by Jon Scieszka
Riley picked up a bowl and crawled out of his tent. He approached Hamet, kneeled, and pointed to his white, filmy mouth.
“El rais?” asked Hamet—“The captain?” The women had mentioned that their slave was a former ship’s captain.
Riley’s tongue was so stiff, he could not speak. He nodded yes.
Hamet walked to his camel, opened a goatskin, and filled Riley’s bowl with clean water.
“Drink, captain,” he said.
Riley drank. In his best Arabic, he said, “God bless you.”
Hamet was about Riley’s age. Like Riley, he had a wife and children at home, in Morocco, but spent most of his time on long trading voyages. His last trip across the Sahara, from his village to the city of Timbuktu twelve hundred miles to the southeast, had ended in catastrophe. After two years of sandstorms and starvation, he’d returned home poorer than when he’d left. Desperate to earn enough to feed his family, he set out into the desert with his last few bundles of cloth.
The day after arriving in the camp of Riley’s masters, Hamet asked the captain to sit with him. He wanted to hear Riley’s story. In hand signals and elementary Arabic, Riley told of the shipwreck and of the crew’s miserable travels. He told Hamet of his love for his wife and children, including the cabin boy Horace Savage, who he described as his eldest son.
As Riley spoke, a tear slid down Hamet’s cheek. He wiped it away, saying, “Men who have beards like me ought not to shed tears.”
That tear, to Riley, was a spark of hope.
He asked Hamet to take him north and sell him in Morocco. Hamet was intrigued. It might be possible, he said, for them to get to the port town of Swearah. Riley jumped at this, blurting out an outrageous lie. He said he knew the consul (the foreign representative) in Swearah. The man was a friend of his!
Hamet asked how much the consul would pay for Riley.
“One hundred dollars.”
“You are deceiving me,” Hamet said.
Riley swore he wasn’t.
“I will buy you then,” Hamet said. “But remember, if you deceive me, I will cut your throat.”
Riley agreed.
Hamet haggled with Riley’s owner, eventually buying the slave for a piece of blue linen and a few ostrich feathers. Riley begged Hamet to purchase Horace too.
It was too far to Swearah, Hamet said. The boy wouldn’t make it.
“Let me stay in his place,” Riley pleaded. “Carry him up to Swearah. My friend will pay you and send him home to his mother. I could never face her without him.”
Again, Hamet was moved. “You shall have your son, by Allah.”
He traded for the cabin boy. Riley then followed Hamet around camp, pestering the merchant to buy more of the enslaved sailors. Hamet pointed out the dangers—they had eight hundred miles to travel, and a bigger group would need more water and would be easier prey for bandits. Riley wouldn’t stop begging. Finally, incredibly irritated with his slave, Hamet agreed to buy the four other Americans in camp. (The three other Commerce men were in other camps, far beyond Riley’s help.)
The slaves cost Hamet almost everything he and his brother had. If he was unable to sell the Americans, he was ruined.
Before setting out, Hamet knew, the slaves needed at least one meal. At midnight he and Seid silently led one of their extra camels—an old, scrawny beast—out of camp and into a gully beyond view of the tents. Riley gathered sticks and dung for a fire. Seid slid his scimitar across the camel’s neck, and Hamet caught the flowing blood in a copper kettle.
According to Bedouin custom, anyone who has food is obliged to share—it’s the only way to stay alive in such a harsh environment. At this particular moment, though, the brothers and slaves were not in a sharing mood. They’d been hoping to conduct the slaughter without awakening anyone. But once the kettle of blood began bubbling on the fire, the meaty smell drifted into camp. Everyone started coming out to see what was going on.
Hoping to beat the crowd, Riley and the other captives stuck their hands into the blood, which had congealed to a kind of pudding, and scooped scalding blobs into their mouths. Meanwhile, people started hacking off bits of the camel. Some carried off hunks of meat while others threw the liver, lungs, and uncleaned intestines into the blood pot. Someone else cut open the animal’s stomach, dipped out a handful of pulpy, green liquid, poured it into the pot, and stirred the stew with a stick.
Hamet and Seid felt themselves lucky to get a few bites of intestine. The slaves were happy with the blood.
After a short night’s sleep, Riley awoke desperate for a drink. He looked over at the camel carcass and saw a teenage boy bent over the beast’s open stomach, drinking. Riley pushed the kid out of the way and stuck his own head in. “The liquid was very thick,” he recalled, and “its taste was exceedingly strong.” But he wasn’t complaining. “So true it is,” he noted, “that hunger and thirst give a zest to everything.”
Hamet and Seid cut up the bits of remaining meat (just fifteen pounds from the entire camel) and laid it out to dry in the sun. From the camel’s hide, the brothers made sandals for the Americans. Hamet gave Riley a small knife—a sign that Hamet trusted Riley and was counting on him to help lead the group through the challenges ahead.
Then the eight men set out for Morocco, taking turns riding the brothers’ four camels. The slaves all had beards by now, and shaggy hair. They’d been able to scrounge rags or scraps of goatskin, so no one was completely naked anymore, though Riley was still shirtless. When they were a ways out of camp, Hamet pulled a shirt out of his saddlebag. He told Riley he’d stolen it.
“Put it on,” he said. “Your poor back needs a covering.”
Riley kissed Hamet’s hand and put on the shirt.
He and the other Americans had started out thinking of their captors as Muslim savages. The captors had called them Christian dogs. Now, between Riley and Hamet at least, those views were beginning to change.
“Good Riley,” Hamet said, “you will see your children again, inshallah (Arabic for ‘God willing’).”
Over the next few days, the men finished off the last of the camel meat. Their dehydrated bodies no longer produced urine, so the camels’ was the only available beverage. The captain was down to about 120 pounds. They traveled fifteen hours a day in a life-or-death race for water.
“The remaining flesh on our posteriors, and inside of our thighs and legs, was so beat, and literally pounded to pieces, that scarcely any remained on our bones,” wrote Riley. The captives’ pain, hunger, and thirst made sleep at night impossible. “I cannot imagine that the tortures of the rack can exceed those we experienced.”
On what Riley figured was September 30, Hamet and Seid led the caravan into a narrow canyon. There was a well nearby, Hamet explained.
Riley saw nothing but rock and sand.
“Look down there!” Hamet shouted, pointing to a pile of boulders.
Riley peered between the rocks. It was too dark to see. But, as his eyes adjusted, he could make out what looked like a dark pool. Water? He stumbled around the boulders and found an opening, allowing him to reach a trickling spring.
“Riley, drink,” Hamet said, “it is sweet.”
Riley drank. They all drank. The camels drank astounding amounts—sixty gallons apiece, Riley guessed.
With goatskins full, they set out again, soon reaching an area of soft, sandy desert, a mercy for their feet. Several days later they met up with a group of nomads who gave them boiled mutton and bowls of milk mixed with water. “This was indeed sumptuous living,” commented Riley, amazed by the generosity of people who had so little.
The men journeyed on into a region of sand dunes and swirling winds. They were out of meat again but still had the bones, which they pounded to powder and ate. In mid-October they entered a more populous region on the edge of the desert. The group hobbled up a winding path into what looked to Riley like hopelessly barren mountains. But as they turned a bend in the road, they were stopped short by a vis
ion that looked to them like heaven. A green valley. Trees lining a clear stream. Cows and sheep feeding on grass.
The slaves raced into the valley and fell face-first into the stream. As they rested in the shade of date trees, Hamet brought the captives a hunk of honeycomb. They bit off huge chunks with the baby bees still inside. It was so good, they cried.
From there, loaded guns in hand, the brothers led the way north. They walked along hilly paths toward the Atlantic coast.
“Many robbers and bad men inhabit these parts,” Hamet told Riley.
Sure enough, they were followed by lurking bandits with muskets and scimitars—clearly hoping one of the slaves would fall behind and make easy prey. But the group moved quickly and stuck together.
They continued up and down hills, passing small towns surrounded by walls of rock and mud. They passed villagers working in gardens, travelers on horseback, women carrying firewood and jars of water. Standing on a cliff high above the sea, Hamet pointed to a barely visible spot along the coast, far to the north.
“There is Swearah, Riley.”
“How far?”
“Ten days,” said Hamet, “at our slow pace.”
Hamet had a better idea. They stopped at a walled village, and Hamet announced he would hurry ahead to Swearah alone. Seid would stay and guard the slaves. It was time, he told Riley, to write a letter to his friend in Swearah.
“I have fought for you,” Hamet reminded the captain, “have suffered hunger, thirst, and fatigue, to restore you to your family, for I believe Allah is with you. I have paid all my money on your word alone.” He reminded the captain of their deal. “If your friend will fulfill your engagements and pay the money for you and your men, you shall be free. If not, you must die for having deceived me. Your men will be sold for what they will bring.
“Get some sleep,” Hamet said. “In the morning, you will write the letter.”
Riley lay awake all night. His bold-faced lie had gotten them out of the desert—but what the @#%& was he supposed to do now? “To whom should I write?” he wondered. “I know nobody at Swearah.”
The next morning Hamet handed Riley a scrap of paper, a reed, and some black ink.
“Come, Riley,” he said. “Write.”
With Hamet hovering over his shoulder, Riley dipped the reed in the ink.
“Sir,” he began, with no idea who he was addressing (luckily, Hamet could not read English).
“The brig Commerce,” Riley wrote, “was wrecked on Cape Bojador, on the 28th August last; myself and four of my crew are here nearly naked in barbarian slavery: I conjure you by all the ties that bind man to man, by those kindred blood, and everything you must hold dear, and by as much as liberty is dearer than life, to advance the money required for our redemption.”
Riley promised the money would be repaid.
“Should you not relieve me, my life must instantly pay the forfeit. I leave a wife and five helpless children to deplore my death. My present master, Sidi (a term of respect) Hamet, will hand you this, and tell you where we are—he is a worthy man.”
Riley signed his name, folded the paper, and hesitated over how to address it. Finally he wrote: “English, French, Spanish, or American consuls, or any Christian merchants in Mogadore or Swearah.”
Hamet set off with the letter. It would take him at least three days to get to Swearah, and as long for news to return. Riley and his crew could do nothing but wait.
During the day the captives were penned in a yard with cows and sheep. At night Seid locked them in a cellar and slept outside with a loaded gun.
Their sunburns began to heal. There was plenty of water and barley bread twice a day. It was delicious, but more than their shrunken intestines could handle.
“Our bowels seemed to ferment like beer,” Riley noted.
A small price to pay.
The real torture was the waiting. Five days passed with no news, then six. On the seventh day, a traveler came into town and announced he had seen Hamet several days before, very near Swearah.
From that moment on, Riley nearly fainted every time the village gate opened. “I longed to know my fate,” he explained, “and yet, I must own, I trembled at the thought of what it might be.”
On the eighth night since Hamet had left, someone knocked at the village gate. Seid went to see who it was. The captives, sitting on the ground and shaking from a mixture of cold and fear, watched him return with a tall, well-dressed man.
The stranger walked into the yard. He looked the captives over, and his gaze rested on Riley. He took a step forward and uttered, in English, an all-time classic line:
“How de-do, captain?”
Riley felt his heart leap into his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He jumped up. All the slaves did.
The stranger was holding out his hand. Riley grabbed it. He begged to know the news from Swearah.
“Habla español?” the man asked, switching to a language he actually knew.
Riley nodded.
The man introduced himself as Rais bel Cossim, close friend of Mr. William Wilshire, the English consul in Swearah. Hamet had delivered the letter to Wilshire. And here was Wilshire’s response.
Riley took the paper with trembling hands. He was quaking too violently to read the words. He handed the letter to one of his crew members, then fell to the ground and listened as the man read aloud:
MY DEAR AND AFFLICTED SIR,
I have this moment received your two notes by Sidi Hamet, the contents of which, I hope, you will be perfectly assured have called forth my most sincere pity for your sufferings and those of your companions.
The letter got even better.
“I have agreed to pay the sum of nine hundred and twenty dollars to Sidi Hamet on your safe arrival in this town with your fellow sufferers,” Wilshire continued. “You will be at liberty to commence your journey for this town on receipt of this letter.”
Tears streamed down the captives’ bony, bearded cheeks. They were going to make it home.
Curious people lined the road to watch the captives march into Swearah. The Americans washed and shaved and ate. Captain Riley asked for a scale. He weighed ninety pounds.
After a few weeks of rest, the Americans sailed home. Back in the States, Riley wrote a book about his adventures. It was a huge bestseller. A teenager in Indiana named Abraham Lincoln loved the book, and it may well have influenced his view of slavery. Riley certainly thought differently about slavery than he had before. “I have now learned to look with compassion on my enslaved and oppressed fellow creatures,” he declared, referring to the 1.5 million people held in slavery in the United States. “My future life shall be devoted to their cause.”
Of the six men left behind in the Sahara, two made it home; the other four were never heard from again. One of the survivors, William Porter, later told his story to Riley. He’d been purchased by a Muslim trader who was determined to bring him north to Swearah. They were attacked by bandits. The trader was murdered. Porter changed hands a few times but eventually made it to a coastal town, and from there, to America.
Porter described the trader who had died trying to bring him to freedom. Riley was absolutely convinced it had been his friend Hamet.
Bibliography
King, Dean. Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004.
Ratcliff, Donald J. “Captain James Riley and Antislavery Sentiment in Ohio, 1819–1824.” Ohio History 81 (1972): 76–94.
Riley, James. An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce. Hartford, CT: Published by the Author, 1817.
Robbins, Archibald. A Journal, Comprising an Account of the Loss of the Brig Commerce. Hartford, CT: Silas Andrus, 1818.
TARANTULA HEAVEN
BY SY MONTGOMERY
Here are some sounds you do not want to hear in the jungle: the sound of crumpling paper. (In the Amazon this usually means carnivorous ants are pouring from a tree.) The sound of cracking bark. (In B
orneo it’s a clue an orangutan is trying to push a tree down on top of you.) And neither do you want to hear a shout from a man who studies tarantulas for a living—a man who is not easily disturbed, a man who is only fifty yards away, but you can’t see him for the jungle—uttering, with great distress and alarm, an unprintable expletive. Particularly when it is followed by the thud of 230 pounds of spider specialist hitting the ground and then crashing down a slope.
The week before Thanksgiving, we were somewhere off-trail at the Trésor Reserve, our second day in the rain forest of French Guiana. With photographer Nic Bishop, I was researching a book to be titled The Tarantula Scientist, on the work of then-Ohio-based arachnologist Sam Marshall—whose distressed exclamation had just reached our ears.
“Sam?” I called. “Are you all right?”
Silence.
The day before, Sam had been telling us this forest was more benign than the beech-maple forest of Ohio. “There are fewer mosquitoes, no poison ivy, and as far as fer-de-lance”—that’s the most common snake here, a species whose bite likely won’t kill you but would require multiple skin grafts to fix—“I may have stepped over five hundred of them, but I never see any.”
Maybe he had found one at last.
Seconds passed. Then, matter-of-factly, Sam spoke again: “I found a wasps’ nest.”
He’d found it by smacking his head into it. The nest was at face height, about six inches long, and looked exactly like the dead leaf to which it was attached. About 150 unhappy, black, half-inch-long wasps were swarming around it.
You might think Sam would keep an eye out for wasps, if for no reason other than self-preservation. There are the half-inch-long, solitary wasps that like to sip your sweat, which you notice when you lower your arm and the one in your armpit stings you. Then there are the huge, horrible, black Pepsis wasps, as big as hummingbirds. These slow-flying monsters attack tarantulas, paralyze them with their stings, and lay eggs in the still-living spider. Their larvae hatch and eat the spider’s flesh. And then, there are more . . . but Sam really paid them no heed. “I was so focused on Theraphosa, I didn’t see anything else,” he explained.