Savage Surrender

by Natasha Peters

  During the first week I would scream at him whenever I saw him. "This ship is disgusting, unbearable. I have never seen such ugly men. And the food! Ugh, the food is poisonous!"

  "Perhaps I'll be lucky and you'll die before we reach our destination," he said.

  "Oh, you think I don't pray for death? Every waking hour! You are nothing but a heartless monster, a counterfeit noble!"

  "And you are a counterfeit lady, Elise," he said lazily. "What of it?"

  "Boor! Pig! I will not permit you to insult me this way. You have no breeding, no manners. You are no better than any of the rest of these—these swine. I won't put up with this another day. You must order the Captain to turn back to France at once. I must get off this ship!"

  He looked at me pityingly, which only inflamed my anger, and strolled out of the cabin. He knew that I would hesitate to follow him up on deck, for even in the beginning I had felt uncomfortable in the heavy silence that fell over the men when they saw me. They watched and waited, and even when I was in the cabin I could feel them lurking just outside, waiting, longing, biding their time.

  Several times I tried without success to find out why Garth, an American, had been a spy and saboteur in France.

  "I do not understand," I argued. "America is a neutral country. She has no quarrel with France, not like England."

  "Your knowledge of current events is quite dazzling, Elise," he observed. "Really, one would think you had been a student of diplomatic affairs all your young life."

  I bristled. "I know as much about it as anyone. Perhaps you were in the pay of the British. That would explain everything. Were you?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Oh, you are the most irritating man! I suppose you were just rampaging around France in disguise for the sheer fun of it, and that you really admire and love Napoleon and think he is the greatest leader the world has ever seen."

  "In my humble opinion," he drawled, "Napoleon is just one more petty tyrant trying to get his name in the history books. I do think, however, that he should keep his eyes off the New World until he has done conquering the old."

  "Ah, ha!" I cried triumphantly. "Then you admit you were a spy!"

  "Not at all. I was merely expressing my opinion. I recall that your uncle had no great love for his Emperor."

  I waved my hand. "Oh, that's only because Uncle Theo has known Bonaparte ever since he and my father were cadets together. They served together, and when Napoleon became First Consul he made my father a general. Uncle Theo considers him an upstart because he's young. Napoleon says all the great leaders have been upstarts: Alexander the Great and Caesar. But then Uncle Theo never got over the Revolution. That was why we are so poor."

  He stifled a smile. "Because Napoleon is an upstart?"

  "Because of the Revolution," I explained impatiently. "Most of the Lesconflair lands were confiscated, but Uncle Theo's father buried all the family treasures until after it was all over. He says Napoleon climbed to power on the bones of France's finest and oldest families, and that he deliberately fomented chaos so that when he restored calm he would look like a great savior."

  "Your uncle is very astute," he admitted.

  "Yes, he is. But you keep distracting me from the subject. We both know what you are. Surely the need for secrecy is done. How could I possibly endanger your mission now, here in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by your countrymen? Why won't you tell me what you were doing?"

  He shrugged. "Because it's none of your business or anybody else's."

  I stormed and pouted, to no avail. I was no farther along on my quest for information than I had been. Yes, he was most infuriating.

  We lay at anchor off the coast of Africa for nearly two months before the Captain was satisfied with the number of slaves in the hold and we were able to sail. The Sultan's additional hundred slaves arrived from the interior a few days before we weighed anchor, and they were added to the already overcrowded hold.

  Garth warned me constantly to stay out of the Captain's way, and he forbade me to go near the hold. One day, however, the groaning and moaning from below seeped into my brain, tormenting me so that I could hardly bear it. I slipped up on deck, determined to see for myself the conditions that this living cargo had to endure. I walked boldly towards the hold. Although there was usually a guard stationed at the hatch, no one was around now. I lifted the heavy hatch with some difficulty, and descended the short ladder into the bowels of the ship.

  The stench that greeted my nostrils was so overpowering that I fell backwards a step and pressed the hem of my skirt over my nose and mouth. Keening and moaning filled my ears, and with it the clank and rattle of chains. I forced myself to stay until my eyes became accustomed to the gloom and I could see better the Hades in which I had found myself. I moved slowly down a narrow aisle between layers of bodies that rose up on either side of me. Huge shelves had been built, one on top of the other, to accommodate up to five slaves apiece. The poor creatures lay there, like items in some grotesque shop, unable to sit up or even move around. Once a day they were taken up on deck in small groups for air and force feeding, like so many geese being readied for fois gras. If they refused to eat they were beaten. That short trip was their only exercise, and the rest of the time, twenty-three and a half hours out of every day, they lay here, tossing and wailing and dying.

  I proceeded slowly along this ghastly corridor of death, feeling the bile rise in my throat. I became dimly aware that I was walking through a running stream of stinking muck that could only have been human excrement. I grew cold with the horror of it all. My leg knocked against something that felt like a spar. I reached down and felt a human foot and leg, stiff and cold. A baby cried weakly and I heard small children sniffling and fretting. The women seemed to be separated from the men, and I wondered if, being smaller, they had been packed in even tighter than the men on the rough plank shelves.

  The Captain had said that he had taken four hundred on board. Four hundred, in a space no bigger than Uncle Theo's library. He had also said, "Even two hundred will bring a fat profit." The monster fully expected to lose half of these people to starvation, disease, suffocation. Every day the sailors tossed a new corpse into the sea.

  A groaning louder than any other filled my ears. I realized that it was me, and that if I didn't get out of that wretched hole I would go mad. I stumbled back, through the slime and the muck, towards the hatch. My teeth were chattering and I was babbling prayers in French, prayers I hadn't said since I was a child. Then suddenly I heard the slam of the hatch door and I was plunged into total darkness, stumbling along towards the ladder I knew lay ahead of me. The rolling of the ship pitched me from side to side, and I knocked against the flanks of bodies. Recoiling from the writhing, stinking, crawling flesh, I lost my balance and fell headlong into the filth. Hands came at me out of the foul blackness, hands plucked at my hair and my face and my gown, hands begging for release, for salvation, for death. Hands groped for light, for air, for freedom. I was screaming when I reached the foot of the ladder, screaming as I pounded my fists against the underside of the hatch.

  Finally it was flung open. Dazzling sunlight flooded my face and nearly blinded me. Brutal arms pulled me to the deck, and I looked into the grinning face of Captain Josiah Fowler.

  "How did you like our hold, Madame?" he sneered. He shook me roughly. "I've got half a notion to chain you down there with the rest of 'em, if you're so fond of 'em. Damned interferin' bitch."

  I began retching and he threw me away from him. I fell in a gagging stinking heap on the deck.

  A strong arm lifted me to my feet. "Come on, Elise, let's go back to the cabin."

  I looked up into Garth's face. "Horrible, horrible," I murmured. "Worse than animals, Garth. They live like pigs in a sty, only it's worse, much worse. It's a nightmare."

  "By God, McClelland, if I ever see that wench around here again I'll flog the both of you. You keep her out of my sight, you hear me? Next time I'll throw her down there and keep
her there until we reach Jamaica."

  "Let's go, Elise." Garth dragged me away, still crying and babbling incoherently and praying feverishly. When we were in our cabin he stripped all the clothes off my body and washed me from head to toe with water and strong soap. I stood shivering in the middle of the room while he worked over me, scrubbing the smell out of my hair and off every inch of my body. He wasn't particularly gentle with me.

  "Why didn't you stand up to him?" I demanded through my tears. "Why do you always take his part, not mine? You should go down there, Garth, and see for yourself what that man is doing. It's a disgrace, it's shameful. I never dreamed a man could behave that way, treating people, human beings like swine!"

  "Hold your tongue, Elise," he said sharply. "For the love of God, just be quiet."

  I stared at him for half a second, then burst into a torrent of noisy weeping. He pulled my nightdress over my head and managed to work my hands and arms through the sleeves.

  "If you don't calm down I'm going to hit you," he said.

  "You—you wouldn't!"

  "Don't push me any farther, Elise," he said warningly. "Your stupidity almost cost us our lives."

  "Pooh! Liar!" I spat. "We're paying passengers, aren't we? He—he wouldn't dare lay a hand on either of us."

  Garth shook his head. "You're so—young," he said in an exasperated tone. "Haven't you learned anything by what happened today? Don't you know that a man who is capable of running this kind of operation, of smuggling and trading human lives, is capable of anything? Do you think that just because we've given him a few coins to take us along that he would hesitate to get rid of us if we became a nuisance? Use your head, Elise. Try thinking like a woman instead of a feather-brained ingenue. He's involved in a dangerous and desperate profession, and he's a dangerous and desperate man."

  I looked at him. "So were you, when I met you. And I managed to survive that."

  "So you did," he sighed. "Why don't you try looking on this as another test of your wits and strength. Try and see if you can survive this voyage and Captain Fowler. Stay away from the hold and stay away from him. He is a stupid and ignorant man. He really believes that women on a ship are bad luck, and in a sense he's right. Do you realize what the presence of one woman on board a vessel carrying a hundred men can do to them? Don't you know by now what they're thinking about when they look at you, what they would do to you if they had half a chance? Remember that girl in Dahomy, Elise. She died because those sailors had been penned up on a ship for nearly six weeks with a beautiful woman and they couldn't touch her."

  "You can't blame that girl's death on me!" I cried. "That's preposterous."

  "Is it? I'm just telling you, Elise, to be on your guard. I'm not joking and I'm not teasing this time: stay away from Fowler and don't interfere with the slaves."

  "You're afraid of him, aren't you?" I sneered. "You're a coward after all, but then I always suspected it."

  His mouth hardened. "I'm not a coward, but neither am I a fool. You are, Elise. My advice to you is to grow up. Put away your dreams and your illusions about human decency and accept the reality of the situation."

  I said stiffly, "When I want your advice I'll ask for it."

  "As you please. But don't come crying to me when you're hurt and disappointed. You didn't have to see what was in that hold. Your brain should have told you. You won't get any sympathy from me and you aren't going to enlist my aid in cleaning up conditions below decks. I'm not a saint or a crusader and neither are you. Forget it. Forget the slaves and what you've seen."

  "Never!" I said passionately. "I'll never forget them and I'll never forgive you for being so cold-hearted and unfeeling about them. I'm not a saint and I'm not a crusader, but I am a human being and my heart cries out when I see other human beings in pain. I can't believe that you feel nothing, no anger, no rage, no sorrow. What kind of man are you, Garth McClelland? I'm glad I'm a fool, if being a fool means that I'm not like you. Where are you going with those?"

  He had scooped my soiled clothing into a pewter basin and was walking towards the door.

  "I'm going to dump them over the side."

  "No!" I protested. "I have so few things—and my shoes!—please, I beg you, don't do that. I'll clean them myself, Garth. Don't throw them away."

  He set basin and contents down and bowed mockingly. "As my lady wishes," he said. "If you busy yourself with domestic chores perhaps you can curb your troublesome humanitarian impulses." Then he opened the door and went out.

  I sank onto the berth and buried my face in my arms. I didn't know how much more of this I could endure, and I had the feeling that there was worse to come. I was right.

  The next few days passed uneventfully enough. But the grisly obbligato of moans and sobs from the hold never stopped, day or night. It accompanied my every thought, my every action, until it seemed like the ship itself was mourning as it rocked along over the waves under flat gray skies.

  I suspected that even Garth was not unaffected by the atmosphere. His face lost its habitual smile of cool disdain and took on a worried frown. He spent longer hours away from the cabin, not, I surmised, in the company of Captain Fowler, and frequently he did not come to sleep at all. When I tried to make conversation or ask questions he answered with curt one-word replies, and it was obvious that he didn't want to be bothered with me. He was more remote and cold than ever, and I actually longed for the days when he raged and insulted me and told me what to do. I hated being ignored, and even insults are better than no attention at all.

  The crew was edgy and nervous. It was clear to me that they hated Captain Fowler and detested their duties. When the slaves grew noticeably weaker, the ship's doctor became alarmed and urged the Captain to permit longer periods on deck. The Captain agreed, and further decreed that the hold be cleaned out daily and washed out with sea water. The men hated that job most of all.

  Then a sickness broke out in the hold and scores of captives—mostly the older ones and the very young children—died. After a week the plague had run its course below decks, leaving over seventy-five slaves dead, and it spread to the crew. Most of the afflicted sailors recovered, but the cabin boy and several others died, and half a dozen more were unfit for work for a week or more.

  The Captain prowled the decks relentlessly, whip in hand, looking distraught and wild-eyed. Every slave meant money lost. Dead and incapacitated crew members meant that the already overworked sailors who remained well had to shoulder extra responsibility. Fowler kept a watchful eye on his men and discouraged malingerers by flogging them in public. If anything, the iron-clad discipline aboard the Charleston Belle became more rigid. Slaves and sailors alike paid heavily for mistakes and misconduct.

  In mid-December, when we were about two weeks out of Ouidah, we were buffeted by strong winds and heavy squalls which swamped the decks and carried off one of our precious barrels of fresh water. During one violent thunderstorm the foremast was struck by lightning and the top half snapped off. This slowed our progress considerably, and the Captain raged against the injustice of Nature. When the bilge pumps ceased to function the hold was flooded and we began to founder. More slaves died before the water was baled out and the pumps put to rights, drowned as they lay chained to their crude bunks at the bottom of the hold.

  This run of bad luck left everyone unnerved. The Captain's behavior became more violent and more savage. There were floggings every day. One evening when I was up on deck I saw him heave a tiny black child overboard because it had gotten under his feet. Although my heart cried out in anguish, I forced myself to hold my tongue and return to my cabin. Garth was right: this man would stop at nothing now, and I dared not risk a complaint or protest.

  One afternoon, unable to bear my captivity any longer, I went up on deck while Captain Fowler was administering a particularly vicious flogging to a huge black man who stood chained to the mainmast with his hands tied high over his head. I crept up unseen behind a silent group of onlookers.

 
"Be-Jesus," one sailor muttered to his neighbor, "the poor bastard's had twenty strokes already and he's still on his feet."

  "He's hardly bleedin'," the other whispered. "Hides like leather, these slaves got. And not a peep out of him yet."

  I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck to watch. Every lash seemed to bite into my own flesh. The men around me moved their lips silently as they counted: twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight-

  When the Captain's arm grew sore he turned his whip over to the bo'sun. "Lay into the son-of-a-bitch. He's enjoyin' it too much," he ordered, standing back to watch the show. "Harder!"

  The black man never whimpered. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. The crew grew excited at the man's stamina and started betting on which lash he would fall. Forty. Forty-one. At last the man slumped and his head dropped forward.

  "Bring him to," the Captain snarled. Someone sloshed a bucket of water in the slave's face. He groaned and sputtered. "Keep goin, Bo'sun," the Captain said. "I want to hear the bastard scream."

  The flogging continued. I was sweating, even though the wind over the decks was brisk and cold. My fingernails dug into the palms of my hands. Keep a hold on yourself, I kept saying. Garth is right. Don't be stupid. It took every ounce of courage and self-control I had just to stand there and do nothing. This was real, this was life, and it was ugly.

  Twice more the slave fainted, twice more he was revived. At sixty lashes the Captain called a halt. The man's back was a red pulp. Blood ran over his naked buttocks and down the backs of his legs. The Captain seized him by the hair and jerked his head back.

  "Goddamn," he said gleefully, "he's still conscious. Come on, boys, let's wash a little of this mess away. Get some salt water."

  I gasped and closed my eyes, and jammed my fist into my mouth so that I would not cry out. I heard the bumping of the bucket as it was lowered for seawater and drawn up again, then the slosh and the sharp intake of the black man's breath, like a sob, as they poured the brine over his raw flesh.