Voyage of Midnight (7 page)

Under the shelter of a tarpaulin strung between the two buildings, Jonas and I kept busy attending to the slaves. Pills for pains, plasters and poultices for coughs and congested lungs, bandages and salves for wounds, bitters for disruptive bowels,
tonics and elixirs poured down unwilling throats as a cure for every other ailment. (Though the slaves were, on the whole, a healthy lot, and while much of our treatment was preventive, Jonas told me that many of them had been marched hundreds of miles from their homes in the interior, where they then spent weeks in the barracoon awaiting our arrival. Few of them were without some kind of ailment.) Then we shaved their heads and clipped their fingernails and toenails so they’d be less likely to cause damage if they had a fight.

Assigned the nasty task of inspecting the privy parts of each individual for any signs of the pox, it became quite necessary for me to put on the air of a surgeon’s mate, which I was; else all I could think of was the fact that I was still just a lad, only fourteen, who daily examined the mirror in hopes of finding his first whisker. It was an immodest task, and I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finished. No sign of pox among the lot. I was beginning to realize that education wasn’t only found within the pages of a book.

The day before we were to load the slaves aboard the
Formidable
, they were branded. Rain pounded the tarpaulin, spattering off the edges like a waterfall before flowing in cool, muddy rivers about our feet. Under the tarpaulin we built a fire, set atop a sandbox to keep it from getting wet; it was a small fire of green mango wood, billowing a bitter-tasting smoke that stung and swelled my eyes. Jonas was free with his curses. His eyes looked as if they might pop from his head.

Several iron brands with the name of the ship lay in the hot coals. Once branded, the slaves became the property of the
Formidable
and her owners. Jonas placed a pot of palm oil in the sand next to the fire. Outside the tarpaulin stretched a queue of Africans, the queue so long the black bodies disappeared into the
gray, pounding rain. I swiped my brow with my sleeve, dreading the task of branding over three hundred slaves.

Jonas motioned for the two burly African guards to bring in the first slave—a lad, fifteen years or so, iron collar about his neck, eyes wide, breath coming in gasps. As the two guards tossed him onto his stomach, pinning him in the mud, Jonas took one of the irons out of the fire. Through the dusting of ash, the iron’s end glowed as orange as Jonas’ eyes.

My pulse quickened. The air stank of hot iron, mud, and fear.

“Dip the end in palm oil, like so,” Jonas wheezed, “and press it firmly between the shoulder blades.” Flesh sizzled. The boy squirmed. A moan escaped his lips. “Keep it there for a few seconds, release, and it’s done. Simple.” Jonas waved his hand, indicating he was finished with the slave. The two guards hauled the boy from the mud and back out into the rain.

“Why the oil?” I asked Jonas, watching as the boy stumbled to find his feet and feeling those familiar gripes in my belly, as if I’d swallowed something rotten.

“So the flesh won’t stick to the hot iron.” Jonas coughed the woodsmoke from his lungs, then said, “Makes a nice clean brand. Now you try.”

The two guards brought in another slave—this time an older woman—and forced her to the mud. I reached for the iron, blinking back the smoke, seeing the sudden, unsettling image of the Gallaghers watching me. A wave of nausea rolled through me like an ocean swell and I clenched my jaw, thinking,
You’ll just have to harden up to it. Become a man. Like Uncle
.

“Go on,” prompted Jonas. “Dip it in the oil.”

Pushing all thought away, mouth dry as bones, I dipped the iron into the oil and pressed the brand between the slave’s shoulder blades. She threw her head back and screamed.

“Harder,” said Jonas. “You’re barely touching her. There, that’s it. That’ll do.”

As the woman was led away, her cries vanishing into the pounding rain, Jonas cuffed my arm and laughed. “See? You lived through it. And believe me, it gets easier.”

I managed a smile.

And so the morning continued as one slave after another was branded, some crying dreadfully, others enduring silently, and all sorts in between.

It was some relief to discover that Jonas was right. For a while the task
did
become easier—only one more step in the procedure, like forcing medicine down their throats or measuring their height. But then, come early afternoon, as I sat on my chair and pressed the iron onto the back of a comely female who howled and writhed, I’d a peculiar, unsettling memory. One of Master Crump laying his dreaded cane across my bare back while I begged and pleaded for mercy, my nose clogged with the stench of camphor. Again and again and again he whipped me, deaf to my cries.

No, Master Crump, please, no, no, nooooo!

My breath caught. A lump grew in my throat as a gust of wind whistled through the tent and my vision blurred.

“What’s the matter with you, boy? You’re shaking like a leaf. Gimme that iron.” Jonas grabbed it from me while I wiped my eyes, coughed, and cursed the fire.

Must be the smoke
.

The next slave was a fine specimen of manhood. Tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular, he didn’t look away as did the other slaves. Instead, he stared defiantly at Jonas and me, a roaring fire of hatred in his eyes. I’d my doubts as to whether the two African guards could hold him should the man decide to fight. They
yanked the chain attached to the iron collar about the man’s neck and forced him to his knees in the mud. Then they began to push him onto his stomach.

I retrieved an iron from the coals and prepared to dip it in the pot of palm oil.

Next thing I knew, there was an animal-like roar, two black bodies went flying through the air, and the iron was yanked from my hand.

Then, suddenly, the monster of a slave lowered his face to mine. For an instant only, I stared at him—saw that fiery hatred; the visage of murder; his sharpened, pointed teeth—before he thrust the red-hot brand onto the flesh of my chest, just below my throat, holding me by the shoulder to press it all the harder.

My skin fried. Popped.

Pain seared through my body.

I shrieked. The world spun round.

Oh God, it hurts! It hurts!

Jonas hit the man’s arm, loosening his grip.

I must’ve fallen off my chair, for suddenly I was in the mud and mud was in my ears.

I smelled flesh burning—my own.

All about me echoed screams. The crack of a whip. The retort of muskets. Jonas cursing. The bellowing of the giant. My uncle shouting orders.

And then, except for the rain, the moaning and weeping of the slaves, and my own stifled cries, it was silent.

I lay for a while, my chest throbbing and burning, until my uncle came and stood under the tarpaulin. “Philip, get up.” When I didn’t move, he said it again.

Slowly, I sat up in the mud. My chair lay overturned beside me, along with the branding iron. Stuck to its end I saw shriveled,
blackened flesh. “Is he dead?” I asked, remembering the slave’s look of murder, the gunshots.

Jonas picked up the iron and returned it to the embers. The fire snapped, sending a plume of sparks upward. Outside the tarpaulin, rain roared. Water streamed off the canvas.

“Stand up,” said Uncle. His face was hard, his eyes slitted. He held a whip coiled in his hand.

I did as Uncle told me. I wiped the mud off my face.

Uncle motioned to someone behind him. “Bring the slave here.”

Five sailors brought the giant, two on each side, one with a musket jammed into the slave’s spine. Mud caked the slave. Mixed with the mud, I saw blood. Again the slave stared defiantly.

Uncle looked at me and pointed at the slave. “Brand him.”

I stood rooted, unable to move, my chest afire.

“Put him on his face,” said Uncle to the sailors. Then, again to me: “I said, brand him.”

Still I stood, watching as the slave gave no resistance, staring at me all the way down as the sailors shoved him onto his belly in the mud.

“Go,” whispered Jonas, pushing me from behind. “It’s got to be done.”

I reached for a branding iron. My hand shook. The end of the iron glowed red. I started to dip it in the oil.

“No oil,” ordered Uncle.

And so I branded the murderous savage. Pressed the iron deep into his flesh, just as he’d done to me. His flesh quivered and smoked, but he made no sound.

A great well of rage boiled up inside me, and after the branding was over I bellowed and hurled the iron into the fire, scattering embers. I stormed from the tent into the rain, glad my chest hurt, glad it burned, glad I’d be scarred forever.

I fell to my knees in the mud, hair hanging in soggy strings, and vomited.

Uncle was there, his hand on my shoulder. “Nothing to be ashamed of. I was sick plenty of times when I was your age. Have Jonas see to your wound.” He walked away, boots sucking in the muck.

U
nder a cloudy yet rainless sky, we loaded 368 slaves aboard the
Formidable:
244 men and 124 women and children. I’d have doubted the vessel’s capacity had I not seen it with my own eyes.

While we’d been gone up the creek, the rest of the sailors, under the supervision of the carpenter, had built double decks in the hold. The decks were like shelves, with two feet between each deck. Arriving in canoe loads of fifty or so, the slaves were herded into the hold and onto the narrow-spaced tiers, shackled together two by two, while a pair of mounted carronades swept the hold in the event of an uprising. With the exception of some screaming and fainting, all went smoothly. The females and children were placed together in the aft hold (there
was no need to shackle them), separated by a reinforced bulkhead from the men in the main hold. They were packed together tightly—too tightly, in my opinion, for they were like spoons in a drawer. How would they even roll over?

I mentioned this to Uncle, but he reassured me that all the negroes would take exercise twice daily—stretch their limbs, dance, and enjoy themselves. That they’d have two meals a day of boiled rice, beans, and yams, and that the men would be given a pipe and tobacco once daily to share about. “So don’t let it trouble you,” he said, in as pleasant a mood as I’d ever seen him. “They’ll have many opportunities for comfort.”

Uncle’s mood was infectious, sweeping all my doubts away.
See? The arrangements are excellent
, I told myself.
While the slave trade is a necessary evil, it’s not such a rotten thing after all. You’ve seen the worst of it, and it’ll get better from here. As Uncle said, they’ll have many opportunities for comfort
.

The night before we were to weigh anchor, I lay curled in my berth. Jonas slept above me, snoring. A candle burned in the lantern hanging on its peg above the desk. Cries and moans issued from the hold, seeming to permeate the air, the very timbers of the deck above me, the whitewashed boards of my cabin. A sudden irritation grabbed hold of me, and I thought,
Why don’t they just calm down and have it over with?
—whereupon I fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming of the time when Master Crump dragged me by the ear, the arm, the ear, from the cotton mill back to the workhouse; me burning with fever, barely able to stand; him saying,
Why must you always be so difficult? Why can’t you just do your job like all the other good lads?

Reprovisioned with wood, water, yams, and rice, with our fine ship well tallowed, every seam caulked within and without, and her standing rigging tarred black as a crow, we heaved up anchor
to the tune of “The Maid of Amsterdam,” set our fore topsail, and headed down the creek toward the river Bonny. I offered to help Uncle navigate the shallow waters, but he chased me off. Said he’d important work to do for the moment, else we might ground on a sandbar and lose our ship and precious cargo altogether.

So I sat on deck, under the shade of one of the spare boats hanging above, studying languages and sweating like a coal miner. Chains rattled and cries came from below, but I was beginning to understand that the racket was a constant bother I’d have to tolerate. Until we were safe at sea and out of sight of land, none of the slaves would be allowed on deck; otherwise, I was told, they’d try to jump overboard and swim back to shore. It was an unhappy arrangement, but would soon right itself. The faster, the better, in my opinion. I felt rotten for them, remembering my time aboard the
Hope
, and the horror of steerage.

While I’d been upriver, Uncle had encouraged me to begin a journal of African words and phrases, seeing as I’d a gift for languages. It was this journal I studied now, determined to be able to talk to the slaves and African slave traders directly on future voyages.

I was scratching a mosquito bite when the cabin boy, Billy Dorsett, approached me.

Up until now I’d distanced myself from the crew, not wanting to become too friendly with such a shifty-eyed, foulmouthed bunch—although, I admitted, it was quite lonesome with just Jonas and Uncle to talk to. Frankly, there were many nights I lay awake wishing I’d a friend, begging God for a
real
friend, someone my own age, someone who liked my company—a companionship I’d never experienced before. But Billy Dorsett wasn’t my friend of choice, nor would he ever be, not if I’d anything to say about it. I hoped God hadn’t sent Billy as the answer to my prayer. He was about as pleasing as a horsefly in the eye.