by Ellen Datlow
“What is that?” Mrs. Newman said in wonder. Her words called Swift back to himself.
“Look away, madam,” he said. “Do not gaze upon that ship. Your soul depends on it.” He turned his face to the shrouds. The moaning, heaving noise of the wreck faded into a new kind of silence, in which Swift could hear only the breathing of the wind and the waves.
Light moved over the rigging. He squeezed his eyes shut.
In the distance someone wailed. The rigging trembled, then stilled.
After a long quiet the Malay maid spoke, her voice traveling far in the stillness. “Ship gone,” she said, and added, “It took.”
In the afternoon, a group of men from the lower rigging tried to swim over to the foremast, seeking a less-crowded position. The waves crashed over them. Four of them struggled through the spray to the mast and clambered up to the foretop. One of them looked like his messmate, Holdfast. A shout drew Swift’s attention to one of the less lucky ones, a man whose head now bobbed far outside the ship, drifting further and further away. Soon Swift lost sight of him altogether.
The tars had no shoes to eat. They’d worked the Minerva barefoot, in the Lascar style. Some tried gnawing the leather on the rigging but soon laid off, declaring it too bitter to be endured. Instead they made do with scraps of canvas and pieces of lead, which they passed up and down the line.
“You should not eat that,” Mrs. Newman croaked as Swift took up a piece of lead the size of a coin. “It’s poisonous.”
Swift put the lead into his mouth. It tasted like nothing; like the air itself. He sucked on it, enjoying the temporary sensation of moisture on his tongue.
“The haunt,” someone said wearily. “It’s here.”
The sun was still in the sky, and yet there the ghost ship was, a miasma against the waves. It approached silently, the way Swift had seen sharks approach a woman struggling in the water. He turned his head away.
But this time he saw.
White tendrils slashed out from the haunt, ropes that were not ropes. Some twisted around limp bodies—dead passengers, Swift thought, or the tars who’d drowned earlier—but one arced past him, right past him, and snatched a man from the mizzentop. Swift’s last glimpse of Captain Maxwell was of the man staring straight in front of him, too terrified to scream.
Below them someone did scream, loud and long. The ropes under Swift’s hands pulled taut. For a dreadful moment he thought the entire rigging might go, ripped free by this man fighting for his life, but then ropes sagged back in place. Behind him, the man’s scream faded into a strange and awful distance.
“That is no ship,” Mrs. Newman said in a small voice.
Swift chewed his piece of lead to powder, and swallowed it down.
“Did you smell it?” Decurrs asked.
Swift was caught off guard. “The haunt?” The old salts said that ghosts had a smell, a stench by which a lore-steeped sailor would know them. “I did not catch it.”
“I did,” Decurrs said. “It smelled like sick and pus swept together on a hot deck. It smelled like a hold full of shit and fear. I know that smell. So do you.”
Swift felt ill. “I smelled nothing,” he said.
“I think I saw her netting, when she came about,” Decurrs said.
Swift pressed his forehead against the ratline. He could feel the rough fibers of the rope cutting into his skin.
“You think she’s a slaver?” The words surprised him; Swift had not thought to speak, not out loud.
“Aren’t most ghost ships slavers? They are in the tales.” Decurrs leaned forward to eye the snoring Gunner, then lowered his voice.
“I knew you’d been in the Trade by the Guinea scars on your legs,” he said. “Aye, and by the scars on your back. You sailed under a hard man?”
“They’re all hard men,” Swift said.
“Aye, but some are harder than the Devil himself.” Decurrs leaned into his shroud, his face in shadow. “Were you articled? I was. Woke up on the tavern floor with a crimp holding a paper in front of me. He said I’d signed, so what could I do?”
There was a sour taste at the back of Swift’s throat. “I was in debtors’ prison,” he said. “I took the Guinea door.”
“A hard choice,” Decurrs said.
“Not for me,” Swift said. “Not then.” He remembered how Bessie’s hands had twisted as the captain described the offer—Swift’s debt paid, if only he’d agree to sail aboard a slaver. And he remembered watching Emily clutching the bent twig she called a doll, thinking how tired he was of watching his child play in a prison cell.
Swift was no fool. He’d expected to die on that voyage, as most slave-ship sailors did—from disease or from the captain’s beatings. But with his debt paid, his family would be free. He had not known then, how his debt would accumulate onboard; that it would be not one voyage, but two, then three, that he would owe. Bessie and Emily were long dead now, but Swift’s debt was still alive, out there somewhere, looking for him.
“Beware, beware, the Bight of Benin,” Decurrs said. “There's one comes out for forty goes in. Well, we’re the ones who came out. Now here we are. And here’s the haunt-ship come to collect.”
The Gunner laughed. The sound jolted them both; they had not realized the man was awake. “You think the haunt comes for you? How fine you are, in all your sins. Me, I have drawn lots to eat men. I have cracked a boy’s leg open and sucked the marrow from it. I have heard this talk before, of curses and Providence, aye, and eaten the flesh of those who talked so.”
Decurrs shifted away from the man. He climbed downwards, not caring that he had to contort himself around the other bodies on the rigging. Swift followed, but he could still hear the Gunner talking after them.
“Here’s your truth,” the Gunner called. “The haunt comes like the wind comes. You fools think it comes for your sins because you want to believe there’s justice in the world. There isn’t any.”
“He is mad,” Decurrs said when they reached the lower rigging. “We will all go mad here.”
They hung on the ropes and watched the deck below. The sea was calmer now. A few sailors had left the rigging and were trying the quarterdeck, staggering about on the wet boards.
We should get the passengers below, to stretch their legs while they can, Swift thought. We should build a raft.
“Glosse was right,” Decurrs said after a time. “We must have a reckoning.”
The sailors had come, finally, to speaking of the Trade.
“The Nancy’s captain stood the other Negroes on deck so they could watch. He had lines tied under the arms of the ringleaders. He ordered them lowered over the side,” said Cobb.
“Go on,” said Glosse.
The remnants of the starboard watch had gathered on the abandoned crow’s nest for their consultation. Far below, passengers and sailors tested out the limits of the quarterdeck. As third mate, Glosse stood as judge on the Minerva. As far as they knew, he was the only officer left on the wreck, save the Gunner, whose strange calm they all suspected.
Cobb looked away, as though scanning the horizon. Swift knew his gaze had gone somewhere else.
“When the water turned red, he gave the order to hoist them up. The sharks had taken No. 3’s legs off at the knees. I thought she was already dead. But when we lowered her again, she started screaming. So I suppose she had only fainted.”
“How long did it take?” Glosse was precise. It was important to focus on the facts, in such matters.
“I think an hour before all three were dead. The captain cut the ropes on the last one; it took too long.”
Glosse nodded, satisfied.
“Did you not protest the order?” the boy exclaimed. How he had maintained his capacity for horror, Swift did not know.
Cobb shrugged, his sunken eyes flat and hard, like sea-washed stones.
“Who else?” said Glosse, ignoring the boy’s question. “Not the usual things. We all know them.” He paused. Swift wondered if the boy could hear
everything that lurked in those words, but he stared bewildered; Pretty Pol’s face was closed. This was a current that flowed past them, the sailors who had not worked the Trade.
“And what have you done, Glosse?” Decurrs’s voice sliced knife-sharp. Glosse scratched his chin. Like the rest of them, his blistered skin had begun to tear, hanging off in dead strips.
“I’ve lashed and pickled,” Glosse said. “Aye, I’ve done the usual things. But not to the children. Not like some.” Decurrs blinked and looked away.
“Did you not pass the whisper?” The boy was still incensed at Cobb’s story. “Mr. Clarkson and his ’bolitionists are forever combing the docks, asking tars to testify. You could have passed the whisper at least.”
“Aye,” Cobb said sourly. “And didn’t some Bristol boys club Mr. Clarkson and try to feed him to the sea? When the owners pay good coin to kill Cambridge gentlemen, what do you think the chances are for a common tar like me?”
“That Negro seaman, Equiano, him what wrote the narrative,” the boy said stubbornly. “He passes whispers for tars. He passed the whisper on the Zong, even—”
Swift’s blood drummed in his ears.
“—and they haven’t killed him yet.”
“I had a shipmate who passed the whisper once,” Decurrs said. His voice had gone low and strange. “Listen,” he said, fixing them with his gaze. “There was a ship. She sailed under a hard man. A Negro caused trouble in the hold. No. 37. So this Captain Bremmer—” Decurrs’s face contorted for a moment, as though he would like to spit, but thought better of it. “This Bremmer, he ordered the man whipped and pickled with salt water. You know,” he said to Glosse, “the usual things. But this captain, he went further.
“He hung the man up on deck, and tortured him with thirst. He would give the Negro no water, he said—though that number was strong and would have fetched a good price in Antigua—he’d give him no water but urine, and no food but shit to eat. The captain’s own shit.”
Decurrs gave a strangled laugh. “The captain sent his cabin boy to fetch it, but when he made the boy go—a boy younger than you, mind,” he said to their mess-boy, “eleven years old he was, and new to the Trade. He didn’t know how it is,” he added to Swift.
Swift nodded, hoping Decurrs would fall silent, knowing he wouldn’t. There was a kind of madness that came upon slave-ship sailors sometimes, a fever in their blood. Some blamed the disease on the African air, but it was more than that, and Decurrs, blasted raw by sun and wind, had it now. It was this fever and not courage that sent tars into the courts to testify, knowing they’d be killed in the alley afterwards, knowing their wife and mother would be brutalized on the streets. It was this rage, Swift knew, that sent a tar to point his hand in court, which made him into a monstrous revenant that was not a man at all, but some dead-alive thing returned from the sea. A witness.
“He didn’t know,” Decurrs repeated. “And he refused the order.” He wiped his face with his skinny hand, considering. “The captain had him flogged and brined, of course. Sixty lashes, but it wasn’t enough. He dragged the boy up the deck and put a plank over him. He ordered us to walk on it,” he said dispassionately. “He stamped on his breast so we could hear his bones splinter. The boy’s shit came out of him, and the captain forced it down his throat. Then he hung the boy up on the mainmast. He gave him and the Negro the urine to drink, and forbade us all to bring water or food to them.
“For three days they hung there, while we worked. I don’t think anyone dared try to give them water. I know I didn’t. The captain gave the boy eighteen lashes each day, even as he died. When I sewed him into his sail, his flesh felt like jelly to the touch. His body was purple and swollen huge. You could not tell it was a child anymore. The sharks took them both.”
Decurrs glared at them. “I did not pass the whisper, but my shipmate did. Fourteen years old, he was. They found his body floating by the docks. I said nothing. I said nothing for all my days sailing the Triangle. I said nothing after. Only the cabin boy spoke up. And my shipmate. Children. Only them.” Decurrs rubbed his chin again. “I think you know what must be done,” he said to Glosse.
Glosse shifted uncomfortably. Decurrs’s story seemed to have taken the wind out of his sails. “Is there anyone else?”
There was a ship, Swift thought. He could feel the words in his mouth. She was called the Zong.
“There’s no one else,” Ducurrs said, cutting off anything Swift might say. He stood up abruptly, wobbling on his weakened legs. Swift reached out to steady him.
“No,” Decurrs said, and patted Swift’s hand. Swift released his grip.
“Shipmates,” Decurrs said sternly. “I leave you in a sorry state. But if I’ve accursed you I do remove it now. If any of you live, carry word to my sister. Do not tell her about the ship.”
Then, before anyone could intervene, Decurrs tipped himself backwards. Sky bloomed through the space where he had been. Swift leaned forward, searching the ocean with his eyes, but Decurrs had already vanished under the waves. He did not come up again.
After a while, Glosse shifted his weight. He did not look at them.
“We must get off this wreck,” he said. “We must get off today.”
The sea was hot and smooth, like a silver plate left in the sun.
“This is our chance,” Glosse said. He’d been signaling the men on the foremast with a handkerchief. They, in turn, had employed themselves in making a raft from the fore yard and sprit sail yard, lashed together with ropes and spars rescued from the flotsam.
In the afternoon they launched her, paddling with pieces of plank they had whittled with their belt knives. The survivors from the mizzen mast waited to greet them.
“Avast,” said a sailor on the raft, baring the blade on his belt knife. “The raft cannot support you all.”
“Only the strongest can come,” said another. “All hands must paddle if we’re to make the shore.”
“None of the women,” the knife man said in a kindly tone. He gestured with the point of his blade to the Malay maid. She guessed the meaning of his words and stepped back a few paces, dropping to her knees on the few planks that remained of the quarterdeck.
Cobb stepped forward. “I’ve got life in me yet,” he said. “I’ll sail with you.”
“And I,” said one of Lascars.
Glosse stepped forward. “You’ll need my help to find the land,” he said. “I can reckon the stars.” They motioned him forward. As Glosse stepped forward, the mess-boy caught at his shirt sleeve. “This is wrong,” he said. “You cannot leave the passengers here to die.”
Glosse snatched his shirt away. “Where and when they die is up to God, not me.” He stepped forward onto the bobbing raft, sinking his weight low to keep his footing.
“What about you, Swift?” Holdfast Muhammad looked up from his corner of the raft. “You’ve got a good hand with the carpentry. We could use you.”
“Aye,” Swift said reluctantly. He looked at their raft, a shaky net of spars and canvas, lashed together with rope. “But I’ll stay here.” He did not know what decision he’d make until the words were out of his mouth, but there they were.
“You know how it’ll go if you stay,” Holdfast Muhammad said in a low voice. Swift appreciated that he did not speak of dying in front of the passengers.
“I know,” Swift said. “I’ll stay.”
Glosse looked at the boy. “You should come with us,” he said.
“No,” the boy said, trembling with self-righteousness. Had Swift ever been that young? “I’ll stay here.”
Glosse shrugged and took the paddle handed to him.
The raft took on three more sailors and two of the merchants. Then they set off, paddling determinedly away from the Minerva.
Swift sank to his haunches and watched them go. They were trying, he knew, to be well clear of the Minerva before the haunt returned.
“Do you think they’ll make it?” the boy asked. His voice had lost its ring of
certainty now that the raft grew smaller in the distance, now that the moaning from the rigging was rising around them again.
“I do not know,” Swift said. He put his hands to the shrouds and climbed back up the rigging.
Mrs. Newman had resumed her place in the crow’s nest. “Those men on the raft,” she said through cracked lips. “Have they gone to seek help?”
“They have,” Swift said.
The Gunner was slumped in the ropes. Ugly red ulcers dotted his skin, and it was only by his breathing that Swift knew he was alive. Swift took up his old position by the man’s side. Staring straight ahead, he could almost believe that Decurrs was still beside him, perhaps a step or two down on the ratlines.
He waited for the haunt to return.
On the third night they heard screaming over the water. Not a lot of screaming—two, maybe three voices. One went on for some time.
“That was the raft,” the Gunner said. “I cannot abide a raft anymore. Not after what I’ve seen.”
Swift opened his eyes. The Gunner had died two days ago, and his corpse slowly rotted in the flotsam below. On a slave ship, the sharks would have found his body already, but this was the Minerva, and the dead man studied Swift with desiccated eyes.
“You will drink the salt,” the dead man said. “It will help for a while, and then it will drive you mad.”
Then it was not the Gunner beside him on the ropes, but the governor, large as life. He had his pistol on his hand, same as he’d had on the Zong. Swift felt like laughing at the man, just as he had all those years ago. You did not threaten a slave-ship sailor with a quick death. They’d lost all fear of such things. It was the slow death and the slow pain they feared. The thirst, the pickling, the sharks.
“Water,” someone croaked above him. It was the Malay maid. She dangled the coat to him. Swift took it from her and wrapped it around his shoulders, for his hands were losing their grip. He descended the ratlines slowly, step by step, stepping carefully around the living and the dead.