The candle’s gone out! Dear God, the candle!
Wanting to scream, chest already tightening like a vise, I whisked open my drawer for a fresh candle.
“Philip! Wake up, for God’s sake!”
My hands wrapped about a candle.
In a moment I’ll have light. Hurry, Philip, hurry!
I stood and reached for the latch on the lantern door, then stopped, my hands on the metal casing.
But—but how can that be? The lantern. It’s hot.
And in that instant the awful truth dawned.
The candle still burns, only I can’t see.
I did scream then. A wail erupted from deep down, bubbling out of me in a terror greater than I’ve ever known. As if I’d awakened one morning to find that the sun had disappeared from the sky and all was cold and night forever.
For the first day of my blindness, I thrashed and screamed and blubbered like a madman.
Uncle ordered me locked in my cabin until I stopped this childish nonsense. “Bloody hell!” he hollered. “You’re a man, aren’t you? Act like one!”
I pounded on the door and screamed until I was hoarse, screeching over and over, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Finally, hours later, I crumpled to the floor, weeping, begging to be let out, to be taken on deck, to feel the sun on my face at least, at the very least, oh please, please. I promised to stop screaming then.
When I lay prostrate on the floor, tears spent, five years old again and shut in the darkness of Master Crump’s cupboard, the door opened. I didn’t hear it, but I felt it. A gentle breeze.
“Who’s there?” I raised myself up, half expecting a cane to descend upon me.
The door closed again. Someone was beside me.
“Who—who is it?”
“You are thirsty?”
It was Pea Soup.
“You are thirsty?” he asked again.
I hesitated only a moment before I croaked, “Yes, yes, please help me.”
A hand touched my face, my nose, my mouth, and then a goblet was held to my lips. I drank deeply, gasping for breath between gulps, until every last drop was gone.
“Thank you,” I said, wiping my mouth, only then realizing that I’d drunk twice the normal ration, that Pea Soup must’ve given me his own. I was reminded of steerage, of being aboard the Hope, and of the poor Irish family who fed me, though they had scarcely a crumb to their name. Such kindness moved me deeply.
I lay down again and began to weep.
Pea Soup sat beside me.
“I’m blind,” I told him, as if he didn’t already know. “I—I can’t see. Everything is dark. I hate the dark. It frightens me. They used to lock me in the dark.”
For a long time I cried. Pea Soup said nothing.
By and by I stopped weeping and lay still, utterly spent, only then falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. Once I briefly awoke to find myself in my bunk, with Pea Soup snoring in the berth above me.
By the next day, every last one of us was blind—slave and crew.
Uncle having unlocked my cabin door at last, I emerged on deck to learn this news.
“But what will we do?” I asked Uncle.
“I don’t know.” I heard the tightness in his voice, the despair, and my heart swelled in sympathy despite myself.
“But how will we return home?”
“We’ve no course now but to pray. It’s in God’s hands.”
So we wandered the seas, aimless, God as our steersman.
We kept the sails up, praying we’d make land somehow, knowing that even if we did, it’d likely be to founder upon a reef, or an atoll, or rocks. Everything—rigging, blocks, yards—creaked, slapped, or knocked about, for we could do nothing. It was impossible to trim the sails. We couldn’t figure out which rope went where.
It was the deepest sort of blindness, without even a glimmer of light. Even on the darkest nights at sea, a seeing person can discern the glitter of the waters and the white crest of the wave, and half perceive, half guess, the form of surrounding objects. And even in the midst of the darkest night, a seeing person knows that soon the sun will rise, bringing new light to the world.
A bleak part of me wondered if jettisoning the “cargo” now might be the most merciful thing we could do, for the slaves’ cries and moans were so piteous, and yet we were powerless to help them. No longer were they allowed to come on deck, for it was rotten enough that we, the crew, stumbled about, arms in front of us, feeling our way from mast to hatch to bow, only to discover we were headed in the wrong direction, without having three hundred some-odd slaves to worry about as well.
Uncle tried to keep order. He maintained the watches, having us estimate four-hour stretches. He kept a “lookout” at all times—ordering someone with keen ears to listen for the sound of the surf, of breakers crashing against a reef or rocks. And when several men pillaged the spirit-casks and lay in a drunken stupor, Uncle whipped them to their senses with his rattan cane and set a guard with crossed swords over the storeroom. Uncle commanded the crew to enter the hold, as usual, to feed and water the slaves. To find those who were dead and heave them overboard before the stench of their decay overwhelmed us. The sound of bodies plunging into the deep was becoming increasingly familiar.
Uncle kept saying, “Surely one of us will regain sight and direct us. Surely God doesn’t mean for us all to die.” Thrice daily my uncle summoned us for recitations from the Book of Common Prayer. He knew only three passages by heart, and it was these he repeated morning, noon, and night. The morning prayer was “Lord be merciful to us sinners, and save us for thy mercy’s sake. Thou art the great God, who hast made and rulest all things: O deliver us for thy Name’s sake. Thou art the great God to be feared above all: O save us, that we may praise thee. Amen.”
“Amen,” we echoed.
While I indeed wanted to be delivered—prayed to be delivered, in fact—I wondered why the Divinity would save us only to let us then turn and murder hundreds of innocent souls. What right did we have to be saved at all?
Pea Soup, who’d seemed to have gotten his bearings, now shared my cabin. Oddly enough, it gave me comfort to have him there—the one I’d feared for so long. To be alone in the dark would’ve been unbearable. Sometimes I’d awaken in a fright, disoriented, my chest tightening in that familiar panic. I’d cry out, “Pea Soup! Are you there?” He’d answer, “Here, Philip. I am here.” (Except that when he said my name, it sounded more like Hileep.)
One day again I cried out, “Pea Soup! For mercy’s sake, where are you?”
His voice came from the berth above me, startling me with its firmness. “No, Philip. No more Pea Soup. I am not Pea Soup. I am Oji.”
“Wh-what?”
“You asked my name. Long time ago. My African name. I am Oji, first son of Ikoro.”
I lay back, the tightness in my chest easing, my breathing returning to normal.
Oji, first son of Ikoro.
I rolled his name on my tongue, as if it were a sweet—“Oji … Oji”—finally pronouncing, “Why, it’s a grand name. Much better than—than Pea Soup. To tell you the truth, I hate pea soup. I prefer potato.”
It was a dumb joke, but I laughed anyhow. It was the only laughter I’d heard in days, and it felt and sounded good. After my laughter died away, I lay there. Then: “Why are you so kind to me, Oji?”
I admit, part of me wanted Oji to say that all was forgiven between us, that he was wrong to have ever hated me. Instead, I was disappointed and somewhat hurt when he replied, “My father said to be.”
“I—I don’t understand. Why would Ikoro want you to be kind to me? Truth was, I wasn’t so kind once to your father. I’m ashamed of what I did.”
But Oji wouldn’t answer me, saying only that one day I would know. One day. But not yet.
That night, while I slept, Ikoro and the five executed slaves watched me. And I dreamed that the scar on my chest glowed a burning red.
I tried to invent remedies to reverse t
he effects of my blindness: Seawater mixed with mashed yams, heated to a slow boil and afterward some smeared on the eyelids. Saliva mixed with tobacco juice, then drizzled into the eyes. Setting over Uncle’s cigar while he smoked, my eyes watering, and him saying, “Well, Mr. Surgeon, I’d say that if this were the remedy, I’d see clear as crystal by now.”
The worst attempted remedy, though, was the lime juice. I thought that if lime juice could prevent scurvy, perhaps it’d cleanse the eyes and heal blindness. So I lay upon my bunk, braced myself, and ordered Oji to squirt it in my eyes.
“It will hurt,” he said.
“I know.”
And it did. A knife stabbed in the eyeball couldn’t have hurt any worse. I screeched and thrashed as Oji pried open my eyelids and rinsed my eyes with seawater. An hour later all I’d accomplished was to drench my corn-husk mattress.
“You are brave,” pronounced Oji.
“Or daft.”
“You are like the man in my village who goes to hunt the lion.”
I removed the wet towel from my eyes, staring through the darkness as if I could see Oji sitting beside me on my mattress. “You’ve hunted lions?”
“I was eight years old when I was taken from my village. Boys do not hunt lions. Only men.”
“I hardly think squirting lime juice in my eyes compares with hunting lions.”
“You are still brave.”
“So you were only a boy when your village was attacked?”
“My village was not attacked.”
“But—but you were captured as a prisoner of war. Weren’t you?”
“A boy setting traps to catch animals is not war. I was kidnapped.”
“Kidnapped? But Uncle told me—” And before I’d even finished my sentence, again I knew Uncle had told me another lie. I tossed the towel against the hull and cursed.
Oji leaned across me, fumbled about, and then placed the towel back over my eyes. “Cursing does not go well with you. Leave the curses to your uncle.”
Later that day, Oji and I stood at the bow, where the spray misted over the ship, tormented by the never-ending cries issuing from the hold.
“I was happy that day,” Oji told me, speaking in his own language, for the dialect I’d been learning was his native tongue, and he was now my teacher. “Come moonrise, my village planned to have a feast and dance. All day the drums beat. I was almost finished checking and setting my traps when arms grabbed me and a bag fell over my head and the sun disappeared from the sky.”
“What happened?”
“I kicked and screamed and cursed, but no one from my village heard me.”
“Because of the drums?”
“Yes. I was chained with many others and made to walk for three full moons until I reached the river’s shore. I never saw my village or my family again.”
“Until you found Ikoro.”
“Yes.”
I wondered what it would’ve been like to have been stolen from one’s family, from everything familiar. Even worse, I imagined, than having one’s parents die at an early age and going to live in the workhouse under the guardianship of Master Crump.
Oji’s voice tightened. “Every day I think about my village. I remember my father’s vast yam fields, and how the smoke from the cooking fires smelled, and how sometimes it rained so hard you could not tell sky from ground. I remember the stories my mother used to tell—about the tiger and the monkey, about how the tortoise got his shell and how the pigeon learned to fly.” Oji sighed. “Even today my mother watches the horizon, waiting for my return. She will watch every day until she is buried and cannot see through the dirt.”
A thought came to me. “Then you were chained in the hold as well … as they are.”
“For many days and nights. I thought they were going to eat us.” He paused. “Today, when I hear my African brothers and sisters cry in the belly of the ship and I can do nothing to help them, my heart is full of holes.”
I picked at a bump on the rail, picked and picked, as a heavy shame settled on me, each desperate cry from below searing my heart as with a brand. I could never know what it must be like. To have one’s very self stolen away and then to be treated worse than an animal. Yes, a heart full of holes. “I’m sorry, Oji.”
“Why?”
“I—I’m sorry for taking you again on this voyage. I’m sorry for locking you up again. I’m sorry for everything.”
“You are wrong. You think it was your decision. But it was my personal god, my chi, who made it happen. For I was able to see my father again. One last time. And to hear that my grandparents, my mother, my brothers and sisters, are all well. Someday I will return to them.”
I imagined Oji returning to his village, and the thought eased my shame. I said in English, “I’ve a family too. Well, they’re not my blood family, but they love me like a son. They’re waiting for me to come home. Like you, I’ll return to them someday.”
“Then I wish you success in your journey.”
I paused, not certain how to say next what I’d been thinking except just to come out and say it. It was something that I’d been pondering for some time. “Oji, you’re not my slave any longer. I release you. You’re free now.”
To my surprise, Oji laughed, but it was a laugh without humor. “Even you, Philip, cannot release what was never yours to begin with.”
And he left me then, silently. He left me alone by the rail, left me groping in the spaces about me, calling “Oji? Oji?” and finding nothing except the thick of darkness.
We estimated that we’d been sailing blind for three weeks now.
God only knew where we’d drifted, or what the filthy state of our vessel was. Our water had turned nasty, tasting like bog water.
On one particular day (I knew it to be daytime, for the sun was hot on my face, hurting my sensitive eyes), I was lying near the bow. Oji was beside me, and our conversation had faded to nothing. Waves slapped heavily against the hull. My tongue was thick, my mouth pasty, for we were allowed only a quarter cup of water per day. As I lay there, I imagined drinking a cold glass of water straight from the workhouse well. Glass after glorious glass. Droplets of water glistening on the outside of the glass, sliding down.
Then from over the sea came an odd sound. At first I didn’t notice it. But as the sound grew closer, I stopped dreaming and listened. The creak of wood, the snap of canvas, the slap of water against the bow … coming closer, closer.
I sat up, my pulse quickening. “Do you hear that, Oji?”
“Yes. They are coming.”
I jumped up and screeched, my voice cracking. “Sail ho! A ship’s approaching! Off—off the port bow!”
In just moments a mass of sweating, stinking bodies jostled and pushed into position beside me.
And then we were silent, listening.
There it was.
The unmistakable sound of another ship at sea.
Closer, much closer.
Joy burst from my heart as a simultaneous cry erupted from every throat. And in that instant our cry was answered from across the water.
They’ve seen us!
A part of me wondered whether perhaps this was a warship come to capture us, but I was beyond caring.
We dissolved into a frenzy of sobbing. Someone grabbed and hugged me. Then someone else. I was jumping up and down.
“Praise God!”
“They see us!”
“We’re saved!”
Then Uncle was hollering through his speaking trumpet. “Ship ahoy! Ahoy! What ship?”
“The San León of Spain. I am its captain.”
We’re saved, I thought. And praise be to the saints, it’s not a warship.
“Where from?” asked Uncle.
“From Old Calabar, in the Bight of Biafra.”
“Then you’re slavers?”
“Aye. We have a full cargo.”
“As do we!” replied Uncle. “Please, then, I implore you, as one slaver to another—”
But
before Uncle could say more, the captain of the San León cried, “Help us, for God’s sake! Before it is too late! Before we sail past one another and all is lost!”
There was a slight hesitation in Uncle’s voice. “We want help ourselves. We—”
“Please, please help us! We are dying of hunger and thirst. Send us some provisions and a few hands to work the ship, and name your own terms.”
“We can give you food,” said Uncle, “but we’re in want of hands. Come aboard our ship and we’ll exchange provisions for men.”
“Gold! Gold!” replied the captain of the San León. “We will pay you in gold, a thousand times what the food and hands are worth, but we cannot send any men. We have slaves on board; they have infected us with ophthalmia, and we are all stone-blind.”
At this announcement, a silence fell among us. A silence pure and deep as death. It was broken by a fit of laughter, and then all of us were laughing, an awful hysteria like that of a man marching to the gallows, knowing he no longer had to settle his debts. My sides hurt from laughing. Tears streamed down my face. I could scarcely catch my breath, but when I did, when our horrible laughter subsided, we could hear, by the sound of the curses that the Spaniards shouted at us, that the San León had drifted away.
That night, a storm blew in.
The wind howled. The Formidable shrieked as if it were alive. Every timber groaned. Masts creaked. I cowered in my bunk, hearing things rip apart, the sails bursting their bonds with a sound like musketry, imagining the unmanned wheel spinning wildly from side to side, the waves dashing across the decks, sweeping away everything not tied down.
“The gods are angry,” said Oji. “We will die in this great lake of water.”
I feared the ship would burst apart and water would rush into my cabin, and that I’d sink into the deep and die in the darkness, not even knowing where I was or what day it was. I thought of Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher. Of their waiting year after year, finally realizing that their little English boy was never coming home, then being laid in their graves, never knowing how much their foster son truly loved them.
Voyage of Midnight Page 13
