So intently did she listen to the young priest that Father João reported enthusiastically to his superiors, “We are making many converts in the barracoon. The girl who calls herself Luta is ready to embrace the true religion.”
So in the late afternoon of a day which had seen both storms and blazing heat, two older Jesuits appeared in the barracoon, stepping gingerly among the lazing bodies until they reached the spot where Luta stood in chains. Moving her two companions aside as far as their chains would permit, the priests addressed her and asked if she was prepared to accept Christ as her preceptor. When she nodded, they expressed true joy of spirit and told her that Jesus would now take her into His personal charge, and that she would know life everlasting. Her trials on earth she would be able to bear because of the paradise that would follow hereafter; in her new home she would find God’s love and attention.
They then blessed her and asked her to kneel, which she did with difficulty, since her chain-companions had to kneel with her. This in turn caused the slaves attached to those two to kneel, until at last all the surviving blacks of this chain were on their knees while the girl Luta was taken into the church. Cudjo, who had to get down with the rest, would have objected if the recipient of this grace had been anyone but Luta; he felt that if she needed this assurance, he would do nothing to distress her.
“You are now a child of God, the beloved of Jesus,” the older priest intoned, and after he left, the twenty-five slaves got up off their knees and the two men chained to Luta looked at her with special interest to see if the blessings of the priests had in any way affected her. They could detect only the quiet resignation she had always manifested.
A curious change now came over the blacks in the barracoon: they had grown so satiated with the mindless routine of storm and sun, they began hoping that the thing the priests called a ship might come to Luanda. No one in the pens could imagine what new terrors this ship might bring, but they sought it. Cudjo was actually hungry for change.
At dawn on the second day of August a ship of much different character arrived off Luanda. It was low and sleek. Its sails were rigged in the hermaphrodite manner—four very large jibs attached to the long bowsprit, four square sails at the foremast, two fore-and-aft at the main—which meant that it could exact the maximum advantage from any wind. The main thing, however, was the impression it created of meaning business; the slave dealers on shore told each other, “Now something will happen.”
By eight o’clock that morning a small boat let down from the ship, darted into a cove and deposited on shore an older man, stooped of shoulder and slow of gait, but his arrival reassured the slavers. “This one means to buy,” they said as he walked purposefully along the shore.
“Hello,” he said as he came to the square, “I’m Goodbarn, from the Ariel, Captain Turlock.”
“We recognized you,” the chief agent said.
The visitor fell into a rattan chair and asked, for a drink. He seemed tired and much aged since they last saw him, so they were not surprised when he said, “This is our last trip. We’re going to load maximum and strike for a big profit.”
“The barracoons are filled.”
“We want no old, no sick.”
“For you, Mr. Goodbarn, we have hundreds of strong young niggers.”
“We’re going to load four hundred and sixty below-decks. And we’ll risk fifty-seven topside. Those must be in chains so we can bolt them down.”
“Large shipment,” the agent said.
“We intend to retire rich.”
“How old is Silverfist?”
“Well past sixty, but you’d never know it.”
“When do you propose loading?”
“Today.”
“That would be impossible.”
“You said they were waiting.”
“Yes, but we couldn’t get the red chair set up in time.”
“To hell with the red chair,” Goodbarn said. He was tired and even more eager than his captain to be done with this last gamble.
“Without the red chair, there will be no departure of slaves from this port, I can tell you that.”
“When can we do it?”
“Tomorrow, but what plans have you for slipping into shore?”
Goodbarn took a long drink of warm beer, held it in his mouth and looked out toward the bay. “We came here in 1814 to refit the Ariel for slaving ... for that one trip. Eighteen years later we’re still slaving, telling ourselves this is the last trip.” He looked about cautiously and indicated that he wished to speak alone with the agent. “You asked what our plans are? Captain Turlock reasons that some spy on shore is flashing signals to the British patrol. Don’t laugh. Nothing else explains the promptness of their reaction whenever we attempt a landing.”
“Quite impossible,” the agent said. “The Portuguese officials—”
“So what we’re going to do is pay a Spanish captain to make a false run some miles up the coast. The Bristol will follow and we’ll sweep in.”
“The English commander’s too clever for that trap.”
“It won’t be a trap. Because today you will march three hundred slaves north to where the Spaniard might land. And if the Bristol refuses to follow, the Spaniard loads his slaves, sells them in Havana and splits with us. However, my good friend, we’ll make this so real that the Bristol will have to sail north.”
“Who pays for marching the slaves ... in case the Bristol trails them?”
“I do. We have a great risk in this voyage, a great chance of profit. Captain Turlock is always ready to pay money to make money.” And he poured onto the table a small pile of silver coins.
When the dealer hefted them, counted them and considered the complicated offer being made he nodded, then called to the others, “We can move the red chair out tomorrow. The Ariel will load five hundred and seventeen at nine o’clock.”
At noon three hundred other slaves started marching north to serve as decoy; at one Father João spotted them and flashed a signal to the British; at two the Bristol sailed north.
In the barracoons the slaves from which the Ariel would select her cargo were carefully readied for shipment. Each received a bucketful of fetid water in the face, another in the middle of the back. Additional buckets were left standing in the center for those who wished to cleanse themselves further; Cudjo and Luta did so. While they were washing, priests brought in extra tubs of food, something that had never happened before, and Cudjo whispered, “They want us to look clean and healthy. Tomorrow we’ll be sold.” That night the slaves went to sleep knowing that in the morning something of significance must happen.
At dawn they were marched out of the barracoons and down to the wharf, where Cudjo saw for the first time a burly redheaded old man with a silver knob for his left hand; and the imperial way the man stood, shoulders stooped but eyes flashing, indicated that he was master. When Cudjo observed the manner in which other whites deferred to him, he whispered to the slaves on his chain, “Watch out for that one.”
Now the old man moved with precision down the long files of unshackled blacks, accepting some, rejecting others: “Yes, yes, yes, not that one.” From the assured manner in which he made his decisions, Cudjo guessed that he had often engaged in this process.
When he had approved some four hundred blacks, he turned briskly to those in chains, but before he started down the line he called to another elderly man in a black suit—“Goodbarn,” Cudjo heard him say—and together they inspected the sturdy slaves. They accepted most, but when the big man came to the slave next to Cudjo, a big fellow who had been ailing since he reached the barracoon, he saw at once that this one was not a good risk, and he indicated that he must be removed from the chain, but Goodbarn, if that was his name, explained why this could not be done, and the big man shrugged his shoulders.
He now came to Cudjo, and for some inexplicable reason grabbed him by the chin, stared into his dark eyes and said something to his associate. He obviously did not like wh
at he saw in Cudjo’s face, and again asked if both Cudjo and the ailing slave could be cut loose, but Goodbarn said no. With his hand still at Cudjo’s chin he growled some warning and thrust the slave back.
When he finished checking the chained slaves, he ordered Mr. Goodbarn to assemble all he had approved; he marched with them, nodding his head and saying short words to Goodbarn. Then he withdrew a short distance, surveyed the mob and nodded. The purchase was agreed upon.
Now the spiritual part of the long voyage from the Xanga villages began. The five hundred and seventeen chosen slaves were herded into a small area, where they stood with their backs to the sea facing a handsome red chair which had been placed on bales of merchandise, forming a kind of rude open-air cathedral. To it came a procession of priests making way for a tall and somber man dressed in red. When he had been assisted onto the platform containing the chair, he raised his hands and the crowd fell silent.
“You are about to start a journey to an unknown land,” he said in Portuguese. “But wherever your fate takes you, God will be watching over you, for you are His children. He will guide and comfort you.” He continued for some minutes, while Mr. Goodbarn fumed, always looking at the ocean. The bishop was of the opinion that the blacks were actually lucky to be making this journey, for they would be moving into areas where God prevailed, and there they would learn of His boundless charity.
But now came the significant part of the exercise, the symbolic moment which justified the establishment of the barracoon and its more or less humane management. The bishop extended his arms to their widest and cried, “In the name of Jesus Christ, I baptize you into the Holy Christian Church. If perchance you should die on the journey you are about to undertake, you will be received into heaven and sit upon the right hand of God.”
When he had finished making the sign of the cross, seven priests hurried through the massed slaves, anointing them with holy water and assuring them of life eternal. When this was completed, the bishop gave the entire assemblage his blessing, wished the ship’s crew a safe passage, and climbed down off the bales of cotton. As soon as he was gone, Mr. Goodbarn shouted, “Now get these black bastards on board. Quick!”
The slaves were turned about, to face the ocean, and for the first time they saw the ship that would carry them to the blessings of which the bishop had spoken, but they were permitted to inspect it for only a moment, because members of the ship’s crew began thumping them in the back and shouting, “Move on! Move on!”
They ran a gauntlet of sailors and slavers, all urging them toward the ship, up whose gangplank they were rushed. On deck stood Captain Turlock, his red beard flecked with gray, his silver fist shining in the hot sun. With sure eye he studied the slaves to check whether sickly substitutes had been inserted, and with a heavy swipe of his metaled hand he moved the unchained slaves toward the hold.
There Mr. Goodbarn supervised their allocation to one of the four compartments, taking pains to ensure that powerful men and possible troublemakers were sent to the lowest hold. Belowdecks a Mr. Jenkins supervised the welding of such chains as had come below, and when these men were finished with their tasks, four hundred and sixty slaves were stowed in quarters that might have accommodated sixty men in reasonable decency. The grating at the mainmast was bolted shut. The passageway between the two levels was locked. The white men climbed out on a ladder, which they drew up behind them. And the hatch leading to the deck was bolted from the outside. In gloom, and seasickness, and filth the blacks would sail.
Meanwhile, on deck, Captain Turlock was trying to do something he had never done before: find space for fifty-seven men and women, most of them in chains. These he bolted to the bulwarks, port and starboard. The others he ordered to huddle forward, with a guard instructed to shoot them if they gave trouble.
“It’s our last trip,” he told Goodbarn. “See it goes well.”
It started poorly. Father João’s false signal had sent the Bristol on a wild chase to the north, but as soon as the priest realized he had been tricked and that the Ariel had slipped into shore, he boldly unfurled a large sheet, which alerted the Bristol to the invasion. Now it came rushing south, determined to intercept the slaver before it could get out to sea.
“Bristol coming!” Captain Turlock’s lookout cried.
“All hands!” Turlock shouted, and no other orders were necessary, for each American sailor knew that he must get this clipper out of Luanda or risk years in a London jail.
With astonishing speed the crew had the Ariel ready, and while Portuguese wharfmen, eager to keep slavers coming to their port, threw off the lines, Mr. Goodbarn supervised trimming “the slaver’s delight,” as the hermaphrodite rigging was called. “If’n a morfidite can’t get you goin’ in light airs, nothin’ can.”
The Bristol, already under way, would enjoy an advantage, especially with her formidable guns, but the Ariel did not propose to allow her within range, and in the early stages of the contest nullified the Bristol’s running start by catching an offshore breeze which carried her well out to sea. Father João, watching the two ships, prayed the breeze would drop so that the slaver might be taken. But his prayer was not answered. The breeze maintained and Captain Turlock cleared the harbor.
“Raise the topsails,” he told Mr. Goodbarn, and when they were aloft, the ship leaped forward, but it had to keep to a course which brought it close to the Bristol, which had swung its guns into position.
Among the slaves bolted to the deck topside were Cudjo and Luta, and the former, always alert to what happened about him, deduced that the disciplined behavior of the American crew meant that they faced some kind of danger, so he pulled himself erect, as far as his chain would allow, and peered over the gunwale. “Oh!” he gasped, for there, not far away, he saw a much larger ship, its sails rounded with wind.
Till this day he had never seen a ship, so he could not understand its characteristics, but he knew intuitively that this other vessel was the cause of the apprehension he saw in the faces of his captors. For only a brief moment was he able to study the relative position of the two ships, for Captain Turlock bellowed, “Mr. Jenkins, get that big one down!” And Jenkins clubbed Cudjo with a belaying pin. But after he fell to the deck Cudjo was able to shout to the other blacks, “That one is trying to capture this one!”
Slaves in both gangs scrambled to their feet to see what Cudjo meant, and this concerted movement of the blacks terrified the white sailors, for they had been taught from their first day aboard the Ariel: “The thing to fear is not storms or British cruisers, but a rebellion. Stamp it out before it gets started.”
“Mr. Jenkins,” Mr. Goodbarn shouted, “knock those slaves down!”
With belaying pins the sailors swept along the gunwales, knocking the slaves away, then belaboring them as they lay on the deck. The white men had no reluctance to break heads, for they knew that a certain number of deaths could be expected, and they might have killed Cudjo except that Captain Turlock shouted, “Mr. Jenkins! Back to the lines.”
The savage beating silenced the blacks, but Cudjo continued to watch the British ship as the Ariel rolled in the open sea, disclosing a brief glimpse now and then, and he was delighted to see the other ship moving closer. But now puzzling things began to happen. A series of clever maneuvers by the man with the silver fist began to move his ship away from the pursuer. A gun, much bigger than any ever used by Abu Hassan, was fired and a bullet of immense size, judging from the sound it made, whistled through the ropes overhead.
One of the slaves chained directly to Luta looked over the gunwale and saw what was happening. “They’re firing a big gun at us!” he shouted.
“Get him down!” the captain shouted.
Deprived of their lookout, the cowering blacks could no longer follow the action, and their desire to know became so great that Cudjo defiantly stood erect—in time to see the British ship give up the chase. It fired two cannon at the fleeing Ariel, but the shots fell harmlessly into the ocean, and the
American sailors broke into a cheer.
Cudjo knew that the chase was over. He knew that this red-bearded man had unusual powers. Above all, he knew that any chance for escape was lost.
Once the Ariel cleared Africa and the lurking menace of the British cruisers, the daily routine was established. Each dawn some sailor threw several buckets of salt water over the chained blacks. About an hour later buckets of swill were placed where the slaves could feed themselves. Toward noon the covers leading to the fetid hatches were removed and a work party consisting of unchained slaves from the forward contingent was sent below to collect the bodies of any who had died during the preceding twenty-four hours. These were thrown into a rope basket, which was hauled aloft and emptied over the side of the ship; on several occasions young men and women chained aft would spot the corpses of their parents.
At dusk the swill buckets were again brought out, but the constant motion of the ship was so sickening to the slaves that most of them, including Cudjo, became violently ill at each sight of food. They vomited and excreted and then lay in the filth until the morning bucket of water sluiced at least some of it away. Cudjo, growing constantly thinner, wondered what the conditions below must be. He found only two clues: at noon, when the hatch covers were removed, the heated stench was so awful that the white sailors kept wet rags about their noses, and once when the slaves forward went down to drag out the corpses, they passed Cudjo and he asked, “What’s it like?” and an old man said, “Let them kill you up here.”
Sick as he was, Cudjo followed with intense interest everything that happened on deck. He began to appreciate Captain Turlock’s capacities, and how he varied the set of his sails. He understood the duties of the helmsman and even learned the English words used to direct his actions: “Steady on” when the ship’s wake showed indecision, or “Hard starboard” when the great boom was to be swung to the other side in order to catch the breeze more efficiently. He was able to determine the relative importance of the sailors, and who it was that took command when the captain slept. He learned the bells and spent many fruitless hours trying to determine what was in the black box before the tiller that the captain and the helmsman studied so attentively. It did not yet occur to him that this had to do with direction, for he always knew where north was except when fog settled upon the ocean, but he did notice that the white men consulted this box much more frequently at those times when he himself was disoriented, and from this observation he reached one conclusion: the black box had something to do with preventing the ship from becoming lost. Abu Hassan had once brought to the Xanga villages a trading product that had stupefied and delighted them: a magnet with a collection of iron filings. Only once had Cudjo been allowed to work the magnet before the filings were lost, but its mystery had stayed with him. He now concluded that in the secret box there must be a magnet which pulled the ship in the right direction.