Voyage of Midnight (26 page)

“Get the turncoat!”

“We’ll toss him overboard, all right! After we smash his arms and legs!”

“Don’t worry, Captain Towne, he’s mine!”

“Come here, little Mr. Surgeon, we won’t hurt you!”

Up I climbed, hearing my own panting, my ears roaring with the thunder of my heart, suddenly thinking once again of Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher, thinking how disappointed they’d be to learn that their little English boy would never return, that he’d fallen to his death off the coast of Africa.

Someone grabbed my ankle. I screeched, kicking. My toes hit teeth. Pain shot up my foot, as if I’d stubbed it on a door.

Someone let go. Cursed.

I reached the main yard and paused, having only a second to make up my mind. Above me was the maintop with its lubber’s hole. I could crawl through that and continue up. But even as I contemplated this, the men climbing the starboard shrouds caught up with me as our shrouds converged on the mainmast. Milky eyes stared. Hands clawed the empty air.

A cry escaped me and I climbed away from them, out onto the main yard, the only course left to me.

Below me, Oji dodged the crew and disappeared down the main hatch.

My legs trembling, my feet on the footropes, as quickly as I could I slid across the main yard, as I’d seen the sailors do countless times. Below, Billy shrieked, “He’s on the main yard! Get him!”

Again I heard a boom. Closer this time. Then a shout, sounding as if it came from across the water.

Then, to my embarrassment, my bowels released themselves. High as I was in the air, the contents splattered directly onto Billy below, who screeched like a hog at the slaughter. I must admit to no small satisfaction, despite the fact that I was soon to die.

In moments I reached the end of the yard. Beneath me was no longer the deck, but the rolling swells of the Atlantic, dark shapes swarming just beneath the surface. A wave of dizziness shot through me, as if I’d twirled round and round. I clutched the end of the yard.

Below, Billy was still screeching. Black men were flooding out of the hold. Uncle was still lying slumped against the bulwarks.

Scores of blind crew members had followed me onto the main yard. Gaunt, whiskered, shriveled, yellowed. Clouded eyes stared at nothing. All of the men were clawing the empty air, trying to find me. One of them reached out, grasped a handful of my shirt, and yanked.

I screamed.

My feet slipped off the footrope.

For one precarious second, I clung to the yardarm.

Then my weakened fingers gave way and I plummeted.

My heart in my throat.

Thinking,
Farewell
.

Screaming, screaming.

Arms and legs windmilling through the air.

Down, down, down, into the ocean.

I
hit the water.

Its coolness closed over me. Except for the gurgling of bubbles and the sound of my heart throbbing in my head, all noise ceased. Salt water entered my nose, my ears, my mouth.

Immediately I began to drown. To thrash and drown, wondering if it hurt more to drown or to be eaten by sharks. My lungs screamed for air.

I bobbed to the surface, choked, and then sank again.

Something brushed up against me.

Hurry. Make it quick
.

And then it had me by the scruff of the neck and was pulling me up, up, out of the water and onto something hard and dry.

A wave of shock pulsed through my body, as if I’d just had a tooth yanked out.

I spluttered and choked, my eyes stinging, blinking back salt water.

There, still holding me by the scruff of the neck while I dripped like a sewer rat, was a familiar figure. Blond, mustached, hat upon his head, it was the young officer from the American vessel from what seemed so long ago. His mouth was hard, lips drawn tight, eyes ablaze.

And without saying a word, he shoved me away; he stood at the bow of his longboat, where I lay in a heap, and drew his cutlass, pointing it at the
Formidable
. “Attack!”

Men in the longboat, and there were many—forty, maybe—scrambled over me and swarmed up the ship’s sides, grasping anything they could find to help them aboard. I heard shouts and cries from above. Several men remained behind. One of them deposited himself next to me, cocked a pistol, and aimed it at my head. “You so much as twitch,” he growled, “and it’ll go worse for you than it has already.”

I closed my eyes and lay back, only too happy not to twitch.
You’ve done it, Philip Arthur Higgins. A blind and weakened crew will be no match for trained marines
.

I think I slept for a while—I’m not sure—but I was startled, dreams floating away like feathers, when the American sailor pulled me to my feet. “Up you go,” he said. “Let’s get you aboard with the rest of them.”

After all this, I couldn’t climb. My muscles failed me, and I groaned. Again I tried, and again, until finally the sailor heaved me over his back, complaining about my wretched smell, and climbed up and over the side of the
Formidable
. He deposited me like a sack of potatoes on the sun-soaked deck, then shackled me
to Harold, who, like the rest of the
Formidable
’s crew, sat chained about the mainmast.

It took a long time.

The liberation.

The crew of the American naval vessel tied handkerchiefs about their noses and mouths. Occasionally someone vomited. Some cried openly as more and more slaves crawled out of the holds. Some slaves had to be carried. Some were shackled to dead bodies. Those that were shackled were released. Blinking in the bright sunshine, most of the men, women, and children couldn’t stand. Skeletons with skin. Covered with sores, bruises, vomit, and feces.

Finally the holds and the infirmary were empty.

I’d looked and looked for Oji, but couldn’t see him anywhere. I called his name, but my voice was no more than a whisper.

Oji, where have you gone?
Fevered tears slid from between my eyelids.
Are you dead?

Meanwhile, American sailors moved among the blacks, giving them food and water. The naval surgeon administered what relief he could—ointments, balm, pills. I longed to join him, but I’d released my bowels again, my fever was raging, and I believed I was about to die.

The rest of the
Formidable
’s crew wasn’t in much better condition. Uncle wasn’t far from me, a crimson-soaked bandage wrapped about his neck. He declared in Spanish that they had no right to seize his vessel, that he was a Spanish gentleman of legal commerce. McGuire had his head in his hands. Roach sobbed, proclaiming his innocence over and over. Billy clutched his injured hand, looking dreadfully unhappy. Next to me, Harold was groaning, stinking, dying of fever too.

“You’re the captain?” asked the naval captain of my uncle, coming to stand before him.

For the past half hour, Uncle had spoken nothing but Spanish, declaring his indignation with an ever-increasing weakness. He’d been ignored until this moment.

“Sí.”

“Name?”

“Don Pedro.” Uncle then spoke in heavily accented English. “You have no right to take this vessel. I am a Spaniard, the ship is owned by Spaniards, and the American navy has no jurisdiction over us.”

The American captain didn’t blink. “I’m Captain Marshall of the U.S.S.
Stinger
. Unless you can prove that you are the Spaniard you declare yourself to be and that this is a Spanish ship, I hereby take command of your vessel. Do you have any papers?”

“Sí
. In the captain’s desk in my cabin, aft.”

Captain Marshall gave a signal and one of his men disappeared below, returning a few moments later with the papers in hand. I could see the captain’s shoulders sink as he read them.

“Please, sir,” I said, my voice raspy as dust.

No one heard me. I said it again. “Please, sir, please. Do listen. It’s quite important.”

The captain looked about, perplexed. “Who’s saying that?”

“It’s the boy, sir,” said one of the American sailors. “The boy we fished from the water.”

“That boy is a liar,” said my uncle. “Believe nothing he says.” And from his lips issued a stream of Spanish curses designed to send me to hell.

Captain Marshall ignored Uncle and strode to where I lay shackled next to Harold. The captain pierced me with his pale blue eyes. “You can see, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“He is a liar!” cried my uncle.

“Philip Arthur Higgins, surgeon aboard the
Formidable.”

Captain Marshall raised an eyebrow. “You’re the surgeon?”

“Aye.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen, I think.”

“I—see.” He glanced at one of his men next to him, then said, “You have something to say?”

“Yes. Those—those are fake papers.”

“He’s a liar! I
am
a Spaniard! I am Don Pedro of Castile! My papers are authentic! Touch one hair on the heads of my slaves and I will take you to Spanish court and crucify you!”

“Do you know the location of the real papers?” the American captain asked me.

“Stuffed in his mattress.”

Captain Marshall touched his hat to me. “Thank you, Surgeon. Much obliged. Men, you heard him.”

A
prize crew was put aboard the
Formidable:
a dozen stout men, including the surgeon.

Though some had their doubts as to whether the
Formidable
could make it as far as Sierra Leone before she sank, make it she did, arriving at Freetown with 199 slaves on August 19, 1821, four months after she’d set sail from the river Bonny with 368 slaves aboard.

During the voyage, given fresh food and water, the Africans recovered under awnings constructed on the deck, while the crew of the
Formidable
was chained in the hold, where they remained until it came time for their trial.

I’d have liked to have helped the
Stinger
’s
surgeon—to learn some of his techniques, perhaps—but I’d fallen deathly ill and became a patient myself. Oji told me later that I’d died at one point, that my lungs had ceased to draw air and that my spirit had left my little body, but that upon his cry of grief I’d revived. Yes, Oji was with me then, through that short voyage to Sierra Leone. On the day the
Formidable
was taken, he’d fought to release as many Africans as he could, but had suffered a blow to the head when he emerged from the hold. He was knocked senseless, thought to be dead; his last memory was of hearing me scream as I plummeted from the main yard into the ocean.

Oji had told the captain of my “heroics,” as he called them. Everyone treated me as a hero—Captain Marshall and his crew; the
Stinger
’s surgeon; the Africans, who still called me Ikeotuonye. But I didn’t think of myself as one. My guilt and shame wouldn’t allow me to. I merely thought of myself as a formerly luckless lad who’d once been blind, but whose eyes had miraculously been opened.

Upon arrival in Sierra Leone, the sixteen men of the
Formidable
’s crew who’d survived, including my uncle, were tried at a mixed tribunal, found guilty of participating in the illegal slave trade, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. I testified at the trial, deeply moved when I saw my uncle in chains, a shrunken vestige of his former, jaunty self.

I visited him during his confinement. Just once.

Uncle sat on a cot in his cell, his beard unkempt, mumbling to himself. My feet scuffed the floor and he jerked his head up, listening, gazing about with his one milky eye, the left socket still shrouded with an eye patch. “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Uncle.” I grasped the bars, the press of steel cold and hard. The cell stank of mildew and urine.

He turned his eye away. Busied himself with unraveling the threads of his blanket. First one thread, then another, then another.

“If you keep that up, you won’t have a blanket left.” I shifted uncomfortably after he said nothing. “I—I could send you things to keep up your spirits. Blankets, candies, cigars and matches, fresh clothes …” I almost said “books,” but stopped myself in time.

He arranged the threads in a row. Scratched his beard. Hunched over his threads and began counting them, the breath whistling in and out of his nostrils.