Chesapeake

by James A. Michener

  But as he became familiar with the operation of the ship, he also became obsessed with what must be happening belowdecks, and once when the covers were removed so that six corpses could be hauled out, he strained at his chains, hoping to catch at least a glimpse of the horror he knew existed, but he could see nothing. However, his act did not go undetected, for Captain Turlock saw what he was doing and ordered Mr. Jenkins to strike him down.

  As he lay unconscious on the deck, Turlock stood above him and said to the trembling slaves, “You want to see what’s going on below. Damn me, you’ll see, right now.”

  He ordered the forward hatch opened and had his men throw all the unchained blacks below. If their friends caught them, fine. If they broke their backs, to hell with them. He then commanded his carpenter to unbolt the chains holding the groups aft, and when this was done he ordered his men to throw those blacks below; the two men chained to Cudjo were responsible for dragging him along.

  He awoke in the bowels of the ship. Darkness and horror reigned, and when a storm arose, the shapeless mass of arms and legs and torsos rolled back and forth. The free-moving older slaves from the forward part of the deck found what space they could in the area, which was so cramped that standing erect was impossible; they had to lie flat day after day.

  The chained slaves faced a more difficult problem. Since they had to move as a unit, all they could do was crouch miserably in corners vacated by the numerous dead, but during the first night below, Cudjo was able to move close to Luta, and for the only time since their capture they had a chance to talk.

  “I wanted to come down here,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “Because I know how to sail this ship.”

  “What good?”

  “Because we shall take this ship away from them and sail home.”

  “How?” She pointed to the stifling hold filled with emaciated shadows.

  “We will take this ship!” he repeated stubbornly, and during the long, sick night he moved among the others in this upper hold, whispering to them. One told him a remarkable thing: “In the hold below, which is worse, a man from another village, he calls himself Rutak, has been saying the same thing.” The informant led him to a gap in the planking; Cudjo lay prone, his chains forcing the men nearest him to lie down with him, and he whispered, “Is Rutak there?” and after a while a heavy voice replied, “I am Rutak.”

  They talked for nearly half an hour, and in the upper hold at least six slaves could hear what Cudjo was saying, while in the lower the same number could overhear Rutak, so that before the night was over, all the blacks were aware that Cudjo and Rutak intended something.

  Among those in Cudjo’s chain gang who could not help but hear what was being said was Akko, the young man whose trickery had been responsible for Cudjo’s capture. As the son of a village leader, he had always known preferment, so that the experiences as a chained slave on the march from the Congo, and the indignity of the barracoon, and now the horror of this ship had a deeper effect on him than on most of the others. He was shattered; his deepest sensitivities were profaned and he was prepared to avenge them.

  Shifting his chains, and dragging his two arm-companions with him, he approached Cudjo and said in the dark, “I will help you take the ship.”

  This offer, so unexpected, presented a difficult dilemma. Two months ago Cudjo had wanted to kill this man; now the arrival of worse agonies had obliterated from Cudjo’s mind any thought of mere revenge for personal wrong. But could he trust a man who had betrayed him? In the darkness he could not see Akko or estimate his sincerity, but he did know from his own case that the events of slavery were so compelling as to force a change in any man or woman. He jerked his chains and took Akko by the hands. “We will need you,” he said.

  At noon on the next day, when the hatches were opened, the bright sunlight illuminated the upper hold in which Cudjo and his companions huddled. The space was four feet ten inches high, with no ventilation. One corner was set aside as a latrine, but the urine filtered through onto the heads of the blacks below. Any who died within a twenty-four-hour period were piled in another corner. When the hatch to the lower hold was opened, Cudjo saw that it was sheer hell. He shuddered. Every detail was worse.

  And then Captain Turlock, who was always watching, chanced to look into the hold and saw to his horror that the chained slaves thrown down yesterday had not been bolted fast. “They’ve been free to roam the whole damned ship!” he screamed, and the carpenter was summoned.

  “Fetch the smith and go down there and bolt those niggers down!” he cried, and even when these two specialists, protected by four ordinary sailors with belaying pins, were at their tasks, he continued to rant: “You let those niggers who have seen everything up here congregate freely down there—who knows what might happen?”

  He looked down to see how the work was progressing and saw staring up at him the big warning face of Cudjo, his mortal enemy. “No!” he cried. “Don’t put him in the upper hold with the others who were on deck. Put him and his gang below, and stretch them out tight.”

  So Cudjo, Luta and Akko were thrown even lower into the innards of the ship they had determined to capture, and the blacksmith attached the loose ends of their chain to rings that were the maximum distance apart. Now this batch of slaves would not be able to scratch away lice, or rub their eyes, or feed themselves, or tend to their bodies in any way. The rings of the chain were hammered shut. The cover to the lower hatch was closed. The cover to the upper hatch was restored to place, and a solemn darkness prevailed.

  In this darkness Cudjo, Akko and Rutak conspired. The latter was a powerful man who had already devised a way whereby he might be able to break his chains loose from the bulkhead, and when, with the help of all the free-moving men in the hold, he did so, he showed Cudjo and Akko how to break theirs, too. It then became necessary for the three men to detach themselves from the others, but to break the chain itself proved impossible. They therefore decided that in their escape attempt they would transform their impediment into an advantage. They would utilize the two chains as a weapon, and they trained their two groups, always stooping, never able to stand, in intricate maneuvers which would be supported by the free-moving slaves.

  When their plan was perfected, Cudjo and Rutak huddled for hours with their lips close to the ceiling boards, instructing the men and women above them.

  On the day they had designated for their noontime attempt, a heavy storm arose and sickness belowdecks became epidemic; even Cudjo and Rutak were retching. They were able to vomit nothing because they had eaten so little, and they decided to surrender any thought of going ahead with their plan.

  It was Akko, the thin, wiry little man who resented confinement profoundly, who persisted. “The whites will be as sick as we are,” he argued. “They’ll be inattentive. This day was delivered to us by the gods.” He reasoned so persuasively that Cudjo and the others slowly saw that a storm was the best possible time for their attempt. Accordingly, Cudjo and his men edged open the hatch leading from their hold, whereupon his chain gang and Rutak’s climbed silently into the upper hold. There four sturdy men had organized their part of the operation.

  As they waited in the pitching darkness they formed a strange army: four hundred and seventy-nine unarmed blacks, the strongest impeded by chains, proposing to overwhelm four canny officers and thirty-two sailors armed with guns, knives and belaying pins. The slaves knew that many of them would have to die if this ship was to be taken, but they were certain that many of their captors would die, too.

  Removal of the dead was delayed on this day because of the storm, and it was not till well past two that Captain Turlock ordered his men to open the hatches. Since there were now no slaves on deck to serve as corpse collectors, it had become the custom for two sailors to descend in the rope basket that would later be used to haul out the dead. Once below, the sailors were also expected to check the security of the slaves, going into each of the holds. Because of t
he stench, this duty was not appreciated.

  On this stormy day two grumbling sailors descended in the basket, inspected the upper hold and found that the two chain gangs had escaped from below. They were unable to report this alarming knowledge because as they started to open their mouths, huge hands engulfed their faces and they were strangled.

  With remarkable self-discipline, Rutak and his men climbed silently into the basket, marked the time it had always taken to collect the corpses, then signaled in the accustomed manner for the men on deck to winch the basket out. At the precise moment that Rutak’s team cleared the hold, but before anyone on deck could sound an alarm, Cudjo and his gang grabbed the bottom ropes of the basket and swung themselves on deck. In less than ten seconds the two groups of chain-bound blacks surged over the deck.

  Victory would be impossible unless they used their chains effectively, and this they did. Sweeping in curved arcs toward the sailors, they entwined them, decapitating some, wounding others and allowing them to fall to the deck, where they were strangled by the unchained blacks.

  Most skillful of the leaders was Akko, who had an innate sense of what the chains could accomplish; he and Luta killed three sailors. It was also Akko who first saw Captain Turlock rushing onto the stormy deck, pistol in hand. He saw Silverfist coolly survey the scene to decide where he was needed most; huge Rutak was running berserk, but Turlock apparently judged that others could handle him. Then he spotted Cudjo, the man he had feared from the start, and he knew that he must kill this one or lose his ship.

  “Cudjo!” Akko shouted as the captain pointed his pistol, and when Cudjo did not hear, he and Luta swarmed over the redhead from behind.

  Entangling him in their chains, they tried to strangle him, but failed. He fell heavily to the deck, shouting, “Mr. Goodbarn! Help!” But the mate had already been slain.

  So Akko, Luta and Turlock rolled on the deck, and with his flailing pistol and silver fist he held them off. Struggling to regain his footing, he lurched to one knee, pointed his pistol straight into the chest of Akko and discharged it. Then, with his silver knob, he began to beat Luta in the face, gradually crushing it to a hideous pulp.

  Shoving their bodies aside, he started down the deck to rally his men, and he might have succeeded had not Cudjo turned to see the death of Luta. With a great cry he dragged his chain-mates with him, and they leaped upon Turlock, bearing him down. Cudjo jammed his knees into the captain’s chest, applying pressure until he heard bones crack.

  This should have killed him, but with a tremendous burst of energy he kicked Cudjo away, regained his feet and started swinging his left arm in lethal arcs, but as he started down the deck to rally his men, a sudden gush of blood burst from his mouth. Pressing the back of his right hand against it, he saw that it could not be stanched. “Mr. Goodbarn,” he called with weakened voice, “don’t let them take the ship!”

  But now Cudjo came at him again, assisted by his mates, and Turlock waited till he was close in. Then he lashed out at him with his silver fist, clubbing him over the head with his pistol, but Cudjo bore in, screaming a victory cry. Enmeshing him in the chains, he knocked him down and strangled him.

  He was beating Turlock’s bloody head against the decking when Rutak bellowed, “Cudjo! Mind the ship!”

  It had been agreed from the first hour of the conspiracy that Cudjo would capture the helm, but the death of Luta and his revenge upon Turlock had diverted him. As he shook his head, endeavoring to orient himself, the helmsman discharged his musket almost in the face of a slave attached to Cudjo’s chain, but that black man, with an extraordinary intensity of purpose, continued his forward motion and swept the helmsman into his chained arms, bearing him to the deck and dying on his chest. The helmsman tried to break loose, but three unchained women fell upon him and tore his throat.

  The sight of this violence cleared Cudjo’s brain and he leaped, as well as his chains would permit, to take command of the helm.

  Now all the blacks were out of the hold, and they simply overmassed the sailors. The carpenter, who had nailed them to the bulkheads, had his head torn off; the blacksmith, who had cut away the chains of those who died so that they could be pitched overboard, was now wrapped in chains of his own, weighted with whatever iron could be found, and tossed screaming into the sea.

  It was Rutak who stopped the killing, and ordered, “Throw all the white men into the hold. Half on the bottom, half on top.” He then directed that the dead sailors be tossed into the stormy sea, and this was done, except that when four blacks grabbed Captain Turlock by hands and feet, Cudjo halted them. “He was brave,” he said, and he looked into the glaring eyes of the dead man and placed his two hands under his back. Gently the tired old body was dropped into the Atlantic, an ocean it had fought for so many years. The silver fist, so valuable it could have ransomed many of the slaves, went useless to the depths.

  Now came the sadness of bidding farewell to the forty-eight slaves who had given their lives for freedom. Each survivor had known at least one of the dead as a friend,, but none experienced the confusion and anguish that Cudjo did when Akko and Luta were cut loose from the chains in which they had lived side by side for one hundred and sixty-four days. The dead man had been the cause of grief, the wise plotter, the heroic warrior at the climax. The dead woman ... she would forever be the echo of that peaceful village along the Xanga. He looked away as their bodies were consigned to rest in an ocean they had never known.

  He left the burial scene and returned to the helm, determined to get this ship somehow to safety. In the dark hold he had assured the slaves that if they captured the ship, he would know how to sail it.

  He knew. As the storm worsened he ordered even the reefed sails to be taken down, and when his black crew could not immediately comprehend his orders, he left the tiller and showed them. The steering of the ship he turned over to the man from the upper deck who had led him, on that first fateful night, to Rutak in the deck below.

  When the ship steadied, and when Rutak and his enterprising assistants had explored all quarters, experimenting with the compact and varied foods found below, Cudjo turned his attention to the mysterious box which he knew he must master if this adventure was to succeed. He could make nothing of it. Around the black face within the protecting arc appeared figures in white, but they were a mystery. A long needle rested in the middle of the mysterious thing, and it moved.

  Cudjo concluded that there must be some relationship between the motion within this black box and the wind, or perhaps the sails, or the sway of the ship, and it was not until the next night, when the storm had cleared and the stars came out in unaccustomed brilliance, that he was able to solve the riddle. He allowed Rutak to steer for some unknown destination, one sail set, while he attended to the black box, and late on this starry night, when every hypothesis had proved faulty, for the movement coincided with no phenomenon that he could detect, he happened to look up at the stars with which he had been so familiar in the jungle, and when he located that faithful star by which men traveled at night, he suddenly realized that it controlled the dancing needle, so that no matter where the needle seemed to point, it maintained a constant direction.

  What to do with this knowledge he could not decide, because he had no concept of the world or where on this great ocean he wished to go.

  Rutak and the other freed men and women now came to him to discuss this very question: Where are we to go? He was powerless to answer them, and their combined speculations provided no answer.

  They knew that Arabs were their mortal enemies, lurking and tricking to drive them into slavery. They knew that persons who spoke what was Portuguese were also their enemies, eager to sell them into slave ships. The priests confused them; some had helped and even stayed in the barracoon when they took sick, but others had been responsible for their going aboard the ship; the chief in red who had hurled so many final words at them and then dashed them with water, they could not fathom at all. The one thing they were cer
tain of was what Cudjo reported: there was on this ocean at least one ship which had intended to befriend them. Their job was to find that ship.

  So they kept to the arbitrary course which Cudjo had set that first starry night; they would sail north, always north, and as the weeks passed they became efficient in raising sails and reefing them. They deciphered what an anchor was and how to use it, and they dragged up from the holds three sailors to instruct them in ropes. These sailors, each a veteran of five or six slave crossings, were surprised at the order the blacks were able to maintain; they had been taught that slaves were animals.

  But the sailors would not help the blacks navigate their prize. They deduced that since the weather was growing colder they must be heading north, but since they never saw the stars they could not guess how far. They also judged that only those crewmen jailed belowdecks survived, which meant that the mutineers had killed at least nineteen Americans. They went below, determined to recapture the ship and hang every damned nigger, but Rutak, having masterminded a piracy of his own, did not intend to encourage another. Accordingly, he ordered forty blacks, men and women alike, to bunk belowdecks to monitor the holds, and these suspicious watchmen, having escaped from the horror which the whites had maintained in those cramped quarters, were determined that there be no repetition.