The Voyage of Promise (11 page)

Here the good Alderman took his handkerchief from his waistcoat and wiped his misty eyes.

“I must suppress my own feelings,” he said, “and act upon prudence. And so must each of you.”

“Slave trash, that’s all ye be!” Lukas said with disgust to the smattering of Africans left behind. “Nothing to do but season ye fer the final scramble and hope fer a little bit of somethin’ fer me trouble.”

He gave a hard shove to Safya and Tawnia, who were tied together. Tawnia stumbled forward, jerking the less agile Safya to her knees. Lukas gave Safya a vicious kick and hissed, “Git to yer feet, woman!”

Cabeto jumped to help the two, but Lukas raised his lash and brought it down hard across Cabeto’s bare back—once, then again. Before he could bring the lash down a third time, Captain Hudson yelled, “Lukas! You beat his back raw and mark him as a troublemaker, and we might just as well abandon him with the rest of the refuse slaves. It’s hard enough to sell lame. Impossible to sell lame trouble!”

It was with disgust that Captain Hudson looked over the remaining slaves he had to offer—a lame man, a scarred and maimed troublemaker, a woman past her prime, and the young one, hardly more than a child, who would not stop her sobbing.

“You are worth almost nothing to me now,” he said with disgust. “Do not test my patience, or I will throw the lot of you to the sharks!”

“I do hope and wish to be amongst the foremost in the cause of humanity, and in opposition to every type of oppression,” Mister Cruger said when he got his chance to speak. “But should the House of Commons decide to recommend abolishing the trade, then everyone who sustains loss by that decision—from merchants to planters—must needs be reimbursed for those losses.” He paused to allow his hearers to comprehend the gravity of his words. “The people have been taught to associate everything cruel and oppressive with the trade,” he continued, “but from my knowledge and the evidence I have seen, that has been greatly overcharged.”

That night, locked in irons in a room with other “refuse”— some sick, some injured, some dying, some simply with no more will to live—Cabeto called:

“Sunba.”

“I am here, brother.”

“Safya.”

“Yes, I am here.”

“Tawnia.”

Sobs.

“Tawnia, answer,” Cabeto said gently.

“Yes,” wept the tender child’s voice. “Yes, I am here.”

W
ake up!” Nathaniel Greenway growled. He administered a swift kick to bosun Alexander Collins, who lay sprawled in a circle of lines, his head thrown back, snoring softly. “You are supposed to be standing watch!”

Collins jumped to and pulled himself upright. “Just catching me a quick wink, is all,” he said, doing his best to stifle a yawn.

“And what do you suppose Captain Ross would have to say about you over here fast asleep?” Greenway asked. “You just may find yourself on the receiving end of the cat instead of the giving end.”

“This is not a warship,” Collins answered, giving way to both the yawn and a full-body stretch. “Look about you and you will see that not much happens at this hour.”

“And if it did, you would be the last to know!”

Nathaniel Greenway was always, and in all ways, a man of the rule book. It rubbed him raw that this rude, snappish seventeen-year-old managed to get by with such a careless approach to his duties and still retain so high a position on the ship. Everyone knew it was because he was the nephew of
a major investor. The nepotism that allowed such a travesty rankled Nate Greenway no end.

“It is officers such as yourself that doom ships to the bottom of the sea,” Nate snapped.

Alex laughed. “Old men worry too much,” he said. Still, he went to work instead of going back to sleep, and that did bring Nate a small degree of satisfaction.

It was four in the morning, and Nate had to grudgingly admit that all was exceedingly quiet. The seas were calm under a waning moon, and the winds extraordinarily peaceful. Only the occasional sound of footfalls somewhere on deck broke the monotony of the gentle slap, slap, slap of waves against the hull. Men busy at their jobs checking the sails and making necessary adjustments. Sailors carrying on even though the officer in charge of them slept. Disgraceful! Nate Greenway would never allow himself to nap on duty. Never, no matter how calm the night or how heavy his eyes.

Actually, on this particular night Nate welcomed solitude. The whole matter of the crew’s disagreeable attitude, and then of Captain Ross’s refusal to address his part in what was becoming the tone of the ship, had him totally confounded. Upset him, even. To be quite honest, he was rather irritated at the whole lot of them. Greenway stretched his arms over the railing and gazed out at the tranquil sea.

And you have great experience as captain of a ship, I assume?
That was what Captain Ross had said when Nate dared take the brave step of bringing the simmering troubles to his attention. And the captain had said it in a most rude way too. Insulting, actually. Even mocking.

And what was his snappish comeback when Nate had tried to explain the reasons for his concern? Oh, yes. Captain Ross had said:
“You will do well, Mister Greenway, to tend to your
charts and navigational instruments and allow me to tend to the men on my ship.”

It was a quiet night filled with unrest and disquiet, with deep sleep and deeper shadows. A careless watch officer who thought nothing of sleeping on his job was followed by an exasperated watch officer who turned his back to the ship and lost himself in bitterness and angry resentments. It was the perfect night. Sam and Billy recognized it immediately, and they were quick to seize the moment.

They swiftly cobbled together the last pieces of their plan, then all they had to do was lay low until Officer Greenway’s bunk mate, Officer Brandt, started out on his nightly rounds. Alex Collins was right when he said that a merchant ship was not a warship. On a warship, officers would never dare grow so complacent. Nor would they be so careless.

While the half of the crew who were not on watch duty were supposed to be asleep, peacefully swaying in their hammocks in their berth below decks, and as most of the officers did indeed sleep, two shadows—one tall and shaggy and the other stout—moved furtively through the darkened deck.

Fiddle-playing Jake wasn’t the only crewman recently out of Newgate Prison. In his writings, Samuel Johnson described life in jail as worse than life at sea, but Mister Johnson obviously never had an extended stay in Newgate. For the fact was that those unfortunate enough to be thrown into the filth and disease and unbearable stench of that wretched place could be forgiven for longing for the cleansing winds of the open sea. And captains, desperate to supply their ships with a crew, were eager enough to fill the lists with any available strong backs and able bodies, few questions asked.

Sam had served even more time in prison than Jake, dodging the gallows for five years at Newgate after being found guilty of the crime of picking pockets. He made good use of
his sentence by extending his craft to include picking locks. Billy would have been incarcerated at Newgate as well—and almost certainly would have hung on the gallows for his brazen acts of thievery—except that he never got caught.

Deftly, Sam popped open the lock on Jonas Brandt’s and Nate Greenway’s cabin door. He and Billy knew exactly what they were looking for—the officers’ chest.

“There ’tis!” Sam mouthed to Billy. He pointed to a chest under the first bunk, pushed as far back as possible.

Billy pulled the chest out, and Sam popped the lock. It didn’t take much rummaging for them to realize nothing was in the chest except extra clothing and an assortment of personal items. With an angry grunt, Sam slammed the lid down and snapped the locks closed, then motioned for Billy to shove it back into place.

A second chest lay under the other bunk. Billy tugged at it.

“It be heavy!” he whispered.

In the end, it took both men to force the second chest free. Sam immediately set about popping the lock.

“Whew!” Billy breathed when he opened the lid. Six new blunderbuss flintlock pistols lay on top, and beside them six leather sacks of ammunition—wrapped packets of lead balls and measured portions of gunpowder. Underneath were six curved, single-edged blade cutlasses with cupped guards at the hilt, as well as six sharp-bladed knives. Half the ship’s weaponry lay at their fingertips.

Quickly, silently, the two men piled the weapons beside the door. They carefully closed the chest and snapped the lock shut, then shoved the chest back into place under the bunk. They stuffed the pistols and ammunition inside their shirts, three for each, then shouldered the cutlasses and knives. Just
as silently as they had entered, the two stole out again onto the deck where they faded into the shadows.

“Pleasant morning, Nate,” Jonas Brandt called out as he strode by the watch officer. Something about Mister Greenway’s pensive form leaning over the deck made him stop. “Might there be something pressing on you?” he asked.

Mister Greenway gave him a curt nod and waved him on his way. When Mister Brandt did not immediately move ahead, Nate softened his stance and wished him a pleasant morning in return, then allowed as it did indeed look to be the makings of a grand day.

Jonas Brandt, growing used to Greenway’s contemplative ways, hurried on. He was eager to complete his business on deck and return to his cabin. But even as Nate Greenway turned back to his uneasy contemplation, the stout shadow and the tall, shaggy one crept past him slowly… silently… and completely unnoticed.

C
aptain Ross!” Jonas Brandt shrieked as he pounded on the captain’s door. “To arms, sir! To arms!”

Grace jumped up from her bunk and dashed to open her door so she could see what was going on. Doctor Wills rushed toward her, hopping as he struggled to pull his breeches on over his bare legs. The sleeves of his shirt billowed around him. Alex Collins and two other young officers were right behind him.

“Stay inside!” Doctor Wills ordered. “Shut your door and barricade it with everything at hand!”

In the cabin next to her, something crashed onto the floor, and then a commotion of voices erupted.

“Arm yourselves!” Captain Ross called out. The voices were drowned out by a stampede of running feet.

Slowly, cautiously, Grace pulled the door open, just wide enough to allow her to peek out. Now no one was on the deck. All she saw was a trail of discarded nightclothes.

“Stand down! That is a direct command!” It was the captain’s voice, and it came from up ahead, midship. But the captain’s order was met with hoots and jeers.

“Stand down now, and I promise you your punishment will be light!” the captain repeated.

“Yer worry is best saved fer th’ punishment we metes out t’ ye!” Billy shouted back. “And don’t ’spect it to be light, neither!”

Billy’s threat ended in the unmistakable roar of a blunderbuss pistol, followed by a bellow of fury.

Something was terribly wrong.

Grace eased out of her cabin and, pressing herself close against the bulkhead, made her way forward toward the source of the commotion. She didn’t get far, however, for as she rounded the corner where the captain’s cabin jutted out onto the deck, she stepped directly into the midst of battle. Grace froze in alarm as Alexander Collins leapt in front of her, brandishing a cutlass.

“Lord above, ’ave mercy on us!” screamed one of the two crewmen who danced and ducked in an effort to dodge Collins’s blade.

Grace would expect as much from the brash Mister Collins, who roared out a hearty laugh with each thrust of his cutlass. But it was not him alone.

“Mister Greenway!” Jonas Brandt called as he tossed a cutlass to the navigator.

As the sword hurtled through the air, Nathaniel Greenway grabbed it by the hilt and expertly thrust his hand into the cupped guard. He jumped up onto a barrel with an amazingly agile leap for a man of his size, and from that vantage point immediately struck down two well-armed sailors. Even the stout cook grabbed up a cutlass and thrusting with his stubby arms, plunged headlong into the fray. Not only did the cook handle himself with surprising enthusiasm, he also demonstrated impressive skill with the blade.

“Watch above!” the captain yelled.

Billy had seized the cutlass diversion as an opportunity to swing unobserved up into the shrouds, and Sam and Jake followed close on his heels. Now all three hovered above the deck—Billy hard against the main mast, Sam out on the yardarm, and Jake clambering high above them all, up toward the crow’s nest. Both Billy and Sam aimed fully loaded pistols down at the deck.

“Mister Brandt, take cover!” the captain ordered.

Even as the first mate dashed behind the lines and ducked down as far out of sight as possible, lead balls peppered the deck in the exact spot where he had stood mere seconds before.

But the seamen were not soldiers. Hooligans and thieves, yes, but not fighting men. Two cowering crewmen fell to Alexander Collins’ cutlass. Doctor Wills’s pistol felled another. After that, most of the crewmen quickly dropped to their knees and begged for mercy.

Not Billy’s friend, Chester, though. He jumped up behind the surrendering crewmen and brandished a threatening knife at them. “Git up, ye snivelin’ cowards!” he bellowed. “Git up afore I carve ye all to shreds!”

Before he had a chance to make good on his threat, Captain Ross blasted Chester’s legs with the blunderbuss pistol’s shotgun-like multiple discharge. Chester crumbled to the deck, where he lay howling.

“Now, lads, pluck those troublemakers from out of the shrouds!” Captain Ross ordered.

The winds had come up, though, and it was not an easy order to obey on the wildly pitching deck. Doctor Wills took aim at Billy with his pistol, then pulled back on the trigger. But instead of hitting Billy, the spray of lead balls simply peppered the mainsail above Billy’s head with holes.

Jake let out a wicked chortle. “ ’Tis as I always says, old man,” he gleefully called down to the captain. “We be better
sailors than the whole entire lot o’ ye officers!” He reared back and roared out a great guffaw. But just at that moment a wave smashed against the ship, sending sailors sprawling across the deck. The jolt knocked Jake’s grip loose and flung him through the air. He splashed into the sea and disappeared in the foaming waves.

Billy, gripping the mast, and Sam, clinging to the yard, stared after Jake in shocked silence.

“That be it!” Billy roared. “That jist be it!”

Sam pointed his pistol down at the crowded deck and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared, Doctor Wills lay on the shot-pocked deck, bleeding and still.

For a moment, everyone gaped in disbelief. Then, his voice hard with fury, Captain Ross ordered, “Take them down…
now
.” Already he was taking aim at Sam with his own pistol. Jonas Brandt scrambled to toss firearms to the other officers, but there was no time to get the balls and wrapping and gunpowder passed around.

Captain Ross fired, and Sam tumbled from the yard onto the deck.

In frustrated fury, Billy pulled out his knife and stabbed it into a hole in the sail. He pulled the knife out and stabbed it into another hole, then another and another. Ripping at the sail and slashing at the rigging, he screamed, “We’ll all go down to the sea! Ever’ last one o’ us!”

Grace scooped up Doctor Wills’s pistol. She grabbed a measure of gunpowder from Mister Brandt’s store and poured it down the barrel, then wrapped the lead shot in a piece of cloth and rammed the packet down the barrel.

“But he goes first!” Billy yelled. He pointed his loaded and fully cocked pistol at Captain Ross and pulled the trigger.

Grace snapped the frizzen into place, then took aim and fired at the exact moment Billy did.

When the thick cloud of gun smoke cleared, Captain Ross lay on the deck, his leg ripped up with lead shot. Billy hung upside down in the shrouds, his foot entangled in the lines.

“Miss Grace, you saved my life!” Captain Ross gasped in shocked amazement. “Can it be that you are as comfortable with a firearm as with an embroidery needle?”

“An embroidery needle?” Grace asked with mock surprise. “Why, sir, never in my life have I had occasion to use such a complicated piece of machinery!”

Plucking up his last bit of strength, the captain sighed and said with a wan smile, “Such a mysterious woman you have turned out to be, Miss Grace Winslow.” Then he allowed his eyes to drift closed. His face was deathly pale. “How I will miss the good doctor,” he gasped. “How I will miss… my dear friend.”

Jonas Brandt blinked about him uncertainly. “Sir, the prisoners. What of them?” he asked the captain.

But no answer came.

Mister Brandt rose unsteadily to his feet. “I count seven seamen missing, and that number includes all the troublemakers,” he reported. His voice wavered in spite of his resolve to hold steady. He plunged ahead: “This most unfortunate encounter means we have seven fewer capable seamen at our disposal. Plus, both the captain and the ship’s surgeon lie injured or dying.”

As Mister Brandt talked, a curious thing happened: his voice actually gained in strength. And as his voice grew stronger, so did Mister Brandt himself increase in both power and authority.

“We must lower the sails and set to the task of mending them and the rigging as well. All hands will be required to repair the damage, and it must be accomplished with all due haste.”

Then Mister Brandt looked at each of the seamen on deck, all still on their knees, many quaking at the prospect of the gallows awaiting them—or worse.

“I could have every one of you shot on the spot for the crime of mutiny on the high seas,” said Mister Brandt.

He paused for several seconds; long enough to let the enormity of their crime sink in.

“I could, but I shall not. This will be your punishment: no food or drink from now until morning’s light, then half rations for the next two days. But with your cooperation and hard work, neither I nor anyone else shall mention again your part in this most unfortunate occurrence.”

With Grace as his assistant—her graceful, thin fingers could do what his thick, clumsy ones could not—the cook removed the lead balls from the captain’s leg, one by one— twelve balls in all. This was one of the few times Grace truly missed the portion of her forefinger on her left hand that had been lopped off by Tungo in the rebellion.

“I should not think it best that you be required to nurse me,” Captain Ross said to Grace as she bathed his face with cool water.

“If I can bring myself to nurse Mister Hathaway, I most certainly can nurse you,” she answered. For Jasper Hathaway’s care had indeed once again fallen to her.

Mister Brandt called to Grace. “I need your help as well. We must sew poor Doctor Wills up in a canvas sack to prepare him for burial at sea.”

The dead seamen, all sewn into their hammocks by their mates, already lay in a row alongside the deck rail.

But Grace shook her head and showed him her maimed finger. “I don’t know that I can be of much help to you with a sewing needle,” she said, “but I will do what I can.” Then, tears filling her eyes, she cried, “Nothing about this is right.”

“No,” Jonas Brandt said. “None of this is right at all. But this is how it happened. And right or wrong, I am now the one in charge. Tomorrow we will all stand together on the deck, and before Mister Collins drops the doctor and the departed seamen to rest in the sea, the men will expect words of comfort from me. But I have no such words. I have not the least idea what to say.”

“In the captain’s book of God…” Grace began hesitantly. “Captain Ross… he read something to me, sir. Perhaps together we can find it.”

And so, first for the good Doctor John Matthew Wills, then for each of the others who followed him one by one to their ocean grave, Jonas Brandt read these words from Job 19: 25-26,

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he

shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

And though after my skin worms destroy this body,

yet in my flesh shall I see God.

Afterward, all the crewmen from both watch crews worked from sunup to sunup, each man napping only when he absolutely must. They took the damaged mainsail down and spread it out on the deck. With coarse sail thread and enormous needles, they sewed up the smaller tears and holes in the thick hemp fabric. Then they carefully cut patches to fit over the worst of the holes and slashes, sewing the patches in place by hand. It was rough, hard work that ripped up even the most calloused hands. Then they recut, repaired, and rewove the damaged cordage of the rigging.

For Grace, days of boredom were a thing of the past. Now each day was filled with such busy-ness that it blended into yet another weary night. Even Puss seemed to sense an urgency to
get back to work, for he never again came to lounge on the floor by Grace’s cot.

Grace was up early each morning. She began her day by dressing Captain Ross’s wounds and changing the bandages, then she bathed his face and neck with cool water and coaxed him to eat a bit. After that she made her dreaded trip to Mister Hathaway’s closed-in room, heavy with the smell of impending death, to tend to him and urge him to take the medicinal foods Doctor Wills had prescribed.

Mister Hathaway’s condition had deteriorated so frightfully that his parched lips were stretched into a permanent grimace. Grace could hardly stand to see the gaping empty space where he had so proudly displayed his ridiculous gold tooth. Yet Hathaway remained as obstinate as ever, and he resolutely clamped his jaws tight against the spoonfuls of vinegar Grace urged him to swallow. As soon as she could manage to escape, Grace slipped out of his oppressive cabin and made her way back to the captain’s bedside.

In the evening, when his galley duties were done, the cook came to check on Captain Ross’s leg and to re-dress it. “Pray as how we don’t git us into a fog,” he warned as he handled the captain’s wounds with his filthy hands, then wiped them on his cooking apron. “Fer it is fog wot makes infection set in, an’ that’s a fact.”

When cook was gone, Grace said to the captain, “I am reading the second part of your God book now, sir.”

“That part is rightly called the New Testament,” Captain Ross told her.

“It tells about a holy man named Jesus. He could heal people with just a touch of his hand. I wish he were here to touch the fire that burns in your leg.”

“Perhaps he is here,” Captain Ross said.

“You mean, like the trickster?”

“No, he is not a trickster. But Jesus does belong to the spirit world. God sent him from heaven to earth to show people the way back to God.”

“Oh, I think I understand,” Grace said. “I know from African tales about a mediator from the Creator to mankind. One who makes a way between us and the spirit world. Is Jesus that one?”

Captain Ross sighed, and a smile creased his pained face. “Aye, lassie. That he be. You are beginning to understand.”

When the sails on the
Willow
were as well put together as they were likely to ever be, acting Captain Brandt oversaw the final repair and reassembly of the intricate system of masts, yards, ropes, and pulleys that made up the rigging. With everything back in place, the crew raised the patched sails. At first they flapped listlessly in the still air. But then the sea breeze caught, and it filled first one sail and then the other. As the ship began to move smartly again, a hearty cheer arose from the men on the deck.

“It will not be long now,” Jonas Brandt announced to Grace. “We should be in London in a fortnight!”