The Blackbirder

by James Nelson

  The people – thirty or more, in all – were circled around the fire, the orange light dancing off dark skin. Someone began to sing, soft, a rhythmic tune, words that Elizabeth could not understand. In her dumb fatigue it took her some moments to realize it was an African song, the words in the language to which the singer was born.

  Lucy let off her embrace, sat back down on the blanket spread on the ground, and watched with Elizabeth, sniffling now and then.

  The singing went on, high and clear, and at certain places the others would join in, a chorus, all their voices coming soft together, the beat steady and hypnotic.

  They all knew it, though to Elizabeth’s certain knowledge they were not all of the same tribe. Indeed, some of the younger ones had been born in the New World, had never been to Africa at all.

  Extraordinary, Elizabeth thought. They had already created some kind of an organized home, there on that grassy patch of wilderness. She imagined they were well versed in this, creating community fast, making a home wherever they landed, after the experience of being torn away from their real homes and villages.

  She closed her eyes, let the warm sleep creep over her, felt herself being carried away with the rhythm of the singing. She began to understand, on some level deeper than conscious thought, why Thomas felt it was too dangerous a thing to try to hold such people in bondage, why Bickerstaff felt it was an abomination before God.

  King James heard the lookout aloft sing out, and then Madshaka grinned wide, said, ‘He say he see another ship, away, away.’

  Madshaka turned and called down the deck, rapid bursts of language, one after another. Looks of relief, looks of anticipation, gratitude at the approach of salvation, fore and aft.

  ‘I tell them, we see another ship. Get more food now. They very happy.’

  James nodded. He resisted looking over the side, knew that they would not be able to see the ship yet.

  Instead he looked aloft at the baggy sails, the shrouds and stays where the tar had worn away and the cordage shone white in patches like dried bone. This was a tired old ship. Chase was not possible. She could never run another ship down. The strong and brave men on her crew might overwhelm a victim, might take her easily enough, but the trick would be in getting close enough to board.

  James turned without a word, began to pace quickly up and down the quarterdeck in an unconscious imitation of Thomas Marlowe. Think, think, think. Whipping his thoughts into some order, like turning a rabble into a ship’s crew.

  Priorities.

  First, was this a ship worth attacking, was it a ship they might hope to carry? Was it a man-of-war, a slaver, a merchantman?

  He stopped pacing, turned to Madshaka, who was waiting patiently for instruction. ‘I am going aloft, see what I can of this ship. You get the heads of the tribes together here. Tell them what we talked about, how we take this ship for the food, just the food.’

  ‘I tell them. But they want to vote on it, you know. Like the pirates do. Like we talk about.’

  James paused, scowled. Anger sparked like a flash in a pan. Damn it all, damn their hobbling votes.

  But, of course, Madshaka was right. He had been happy to have the full responsibility lifted before, when he did not want to make a decision. Now that he knew what course he wished to take he was not so happy to have his authority questioned.

  So damn me too, for a false bastard.

  ‘You right. You tell them what we talked about, make them understand we got to just take food. They can vote, but you try and see they vote right.’

  ‘I tell them,’ Madshaka assured him.

  James stepped toward the shrouds, paused, turned back. Met Madshaka’s eyes. ‘You tell them.’

  ‘I tell them.’ Madshaka was not smiling now.

  James held his gaze for a second more. ‘Good.’ He picked up the one remaining telescope and climbed into the main shrouds and then up aloft.

  He gained the crosstrees and looked south in the direction that the lookout was pointing. They were in an area where one might expect ships of all kinds. Just the day before, James had thought he had heard gunfire to the west of them, broadsides and single guns going off. But it had been very faint, too faint to be certain. It had lasted about an hour and then there had been nothing more.

  He had not bothered to mention it to the others.

  Now he had the distant ship in sight and he raised up the telescope and looked through. It was not a very powerful glass, and there was a crack in the object lens, which was no doubt why it was left behind, but it did give James a somewhat improved view.

  She was three or four miles away, downwind, but not directly. Ship rigged, about the size of the tobacco ships that sailed from the Chesapeake, perhaps a bit bigger. But a man-of-war? He really did not know. Climbing aloft he had thought that it would be obvious, but now looking at the ship he realized that he could not tell.

  He lowered the glass, continued to stare south, his mind working on this new problem. Attack or flee? He pushed his thoughts into order. Either this ship was a man-of-war or it was not, and he could not tell one way or another.

  If they attacked the ship, there was a chance they might all be killed.

  If they did not get food in a day or so, then people would most definitely start to die.

  The options were possible death versus certain death. There really was no decision. He stuck the telescope in his shirt and headed down again.

  CHAPTER 11

  King James poured a little trail of powder in the cannon’s touchhole, stepped back, and gestured to the men on the train tackles to haul away. They pulled; the gun rumbled up to the gunport.

  They were small guns, four-pounders, and of all the men aboard, James alone had any experience in loading and firing such weapons. He had not bothered training the others. It was pointless. They would never win a fight with guns.

  He gestured for the ad hoc gun crew to stand clear, and when they were out of the way he brought the match down on the powder train. A hiss, a spark, and then the gun went off, blowing smoke out over the empty sea. It was not an attack. It was a signal. A cry of distress.

  James looked aloft. The sails were hanging half in their gear, sloppy, flogging in the wind. The ensign was flying upside down. The ship looked very much as she had the first time he had seen her, coming through the capes. But this time the black men were not chained down in the hold. This time they were armed and crouching out of sight behind the bulwarks.

  He looked at Madshaka, wondered if he himself looked as foolish as the grumete did. Madshaka’s face and hands were painted white, with paint they had found in the bosun’s locker, as were James’s. They were wearing bits of the officers’ clothes that they had collected from those men who had been wearing them: coats, waistcoats, breeches. Like the paint, it was enough to give the right impression from a distance.

  James felt like an idiot, painted up in that way. But it had been his idea, and he could think of no other.

  He looked up at Cato, stationed as lookout high up on the mainmast, could see he had nothing to report.

  ‘Tell them to haul the gun in,’ James said to Madshaka, and Madshaka repeated the words. An unshotted gun did not hurl itself inboard like a loaded one. James picked up the wet swab, thrust it down the muzzle, ladled powder into the barrel once more, then rammed wadding home and gestured for the gun to be run out again.

  Once the distance between the two ships had closed, there would be no mistaking their ship for anything but what she was. All the scrubbing and brimstone in the world would not wash away the stink from a blackbirder.

  If a blackbirder were to run down on a strange vessel, she would immediately arouse suspicion. If an approaching merchant ship were to see black men on a slaver’s deck, they would haul their wind and bear away. No ship, save for a man-of-war, would knowingly approach a vessel that had suffered a slave uprising.

  They had to get their victim to come to them.

  More powder in the touchhole, the glo
wing match, and the gun went off again. The blast was still ringing in their ears when Cato called down. ‘Hauling her wind, James! Here she … here she goes, staying now!’

  ‘What he mean by that?’ Madshaka asked.

  ‘She turning, coming up to us. I guess she believe we a ship in distress.’

  Madshaka smiled again, wicked, piratical delight. Translated James’s words to the others, and they smiled as well.

  ‘Tell them to get out of sight, behind the bulwark. We get aft, on the quarterdeck.’

  The two men went aft and stood beside the lashed tiller, waiting, waiting. Tension undulated around the deck like heat from a furnace. The women and children were down below in the great cabin and the smaller cabins along the alleyway. They would not go back in the hold.

  When the approaching ship’s topgallant sails were visible from the deck, James called for Cato to come down. ‘I think we set the foresail, you and me,’ he said to Madshaka. ‘That don’t look wrong, that shouldn’t scare them. Then we can close faster, get down to them.’

  Madshaka nodded and the two men went forward, all eyes following them, not knowing what they were about. The yards were not braced perfectly, but close enough. They did not want to look perfect in any event.

  James cast off the buntlines and the foresail tumbled down into a big, flogging sack of canvas, the lower corners still held up by the clewlines. He spun the weather clewline off the pin, let it run through his hand, and Madshaka took in the sheet as fast as he could.

  The wind filled that half of the sail, bellied it out, and Madshaka could pull no more. James clapped on to the sheet and together they hauled away. They pulled together, in a steady rhythm, falling naturally into the work. Madshaka was a head taller than James, but both men were powerful, and soon they had the sail sheeted home despite the breeze’s trying to tear the line from their hands.

  They crossed the deck and did the same on the leeward side. The bow of the ship began to turn, her bowsprit pointing toward the ship coming up with them. James unlashed the tiller, brought it amidships, steadied the blackbirder on a course to intercept the Samaritan that was speeding to their aid.

  Coming to our aid indeed, James thought. In a way you will never guess. ‘You told them, we only going for food?’ he said to Madshaka. ‘And we ain’t going to kill no one unless we have to?’

  ‘I told them.’

  The distant ship tacked and half an hour later tacked again, and by then she was hull up, no more than a mile away. With the foresail set and the blackbirder running with the wind between two sheets, the distance was dropping away fast.

  Through the cracked telescope James could see figures moving around on the deck and he instructed Madshaka to wave his arms over his head, as if trying to attract their attention. There were not many people on the other ship, as far as James could tell, and he did not see very many guns. He did not think she was a man-of-war.

  ‘Madshaka, tell them just a few minutes more,’ James said, and Madshaka hurried forward again, along the bulwark, speaking to the men crouched there.

  A quarter mile from them the other ship rounded up into the wind, foresails aback. She was heaving to, as James had guessed she would. A moment later he could see a boat lifting off the booms. They would want to find out what the trouble was before committing themselves. If it was fever on board, for instance, the aid they would offer would be limited to floating supplies down to them in a boat.

  The boat pushed off, pulling for them, and there was no alarm that James could see. By the time they realized that the blackbirder was not going to heave to it would be too late for them.

  The blackbirder was making a good three knots with just her foresail set. She swept past the yawl boat with never a word to its confused crew, her bow aimed at the merchant ship one hundred feet away.

  On the merchantman’s deck, men were running like roaches, flinging off lines, but it was too late for them. Their foresails were bracing around, filling with wind, when the blackbirder struck, amidships, with a great rendering crash, smashing down bulwarks, snapping her own spritsail yard, sending a shudder like an earthquake through both ships.

  The blackbirder was still driving herself into the merchant ship, the grinding, crunching, snapping still loud, when Madshaka wheeled his cutlass over his head and charged forward. He was screaming – it did not sound like words of any language – but the meaning was unmistakable.

  From behind the bulwarks the waiting men sprung to their feet, raced after Madshaka, down the blackbirder’s deck, up onto the bowsprit, out along that spar for a dozen feet, and then down onto the quarterdeck of their unhappy victim.

  James ran too, as fast as he could, more angry with Madshaka for charging off than worried about the fight. There were no more than a dozen white men on the merchant ship’s deck, terrified men, looking with wide eyes and gaping mouths at the black host, fifty strong, coming from the bowsprit above them and dropping to the deck, swords, cutlasses gleaming, all of them screaming in their alien and barbaric tongues.

  James tried to push his way to the point of the attack but he could not get through the press of Africans racing for the bow and over onto the other ship. He leapt up on the foremast fife rail, craned his neck to see what was happening. Screams, white voices and black, blades raised overhead.

  He leapt down again, raced around the larboard side of the bow, and clambered up onto the bowsprit that way, pushing his own men aside to gain his place. Up along the spar, hand on the forestay to balance him.

  It was a slaughterhouse on the deck below. Madshaka was leading the charge aft, swinging his heavy cutlass like it was a twig, hacking away at any white man in front of him.

  One of the crew threw aside the handspike with which he was defending himself, fell to his knees, arms raised in surrender, and Madshaka brought his cutlass down like an ax, catching the man right on the collarbone, all but cleaving him in two. He fell away and Madshaka jerked the weapon free, looked for the next man.

  ‘No! No! Stop!’ James shouted. ‘No!’ His voice could just be heard above the screams of the warriors, the shrieks of their victims, but it did not matter because not one of the men, black or white, could understand him.

  He leapt down to the deck, hit the planks with his bare feet, took the shock with his legs. Warm, wet, he was standing in a pool of blood. There was blood everywhere, great splattered patterns shot along the white deck, pools, sprays of blood against the deck furniture.

  Running, screaming, chaos, swords hacking at anyone who lived. James leapt forward, eyes on Madshaka’s wide back. Madshaka’s arm lifted again, cutlass in hand, and James grabbed it, spun the man around, his own sword under Madshaka’s chin.

  ‘Stop it! Tell them to stop it, or I kill you here!’

  Madshaka’s face was terrifying, subhuman. White paint and red blood and dark skin swirled together, and through it those eyes, dark and bloodshot and utterly wild. He was heaving for breath, and he looked at James with no spark of recognition.

  But James too was just hanging on to control, and the fury in which he had killed the captain of the blackbirder was gathering against Madshaka. The shaking in his hand was transmitted through the steel of his sword. The point trembled an inch from Madshaka’s Adam’s apple.

  The big man moved his arm, a quick jerk, and James almost drove his sword through his throat.

  Then Madshaka let his arm drop and his whole body seemed to relax. He smiled. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. He turned and addressed the men, shouted out, his voice commanding, cutting through what din was still echoing around the deck. He grabbed a cutlass-wielding African as he ran past, checked him, pushed him back against the bulwark, shouted something in the man’s language.

  Fore and aft weapons were lowered, voices silenced, and soon the only sound was the groan of the dying, the crunch of the two ships still locked together.

  And in James’s mind, he could see nothing but Madshaka’s face, smiling through the paint and blood. It was the mos
t hideous sight he had seen on that hideous day.

  ‘Congratulations, Captain.’ Madshaka was looming over him again, his face a mask of humble admiration.

  ‘You bastard!’ James hissed. ‘I told you to tell them no killing unless we had to! You butchered them! You bloody butchered them!’

  Madshaka frowned, shook his head. ‘I told them. I told them many times, like you say. They go crazy.’

  ‘You led them. You led them and you started them on this!’

  Madshaka took a step forward so he was looking down at James, his voice low, little more than a growl. ‘Look here, King James. You been too long with the white men. You don’t remember how much these people hate. Maybe I go crazy too. I just get stolen from my home, remember. I just come across the ocean on the death ship. You just try to remember how you feel, twenty years ago.’

  The two men stood, eyes locked. Madshaka said, ‘When you kill the captain of that slave ship, I think then you remember.’ He turned quickly away, moved down the deck, shouting orders in one language then another.

  James stared out over the ocean. Madshaka was right, of course. Twenty years before there would have been no stopping him until every white man before him was dead. It was that same rage that had driven him to stick a knife in the slaver’s captain, to make them all outlaws, pirates.

  Here he was cursing Madshaka when it was his own lack of control, his own fury, that had led to their being at that place, adrift on the trackless sea.

  He would not have balked at slaughtering slavers, plantation overseers. Was it because these men were sailors, merchant sailors, that he felt differently?

  He shook his head. So much to do, so many considerations still before him. So much blood on his hands already. How he longed for the Northumberland, his little crew, the simple freedom of plying the Chesapeake Bay.

  I am getting old, he thought.

  Madshaka was rounding the men up, gathering them together aft. There was talk now, quite a lot of talk, vigorous arguments with hands waving and fingers pointing around, men shouting back and forth, heads nodding in agreement, faces screwed up in expressions of incomprehension.