails vanished as had the small boats. The black boy slipped behind the mast. We were still alive here, but in the sea, slaves and rowers were falling into the silent dark depths. Smith began to beat the air with his fists. I realized he was waiting for me to say something, do something. I stuck my foot in a coil of rope, then made as if I was trapped. “My foot's caught!” I cried. Smith ran off. I hastened to the boy who was clinging to the mast. I took hold of one arm, but he shook me off. His breathing had a dire sound to it, and I thought he might die of sheer terror. I took hold of him again, determined to hold on no matter how he struggled. Suddenly he gave way. I felt his breath fluttering against my face. I released his arm then, and motioned in the direction of the forehold. Then I got down on my hands and knees. He did the same. We crawled along beneath the main staysail that strained above our heads. I heard the Captain's shouts but not what he said. The wind howled.

We gained the hold and dropped down into it. In the dark, I found the boy's arm again. We went as far as we could from the open hatch. Between a nearly empty cask and the great root of the foremast, we crouched. Our breaths mingled. The boy whispered something. “I don't know,” I said. He was silent. Then, to my horror, I saw the solid hatch cover descend over the hold, remembering at the same moment that the hatches were always closed in foul weather.

The hideous stench made breathing difficult. My legs began to cramp and every bone in my body ached. Something furry brushed against my hand. I got to my feet, cracking an elbow as I rose. The boy got up too, and we stood for a long time. I felt the ship heeling over as though a giant hand were pressing her to her side. Sometimes we sat, sometimes I dozed. Once, the boy took my hand and pressed it against the cask. I felt moisture. He directed my damp fingers to my mouth and I licked them. We took what wet we could, our fingers crossing the surface of the cask like moles. When the ship yawed, we were flung back against the timbers. Sometimes we clung to the cask to keep from landing on our heads. But as terrible as the storm was, it would be worse when the hatch was opened and we were discovered. I thought of Stout's face, how he would look, how he would smile when he saw us.

The boy spoke to me. I answered. Neither of us knew what the other said, but the sound of our voices in the dark held back dread as the thunderous violence of the storm broke all around us. There were moments when I wanted only to give way, to become a noise, a thing, so as not to
know
the terror I was feeling. We plunged and pitched through the sea—I know the ship made great speed those first hours, but it was the uneven lurching speed of a crippled runner.

We both slept. What I sensed as a long time grew immeasurable. These could not be hours passing, but days. As I sat, braced against the howling, crashing chaos above, taking some comfort from the small but steady sound of the black boy's breathing as he slept, I couldn't imagine night and day, dark and light, only the storm, the ship plunging through it like those stars I'd seen fall through heaven in late summer.

Once I woke to hear him crooning to himself. God knows what his words meant! But the sound of them! It will be like that, the last sound of the last soul on this earth. I shook his arm to make him stop and he laughed. It was then I felt a pang of hunger and remembered the biscuits Cawthorne had given me. We each had two. Though damp, they were fine biscuits and did not require to be broken by a hammer.

We often held our strange conversations, each waiting for the other to finish as though we actually understood. Once, there was a terrible crash above. A violent shudder passed through the ship and entered my bones. I waited for the sea to rush over us. But it didn't come. And all the while, I scratched my legs frantically where the salt damp was biting my skin.

Then, long after we'd finished the last of the biscuits, at a time when I'd lost all sense of whether I was awake or dreaming, the hatch cover disappeared as though lifted by a mighty hand. I saw daylight. I saw a gray turbulent sky stirred by the wind. The boy and I looked at each other. In his sunken eyes, I saw the questions that must have been in my own.

I crawled among the casks until I found a piece of the rope ladder which still hung down from the deck. As I gripped it, water the color of the sky rushed into the hold and tossed me back to where I'd started as if I'd weighed no more than a gull's feather. I heard canvas flapping, the creaking of straining wood. I went back and took hold of the rope again and pulled myself up to the deck.

The first thing I saw was the ship's small boat smashed to bits. The mainmast lay athwart the deck, broken and twisted, its sails all rags. Beneath it lay Purvis, one leg free of the mast and floating in the water that advanced and retreated. The ship was awash to the hatches—the great wheel which had guided us such distances was now useless, floating among the ship's debris. Only the mizzenmast still stood, its sails whipping back and forth. I was drenched instantly. I rolled myself to Ned's bench and clung to it.

The water stung my eyes and filled my ears. It came again and again across the deck as the ship, slack and lifeless, rose and crashed down. Nothing stood still in all the gray bawling world.

I raised myself up and flung myself across the bench. Through my blurred sight I caught a glimpse of what I could not believe was there. Land! But even as I drew breath, the ship plunged down into a trough between giant waves. When it rose, I saw palm trees, their topmost branches combing the sky as though on the very point of being yanked out of the earth and carried heavenward. I had never felt such fear—no storm in the great ocean was so awful as this—to see land, to be so near the shore …

I heard a moan, muffled like the cry of a sea bird in a heavy rain. I raised my head then ducked as a wall of water rushed toward me. I felt the weakness of my fingers gripping the soaked wood of Ned's bench. Then I saw Benjamin Stout caught like a huge fly in a tangled web of rope. He stared blindly at the sky. Another wave came across the deck. I looked for Stout. He was gone along with all the rope which had trapped him. I saw land again. I made out the foam crests of the waves breaking against the shore, and I cursed the light that let me see. If it had only been dark!

It must have taken an hour for me to move my hands to the bench leg, to lower myself through the battering wind to the deck. Coughing, unable to see, I felt my way back to the hold. Inch by inch, I advanced. Once I grabbed at something only to feel it give softly in my fingers, the feel of cloth and bone and flesh traveling up my arm. I shouted with horror and my mouth filled with water. I choked and sputtered and tried to see whose leg I had grabbed. I thought it was Cooley but could not be sure. I thought I heard a cry for help but the wind mimicked distress so perfectly there was no way to tell. The ship hit the bottom of another trough just as I reached out and took hold of the rope. I could not move. It was hopeless. I had no strength left to brace myself against the elements which would soon send the ship and her cargo of corpses to the bottom, to the depths where no wind blew.

I felt a monstrous convulsion traveling through what was left of
The Moonlight.
I opened my mouth and shouted with all my might as though such a pitiful squeak, lost in the smash and crack of the wind and sea, could bring the storm to a halt. An instant later, the ship listed so far to her side it seemed that only the wind kept me plastered to the deck like a bug blown against a piece of bark. But the shudder had moved me forward a foot, and I was able now to fling myself over the edge of the hold.

My head and shoulders were hanging down into the darkness. I heard isolated
pings
of dripping water in that strange stillness below the deck. Then I saw something waving, something living. A dozen frights rushed through my mind until sense came back to me and I knew it was the black boy reaching up. I gripped his fluttering fingers. Then, as I edged myself down, his arm came to guide me.

Squatting, we held each other's arms. He was trembling, as I was. He spoke to me. I gripped him more strongly and nodded. A wave hit. We fell and rolled among the casks, holding on to each other as we gathered bruises and splinters. We lay against the hull in a pool of warmish water that had its own small tides as the ship rocked back and forth.

Then, gradually, the pounding on the deck grew less; the wind receded; the rattling and thumping of the ship's gear—the very stuff of the ship herself—diminished to a low quarrelsome mumble. There were little easings and movements I barely noticed through the hull. I realized the ship was settling upon something, a reef, a rock, something upon which it would rest briefly before plunging to the bottom. The boy took my wrist. I felt rather than saw the motion of his hand as he gestured toward the hatch.