by Mel Odom
THE RING OF SHEBA
Chronicles of Ngola
Book 1
By
Mel Odom
Copyright 2019 by Mel Odom
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.
All Rights Reserved.
A slightly different version of “Drums of the Ogbanje” first appeared in Black Pulp in April 2013.
Letter
Drums of Ogbanje
The Ring of Sheba
Afterword
About the Author
14 September 1825
Your Majesty, King George IV,
I hope this missive finds you in good health, Your Majesty, and know that I ever toil to succeed in the task you have given me to ride the world of the abominable slave trade.
As you know, Ngola, self-styled “captain” of the “Mambele,” so named after the weapon Ngola chooses to carry into battle, remains at sea and is a concern I have. I narrowly missed him when he put his ship into port at Mpinda in the Kongo. I was then perhaps only three days behind him. I still pursue him, as well as the scurrilous Portuguese slavers who insist on maintaining their devil’s trade even though they know You and our great Empire stand against it. Should I catch Ngola, I will endeavor to bring him—alive, God willing—to answer for his crimes against You regarding the theft of the ship he now commands.
I have managed to add to my store of knowledge regarding Ngola, but not much. The man’s history remains as elusive as he himself. Even with his good fortune, were Africa not so large and so unknown, I would have him in irons now.
I have started a timeline of events of which we can be fairly certain of his life. Ngola was born in Africa, somewhere, between 1785 to 1790. Definitive reports to this regard are impossible to access. Perhaps knowing more about the man will enable me to take him sooner.
According to some I have talked with, ex-slaves and freemen who claim to have served with him in different places, Ngola was captured by Portuguese slavers, which speaks to the reasons he hates them so and pursues them with such unwavering fervor, as a boy and sold as a slave to plantation owners in Haiti.
As you know, the Troubles yet continue in Haiti. The slave rebellions continue unabated, and the Americans have added fuel to the fire with their American Colonization Society that has gone so far as to pay for passage of free blacks in their country to emigrate to Haiti. Records there, I fear, are not to be had, so I make do with twice-told tales and stories that may be fabrications.
I even question Mr. Arnold Boyer’s accounts once he has written up the stories we have gathered. Mr. Boyer is an excellent writer, I am sure, and he came to You well-appointed, but I fear he has succumbed to the adventurous nature of the tales we have gotten in our travels. Please read the following tales with some jaundice, for I believe Mr. Boyer, as a journalist, can be self-serving. I know some of his stories about Ngola have been published by greedy editors in our own Great Empire as well as in France and Germany.
Still, Mr. Boyer is quick to fill up pages while we gather the accounts so that I may send you these tales. I am thankful of that. Captaining this ship and crew commands most of the hours of my days, and trying to decipher where Ngola might next go. I must say, we haven’t been without adventures of our own.
To return to that timeline I was talking about, I have also confirmed that Ngola once served on Lord Admiral Nelson’s Navy and fought against the French. After that, for a time, he even served with the West Africa Squadron under Captain Montgomery Stuart. Unfortunately, Captain Stuart was killed in a pitched battle with the Portuguese—those events are still not made clear to me—and Ngola was sent to serve with Captain Arthur Fitzwilliam, whom, I am troubled to say, was not as compassionate toward the African people as You and the Squadron might have wished.
Sometime after that, Ngola took over Captain Fitzwilliam’s ship, put the original crew ashore, and signed on his own crew. I can’t vouchsafe the pedigree of that group. If not for Ngola’s own interest in ridding the world of the Portuguese slavers, I think they might sail under the Skull and Crossbones and take any ship they might fancy.
Here, then, are two accounts Mr. Boyer has cobbled together concerning my elusive target. Remember that we have gotten them from a number of untrustworthy sources, and Mr. Boyer has waxed quite eloquent upon the tales.
I remain as always Your Honor’s most ready to be commanded in the West Africa Squadron.
Thomas Walsingham, Captain of His Majesty’s Ship “Reliance.”
DRUMS OF THE OGBANJE
Bay of Luanda
West Africa
April 1825
1.
Moonlit Steel
With a heavy fighting knife clamped between his teeth, Ngola Kilunaji climbed the thick anchor rope up from the cold sea along the ship’s hull to deliver death to Portuguese slavers. Brine beaded over his dark skin as his muscles warmed to the task.
The vessel tugged against its anchor, riding restlessly atop the white-topped waves. Dark clouds obscured the full moon intermittently as they scudded across the sky. The scent riding the winds promised a squall by morning or shortly thereafter.
The coming change of weather tightened the old whip scars that striped Ngola’s back. They reminded him of how hopeless and afraid he’d felt as a child when he’d been shackled in a Portuguese slaver ship. He knew intimately what the men and women and children in the holds were going through as they sat in the darkness in the belly of an uncaring beast that moved restlessly upon the deep.
The sour stench of human misery clung to the vessel as though hammered into the ship’s timbers and made part of the ship by blood and death. More than that, though, Ngola’s nostrils took in the sick scent of approaching death. Not all of those people aboard would survive the trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Their bodies would be tossed overboard for the sharks that followed the slave ships to feast on.
At the gunwale, he paused and listened. Voices drifted on the breeze, snatches that were ripped apart on the wind. He understood Portuguese well enough, though he spoke English and French much better. Instead of being bored, the crew sounded ill at ease.
“I do not trust that old man, Luis,” one slaver said. “I think he is going to bring down some heathen curse on us with everything he is doing.”
“Captain Salazar will not allow that to happen.” The second voice sounded surer, but some worry tainted his words. “The captain will kill Lukamba before he allows anything untoward to happen to us. Just be glad that that old demon worshipper is gone from the ship. We won’t see Lukamba again once the captain has had his use of him. He’ll kill that old sorcerer and leave him to rot out there in the jungle.”
The names stirred a memory within Ngola as he poised at the ship’s railing. Though their paths had never before crossed, Ngola had heard whispered stories of the old witch doctor and of the greedy Portuguese captain who hunted lost treasures as well as slaves. The dead were supposed to walk at Lukamba’s command, and demons were allowed entrance to the world through his knowledge of the dark magic that lurked within Africa.
“Salazar is hypnotized by Lukamba’s tales of treasure,” the older man said. “The captain dreams of riches. Instead of chasing myths and lies, he should be thinking of the money this cargo of slaves will bring us. After we deliver these wretches to the Caribbean, we will have wealth enough to keep us in rum and women for days. Then we can r
eturn here for more slaves and begin again.” He cursed. “Instead we are here while that old man leads the captain after ghost ships and searches for more of his evil vodun spirits.”
“Pray that those spirits take Lukamba to Hell and drive the captain back to us. Or maybe take the captain as well so that Carneiro becomes the ship’s master. I would follow him. Carneiro would not be wooed from certain profits so easily.”
“Careful, you fool!” a third voice protested. “There are many here who like Salazar and dream of the same riches he does. Thoughts of treasure make men crazy. If they hear you, they may tell Salazar, and then you’ll end up at the bottom of the sea. I don’t want to join you.”
“Faugh! Were Salazar to find those riches, you know that precious little will trickle down to ship’s crew.”
Glancing back down the twisting anchor rope, Ngola spotted Colin Drury only a few feet beneath him. The Irishman held steady as he climbed from the sea. His face was grim and determined as his pale blue eyes blazed in the light from the lanterns hanging at the stern.
Below Drury, three more men, two Africans and an Englishman, held onto the rope as well. Seven more men bobbed in the water, waiting their turn at the rope. Ngola’s ship, Mambele, lay a quarter-mile away to the north, black against the backdrop of the tree-covered coastline so that it could not be seen. They had swum to the Portuguese ship after they’d located it. Stories from nearby ports had set them on Salazar’s trail.
All of Ngola’s crew were proven warriors, used to boarding ships and fighting with edged steel. They’d been handpicked by Ngola and blooded again and again against the Portuguese and the African tribes who took slaves.
Ngola heaved himself over the railing and landed on callused bare feet. He had to protect his crew as the men came on board, and he knew their presence would not long be secret. On the deck, the wind whipped over him, cooling the wet pants against his skin.
He fisted one of the cutlasses hanging at his hip and drew it from its leather sheath with a thin whisper. He put the knife in the sheath at his back and took up the mambele from his other hip, unhooking it from his second cutlass.
The mambele throwing dagger looked like a falcon’s claw, providing a total of three blades and an excellent chance of sinking deeply into a target. The heavy weapon looked unwieldy, but in Ngola’s hands it was lethal and swift as a diving hawk.
Colin Drury stepped up beside Ngola on the stern deck. Although the Irishman was only a couple inches short of six feet, Ngola loomed over him by inches. Where Drury was compact and lean and pale, Ngola was broad and thickly thewed with ebony skin. Drury wore his dark auburn hair pulled back in a queue and went clean-faced. Ngola’s bare head gleamed in the lantern light. Water droplets clung to his short, curly beard.
Footsteps padded over the wooden deck and headed for the stern. Ngola flowed into motion, shifting from stillness to action in a single lithe stride. Behind him, Drury stood watch over the anchor rope as their men continued boarding. Without a word, they fanned out into fighting positions.
Four Portuguese sailors crossed the main deck below and headed toward the stern castle where Ngola was. Knowing there was no way his men would escape notice and that a cry of alarm would surely shortly follow, Ngola decided to take advantage of their brief edge of surprise. Weapons in hand, he launched himself at the three men before him while they were still engaged in their argument about the ship’s captain and the certainty of vodun curses.
Ngola smashed into the men and knocked them all sprawling across the deck. Heaving himself up on one knuckled fist, Ngola set himself on his feet and swung the cutlass at his nearest enemy. There was no mercy in his heart. The men were slavers and Ngola had sworn to kill as many of them as he was able.
The heavy blade of the cutlass smashed through the slaver’s skull as much as it sliced. The dead man spilled away when Ngola yanked the blade free. One of the other men rushed up quickly and lashed out with a long fighting knife rather than trying for his sword.
The move almost caught Ngola off-guard. Reflexes honed by years of fighting for his life in Haiti during the slave uprisings against the French, then more years on a ship in Lord Nelson’s Navy battling still more French spurred Ngola to lift the mambele to intercept his opponent’s knife.
Razor edged metal screamed as the blades met, but the knife, trapped between two of the mambele’s blades, stopped inches short of Ngola’s throat. The Portuguese slaver’s eyes widened in fear, then emptied of life when Ngola split the man’s skull with his cutlass.
With an oath and with the dead man’s blood spattered across his bare chest, Ngola kicked the corpse from his blade and shook the trapped blade from the mambele. The other two slavers recovered quickly and shouted in alarm as they drew their weapons.
“To arms! To arms!”
Colin Drury fell in beside Ngola and added his blade to his captain’s as they battled the two slavers. Swords clashed and the clangor of metal swelled over the ship and the nearby waves. More Portuguese slavers poured from the ship’s hold with weapons in their hands, crying out for their brothers to rouse and follow them into battle.
“We are under attack! Grab your weapons!”
The slave ships usually kept a crew of thirty to forty sailors. Once chained in the hold belowdecks, the slaves didn’t offer much resistance. And every crewman over what was needed to manage the ship was another mouth to feed and less space for cargo. But Salazar was an aggressive captain and kept extra men to crew a British ship if he had the chance to take one as a prize in battle. Salazar had already taken two ships from captains in the West Africa Squadron, the small fleet the British Empire had sent to combat the slave trade.
Ngola blocked an overhand blow that streaked for his he by catching his opponent’s cutlass with the mambele. The blades clanked as they clashed. Holding the blade trapped, Ngola went chest-to-chest with the man. The slaver’s fetid breath reeked of decay as it sprayed over Ngola’s face.
Then Ngola smashed his forehead into the man’s nose, shattering the vulpine beak and sending the slaver stumbling back. A quick slash of the cutlass spilled the man’s guts across the deck, drenching the dry wood in blood.
Ngola’s crew spread out behind him, digging into their fighting positions, but they were being hard pressed by the thirty Portuguese slavers filling the deck in front of them. Light from lanterns hung in the ship’s rigging danced along the naked blades.
“Joao!” Ngola roared.
“Aye, Cap’n!” Slight and wiry, the young man fought at the fringes of the crowd. He was of mixed blood, his mother a slave and his father a Portuguese rapist he’d never met and had sworn to kill if he ever met him. The young sailor was handsome and had hazel eyes that belonged on a large cat.
“Charge that blunderbuss!” Ngola commanded. “Let’s cull these dogs.”
“Aye, Cap’n.” Joao swung his cutlass in a savage slash that cleaved into the side of a slaver’s head and dropped him mewling to the deck. Instantly, the young sailor spun and retreated to the stern castle while Mamadou and Kayode shifted to cover his back.
On the stern castle, Joao unlimbered the short muzzleloader he’d carried in a watertight sleeve over his shoulder. He readied the weapon in short order, dropped to one knee, and brought the blunderbuss to his shoulder. Less than two feet in length and near big around as Joao’s wrist, the thick barrel gleamed like it was covered in dark oil.
“Ready, Cap’n!” Joao shouted.
Parrying two blades at once with his cutlass, slashing the throat of the third man with the mambele, Ngola raised his voice. “Give ground!” He disengaged from the slavers he’d swapped parries with and took two steps back.
Instantly, his crew did the same, displaying the discipline he had trained into them.
For a moment the Portuguese slavers held back, not certain what was about to happen. Bloodied and caught unprepared, they hesitated at stepping over the bodies of their own dead to continue an attack.
“Fire!�
� Ngola shouted.
The blunderbuss’s frizzen struck sparks that ignited the black powder on the flash pan. An instant later, the weapon detonated with a sonorous BOOM! and belched forth bronze balls nearly the size of a man’s thumb. A cloud of swirling gray smoke wreathed Joao.
The projectiles smashed into the front line of the Portuguese and cut them down, sending the luckless men stumbling back into their fellows with their faces shattered and their hands missing fingers, their arms broken and bloody.
“Reload!” Ngola yelled.
“Reloading, Cap’n!”
Ngola stepped forward, giving his hated enemy no quarter as he swung his heavy blade, removing a man’s weapon along with his hand. “Advance!” His crew moved with him, slashing out at the stunned Portuguese.
Though the slavers were shell-shocked and bloodied, they fought for their lives with that singular purpose. At Ngola’s side, Ikenna dropped with a ball in his brain, and at the end of the line Corporal Horace Dinwiddy, lately of the West Africa Squadron, went down from too much blood loss from his wounds.
Losing both of the men saddened Ngola because he knew them well, as he did all of the men that sailed under his command, but he pushed the emotion away. There would be time to grieve later. Now was the time to fight. He slid the mambele into the sheath at his back.
Reaching down as he blocked the swing of a cutlass with his own, he fisted a pistol in his left hand, drawing it from the dead man at his feet. He eared the hammer back, shoved the muzzle into the mouth of the slaver in front of him, breaking the man’s teeth, and pulled the trigger.
The ball exploded through the back of the slaver’s head and into the face of the man behind him. Squalling in pain, not dead but maybe dying, the second slaver fell backward, taking one of his mates with him.
Ngola used the spent pistol’s barrel to block another blade, then dodged to the left, bumping into Colin Drury for an instant as another slaver fired his weapon. The ball whipped by Ngola, leaving a trail of heat that kissed his cheek lightly. Blocking another man’s blade with his cutlass, Ngola used the pistol like a hammer, swinging it with all his strength into his opponent’s face.