The Slave Dancer (6 page)

The ship was going nowhere under a sky that darkened into a windless night and lightened into a day so motionless, so empty, we were like a plate poised on the edge of a pit without bottom. The Captain and the Mate roamed the deck, their eyes on the sky, and the seamen quarreled.

They quarreled from morning until night and in the middle of the night. Benjamin Stout lost his smile when he found his sea chest emptied, and all its contents strewn about, his razor and strop, his knife and fork, his sheath knife and the fid he used for splicing, and his small seaman's Bible, its pages damp as though it'd been dipped in brine.

During those days, a fever seemed to pass among us, leaving everyone weak yet restless. Stout accused Purvis of emptying out his sea chest. He seemed to think it the worst of a list of crimes of which he accused Purvis. Purvis swore and threw his ham fists in the air. The others added fuel to the fire, inciting them both to what end I don't know. I stayed out of our quarters as often as I could and once slept on the deck where Spark, finding me huddled near the bow, gave me a terrible kick that sent me rolling.

It was that dawn when the light was the color of the sea itself, and I could hardly make out the line of the horizon, that I saw a figure, its head wrapped in cloth so I couldn't recognize it, moving furtively on all fours toward the aft section. Although I was afraid Nick Spark would return, I was so curious about the creeping man that I stayed where I was.

I searched the deck with my eyes but either the Mate had evaporated or gone to his quarters. If Gardere and Seth Smith, who passed within a foot of where I was crouched near the ship's small boat, had seen the creeper, they didn't, apparently, care to investigate.

Not five minutes later, along the same route, like a sightless worm that must go by smell, the creeper returned. But this time, it crawled along on only three limbs for one hand was held up, its begrimed fingers holding a beautiful white egg which, in that dim light, was as luminous as a tiny moon rising between deck and rail.

The air was damp and sea-soaked, and I breathed it in as though it were a draught of fresh water. But no sooner did I imagine what it would be like to drink up a whole pond than I skittered away from the thought. Our water ration had been cut. The longer it would take to reach our destination, the less we would have. God knows my family was poor! But there wasn't an
end
to anything. We'd always had something to eat and drink. For the first time in my life, I could, if I put my mind to it, see to the end of a thing needed for life to go on. We lived off what our ship could carry, but the ship drank the wind, and without that, ship and crew would be lost in the wastes of the ocean.

I made haste to return below. There, I found Purvis, Stout and Sharkey looking at the egg, an ordinary enough object in the light of the oil lamp. Someone had placed it in a tarpaulin hat, and the three sailors stared down at it as though it was a priceless jewel.

Although we'd had no eggs for our mess, I thought they were making a bit much of it. Still frightened by my vision of empty water casks, I said, “Would Curry give me some beer, do you think?” hoping one of the men would answer.

Stout murmured, “Don't fret, lad. Ill see you get what you need.” But Purvis let go of the hat, leaving it in Stout's hands, and gave me a wallop across my back.

“None of that mewling,” he said furiously. “None of us is better off save two we won't mention, and I'll have no cat cries from you, Jessie. You get the same amount to drink as all of us, and that's a far sight better than you'd do on some ships I can think of.”

I shrugged as coolly as I could, but felt better, not that I would have admitted it to Purvis.

Despite the murky dawn, the morning was clear and sunny. Later that day, a wind of sorts blew up. At the first breath of it, the men straightened their backs and moved smartly about the deck. Their voices rang out clearly, and in the galley, Curry sang a tune to himself in a horrible cracked voice that sounded as if it had been fried in lard. Only Nicholas Spark stalked about the ship like a spirit of mold and decay.

We made good speed that day, although as dusk approached the wind slackened somewhat, as did our spirits. Then we were summoned to the deck, even those men who were resting after their watch.

We stood in a clump amidship while all about us a great flaring sky of twilight burnished our faces and streaked the masts with a tender golden light.

The Captain and Spark were some distance away from us, regarding us fixedly. Gardere was at the helm, and Sam Wick and Smith were occupied with the sails. The eerie silence, the molten hills of the sea, the unmoving figures of Master and Mate filled me with dread and yet a kind of exhilaration as though we were all waiting for the appearance of something supernatural. Then the Captain spoke.

“It has come to my attention—I'll not confide to you how—that a certain precious thing has been taken from me, stole in the dark by a scoundrel, grasped by his filthy claws, made off with to his hole.” He paused. In the awesome silence that followed his words, I saw once again that dawn apparition carrying the moon egg.

“To its hole!” the Captains voice rang out. “And there, EATEN!” he screamed. “My precious thing, EATEN!”

Spark stepped forward holding in his hands a length of tarred rope.

“That scoundrel, that Irish bucket, that thieving scum of the earth, will now show himself,” the Captain ordered, his voice suddenly quiet.

None of us moved.

“Purvis!” cried Spark in his burnt out voice. “Forward, Purvis!”

Purvis went to stand before them.

“The wind's freshening again, ain't it?” the Captain observed conversationally to Spark.

“I believe it is, Sir,” replied the Mate.

“It'll blow hard this night, would you say, Spark?”

“I would, Sir.”

“Cooley, Stout, fasten the egg-stealing serpent to the mast,” said the Captain.

Without a second's hesitation, the two sailors took hold of Purvis and bound him with ropes to the mast.

“Now, Spark, remove his shirt with your rope!” ordered the Captain.

Nicholas Spark flogged Purvis' shirt from his back. Beneath the leaping of the rope, blood and cloth mixed. The sun began to die on the horizon, and still he beat him. Faint, my legs like porridge, I leaned against Ned who made not the slightest accommodation of his body to my weight. I wept silently. Purvis groaned and moaned but never cried out.

At what seemed to be the last fading ray of sun, the tarred rope fell from the Mate's hand. He turned to the Captain, his face as smooth as the surface of a stone.

“Now tie him to the shrouds,” said the Captain. “The air will refresh his corrupt soul.”

I barely slept that night. Once, I peeped out at the deck. Far above, like a huge tattered bird, its wings flapping, hung Purvis, tied to the shrouds where the wind beat against him as though animated by the same demon which had raised Nicholas Spark's arm and brought the tarred rope down on his back.

Toward morning, I overheard a conversation.

Smith said, “You handed Purvis over to that beast.”

“He would have done the same in my place,” said Stout.

“You're a damned foul creature, Stout.”

“No different from you or anyone else,” Stout said mildly from his hammock.

“You're one with Cawthorne,” Smith said. “No difference between you except he's ambitious.”

“That may be true, Seth,” said Stout. “I wish I had Cawthorne's ambition. I would have made a fine rich man,” and he laughed.

Then I heard Ned asking who had informed on Purvis.

“Why, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Stout himself,” said Seth Smith.

“No, no. I didn't do that,” said Stout. “I expect Spark saw me. But then, you see,” he continued amiably as though discussing the best way to splice a rope, “Purvis and me has sailed with the Captain and Spark before, and I believe they favor me a bit over him.”

It was more than I could take in. My head felt swollen and my cheeks on fire.

Why hadn't Purvis denied the theft of the egg? I couldn't find a word to put to Stout's actions. Why didn't the rest of the men seize him and toss him overboard? Why didn't they go to the Captain and inform him of the real culprit? Why was Stout so calm, even satisfied as he lay there in the damp dark, accused of dreadful treachery by a fellow sailor, unmoved, unashamed, and now as I could hear plainly, snoring contentedly?

Sharkey and Smith brought Purvis down in the morning. Ned took a bottle of salve from his medicine chest and rubbed it into the wounds on Purvis' back as he sat hunched over on his sea chest. I brought him a mug of tea and rum and he drank it down slowly, his face creased like rumpled parchment, as white as though the wind had blown the blood out of him. He looked at me over the rim of the mug. His eyes had sunk into his head.

We were alone for a few minutes. I stood looking at him, unable to tear my gaze away. He groaned softly now and then, or shook his big head as though something was flying about in his hair and bothering him. Then he let the mug fall into my hands.

“I'll be all right soon, Jessie,” he said in a cracked thin voice.

“But—it was Stout!” I cried.

“Oh, yes. It was Stout.”

“But why didn't you say?” I pleaded, beside myself with rage at the injustice.

“There would've been no use in that. The officers of this ship would not care what the truth was. Get me a plug of tobacco, will you, Jessie? It'll make me feel human.”

I fetched it for him. With great effort, he broke off a piece and stuck it in his mouth. “Ah …” he sighed.

“But if it wasn't you—” I began.

“The Captain had it in his mind that it was time for a flogging—to remind the men.”

“To remind the men? Of what?” I demanded.

Purvis clasped his hands and leaned further forward.

“No more talk now, Jessie. I'll rest,” he said.

Stout handed me a piece of cheese that morning as I sat near Ned's bench sewing a piece of canvas. I took it and heaved it over the side.

Stout smiled gently as though he couldn't blame me.

The Bight of Benin

Ned the carpenter had been unusually busy. The result of his labor was a platform on which squatted a nine-pound carronade, black as a bat, absorbing sunlight or the white glare of sunless days, an iron presence which Nicholas Spark touched each time he passed it as though for luck.

I didn't need Purvis to tell me we were soon to meet up with other men. The armament was enough.

An American flag on the signal gaff would discourage the British from boarding us. The carronade would warn them we belonged to ourselves. Purvis had heard there was some kind of American warship that was supposed to prevent the trade, but with thousands of miles of coast to patrol, there was small chance we'd meet up with it. “Besides,” he said, “there is the matter of the flags.”

“What flags?” I asked.

“The flags in the Captain's quarters,” Purvis said. “It's this way, Jessie. If an American patrol should signal us and demand to board the ship, we'd run up a Spanish flag. And if they persisted, we'd show them a full set of papers that would prove
The Moonlight
to be of Spanish ownership.”

“But anyone could tell we're not!”

“I tell you, such things are decided by papers!” Purvis declared. “If the papers are in order, nothing else matters. It works both ways. The Spanish slavers hire an American citizen to take passage with them. Then, if they're boarded by the British, the American puts on a captain's hat, takes command of the ship, flourishes his ownership papers and threatens to sue the British naval officer who's dared to set foot on his deck! There's not so many willing to risk the penalty for boarding a ship and finding neither slaves nor equipment on it. I sailed once under a master who, though he grew rich from slaving, wasn't caught for ten years. When he was finally boarded at the mouth of the Volta River, he was dropping slaves over the port side of the ship while his Portuguese servant was dressed up in captain's clothes, cursing the British as they scrambled up the starboard side. They couldn't prove a thing against him!”

“But there are many against the trade,” I said, irritated that Purvis was so satisfied with his arguments.

“Oh, Jessie! Don't you see? The British like to provoke us because we don't belong to them any more!”

“But they've outlawed slavery in their own country!”

Purvis stroked his chin and narrowed his eyes. “You can be sure,” he said with conviction, “that they wouldn't have passed laws against slaving if they hadn't found something else as profitable. That's the way of things, Jessie. But you'll see! You're bound to get a bit of a share yourself at the end of this voyage!”

I felt the force of truth withheld and hidden behind Purvis' grin and so, perhaps to remind him of an event that he couldn't so easily smooth out and explain as British law, I asked, “Does your back still pain you?”

He scowled and threw out his fist.

“Never mind that!” he growled.

I crawled into my hammock with much on my mind.

Life had turned upside down. My friend was a man who'd pressganged me. I disliked the man who'd befriended me. For all that talk of papers, I could see clear enough that two governments were against this enterprise, even though my own was, according to Purvis, weak in its opposition. Purvis had said the native kings sold their own people willingly, yet he'd also told me there were chiefs who would sink the ship and kill us all if they had the chance.

“Play us a tune,” Purvis' voice floated up to me with a certain melancholy note. “We haven't had a tune from you all these weeks, and soon enough you'll be playing, but not for us.”

I peered over the edge of the hammock. Smith and Purvis were looking up at me expectantly. I took my fife and jumped down and played as fast and loud as I could. The two men danced in the small space, circling each other like two dreaming bears, their faces as serious as though they were reading from the Bible.