by Ron Carter
“Man in the water, fifty yards dead ahead!”
After they recovered the body, the crew on deck lifted it aboard, and the four in the longboat climbed the net back onto the schooner. They left the longboat in the water, tied alongside, riding light behind the curl. Minutes later Bartolo’s arm shot up again, pointing.
“Man in the water, eighty yards ahead, to port!”
By half-past three in the afternoon, with the sun past its zenith, they had the bodies of five black slaves on board, wrapped in canvas, stored belowdecks. Four were men. One was a woman. Each showed the swelling and bruises on their wrists and ankles from iron shackles, and fresh scars and fresh welts on their backs from whippings. The crew moved through their duties mechanically with the growing feeling they were entering into something evil, something to be feared, something that could bring judgments down on their heads. They remained silent, peering ahead for sails.
Young motioned to Caleb and led him to his cramped quarters. “What’s your plan if we catch the slaver?”
Caleb’s face was a blank, his voice subdued, eyes points of light. “I don’t know yet.”
Young raised a warning hand. “Slavery is legal. The law says if we interfere with a ship engaged in lawful trade we can be charged with piracy. Hanged.”
“I know that.”
Young came directly to it. “Do you plan to do something about the slaver if we find it?”
“Maybe.”
“You want to get all thirty-four of us hanged?”
“No.”
In that moment Young saw something in Caleb’s eyes, and he asked, “You have a personal stake in this?”
Caleb took a deep breath. “About eight years ago I was a prisoner of war in a British prison in South Carolina. I broke out and made a run. British pickets had me caught. A slave came out of nowhere and we swung a cannon around and fired it at them and we made it to the woods. His name was Primus. We came home on a ship where my older brother was captain. We came onto a slaver that had been demasted by a storm. They were throwing slaves overboard, some dead, some alive. We stopped the ship, and I went into the hold with my brother.”
Caleb stopped and Young saw the sick look and then the rise of outrage come into Caleb’s face as he continued.
“There was two feet of water in the hold. Blacks were down there, living in their own waste and filth. No one could lay down, or even sit down. The stink . . . ” He stopped to swallow as the images came back, grotesque, inhuman. “More than a hundred, dead and dying. Sickness, starvation. Mothers with babies in their arms, both dead.” His voice faltered and he paused for a moment. “We took that ship away from the crew and sailed it to port, and we used money from the war chest to buy wagons and horses. None of the slaves could speak English, so Primus and I took the ones that were still alive up to Nova Scotia and left them. Primus stayed. It was the best we could do for them. They built their own settlement. They may still be there, but I doubt it. I think as soon as they could they sold everything and bought passage on a ship back to Africa. I hope they did. I hope they’re home. I hope Primus made it.”
Caleb tilted his head forward to stare downward for a time, and it was Young who broke the silence.
“You intend doing the same thing if we catch this slaver?”
“Probably.”
“And what of the law?”
Caleb’s voice rose. “Whose law? Man’s law that says slaves are property, like an ox. What about nature’s law that says no man has the right to make another his slave? Which is right? Man’s law, or nature’s?”
Young stood silent, awed by the passion in Caleb, and Caleb went on.
“We told the British to give us our freedom, and we had to fight them for six years to get it. Now, another six years have passed, and what we’re doing to those black men is a hundred times worse than what the British were doing to us! If we catch that slaver, I don’t think I’ll hesitate. I think I’ll take the ship away from the crew and do what I can for the slaves.”
Young waited until Caleb brought himself under control before he answered.
“The law is the law. You better tell the crew if you intend to break it. They have a right to choose if they want to be part of it.”
“I will when the time comes.”
The cooks were just beginning evening mess when the call came from the crow’s nest. “Sails ahead. Maybe six miles, ten degrees off starboard.”
Within minutes every man on board the Zephyr was crowded against the railings at the bow of the ship, hands raised to shield out the sun while they strained to see the sails, still invisible except to the man in the crow’s nest with the telescope. Minutes passed while they stood still, searching, and then one hand shot up, pointing.
“There! Dead ahead.”
It was there. The slightest irregularity on the flat horizon.
The small schooner held her course and kept her canvas full, and she knifed through the water as though with a will of her own, gaining on the distant speck with every passing minute. At two miles the shout came down from the crow’s nest, “She’s flying the Spanish flag.”
Tunstall murmured, “She has to be from Santo Domingo.”
Young turned to Caleb. “You intend telling the men? Now’s the time.”
Caleb turned far enough to speak to the entire crew. His voice rang out.
“If that is a slaver, I intend taking the ship away from the crew. We’ll put them in longboats and they can make it to the Florida coast. I’m taking the ship on north, maybe as far as Canada. I intend setting the cargo free.”
He stopped to look into the faces of crew. Some were wide-eyed, startled. Most were an expressionless, blank. Caleb went on.
“It will be an outright act of piracy. We could be hanged. If any of you do not want to get into this, say so now. You can go belowdecks until this is over as proof you refused to take part. No one can fault you for choosing not to break the law. Make up your minds. If you want to stay clear of it, go belowdecks before I start the action and stay there until it’s over. Does everyone understand?”
Men looked to their right and left, and there was murmuring, and then quiet.
Caleb looked directly at the crew. “You’re sure, then? It could mean trouble.”
He waited again, but no one moved to go below.
Caleb turned to Tunstall. “Hold this course and bring us up about eighty yards from their starboard side.”
Tunstall nodded and Caleb turned to Young. “Pass out muskets to every man. Get pistols for you and me and Tunstall and Adam. Get the cannon mounted and loaded. Two on each side with cannonballs, four with grapeshot. Get the muzzles on the rails.”
“Aye, sir.”
The crew swarmed over the cannon to uncover them, mount the barrels on the carriages, and ram the powder then the wadding then the cannonballs and grapeshot down the muzzles. They rolled them forward, lifted the barrels, then rolled them the last foot to leave the muzzles resting on the railings, angled upward. Finished, they picked up their muskets and walked the rolling deck back to the bow to watch the ship ahead growing larger with every passing minute. Caleb and Adam each shoved two pistols into their belts while they watched the crew, waiting, but none of them chose to go belowdecks.
Young spoke to Caleb. “What flag are you going to fly?”
Caleb reflected for a moment. “Spanish.” A moment later he shook his head. “No, American. Leave it up there.”
The gap between the two vessels shortened and then they were passing the stern of the heavy, three-masted freighter with the name Angelique carved in beautifully scrolled cursive beneath the windows of the captain’s quarters. Her crew stood at their starboard rail, startled, staring down in near total disbelief at a schooner one-third their size flying the American flag, with twelve cannon mounted and apparently loaded, and gun crews standing beside them with smoking linstocks and muskets. Less than eighty yards separated the two ships.
The Zephyr spilled half her sails
and slowed to keep pace with the heavy, more cumbersome freighter, and the captain of the larger ship used his horn to shout in broken English with a heavy Castillian accent, “Who are you? What is your purpose?”
Caleb raised his horn. “We are the Zephyr. American. Angelique, what is your cargo?”
There was anger in the voice of the squat, bearded captain. “That is not your concern! Declare your intentions!”
Caleb’s voice boomed. “We have five dead bodies below. Four men, one woman. African. We believe they belong to you. If you are a slaver, declare yourself!”
The Captain on the freighter barked orders to his crew, and the men on the Zephyr stood in silence while they watched muskets and bayonets being rapidly passed out to the seamen on the railing of the larger ship. The Spanish crew measured gunpowder down the barrels and used their ramrods to seat the wadding and then the musketball, and then brought them to bear on the crew of the schooner. The voice of their captain rolled across the water.
“We declare nothing. Withdraw or we will assume you a pirate and fire on you.”
Caleb’s voice was paced, loud, disciplined. “Fire when you will. Our cannon are loaded with grape- and solid shot. This crew has muskets.”
The armed crew on the larger ship glanced at each other, and the muzzles of their muskets wavered. More than half of them lowered their gun barrels as they stared down at the six cannon, muzzles angled upward. Too well did they know that if three or four of them were loaded with grapeshot, most of the crew on the Angelique would be blown halfway across the deck of their ship in the first blast.
For twenty seconds that seemed endless, both crews stood to their guns, the Spanish with their muskets, the Americans with their cannon and muskets, while the two ships plowed on in the heat of the late afternoon with the wind quartering in from the east, blowing hot through their hair and beards. Then the outraged voice of the Spanish captain reached across the gap.
“You are in an act of piracy.”
The determination in Caleb’s voice could not be mistaken. “You have ten seconds. Declare your cargo.”
Every man on both ships was counting seconds, and then the Spanish captain shouted, “Our cargo is legal. You have no right—.”
Caleb turned to the first gun crew. “Put one through their mainsail.”
The gun crew adjusted the muzzle slightly, the smoking linstock dropped, the powder at the touchhole caught, and the big gun roared and bucked. The ball punched through the mainsail nearly dead center to leave a black, ragged hole as the big ship plowed on. The great cloud of white gunsmoke was swept aside by the speed of the two vessels, and when it cleared only the captain was standing at the rail of the larger ship. The entire crew had backed away from the muzzles of those big guns on the smaller ship. Caleb pointed at the captain.
“Declare your cargo. Five seconds.”
The captain was shaking with rage as he bellowed, “Africans. Africans.”
“We’re coming alongside. Order your men to lay down their muskets and get back against the port rail.”
The captain shook his fist and thundered, “I have your name. I have your name. You will be hunted down and hanged for this piracy.”
“Lay down those muskets, or the blood of your crew is on your hands. Five seconds.”
The captain turned and shouted orders in Spanish. His crew laid down their muskets and backed away, waiting his next command.
Caleb turned to Tunstall and the helmsman. “Bring us alongside,” and then to Young, “Get the grappling hooks.”
The little schooner veered to port, then to starboard to come alongside the heavier ship, and the grappling hooks arced over the five feet of dark Atlantic seawater that separated the two vessels to catch the railing of the Angelique, a full eight feet higher than the deck of the Zephyr. The crew of the small schooner pulled the hawsers tight and looped them over the cleats, and the sides of the two ships slammed together.
Caleb shouted to the captain, “Spill your sails and drop anchor. We’re coming aboard.” He turned to Young. “I’ll take ten men. You stay here with the others and keep muskets on their crew. We’ll collect their guns. If any of them go after them first, shoot.”
Young licked dry lips and said, “Aye, sir.”
Caleb spoke to Adam, standing to his right. “Keep your pistols where you can get to them. Pick nine more men with muskets and get ready to follow me.”
“Aye, sir.”
The Spanish captain shouted orders to his men and half of them scrambled into the rigging while Caleb ordered twelve of his own men up into the spars of the Zephyr, and within minutes both ships had emptied their sails and slowed to a stop. The anchor chain of the Angelique rattled and the two-thousand pound black iron hook hit the water and disappeared. The two ships were dead in the water, lashed together as one.
Caleb did not hesitate. With Adam and his nine men he climbed the hawsers binding the two ships together and dropped over the railing to the deck of the Angelique. The captain, short, barrel-chested, swarthy face twisted in fury, faced him fifteen feet away. His voice shook as he jerked an arm up, finger pointing at Caleb like a saber, and spoke.
“I have ships! They will hunt you down. You will hang! You and every man with you.”
Caleb drew a pistol and held it at his side, loose and easy. “Adam, gather their muskets and get them on board the Zephyr.”
While Adam and his men gathered the weapons and passed them over the starboard rail to waiting hands on the Zephyr, Caleb spoke to the captain. “I’m sending two men belowdecks. If any of your crew does anything we don’t understand, you’re the first one to be shot. Tell them.”
The blocky man was trembling, face an ugly snarl, nearly out of control. “I will not!”
Caleb shrugged, cocked his pistol and brought it to bear on the third button of the captain’s tunic. “On the count of five.”
The only sound on the Angelique was the wind in the rigging while the crew silently counted to four before the captain shouted his orders to his men. Then he turned on Caleb and declared, “There is disease in the hold. Dysentery. Go down if you will.”
Caleb gestured to Adam. “You know the smell of dysentery?”
“Yes.” No man could ever forget the thick smell of the rotted linings of a man’s stomach in his discharge, and every man who had served in an army from the dawn of time knew that dysentery had killed far more soldiers than grapeshot and cannon and bayonet.
“Take one man and go down into the hold. If you smell dysentery, come back out quick. If not, take a look.”
“Aye, sir.”
With one man following, Adam opened the small doors beneath the quarterdeck, paused to set his teeth against the stench that rolled out, then disappeared into the blackness. Caleb watched, expecting him to reappear within seconds, but one minute became two.
On the Zephyr, Tunstall was watching the Spanish crew like a hawk. Their dress, the sullen, dark look of pure hatred in their swarthy faces, their beards, and the rings in their ears. A strange look came into his face and he turned to look at Young, who wore the same puzzled expression.
Sounds came from the hold, and Adam and his man came from the blackness back onto the deck to stand erect, faces turned upward as they fought to breathe deeply of the clean, fresh air. Caleb waited, then asked, “Dysentery?”
Adam shook his head. “No. Starvation. They’re about half-dead from starvation. Down there in their own filth. In chains. Some dead. Dying.” He stared at the captain, unable to believe one human being could do to another the things he had seen in the twilight of the hold beneath their feet.
Caleb took two steps forward, and the muzzle of his pistol was less than three feet from the captain’s chest when he asked, “You starved them?”
The captain was loud, defiant, defensive. “Rebellion. They rebelled. Without food they are too weak to rise up.”
“The one with the crushed skull we found in the water?”
“Their leader
.”
“The other four we found?”
“They stirred them up.”
“What port are you from?”
There was the slightest hesitation before the captain growled his answer. “Carenage.”
Caleb had never heard of Carenage, but his expression did not change as he pointed. “Take me to your quarters. Now.”
Caleb gestured and Adam followed the two men through the door into the small but ornately decorated quarters of the captain, where Caleb dragged the ship’s war chest from beneath the captain’s bunk.
He pointed to the huge iron lock. “Open it.”
“I do not have the key.”
Caleb shoved the muzzle of his pistol against the captain’s throat. “Find it.”
Thirty seconds later the lock was lying on the table and the heavy black hinges groaned as Caleb lifted the thick lid of the oak chest. Inside were six large leather pouches of gold French coins, a copy of the manifest, a list of the crew with their signatures, and the familiar insurance papers. With them was a contract for the purchase of the slaves by a man named Hairston in Charleston, South Carolina, from a French company named LeBlanc in Bordeaux, France. The ship to carry the slaves was the Angelique, whose home port was listed as Bordeaux.
For a moment Caleb pondered, then dropped the papers back into the chest and dropped the lid banging. He set the lock back in the hasp but did not close it, stuffed the key into his pocket, and grasped the thick iron handle on one end of the chest while Adam took the other. With the captain ahead of them, they climbed the five steps up the narrow passage back onto the deck, where the summer sun was casting long shadows eastward as it settled toward the western skyline.
The two brothers set the chest thumping on the deck, and Caleb called to Tunstall and Young. “Bring all the men and come over here.”
The entire remaining crew of the Zephyr climbed onto the deck of the big freighter and faced Caleb, waiting.