by Smith, Skye
It dawned on Robert that this must be the ship that had sold Black Irish folk to the governor of Sifa for use in the Chinese Snow mines. "So you release some of the female slaves and they help out?" Robert confirmed. "Doing what? The bilge pumps?"
"Yes, that is another problem. The Amity has seen better days, but then all ships leak. This journey should return enough profit to replace her."
"I noticed you were lightly manned, even for trading. Yer crew can't be happy with the extra work, even with the help of the women."
"The smaller the paid crew, the bigger the profits. Besides, the crew get other benefits. Part of their duties is to make sure that every woman is pregnant before we reach Virginia. A woman carrying a half-breed whelp fetches a better price."
"A ship full of women,” Daniel shuddered. "It must be Hell whenever the moon is strong."
"Not all women. Of course not. The hold is filled with men. Three levels of them. Come and take a look. I am quite proud of how it worked out." Henry looked at the flagon of whiskey and smacked his lips, "We'll take the whiskey with us, shall we?"
As they walked passed the lines of chained women towards the stairs down into the hold, Henry told them, "If any of your crew need some female sport, I will charge them only sixpence each for as many women as they can cover in two hours. Why don't you signal some of them to come over, but no more than ten at a time."
Daniel began to refuse the offer, but Robert spoke over him, "You go along with Henry, Danny. I'll send word with the dinghy crew."
Henry led him down into the hold, and again Daniel covered his nose and mouth with his kerchief. Instead of the hold having one solid deck above the bilge, with twelve feet of clearance for cargo, on this ship there were three decks with only four feet of clearance each. On each of the decks a hundred or more naked black men were laid out in rows and shackled in place.
"How many weeks before you make the first land fall in the Caribe?" Daniel asked while trying to count the number of mouths that would need feeding.
"Four weeks is my fondest hope, for most of the slaves will survive four weeks at sea. After we load more food and water at the first landfall, then another three weeks north to Virginia."
"And if it takes longer to reach the Caribe?"
"I have included that in my profit calculations. Each week of delay will cost me only a tenth of the cargo because I will throw the sickest of them overboard and thus have more space and food and water for the rest."
Robert had caught up to them again, but he was breathing hard into his kerchief and said nothing. It was Daniel who did the arithmetic. "So if the winds delay you by five weeks, you will lose over half?"
"Oh aye, but those that are left will still return me a vast profit." Henry rubbed his hands together and smiled greedily at the thought of such wealth.
"Then why not just take half so that they all arrive in good health?" Daniel then quoted the Dutch captain, "A dead slave earns no profit."
"Surely you jest. What if I make the crossing in record time? By carrying only half, I will have missed out on a fortune. Speaking of fortunes, come and look at this." Henry turned and led them towards the stern. "I have bought a few 'specials' that should earn me tenfold. They must be kept healthy, so I keep them separate and with more space and more food. Just look at these stallions."
He pointed to five large and strong-looking black men. They looked vigorous and handsome, and you could see well-formed muscles rippling under taught, shiny skin. "I will sell them as breeding studs. Aren't they something? The Arab I bought them from swore that they had all been princes of their own tribes. Tribes where princes are chosen by the size of their knobs. Admit it, are they not hung like stallions?"
Robert wasn't paying attention. He was looking behind him at a row of naked white girls. "Are these ones 'special' as well?"
"Hrumpf,” Henry snorted. "Far from it. As they lie there, they are worthless. Just Irish clanswomen cleared from the commons by my cousin's plantation enclosures. My cousin splits the profit from the privatization of the common land with the king, but there is always the problem of what to do with the peasant scum that are cleared from it. We used to sell them for a profit either to the Virginia colonies or to the Barbary traders, but not anymore."
"You mean Barbary pirates,” Robert corrected him.
"Slave traders, pirates, they are much the same. We could sell them cheaper to the Barbary ships that visited Ireland because they provided the transport. Ten years ago we were selling them entire villages at a time. For a fee we would allow them to land, load the peasants, and leave no witnesses behind. Things were so much simpler then, but that all ended when the bloody Dutch bested the Armada and took control of the trade routes. The Barbary traders no longer come to Ireland because there are Dutch frigates patrolling the trade routes. If that wasn't bad enough, now Virginia is refusing more Irish."
"That still doesn't explain why those Irish lasses are locked down,” Robert interrupted.
"I was getting to that,” Henry explained. "It was my cousin Lord Strafford's idea, so I am obliged to try to make it work. I will have my special stallions breed the Irish girls so that when they reach Virginia they will be carrying half-breed whelps the same as the black women. Perhaps that will create a market for them. So far, however, the Irish lasses have been nothing but trouble. They turned so sickly that we had to throw half of them overboard just after we unloaded the rest of the Irish at Safi. Weak Irish blood, don't you know."
Robert went deathly quiet, but Daniel was still pandering to Henry in hopes of being shown the man's charts and rudder log. "I see another flaw in your plan. These Irish lasses are just wee things, and those blacks are huge."
"Hmm,” Henry looked at the wee girls and then at the enormous men. "You could be right. Well, there is only one way to find out. Let's try it. If nothing else it will be enjoyable to watch." With that he took a strange-looking wrench out of his pocket and walked over to the closest girl and stooped down to free her legs. "These are Spanish shackles and cleverly designed. They are held by a nut instead of a rivet, but a nut that only a special wrench can turn."
There was a thumping against the hull of the ship. Henry rose and pulled the girl to her feet beside him. "That will be your men arriving to sample the women." He pushed the girl towards the closest black man and told her to get down and excite the stud, and then he walked over to a hatchway and yelled up to his first mate. There was an answer, then a discussion, and then Henry returned and told them that the mate would show the Swift's crew which row of women they could hump.
The girl had hardly moved and was just staring in horror at the size of the black man. Henry used his boot, and none too gently, to push the girl onto the man. "Come on. Did your practicing on mine teach you nothing. Take it in your mouth, girl."
The girl looked back at him and then looked at the already massive black knob growing in front of her and began to sob. Between her sobs she was able to moan that it was too big and wouldn't fit. She spoke the truth, for the black man's knob had now grown to the length of the girl's forearm, and it was thicker.
Henry was now panting with lust, which made his face seem even more piggy than usual. "Just look at the size of it. Unbelievable. Come on girl, at least grab it with your hand." She tried but it took both her hands to wrap around the girth of it so she began to sob again.
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The Pistoleer - Slavers by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14
Chapter 20 - Rescuing slaves in Africa in March 1641
Robert didn't know where to look. He sorely wanted to stop the shameful rape of this young Irish girl by this big black slave, but he didn't know how. To stop it might insult his host, and the only reason he had put up with this pig's company thus far was in hopes of being given a look at his charts.
His thoughts were interrupted because the pig Henry fell to the deck like a stone. Daniel's filleting knife was sticking out of the soft spot underneath the back
of his skull. The man had died so quickly that he had made no noise at all, and now he was not even bleeding.
"Danny, what have you done?" Robert gasped. "You have killed a captain on his own ship. That is piracy, or mutiny, or at least a murder most foul in every kingdom."
"The man was a slaver, a snake. It's always better to kill snakes before they kill you, " Daniel shrugged, "Besides, what would you have done if she were your daughter?"
"But she is not my daughter."
"Well, she's someone's daughter. Grab her before she sees him and screams the ship down." It was a waste of words. The big black had been watching, and he was holding the girl's head still so she could not turn her face to see the corpse behind her. All that came out of her mouth was some muffled choking noises. The big black was saying something to Robert in a strange tongue, and pointing to Henry's belt, urging Robert to hand him something.
"He's pointing to the shackle key." Robert told Daniel as he pulled the girl off the black and told her to keep absolutely quiet. Once she was calm enough to understand the message, he told Daniel, "Here, take the key and the girl and go over there and free her friends."
As he pulled the key out of the dead man's pocket, all five of Henry's 'specials' pointed towards it and made noises and motions for him to give it to them. They were big strong men, and had the look of warriors. "Uh, for now don't free any slaves. Not until I have had a talk with the first mate." With that Daniel left the corpse where it lay on the deck and hurried topside to find the mate.
On deck there seemed to be some harsh words being exchanged between the Swift's crew and the slaver crew. The slavers were pointing out the most comely of the black women, while the Swift's crew were holding their noses and telling their hosts to wash them down first. To his question about where the mate was, Daniel was pointed towards the command cabin.
He entered the cabin without knocking and while his eyes grew accustomed to the dim cabin after the bright sunshine of the deck, he heard animal grunts and muffled complaints. The mate, a huge and obviously brutal man, was mostly nude and humping away on top of a black woman while he slapped her buttocks. The woman was stretched belly down over a bench, with her shackles secure on the hooks on each of the bench's legs, and thus she could do nothing to stop herself from being used so forcefully but to lift herself in time with the mate's humping to soften the thumping.
The man was looking over his shoulder to see who had opened the door, and he recognized the owner of the other ship and called out, "You can have her after me, but she is 'special' so don't make any marks on her else the cap'n 'll charge you extra for the consequences."
The only consequences that Daniel was thinking about as he grabbed a heavy brass candlestick holder from the desk and smashed it across the back of the mate's neck, was that he would be no match to this mate if it came to a wrestling match. He therefore erred on the side of force and the mate moaned and then slumped his full weight onto the woman. She gave a mighty heave of her back and he slid off her and onto the deck.
The woman now glared up at Daniel with a look of defiance that made her face look both exotically beautiful, and shrewd. He wondered if she were a wife or a sister of one of the five special studs down below. After feeling no pulse on the mate, he backed away. Bloody hell, he had murdered a second man in less than ten minutes. Now what? Would the Swift's crew now on board be a match to the slaver crew still on board? What if the slaver shore party returned and outnumbered them?
There were two pistols on the desk next to a shackle key. They must have been the mate's. He pocketed the key and then checked the prime of both pistols. Usually he would never use pistols that he had not personally loaded, for that meant trusting in whatever fool loaded them. Since there was no time to reload them, he stepped over the pool of blood from the dead mate, winked at the exotic woman still hooked to the bench, and then wandered out onto the deck with the pistols cocked, leveled, and ready to fire.
It was a good thing he hadn't slowed to reload the pistols, for as he was taking a count of the slaver crew, Robert appeared from below leading six naked Irish girls. The sight of them triggered two things on the main deck. The slaver crew figured that something was amiss and began to call for the mate, and the Swift's crew began smashing the slavers' faces with their fists to make sure they landed those all-important first punches.
With a loud yell Daniel brought all of their attention to the two pistols he was aiming, and the slavers backed towards the gunnels and began asking questions instead of fighting. Instead of answering the very reasonable questions, Daniel ordered them to strip naked and to kick everything they had away from them. This didn't take long for they weren't wearing much, what with the heat and with lording themselves over the women.
While Daniel was thinking about what to do next, Robert was already ordering it. "Tie them up, and if any of them fight back, thump them good and proper."
Once the slavers were hog tied, Robert continued to give orders. "You two, take some axes down into the bilge and stave in some of the rotten planking to let the sea in. Not too much mind ye." He pointed to a small dory upside down on a hatch cover. "You two, drop that jolly boat into the drink and put these lasses aboard her." With a nod to Daniel he said, "Daniel, you search the command cabin for anything valuable and load it all onto the Swift's jolly boat The rest of you, run the storm sail up and put an axe through the anchor lines. Let's back this rotten scow onto the beach before the shore party returns."
By the time Daniel had returned to the cabin, the exotic woman had tipped the bench over and was using a still shackled hand to go through the mate's pockets. She must have been searching for his shackle key which was now in Daniel's pocket. He ignored her, which was hard to do because it was so intoxicating to watch her squirm about, and got busy flipping open trunks and boxes and any other likely hiding places. He dumped anything of interest, including firearms and charts, over by the door. After searching every place he could think of, he had found only a small purse of silver shillings and some worse for clipping gold pieces of eight. He did find six more shackle keys on a ring, so he shoved the ring under his belt.
He realized he had been foolish to expect to find a chest of coins. Any coins would have already been spent in the slave markets. He did find Henry's supply of aqua vitae, and he carried those pins of Bushmills over to the door. The woman was now dragging the bench towards him, and grunting to him in some strange language while pointing to her shackles.
He was forced to step around her, and in doing so he stubbed his toe on the corner of a large trunk. It fell open after he kicked it in his pain and anger. It was filled with colorful cloth and women’s dresses. The woman pointed to them and made signs like she wanted to cover her nudity so he threw her a length of bright yellow cloth.
After another 'of course' moment, he dragged the trunk out of the cabin and along the main deck towards the six Irish girls who were waiting to be lowered down into a jolly boat. "Wait," he yelled, "I have found them some clothes." The women pawed through the entire trunk, ignoring their urgent need for modesty while searching for something more splendid than any of the other women had yet to claim. He told them, "There are families on our ship. Good Christian families. You must tell them that you had husbands on this ship." They looked back at him with vacant stares and then returned to arguing about who grabbed which piece of cloth first.
"They don't speak English, and we don't speak Irish,” explained a young lad who was trying to convince one of the half-dressed lasses to step into a loop of rope so she could be lowered down into the boat. She was pushing his hands away, not because they were groping, but because she was trying to get back to the trunk of fancies.
"I speak a little English,” said the girl who had witnessed the death of the captain. "I will explain it to them." These words had no sooner left her mouth than she, and everyone around her was thrown to the deck, and there was an ungodly noise of timbers shrieking and rigging clattering and people screaming. Th
e Amity had run aground. For most of the time Daniel had been searching the cabin, the ship had been drifting backwards towards the beach. It had been anchored bow-to-sea, so it had just run aground stern first and the screeching must have been the rudder being torn sideways.
With each lift of the bow by the beach break, the rudder was digging its way further into the white sand, and then there was a terrible grating noise. The rudder must have been torn loose by the force, and with it out of the way, the doomed hull was grinding herself further up the beach. A moment later the ship shuddered, and the grinding stopped. Or at least it seamed to stop because now another sound drowned it out. The screams of the frightened slaves down below. Chained as they were without any view, they could not know that the ship was safely aground. They must be thinking that they were about to drown in a sinking ship, and that would explain the screams.
Robert once again began yelling orders to the crew, "I am going to free some of the women so they can tell their men that the ship is high and dry." One of the crew yelled back, "Well free only the smallest of them. Some of these women are bigger than you and strong enough to snap you in two."
"Oh, hah, bloody hah,” countered short-ass Robert. "At least I can use a ship's cabin without bloodying my forehead." While he ran around freeing women with a shackle key, another problem arrived. The slaver shore party had realized that there was trouble on the ship and they were racing towards it along the beach.
There was good and bad to this news. The worst news was that the shore party was armed. The best news was that they had left their shore boats in the stream and were legging it along the beach. This allowed the crew of the Swift to clamber into the two jolly boats with the Irish girls and the pile of loot from the cabin, and row for the Swift without any fear of being followed by the shore boats.
