Voyage of Midnight (6 page)

“This will smart,” he warned me, and I could tell by the slur in his voice that he was half-seas over.

“Just keep the needle steady, will you?”

He grabbed my earlobe with a filthy hand and stabbed it.

I was unprepared for the wave of pain that quickly drained the blood from my head, turning my bones and the stool beneath me to rubber.

Jonas moved to the other side. “Brace yourself, boy, here comes the other one.”

I bit my lip. My heart fluttered. My eyes watered. But within minutes, to my pride, two gold earrings were dangling from my earlobes.

Jonas bent close. His breath smelled like the bilge. “Well, I’ll be. Never knew till now how much you look like Captain Towne.”

“Do I?”

“Aye. Both of you look like right scoundrels, you do.” He burst into his donkey-bray laugh and placed the needle back in its pouch.

I held up a mirror.

Do I truly look like Uncle?

Indeed, I saw the same blue eyes, the same mouth, the same nose, the same dark brown hair. And no longer was I the pale, wan lad of yesteryear. During the weeks of life at sea, my skin had weathered. Under my curly hair, a dab of blood trickled
down each side of my neck. But peering closely into the mirror at my earrings and at the fresh wounds behind them, I became aware that I wasn’t the only figure reflected. Over my shoulder, staring at me from behind my back, was Pea Soup. And simmering in his eyes and written upon his face, I saw it clearly—an emotion so intense, so naked, that the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

Hatred
.

I whirled about.

But Pea Soup merely stared at the deck, his face blank, sweeping with his broom.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

During the first part of April, we sailed along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It was the beginning of the rainy season, and the rain fell in torrents. The wind, punctuated by squalls, gusted from our port quarter, pushing us along at a furious rate.

Africa …

I could scarcely wait to arrive. The very name of that dark, mysterious continent stirred my soul and promised excitement and wealth, despite the fact that I was now a smuggler as well as a master, speculator, and entrepreneur.

The whole crew seemed on edge. Tempers rose. Fights erupted. On account of the rains, those not on duty were confined to the lower deck, where the men sweated and stank like old cheese. Jonas and I took refuge in our cabin. I took to wearing white cotton pantaloons and a loose linen shirt, having received several of each as parting gifts from Mr. Emmanuel Fitch. Still, I sweated in the claustrophobic heat. Billy Dorsett asked if I’d an extra set of cottons he could borrow, but I fibbed and said it was my only one, and didn’t he have something important to do?

On the morning of the seventh day, the rains abruptly ceased. I emerged onto a steaming deck, blinking like a sewer rat, the sun piercing the backs of my eyes. A sweltering, damp breeze blew over the
Formidable
, smelling of wet wood, salted sea, and earth. On the horizon, still miles away, a line of land stretched as far east and west as the eye could see. It appeared flat, and without feature.

“Africa,” announced my uncle. He stood beside me and placed an arm companionably about my shoulder.

“The delta of the river Bonny,” I replied, for although the weather had been rotten, I’d continued to assist my uncle with navigation and knew our destination.

“Beware, beware the Bight of Benin: One comes out, where fifty went in.…”

“Excuse me?” I stared at my uncle.

He burst out laughing. “Just an old saying,” he said jovially, thumping me between the shoulder blades. Then he turned and began issuing orders as the crew scurried about, flinging themselves up and down the shrouds and across the yards like monkeys. He posted lookouts, ordering them to keep a weather eye out for any distant sail.

“But we’re safe, right?” I said to Jonas, who’d joined me at the rail. “If it’s a British warship, we fly the Stars and Stripes. If it’s an American warship, we fly the Spanish flag. Right, Jonas? We’re safe, aren’t we?”

Jonas shrugged. “Safe enough. The law says they have to catch you with slaves aboard, otherwise they have to let you go.” His yellow, protruding eyes gazed sharply out to sea, this way, that way; his fingers drummed the rail. “All the same, boy, best just to steer clear and avoid trouble altogether. Don’t want them even knowing we’re in the neighborhood.”

We thankfully saw no sign of sail, and the
Formidable
made
good course for the outermost shoals, which extended miles seaward of the delta, creating a frightful surf. Here we navigated a channel that led to the great estuary, all the while with the sounding lead in hand to measure the depths, for the estuary was very shallow and dangerous.

After anxiously waiting for the flood tide, our clipper-brig
Formidable
scraped over the bar and sailed up the waters of the Bonny, a river half as broad and deep as the Mississippi. We sailed past Bonny Town, shaded by coconut palms and plantain and banana trees, and past a dozen legitimate traders anchored in the waterway. As we sailed, a number of Africans paddled out in a large canoe and boarded our vessel. They seemed pleased to see Uncle, and he likewise to see them. (He was a very important man, I was learning.) For a price, they’d pilot us upriver to our destination.

Two hours later we cautiously worked our way under easy sail into one of the many creeks that fed the Bonny.

Dense forests of mangroves lined the water’s edge. Birds took to flight as our tall masts skimmed by. Finally, when the sounding lead revealed only three and a half fathoms of water, we put down the helm and dropped anchor.

T
he next morning, my uncle, Jonas, eight sailors armed with muskets, and I set off up the creek in the big canoe, with the Africans paddling.

Heat rose in sultry waves. Insects chorused, and clouds of mosquitoes droned about me. I swatted them away, grateful that one of the Africans had suggested I rub my body with palm oil to prevent their bites. But the palm oil had other effects. My clothes, freshly laundered the night before, were now oily and clinging to me. I wished I could bathe in the creek, but Uncle told me to beware: the creek teemed with crocodiles and man-eating sharks. Put one toe in the water and they’d eat you alive.

I clutched the gunwale and peered into the murky water. A snake swam by. And
deeper, a blackish gray shape, seven feet or longer, kept pace with our canoe. I saw another. And another.
Blimey! Sharks?
I glanced at Jonas, who was sitting beside me. Sweat was trickling into his eyes. He blinked and wiped his face on his sleeve, panting a bit. He didn’t look so well. Come to think of it, I didn’t feel so well either. I sat rigidly, sweating like a beast, and prayed that our canoe was stout.

The noon sky was clouded over and my stomach was growling by the time we pulled up onto a clearing nestled between mangrove swamps. Two buildings constructed of cane poles wrapped in vines and daubed with mud stood in the center.

The Africans who were guarding the buildings greeted us, and we disembarked. One of the Africans from Bonny Town served as interpreter.

“We’ve come to buy slaves,” my uncle told the leader.

“We have plenty of slaves for you,” he was informed. “I am the king’s representative. First you make generous gift to King Pepple and then we bring slaves out so you can have a look.”

After gifts of handkerchiefs, chintz fabric, silk, cotton, beer, and brandy were ceremoniously presented, the afternoon was a parade of human flesh. My uncle, in shirt and duck trousers, with a palm-leaf hat and his rattan cane, walked up and down the fettered queues, smoking his cigar. Men, women, boys, and girls—hundreds of them—stood stark naked before him. “Look here,” Uncle said as I tagged along behind him. “You must open their mouths and look at their teeth and smell their breath. Rotted teeth and fetid breath are signs of ill health. We want only healthy negroes.”

And as we peered into this mouth and that mouth—Jonas too—a hard knot formed in my stomach and a queasiness stole over me like a thief.

What’s wrong with me?
I wondered.
Something I ate?

“See this one?” Uncle was saying, poking the slave of interest with his rattan cane. “See the gray hair, both on the head and the privy parts? He’s quite old. Won’t survive the journey over, and I daresay no one would buy him even if he did.” With a snap of his fingers, he ordered the man removed from the queue. “The children? They’re like little trout. If they don’t come up to here in height, we don’t want them. No babies.”

First Jonas, then Uncle, pinched and slapped each one’s flesh, squeezing their muscles and buttocks and probing their armpits. They ordered them to raise their arms, to jump, to dance, to turn about, to speak, to breathe deeply, and to cough. “See that one?” said Uncle to me. “Weak leg. Don’t want him. And this one? She’s coughing. She’ll need treatment before we can accept her. Generally speaking, though, they’re prime stock. Yes, prime stock indeed. Should make the passage without too much bother.” Here, as Jonas moved on, Uncle paused and pierced me with his blue-eyed gaze. “Something the matter, Nephew?”

“I—I don’t know, really. I feel ill. Must’ve eaten something rotten.” I covered my stomach with my hand and grimaced, suddenly wishing Uncle would order me back to the
Formidable
.

Uncle studied me a while longer before he sighed and clasped an arm about my shoulder. We began to stroll past the rows of slaves. “Maybe it’s indigestion; maybe it’s not,” he was saying. “I won’t lie to you, Philip. Slaving isn’t easy. I started in the business when I was twelve—”

“You were only
twelve?”
I looked at my uncle with new eyes, feeling an even greater bond between us.

“Yes indeed. I was hardly taller than your shoe strap. Didn’t know anything more about it than you do now. Took me a couple of years to harden up to it, to become a man. It’s a man’s business, no doubt about it, a business no one with sensibility
should attend, but it must be done just the same. A necessary evil, so to speak.”

“A necessary evil?” I blinked, confused.

“You see, Philip, slavery is a way of life here in Africa. Natural order of their society. Been going on for thousands of years. The tribes continually fight among themselves, taking prisoners of war and forcing them into slavery. All these people you see in front of you? They’re prisoners of war. It’s a sad situation, to be sure. So, if you follow my reasoning, if
we
didn’t take the slaves, then the Africans would just enslave the prisoners—or, more likely, dispatch them as surplus population.”

“Dispatch them?”

“Kill them.”

“Oh.”

“They’ve only so much food and water to go about, you know. So really, we’re doing the slaves a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Saving their lives, in a way.” He gestured about him with his cane. “Look at the conditions these people live in—the swamps, the mosquitoes, even sharks in their bloody rivers. They’re savages. Ignorant, naked savages. Half of them are cannibals. Believe me, once they reach civilization, they’ll be better off and thank us.”

I chewed my lip, pondering. “Do you really think so?”

“I know so.” Uncle smiled. Again he gestured about him, cigar smoke trailing his arm in a gray plume. “Would
you
want to live like this?”

“No,” I answered truthfully.

“Then you agree we’re doing them a favor?”

Eyeing the rows of slaves, naked, dusted with dirt, living out their lives in a godforsaken savage land, I thought how different
they’d look once they took up life in America. They’d have clothes, learn to speak English, attend Mass at Saint Louis Cathedral, perhaps even go to Mr. Gallagher’s shop to have a prescription filled for their master or mistress. It was a comforting thought. And then they wouldn’t be enslaved in Africa, or killed as surplus population. “Yes, Uncle, we’re doing them a favor.”

“Then it’s settled.” Uncle took one more puff from his cigar, then flicked it onto the sand, where it lay smoking. “Feeling better?”

I smiled, realizing that, indeed, my queasiness was gone. “Much.”

“That’s my lad,” he said, releasing me.

Just then a gust of wind blew through the mangroves and rustled the buildings’ palm-leaf roofs. Uncle clamped a hand on his hat to keep it from blowing away as he recommenced moving down the queue. I hastened after, but not before a heavy rain, with droplets fat as shillings, began to fall, putting out Uncle’s cigar with a smoky sizzle.

For the next few days, as rainwater turned the ground to mud, Uncle carried out his negotiations.

More trade goods from the
Formidable
began to arrive—hogsheads, crates, and bales, stacked on cane pallets and covered with tarpaulins. Some of the crates were broken open and the contents examined as carefully by the Africans as we examined our cargo of slaves. Were it not for the rain and the sense of secrecy regarding our illegal task, the entire event would’ve had the air of a marketplace, bustling and commercial.