The Fire Within

by Samuel T Clayton

  After grappling hooks had been deployed and locked into place, the boarding party quickly scaled the side of the slave ship. Tristan was leading the charge and the first one over the gunwale, no regard for his own safety. The rest of the men, not wishing to be embarrassed by their new captain, doubled their efforts as they clambered across onto the French ship’s quarterdeck. Soon, the sight that had greeted their captain came into view, and yelling and cursing quickly made way for gaping mouths with the odd audible gasp. From behind, frustrated sailors pushed through those who had stopped in their tracks until at long last the whole boarding party was standing on the French ship’s quarterdeck, guns drawn, cutlasses and axes at the ready.

  ‘Que porra aconteceu aqui?’ asked one of the Portuguese men, breaking the silence and asking the burning question that was roaming through everyone’s mind, including Tristan’s. What the fuck happened here?

  The two Frenchmen, who had surrendered willingly, were still crouched down about three yards in front of him. Both now held their little white handkerchiefs high in the air and murmured, ‘Miséricorde, miséricorde.’ Behind them, the two dead men, cut down by Tayler’s well-placed shot, had been joined by a third, with a single gunshot wound to the head. Together their bodies painted the quarterdeck a scarlet red that glistened in the bright winter sun. But it was what the boarding party saw all along the sides of the quarterdeck that left them somewhat perplexed.

  Several injured men lay up against the bulwark. Some moved at the sight of the intruders, others not. Festered gashes, cuts and burn marks were rife among the lot. A few men had fresh musket wounds. He had no doubt that these were the ones who had been shot by Hanlon and D’Cruz. Tristan counted at least fifteen living souls propped up against the side of the ship and just shook his head when he looked down onto the main deck where the scene repeated itself.

  ‘Take seven men and secure the main deck! Shoot anyone who acts suspiciously,’ Tristan ordered the boatswain.

  ‘Aye aye, sir,’ answered Delgado. He gathered a few sailors and together, the group made its way down the ladders, through the broken palisade, which he briefly examined, and onto the main deck. The few able Frenchmen, who had finally managed to haul in all of the slave ship’s sails, had no fight left in them and crouched down among their wounded peers with hands in the air, resigned to the fate that was about to come their way. ‘Miséricorde,’ they pleaded with the boatswain and his men.

  A roar startled Tristan’s group as big Jack Tayler and his men lunged over the ship’s side, but the second boarding party was also quickly silenced by the sorry sight. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Tayler enquired, but the man nearest to him just shrugged his shoulders. He marched over to where Tristan was talking to a man waving a little white flag.

  ‘Capitaine?’ Nothing. ‘Anglais?’ Still nothing. Tristan felt his frustration build rapidly when both Frenchmen did not even blink an eye.

  ‘Sir, what is going on here? Looks like someone beat us to it.’

  ‘Can’t you see I’m trying to find out?’ snapped Tristan. Then, realising he could put Tayler’s height and general mean demeanour to good use, quickly followed it with, ‘Mr Tayler, ignore my first order about securing their captain and just find me a man on this ship that speaks English.’

  ‘It’ll be my pleasure, sir.’ Tayler walked to the quarterdeck rail and yelled, ‘Parler Anglais?’ When no one replied, he sneered loudly and made his way to the bulwark where a dying man was desperately clinging to his last bit of breath. ‘This one’s definitely not going to make it.’ Tayler pulled out his pistol and shot the man through the leg. The bullet must have severed an artery, because blood spurted into the air and onto the man next to him, causing the person to roll out of the way with what little energy he had left. The French words he screamed as he tried to evade the crimson fountain mingled with the faint cries from the dying man, and throughout the ship, wounded men started to come to life as they came to realise the dilemma they all faced. ‘Parler Anglais?’ repeated Tayler.

  ‘Oui! Oui!’

  ‘Man, down here, sir!’ Delgado informed his captain. ‘But look here first, por favor!’ For the first time, Tristan heard a slight waver in the old hand’s voice as the boatswain signalled him urgently.

  ‘Send him up!’ replied Tristan, then turned to Tayler and said, ‘Get some answers out of him but he’d better be alive when I get back.’

  Walking down the steps, Tristan passed the young French sailor who was escorted by one of Delgado’s men. No more than fourteen years of age, the bewildered lad had wide-open eyes that spoke of innocence and genuine fear, both of which would be thoroughly exploited by Tayler. The boy stared openly at Tristan, confused that such a young man could command such authority.

  As Tristan pushed through the remnants of the palisade gate, a very faint, yet pleasantly sweet aroma greeted him. It reminded him of their hunting trip when they used to grill large slabs of meat on an open fire. Under the guard of cocked pistols, tired French eyes followed him as he walked over to Delgado, who was standing by an open hatch close to the mainmast. The slave ship’s main deck was littered with metal scraps and fragments, some deeply embedded in the planking. Large sections of wood had a dark tint. Tristan knelt at one of the larger spots and at closer inspection quickly realised that the stains were dried blood which had also caked in the many grooves and crevices. Exposed to the elements, it had turned the wood black.

  ‘I ask two men to look below. You must see, sir,’ said Delgado and gestured towards the rectangular hole.

  Tristan did not know if it was Delgado’s sombre face or the invisible force that was trying to hold him back, but he chose to ignore both and descended into the dark void, surrounded only by a beam of light that streamed through the hatchway. He continued downwards until he reached the lower deck. The intense acrid smell of smoke matched the blackened inside and made it hard to breathe. Tristan held up his hands that gripped the ladder and let the light shine on them. They were exactly as he had expected – charcoaled.

  ‘Open the main hatch!’ He waited patiently, squinting his eyes to try and see into the darkness. Suddenly, towards the bow, light streamed into the hold through the main cargo hatch. He stumbled towards the front of the ship until he could see the light of day above and his surroundings more clearly.

  The hold had been completely emptied. Planks that made up the deck and platforms above, as well as the inside of the hull, were all black like they had been slathered with a thick coat of paint. He picked up an object which lay a few feet in front of him. A charred foot that had been severed at the ankle partly crumbled between his fingers, and he threw it into the darkness in disgust. The more he explored, the more he discovered grisly items, mostly in the form of hacked-off and burnt body parts. With his dagger, he dug deformed musket balls out of planks, but it was the deep scratches on the wooden shelves that got to him in the end. When he started pulling whole fingernails from deep claw marks, his stomach started to churn, and the need for fresh air became a necessity. As he walked to the ladder, his surroundings started to suffocate him, and as the acrid odour of the victims’ ordeal rapidly closed in on him, Tristan could not get to the top fast enough.

  When Tayler saw him stride up the steps, he took a small step backwards. Tristan’s hair was a black mess and his face dark with stripes of thick charcoal smeared across his cheeks and forehead. His hands were black too, and when a joke entered Tayler’s mind about Jabari and his African ways rubbing off on the lad, he held back, surprising even himself. The lad’s blue eyes had a cold, deathly way about them and the mischievous grin that was almost always present was gone.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked Tristan with a calm voice.

  ‘Not much persuasion was required, sir. The boy just spilled the beans when I asked him what had happened.’

  ‘So, come on, out with it.’ Tristan watched the French boy’s face, while Tayler spoke.

  ‘They were heading for Saint-Domingue as part of a
larger fleet. He says there were three more slave ships, two of them larger than to this one, and another two corvettes for protection. Ten days into the voyage, the trouble started. A group of slaves managed to free themselves. They don’t know how, but it happened around noon when half the slaves were brought up to get their oats stew. They killed the cook and guards, then partially broke through the palisade. Acting on the captain’s orders, the crew fired the two swivel guns directly into the mutinous black mass and culled a large number of the Africans. Musket fire followed, and the sailors stopped the tide momentarily, beating back the slaves with cutlasses. The boy says it was a stalemate because the fore of the ship was occupied by the slaves who had hidden themselves behind masts, barrels and crates, while the few remaining French sailors still had control of the aft. But the French knew that the slaves had the numbers to overwhelm them at any moment.

  ‘When the captain signalled for help, one of the corvettes came in close, and their musketeers started picking off the slaves on the upper deck. The Africans were forced down below deck, but nobody could get down there to secure them, so they just fired indiscriminately into the bunch, and when they still didn’t disperse, the captain ordered tar to be heated up, and they poured the smoking hot liquid down the hatch. The boy said the screams still keep him awake at night. In between the chaos, whether it was musket fire, they don’t know, but the tar caught fire. Burning slaves and smoke billowed from the main hatch. Some were shot on the spot while others managed to jump overboard,’ – Tayler shook his head – ‘no doubt to certain death.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ asked Tristan softly.

  ‘That’s where we got to. Quite vividly told, like the boy needed to rid his mind of all that had happened.’

  Tristan was still looking at the French boy, who had been nodding throughout Tayler’s narration. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘We water fire, monsieur. La chance…errr…luck. It no more. Many slave dead from fire and smoke. We throw the body into sea. They kill the one…with…with wounds. Capitaine tell us. Do it! Some slave still good. We put it on other ship. The amiral order us sail ship back to Afrique.’

  ‘Where is your capitaine now?’

  ‘He stay on amiral ship, monsieur.’

  ‘Are there any officers on board?’

  ‘Oui, monsieur. Only aspirant.’ The boy looked nervous because he already knew the question that would follow.

  ‘Point him out to me!’

  ‘He not here, monsieur.’

  Tristan turned around, facing his men. ‘Listen up! There’s an officer hidden on this ship. I want him found, alive! Pair up in twos. Start at the stern and work your way forwards.’

  ‘Lazaretto, monsieur.’ The French boy’s eagerness to help did not go unnoticed, but so too did his betrayal.

  ‘Mr Tayler, there should be a small storeroom at the stern. Look for a hidden hatch of some sort.’

  Both crews watched on as Tayler looked for and soon discovered the hatch to the locker, its scuttle partially hidden underneath the side of a small skiff. With a cocked pistol, he opened it. Cries of miséricorde followed. ‘Found the bastard!’

  ‘Is he your highest-ranking officer on this ship?’ Tristan asked the French boy.

  ‘Oui, monsieur. Highest.’

  ‘Did he help to execute your capitaine’s orders?’

  ‘Oui.’

  Tayler had the Frenchman by the upper arm who now stood in front of Tristan. The cowering man looked like he was about to piss himself.

  ‘Does he understand English?’ Tristan asked the boy.

  ‘Non, monsieur.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What’s his name?’

  ‘Monsieur Alois Dupont.’

  ‘Mr Delgado!’

  ‘Sir?’ The boatswain answered from where he was keeping watch over their French captives, high up on the quarterdeck steps.

  ‘I need you up here, please.’

  When the boatswain arrived, Tristan immediately asked him, ‘Did you overhear the conversation?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘Very well. I need you to make sure that every man on our ship knows the full extent of what has happened here before the day is over. The truth. Can you do that?’

  ‘I can, sir. I tell them the truth.’

  Tristan turned his attention to the Frenchman. ‘Clear away, Mr Tayler.’ Tayler let go of the man’s arm and cautiously walked around to where the rest of the Mary’s crew looked on.

  ‘Mr Alois Dupont, for atrocities committed against fellow mankind, inclusive of murder, I hereby sentence you to death.’ Tristan pulled his pistol from his belt and shot the man straight between the eyes. Bewildered eyes observed Dupont’s lifeless body slump to the deck, the Frenchman’s mouth still gaped open wide as he tried to protest his innocence. With a dull thud, he joined his fallen comrades in the afterlife, and soon after, lowly cries broke out among the French crew as they pondered who would be next. ‘Mr Tayler. Mr Delgado.’

  ‘Sir?’ Both men were still reeling from what they had just witnessed, with Tayler looking for some judiciousness from his captain and friend, but there was none to be had. Instead, the cold and blank eyes that met his own looked no different from those of the lifeless man that lay at their feet.

  ‘Launch that skiff. Put every Frenchman still breathing in it. I don’t care if they have to cling to the sides. Bring everything of value back to the Mary, then burn this abomination of a ship. It has no business being afloat.’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’

  Tristan walked up to the French boy. ‘Lad, you tell every living soul what you have witnessed here today. ‘Tis the only reason why you lot are still alive. When you set course for land, look back at your burning ship and let that be a reminder. Let it haunt you for the rest of your life for you should’ve been in it. Feel the flames sizzle on your skin, the same way you have burned those men. You tell your fellow slavers that Nyegere will hunt them down, every single one of them and next time, he will show no mercy. The highest-ranking officer will be executed, and his crew will burn with their ship. Nyegere! Oui?’

  After a long pause in which the boy conjured up enough courage, he answered, ‘Oui, monsieur.’

  Tristan turned his back on all of them and headed back to the Mary, calm on the outside but inside, a fire was raging, a blazing furnace that would melt the most unyielding of metals.

  The Cueilleurs d'Espoir was a burning wreck on the distant horizon when Tristan addressed the Mary’s crew. The slave ship had not offered up much – a few personal items of value, two large bags of cowrie shells and little food. Her cannons must have been removed before her return voyage, but at least, the extra muskets and cutlasses they had taken off the French crew would come in handy, as would the extra rations.

  Tristan had their full attention. Delgado had done his part, and there was silence on the deck as the men waited with anticipation to hear their new captain speak for the first time. He did not do so from the quarterdeck. Instead, he was down on the main deck outside his cabin door, standing on a small crate.

  To his right stood Silva and Delgado, while on his left, his fellow Britons had taken up positions. They too watched on, not knowing what to expect.

  ‘My fellow sailors, I’m not one for speeches. I’ve never given one, so please bear with me.’ He waited for Silva to translate. It resulted in a few puzzled looks after which some of the men burst out in laughter. In the front row, a sailor started loosening his belt, and his mate soon joined him. Tristan thought back to what he had said, then realised what had happened. ‘Bear, Mr Silva, as in burden, not bare! Do you seriously think I would call all hands so that we can all get in the nude together! For God’s sake, man, tell them otherwise!’

  Realising his blunder, the quartermaster flushed red and rectified his mistake but not before a few breeches had already been dropped. More laughter erupted among the crew, first at the mistake, then at those who had heeded the call and were now desperately trying to pull t
heir breeches back up.

  That’s good, Tristan thought smilingly. Laughter. I can work with laughter.

  When the group had settled down, Tristan commenced. ‘This ship belonged to a good man, a man you all loved dearly. Gentlemen, Captain Francesco Silveira gave his life for what he believed in, or rather, for what he didn’t believe in – slavery. In his eyes, all men were equal, and for that, he unselfishly gave the most sacred of offerings – his own life!’ He paused, giving the quartermaster time to do his part, which the man did brilliantly and with similar conviction, choosing his words carefully this time.

  ‘Today, I saw what men…no, what barbarians can do to their fellow men. Imagine with me, please. These people come into your towns, into your homes, take your fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers for no reason other than the colour of their skins. These barbarians put them in chains and march them to a ship where they are put in the hold, with more chains. For forty days, while they’re sailing, they’re starved, beaten and raped, and all the while they have no idea what they have done to deserve such punishment.’

  Tristan took a breather and nodded to Silva. The anger in the quartermaster’s voice surprised him.

  ‘They arrive in a new land, where their rightlessness is embedded into their skin with a red-hot iron. Aye, your family, now chattel slaves, have no rights, no freedom. Hell, when they wanna take a piss, they have to ask permission to do it! They aren’t allowed to speak their language, and if they even dare to look at their masters the wrong way, strips of flesh are torn from their backs.’

  Upon Silva’s conclusion, Tristan pointed to the sunken ship. ‘Today, I have witnessed what else these barbarians can do. They put those poor people in chains and when they tried to fight for their freedom and respect – like any man in his right mind would do – they were killed like cattle in a slaughterhouse, some of them even burned alive.

  ‘Imagine that be your family! Imagine that! Now imagine you have a chance to do something about it. Would you not sail to the ends of the earth to put an end to such atrocities?’ Tristan jumped off the crate, walked to where Jabari stood and waited for Silva to finish.