Voyage of Midnight (11 page)

Pea Soup speaks English
.

T
he air was hot as a kiln. A sultry breeze whispered over the deck, this way, that way, seeming undecided whether to move us forward or backward, forcing the crew to trim the yards again and again.

Finally the slaves were allowed to come on deck. As it was one of my few moments of rest and relaxation, I leaned against the bulwarks, watching as, two by two, the Africans crawled out of the hold. Day after day, while we’d finished loading our cargo and subsequently battled with the American cruiser (the British cruiser we never saw again), the slaves had been locked below, without fresh air other than what filtered through the grated hatch coverings. Now, six days after our escape out of the Bonny, they were a miserable lot, moaning
and crying and gasping, some so bent they could hardly stand, all of them covered with filth, their stench unbearable. At the sight of them, my breast swelled with pity. I couldn’t have endured it, except I knew that from now on the slaves would be able to take their air and exercise.
From now on
, I told myself,
all will be well
.

I’d been in the hold, twice. On the day we’d first received slaves into our hold, I’d followed Jonas as he visited them in his capacity as ship’s surgeon. But no sooner had I stepped off the companionway into the suffocating darkness than, to my embarrassment, my chest had tightened and I couldn’t breathe, as if someone were squeezing the life out of me. “Jonas,” I managed to say. That was the last thing I remember as I fainted dead away, lantern glass shattering, candle wax spattering. I lasted five minutes before fainting again the next time. After that, Jonas went into the hold without me.

When Jonas found any indisposed, they were carried to the bow of the vessel, to a room under the fo’c’sle that was reserved as the slaves’ infirmary, where I waited, damp with sweat, and where proper remedies could be applied. We administered calomel for digestive upsets, sulfur for skin disorders and chronic catarrhs, salves for festered sores acquired from lying upon a hard surface without relief, and more, until the infirmary became a blur of vials, spoons, and powders. During it all, Jonas kept a bottle of brandy near him, gulping it down whenever his hands shook, or if I talked too much, or if someone screeched in his ear.

Now the breeze ruffled my hair, hot as a fever. More slaves crawled from the hold, until over three hundred fifty milled about. With a signal from the first mate, Billy Dorsett climbed atop a spare boat, tuned a fiddle, then scraped the bow back and forth a few times before plunging into a merry jingle. I’d thought him too dull for such fine music-making.

“Dance!” cried Jack Numbly, the first mate, mimicking what he wanted the slaves to do. “Dance!”

Billy played louder. Surrounded by crew and with a few cracks of the whip, the slaves began to move. Chains clanked. Black skins glistened with sweat. Hot tar oozed from the deck seams, blackening their callused feet. Many slaves grimaced with pain. Others appeared sullen, as if they didn’t want to dance. Most watched us warily, as if fearful of what we intended.

I watched until Uncle spied me and approached, looking pleased as a butter-fed fox, rubbing his hands together. “Fine-looking lot, eh?”

“Yes, Uncle,” I agreed, knowing that, miserable though they appeared at present, a few days of exercise and air would do them wonders.

The second mate, McGuire, joined us by the bulwarks, whip coiled on his hip, pistol in his holster. Though a chap of handsome proportions, McGuire wasn’t much for words. As usual, he said nothing, just leaned against the bulwarks and, like us, watched the slaves dance.

“Doctor’s orders, isn’t that right, Philip, my lad?” said Uncle. “Keeps them limber by exercising those stiffened joints and muscles. And if that isn’t jolly well good enough, the fine fiddle music helps to civilize them, which eventually contributes to their overall happiness in life. What’s the condition of the hold, McGuire?”

“It don’t smell like Paradise Street in Liverpool, I’ll tell you that much, Captain,” McGuire replied.

Uncle lighted a cigar, blew out the match, and then said, “It’s a comfort to me, McGuire, to know that our influence has a civilizing effect upon their savage natures. That without our influence, these brutes would live and die as mere animals, knowing not their Creator nor their purpose or proper station in life.”

“Aye, sir. I’m sure you’re right, sir.”

“It’s a mercy that we’ve fetched them aboard.”

“Aye, sir.”

“See to it that the men—black or white—do not mingle with the women. I’ll not be responsible for a passel of spotted pups running round. It’s indecent.”

“Aye, sir.”

McGuire left, and Uncle clapped me on the back. “Well, it’s been a pleasure, but it’s back to business, eh?”

As Uncle went aft, I glimpsed Pea Soup, his ankle shackled to that of another male slave. Within minutes of my near-death escape, Pea Soup had been confined in the hold along with the other slaves. Even after just a few days in such conditions, I was shocked by the change in him. His head was bowed to his chest; he scuffled his feet; filth matted his hair; he seemed thinner.

Seeing him, I broke out in a fresh sweat. Ever since he’d tried to kill me, Pea Soup’s face had snarled in my dreams. Every time I closed my eyes, he spat at me. Sank his dreadful, pointed teeth into my neck. Said those horrid words, “Tonight you will die!” over and over, until I gasped awake every few minutes. Why did Pea Soup hate me so? What had I ever done to deserve death at his hands? But now … seeing him in such a deplorable state
 … Perhaps he’s learned his lesson
, I thought, feeling the familiar stir of pity. But even so, I couldn’t bring myself to release him. Not yet.

Instead, I returned to the infirmary, only to find Jonas lying senseless on a pallet, empty bottle smashed on the floor, rats poking about the shards.

Over the next couple of days, while Jonas and I labored feverishly, the holds were scoured. Hot vinegar fumes wisped through every crack and cranny of the vessel, chasing away rotten odors and filling the infirmary with a suffocating heat.

“Never mind washing the crockery,” Jonas ordered. “Leave it for later. Have we any clean spoons? No? And where the devil is my brandy? And stop making so much racket! A man can hardly think.”

After piling the crockery and utensils for washing later and scooping the laundry into a pile high as the Tower of Babel, I set about sewing a gash on a slave’s hip. According to Jonas, the man had gotten it in a scuffle. He was now unconscious, lying on his stomach. A crisscross of whip marks bloodied his back, which, Jonas said, was the price of scuffling. (I
did
wonder why the price of scuffling had to be so
bloody.)

Jonas stood on the other side of the pallet, his brandy breath strong, his face like wax in the yellow candlelight. Taking a moment to steady myself, I poked the needle in, glancing at Jonas to see if I was doing it right. The patient twitched. Sweat trickled down the sides of my face, under the bandanna covering my nose and mouth. I caught the other side of the flesh with the needle and pulled the thread tight. After several more stitches, the wound began to close.

“That’s it,” breathed Jonas. “You’ve got it. One or two more stitches should do the trick.”

I pulled the last stitch and knotted it. Jonas snipped the thread with scissors.

“Right, then.” I pulled my bandanna down, yawning and stretching, for it was very late. I hoped Jonas would dismiss me. “Another patient finished.”

Straightening up, Jonas steadied himself on his feet, casting a glance about at the dozen or so patients lying on their pallets. He closed his eyes. Opened them. Focused them unsteadily on me. He spoke, his voice oddly different. “It never changes, this—this madness. One after another after another, till all the faces swim together and you can’t see nothing but flesh.”

For a second I stared at him, not sure I’d understood such a speech coming from bug-eyed, donkey-bray Jonas. “But doesn’t—doesn’t it get better? Soon? Now that they’re exercising and taking the air?”

He gestured toward the man’s bloody back. “Does it look like it’s getting better?”

“But Uncle says—”

“Your uncle says a lot of things.”

A vague doubt niggled through my breast, wormlike, as if it’d always been there, waiting, gnawing.
Jonas is right—it’s not getting better. It’s getting worse
. But as quickly as the doubt surfaced, I pushed it away.
No, Jonas is just an old drunk. Uncle is right. Uncle is always right.… Isn’t he?

Jonas reached for his bottle, knocking it over. The golden liquid dripped from the table onto the floor. Cursing, he kicked the bottle across the room, where it shattered against a bulkhead. He winced and put a hand to his forehead. “I used to be a respected surgeon,” he wheezed. “Now what am I? Huh? Tell me what I am.”

But I’d no answer for him, finding his comments unsettling, and after I cleaned up the broken glass and washed a few spoons, he finally dismissed me for the night.

Twice a day the Africans received their meals: at eight in the morning and at four in the afternoon. They gathered about their various tubs, ten to a mess, using the wooden spoons fastened about their necks. For the most part, they were fed beans and rice mixed with palm oil and seasoned with pepper and salt. Their favorite, though, was peeled yams, cut up thin and boiled with pounded sailor’s biscuit.

All male slaves were kept shackled in pairs as a precaution,
while the women and children roamed freely so long as they stayed on the quarterdeck, away from the slave men. Some of the women were put on the forward deck to assist the cook. The first time these slaves set eyes upon the giant cooking cauldrons, they set up such a wail that I was certain we could be heard all the way to China. Some fainted. Some tried to leap overboard before they could be subdued. “They think we’re gonna eat them,” Billy had told me, his smug expression making me want to punch him, virtuoso or not.

“Oh, really?” I said dryly. “Perhaps with a bit of rum and sailor’s biscuit?”

He shrugged. “Ask your uncle. He’ll tell you I’m right.”

Later, Uncle confirmed what Billy had said. “They’re like children, really,” he explained with a cockeyed grin. “Believing any silly tale, no matter how preposterous.”

Thankfully, the Africans calmed once they saw us cooking rice and beans in the cauldrons.

Each morning after breakfast, all slaves were made to wash their hands and faces, clean their teeth with sticks, and rinse out their mouths with vinegar. For the ill, Jonas and I provided hearty soups, port wine mixed with sugar, and an additional meal at noon.

Then, in the evening, before the crew began stowing the slaves in the hold, several pipes of tobacco were lighted and allowed to be shared among the slave men. One of the slave men was Ikoro.

Billy had told me that all the fight had been branded out of Ikoro, the warrior who’d branded me—that you could poke him with a sharp stick and nothing would happen. But I’d not believed it till now. He was meek and obedient as a lamb: dancing when ordered, eating when ordered, moving from here to
there when ordered, taking his turn at the pipe. Indeed, Ikoro appeared ready to accept his parcel in life. Perhaps this was, as Uncle said, evidence of our civilizing effect. In all my times of scurrying back and forth on various errands, Ikoro never once glanced at me, and I truly believed he’d forgotten the incident between us.

I sincerely hoped so, for it was an incident best forgotten.

“Y
ou see, Philip,” said my uncle one evening as we supped together in his cabin, his mouth full of roasted chicken, “what did I tell you? The slaves are well cared for, and if we can last the next seven weeks or so without disease, we’ll have made a tidy sum for our efforts, even if we lose a few here and there.”

The evening air, cool and breezy, swirled through the open stern windows. I sipped my wine, intoxicated by the smell of fermented grapes and our greasy dinner. “How much is a tidy sum, I wonder?”

Uncle shrugged. “Buy a slave for twenty dollars in Africa, or in goods worth that amount, then sell him for as much as fifteen hundred dollars—even twenty-five
hundred—in New Orleans.” He laughed when he saw my expression of amazement. “So don’t fret, Philip, my lad, there’ll be plenty for all of us.”