Voyage of Midnight

by Michele Torrey

  And as at the cotton mill when I was but a wee lad, exhaustion plagued me and I was tormented by a high fever that left me sweating and gasping. In one of my rare moments of rest, I leaned against the bulwarks next to one of the long guns. My body trembled with chills. My tongue was thick, my lips cracked and bleeding.

  What’ve I done? I thought miserably. We were but one day from land, and I turned about and headed back across the ocean.

  And then, mercifully, Mrs. Gallagher was there, dabbing my forehead with a cool, damp cloth, afterward giving me a spoonful of medicine and squeezing my hand while I choked the liquid down.

  “There, there,” she said, her voice sweet as an angel’s. “My little English boy. You did what you had to do.”

  The child stared sightlessly at me before his eyelids fluttered closed. His breathing slowed and his body relaxed.

  “The medicine’s taken effect,” I said, releasing the boy’s hand. “Agim will sleep well now, I should think. And his wrist is healing cleanly.”

  “The gods be praised,” said Oji. He sponged the frail black body with seawater, attempting to cool the fire raging in the child. “Fight, little Agim. You are a warrior.”

  Each day, following the morning mess, I visited the infirmary. I treated the patients and left instructions for Oji. The incidence of fevers and flux was increasing, and two or three patients lay in each pallet, strewn across the floor in various stages of misery, eyes clouded and shrunken in their sockets, skin stretched across their skulls as if they were skeletons already.

  I was tempted, sorely tempted, to burst into a wretchedness of weeping, to say I was only Philip Arthur Higgins, not God Almighty, and how could I be expected to stem the flow of disease and death? But I clamped my fevered lips shut, ordered my stomach to stop its dreadful demands, rolled up my sleeves, and went to work. If I didn’t do it, who would?

  I tried every remedy I knew. Blisters, plasters, pills, baths, ointments, and more. I mixed concoctions of pine pitch, yellow wax, mutton tallow, Peruvian bark, and Spanish fly; of bittersweet, winter evergreen, and jalap.

  Try as I might, my patients were dying. They slipped away, one by one or by the handful. On this day, after leaving Agim in Oji’s care, I moved on to the next patient, a tall man, thin as a hat rack, his bony protrusions festering with the familiar sores that resulted from lying upon a hard surface without relief. Would I ever get used to the sight of suffering? I hoped not. Never would I harden my heart as had Master Crump—and Uncle, who viewed human suffering as one might view a mosquito stuck in honey, with little interest and no sympathy, concerned only that the honey was ruined.

  “May you receive health,” I said to him in his language.

  The man struggled to speak. His mouth bubbled with a bloody froth. “They say—they say you are taking us home. That you have blinded these men so they cannot see their straight path.”

  Rubbing his sores with a strong decoction of wormwood, I stammered, “Don’t talk. Only rest.”

  “They say you have been sent to us by the gods.” And as if he could see, he touched the brand on my chest with a shaky finger. “This is the sign they gave you.”

  I stopped my treatment, blinking at him.

  Whereupon he reached out and took both my hands in his. His hands trembled, hot and moist. He stared at me with milky eyes. His breath smelled like rotted meat. “I am Ikeotuonye. It means ‘the strength of one person.’ ” He cried out a word I didn’t know, then said, “I—I give my name to you.” After two more raspy breaths, he quivered once and then relaxed, his arms falling, exhaling for the last time.

  The infirmary had grown quiet. I closed his eyelids, aware of the rhythmic sloshing of the water on the other side of the hull, the gentle roll of the Formidable, my own labored breathing.

  I’ve failed again.

  “Ikeotuonye,” one of the other men whispered. And it was whispered in such a way that it sounded as if he were sitting in the vastness of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans instead of in a crowded, stench-filled infirmary in the gut of a slave ship.

  “Ikeotuonye,” others whispered.

  Someone lying on the floor touched my ankle. Another my foot.

  “Ikeotuonye.”

  And they surrounded me, those that could. Touching me, chanting my African name.

  “Ikeotuonye …”

  “Ikeotuonye …”

  I was digging in my medicine chest, searching for antimony, when Uncle threw open the door to the infirmary.

  One look at his reddened face, milky eye glaring, was enough to know that something was frightfully amiss. Behind him stood Billy the Vermin, a smug expression playing upon his normally dull features.

  Uncle said, “Billy heard the sound of a baby coming from inside this infirmary.”

  I glanced quickly at Oji, who was sitting cross-legged, holding the infant. Oji looked as if he’d been caught committing murder. His blinded eyes widened. He stiffened. The baby squirmed and opened its mouth to protest. Oji clamped his hand over the child’s mouth and whispered in its ear.

  “Where is it?” demanded Uncle.

  “There’s no infant here,” I said. My words sounded calm, yet my stomach turned topsy-turvy and my pulse pounded up my neck and into my head. I approached Uncle, praying Oji would quickly place the infant in its hiding spot, praying the infant would settle.

  Uncle brushed me aside and began to search the infirmary.

  None of the patients made a sound, no doubt frightened by this intrusion. But I wished they’d cry, moan, groan, and weep, to cover any noises little Onwuha might make.

  I saw Oji stumble toward the mother’s bunk, feeling his way. Meanwhile, Uncle began touching everything that came within his grasp. A pallet with three children, all ill with the flux. A woman dying of a lung disorder. The girl with the broken leg. Uncle seemed not to notice her splint as he stumbled over prostrate bodies, searching, searching for a baby.

  “Uncle, please, this isn’t necessary.” I followed him, urging the people in their native tongue to make noise, my head pounding with the beat of my heart even when the infirmary filled with a symphony of misery.

  “But I done heard it, Captain Towne,” said Billy, standing inside the door. “Ain’t no doubt. My mama had ten babies, and I know what they sound like.”

  By the time Uncle reached the mother’s bunk, Onwuha was safely stowed in his hiding place beneath the planks. Uncle felt the bunk, then the mother, and moved on.

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn’t until Uncle finished his search of the entire infirmary that the throbbing in my head began to lessen.

  “There’s no baby here,” Uncle said to Billy. “You heard wrong.”

  “But, Captain Towne, I heard—”

  “Philip wouldn’t disobey my instructions.” Uncle looked in my direction. His voice hardened. “He knows the consequences. He knows I do not like to be made a fool, don’t you, Philip?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  “Quite right. You see, Billy? There’s no baby here.” And with that pronouncement, Uncle left.

  Billy stood there, staring into the infirmary as if he could will himself to see the truth.

  “Clear off, you worm,” I told him. “And don’t you ever listen outside my door again or I’ll set Pea Soup on you. He loves white meat.”

  Billy cast me a look of hatred.

  I blinked and stepped back, alarmed.

  The hatred didn’t bother me. Indeed no. What did I care if Billy the Vermin hated me? What made me gasp were his eyes.

  Billy the Vermin’s eyes were looking horribly, horribly healthy. It’d be only a matter of time before he could see.

  The wind died.

  Where before our beautiful white sails had been filled to bursting with a fine, fresh wind, now they hung slack. Rippling with an occasional breath. Hanging this way, then that, depending upon which way the Formidable was listing. The slackened ropes dangled, useless.

  All was still.

&nbs
p; “I don’t like it,” said Uncle. “Never happened to me before in this part of the world. Are you certain you’re on the correct heading?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “You’ve made mistakes before.”

  “Yes, I know. But never again.”

  The leak continued to require pumping. So many crew became ill with the bloody flux that it was necessary to force them to work despite their illness, despite the pain that gripped their bowels so fiercely. They hunched over the pumps in agony.

  “Pump!” Uncle ordered. “Your lives depend on it.”

  “God save us!” cried Roach. He stood in a wooden tub meant to catch his bodily wastes, for the flux was relentless in its release of liquids. “I need water.”

  “You can survive thirst, you filthy, stinking mongrel!” shouted Uncle, the veins bulging in his neck. “But you can’t survive drowning! Or must I dunk you over the side to prove my point?”

  Roach looked alarmed. “But—but, Captain, there are sharks.”

  “At least it would end,” said McGuire, his voice as shrunken and disheveled as his once-handsome person.

  Billy spoke. “We could take the boats and leave this tub.”

  At this suggestion, there was a silence. Only the scree, scree, scree of the pumps.

  I couldn’t breathe. My fever suddenly pounded in my head. Leave the ship? “Uncle—”

  “Philip, how many slaves have recovered their sight?”

  “Last—last I counted, which was several hours ago this morning, it was—let me think—”

  “How many?” he screeched, his face turning an unhealthy red.

  “One hundred thirty or so,” I lied, hoping the number didn’t sound too falsely inflated.

  “Too many for the boats,” he said. Beneath his eye patch, he frowned.

  “Please, sir,” gasped Roach. “Let’s just leave. I’m—I’m dying. Truly, I am.”

  Several others murmured their agreement.

  “Nephew, how many days till we reach land?”

  Again my head filled with a fevered pounding. I wanted to lie down and sleep. Die. Do anything except stand on my feet and answer a question of life and death. If I said too many days were left, Uncle would abandon ship this minute. If I said too few and we didn’t arrive as promised…

  Ikeotuonye, I said to myself.

  “Philip?”

  The strength of one person…

  “I—I don’t know. Without the wind …”

  “If the wind were to return?”

  “Three, four days at most.”

  Uncle smiled grimly. “Hear that, men? You can survive the pumps for another four days. After that, if we’ve no wind we’ll take what slaves we can and leave the ship where she lies.”

  Billy the Vermin looked at me then and smiled, his irises clear and unclouded.

  I swore that he could see me.

  But then he looked past me, his eyes unfocused, and I released the breath I’d been holding.

  Two days later I lay on the deck after a morning mess of one weevily biscuit and a quarter cup of scummy water. It was time to visit the infirmary, but I couldn’t find the strength to rise. Oji lay beside me, his eyes closed, his face drawn with pain, his pointed teeth chattering with the chills.

  The sails still hung slack.

  Uncle had the boats down and the carpenter was running his hands over them, checking them for leaks.

  The pumps still operated.

  Scree, scree, scree.

  I heard someone calling my name, begging for help, saying he was dying. The voice stopped; there was a cough, then silence.

  Scree, scree, scree.

  Across from me, the gunner lay on his back on top of the arms locker, his head hanging over one end of it, his long hair sweeping back and forth, the strands clotted with deck filth.

  Scree, scree, scree.

  I stared at the gunner’s body, at his mouth hanging open, at the flies buzzing in and out.

  There was something wrong. I blinked. Then knew.

  I looked up. The sun was blazing overhead, its round orb staring at me like an eye.

  My cloud cover.

  It’s gone.

  Latitude 4°01’ N and longitude 8° W.

  I took the reading again, wiping the grime from my hands onto my trousers.

  Yes.

  A frightful trembling seized me that had nothing to do with fever or hunger. Once again I felt like a diminutive child shivering under the glare and cane of Master Crump.

  We’re but forty miles south of Africa. If the wind picks up (dear God, let the wind pick up!), we could arrive tomorrow.

  I peered north, willing my eyes to see land. A ribbon of brown, stretching across the horizon. But there was nothing. Nothing but the endless ocean.

  “We’ll shackle them together,” I whispered, “after we’ve taken control of the ship.”

  “We will kill them,” said Oji.

  We sat together on the floor of our cabin, candle burning in the lantern above. It was well past midnight.

  The Formidable was still dead in the water, still forty miles from Africa—her sails slack as a dead man’s mouth, her bow pointing this way, then that, rising and falling on the ocean swells.

  Tomorrow Uncle planned to abandon ship. It was necessary that Oji and I develop a plan to save the captives, who would otherwise die, trapped inside a sinking vessel. Their only hope was a lone white boy who didn’t know how to operate the sails and who lacked the strength to man the helm or the pumps.

  Oji clenched his fists and pounded the side of my bunk. He threw his head back and exposed his pointed teeth in a silent cry of rage. “They have taken my father and my sight,” he finally said. “They have taken everything from me.”

  “For now we must concentrate on getting all our people into the boats,” I told Oji.

  Oji had buried his head in his hands. “There must be strong men in each of the boats.”

  “Yes, and before we cast off, I’ll release the crew from their shackles.”

  “Leave them shackled. They can sink and die.”

  “With no surgeon aboard and with everyone blind, they’ll probably sink and die anyhow.”

  “Then it will be in the hands of the gods.”

  “Once we leave the Formidable behind, we’ll have other concerns.”

  Oji raised his head, gazing sightlessly at me. “Yes. What happens when we reach land? What then?”

  “I—I’ve not thought that far ahead.”

  “Whatever we do, we will all succeed or we will all fail.”

  Through the night, we discussed every detail. The placement of the arms. The moment at which to unlock the captives. The vast numbers to squeeze into just three boats. The possibility of building several rafts to tow behind. Where to stow the provisions of food and water. Praying for calm seas and strength enough to row. Even as we discussed the plan, it seemed impossible. Ridiculous, even. As if I were a child moving toy soldiers about. As if it’d no relation to real life and real people.

  And through it all, I couldn’t help but feel sorrow for the crew, especially my uncle, left behind on a rotting tub, all blind, all betrayed by someone they trusted. Me, Philip Arthur Higgins, surgeon aboard the Formidable, nephew of Captain Towne.

  I didn’t want to do this. I was too ill; my bowels were beginning to loosen with the gripes. Fever clouded my thoughts so that I could scarcely remember what we’d discussed even a few minutes before. I had to concentrate—had to concentrate!

  Blast it, I’m so ill!

  “We’ll take the medicines,” I was saying.

  “I will let the infant bellow like a horn as we row away across the great lake,” Oji said.

  Through my feverish thoughts, I pricked up my ears. I’d heard something. “Did you hear that, Oji?”

  “Is the devil listening outside our door again?”

  “No, no. Listen.”

  And there it was. A creaking, a moaning; a shifting of the vessel, ever so sl
owly.

  “It’s—it’s wind,” I whispered.

  Under the moonlit predawn sky, the breeze was fine and bracing. The hair was blown from my fevered forehead. Chills raced down my scalp.

  “We’re saved!” breathed Calvin.

  “Saints be praised!” said Roach.

  Harold said, “I hope I live long enough to feel grass beneath my feet again. In just a day or two we’ll be on land, right, Mr. Surgeon? Right?”

  I ordered the new heading, and with Uncle beside me, instructing me sail by sail, line by line, I became the eyes of the crew as they climbed about with a newfound strength that defied their illness.

  “No, not that line, the line next to it, I believe. Yes, that’s right. Pull now. Give it all you’ve got. There. The yard’s turning to port. That’s what we want, isn’t it, Uncle? The yard to turn to port? To catch the wind coming from our starboard quarter? By the deuce, Uncle, if I keep this up, I’ll become a sailor through and through. Ha!”

  I continued my charade until finally the course was set and every sail trimmed. I estimated our speed at eight knots. At this rate, we’d arrive in five hours or so.

  Oji and I returned to our cabin. There was much to discuss.

  We’d still need to disembark all of the captives while keeping the crew at bay, but now we’d five hours to accomplish it rather than twenty-four as before.

  “I’ll carry the arms into the hold a few at a time so as not to attract attention,” I told Oji, groaning and clenching my teeth.

  My bowels! Bugger and blast, my bowels!

  The cabin swirled about me in a haze of dizziness. I groped for the chamber pot. It was ten minutes before I could talk again. “When it’s time, the crew mustn’t be able to find a single weapon.”

  “They will resist anyway.”

  “I know.”

  “How will we get them to submit?”

  A wave of helplessness washed over me. I’d asked myself this question again and again and had no answers. Beg them, I supposed. Ask them nicely. This much I knew: I didn’t wish to use violence. I was heartily sick of it. I put my head in my hands. “I don’t know, Oji. We’ll think of something. Lure them somewhere one by one, maybe. Use their blindness against them.”