The Blackbirder

Chapter 6

Twenty-four hours since they had cut the blackbirder’s cable and gone, riding the northeasterly wind through the capes and back out into the big sea. Twenty-four hours and that innate human reflex to find order began asserting itself.

The eighty or so Africans still alive, some just barely, had organized themselves into clusters, by family, by clan, by common language, the men talking and planning, the women tending to their families, the children emerging slowly from their trauma, looking about, exploring the world within arm’s reach of their mothers.

The ship-James did not know her name and did not want to know-was drifting, the sails brailed up and hanging in great folds, the light airs pushing them along more sideways than forward.

He knew where they were, or close enough. James had learned to dead-reckon, had sailed the Northumberland in fog enough times to understand about noting speed and heading and drift, if it could be figured, and to deduce from that where the ship was. He had found a chart, had pricked their position hourly. Knew that it would be important, once they had decided what they would do.

He was on the quarterdeck, alone. He had no clan, save for Cato and Joshua, Good Boy and Quash, and they were forward, knotting and splicing and fixing those things that needed fixing for the ship to function.

King James sat atop the nearly wrecked binnacle box, surveyed his command. The people. The family. The clan.

The pumps were the only work that needed doing, and they needed a distressing amount of attention, as the ship was taking on quite a bit of water. Madshaka had organized gangs who relieved each other at the turn of the half-hour glass. The creaking of the pumps, the gush of water, were the leitmotif under the babble of talk on deck.

James looked forward, and saw Madshaka emerge from the hold, his head and big shoulders rising up from the dark as he mounted the ladder, his face grim, set. None of the other people had by choice gone back down there after Cato and Joshua had unbattened the hatch, and James doubted that they ever would.

Only those dozen strong young men chosen by Madshaka had gone down, gone back into the pit with Madshaka and James to clear away the bodies, the parts of bodies, and throw them overboard, to light brimstone fires and replace the stink of death with the stink of hell. Hell burnt clean.

It had taken hours. Among the worst hours in James’s life, and the competition was fierce for that distinction. Now it was time for the next step.

“Madshaka, pray, a word.”

Madshaka trotted aft, his big bare feet making no sound on the planking. Madshaka was a blessing to James, a natural leader, like himself, invaluable in bringing order, second in command by tacit consent.

“Yes, Captain?” Madshaka said, with his big smile quite at odds with the somber look he had had coming up from the hold.

“We have to figure what we will do next. We can’t drift forever. We must decide.”

“That true. That true.” Madshaka screwed up his face, as if framing a question, began, paused, and then said, “Captain James, you know much about them pirates?”

James knew quite a bit about pirates, in fact, having fought them at Marlowe’s side aboard the guardship, having learned of their ways from Marlowe, who knew from firsthand experience.

“Yes. Some.”

“When the pirates aboard this ship, I listen. They aboard a long time, and I listen, but I don’t understand. They have no chief, I think. Each man have a say in what they do. And black men too, black men among the pirates and they have a say. Is that right?”

James nodded. How to explain those nefarious people? He hated pirates, those robbers, murderers. He had killed many of them with his own hands. And yet, and yet…

Madshaka was not wrong in what he perceived. The men who turned pirate were the world’s downtrodden, and they would no longer suffer such abuse. Each man had a vote, each man received an equal share. Total equality. The color of their skin was not an issue, only their courage and devotion to the brotherhood.

Marlowe was the first, one of the few white men to treat James as an equal. He had gained his color blindness among the pirates. How to judge such men?

“The pirates pick their captain, their chief. But he is only chief when they fight. Other times, they all choose what they are to do, where they go. Every man gets an equal share of what they steal.”

Madshaka nodded, raised his eyebrows. “That is very fair, I think, very just.” He paused, looked around the deck at the various clusters of people. “You could tell them what to do, and they would listen. I could tell them, and they would listen to me. But maybe, we do like the pirates? Maybe we vote on captain, on where we go? It seem…most just.”

James nodded as well, uncomfortable though he was with modeling any part of himself after the pirates.

Still, Madshaka had a point. It could not be up to him, or any other one person, to decide what they would do. They must vote.

It was with some small sense of relief that he called Kusi over and explained what he and Madshaka had decided, told Kusi what to tell the others.

They would vote. It would not be on James’s shoulders. The group would decide. He would do their bidding.

For a moment, at least, the weight was gone.

Kusi and Madshaka went from group to group, explaining, hearing suggestions, conferring. There seemed to be quite a bit of organizational talk, but James had no idea because he could not understand a word of it.

For two turns of the glass the tribes carried on an animated debate within their groups.

Good Boy, Cato, Quash, and Joshua left off their work, came aft. “What’s acting?” Cato asked.

“Madshaka and I was talking. Reckoned we got no business telling all them people what to do. Reckoned we’d vote on it, what we’s to do, where to go.”

The four young men nodded thoughtfully but they did not look so sure. James imagined they would be happy to let one man-him- make the decisions for all. They would have been happy to be relieved of all responsibility in that regard.

At length men from each of the tribes stood and came aft and sat cross-legged on the deck in a semicircle around the binnacle box. Madshaka and Kusi stepped up, flanked King James. Madshaka spoke.

“Each of the clans, they send three men. The men talk for the tribe. Easier that way, not so many men.”

James nodded. It was a sensible thing to do. Each individual tribe would be expected to hang on to the hierarchies that the pirates had shunned.

“I…Kusi and me… have told them what we decide, that we all vote where we go, what we do.”

“Good, good. We best talk on it then, and then we vote.”

Madshaka and Kusi turned to the assembled men, began talking, fast, in the odd and incomprehensible languages of West Africa. James leaned against the binnacle box, arms folded. Hoped that he looked calm, in control. He was in fact quite uncomfortable. All this talk, and he understood not a word.

Heads nodded, men spoke to one another, the translators moved on to the next group. Twenty minutes of this and they were done, and the deck was filled with the babble of discussion, debate. Madshaka and Kusi stepped back, flanking James once more.

One man sitting near the mizzen fife rail leapt to his feet, held James’s eyes, spoke loud, passionately. In James’s ear, Kusi said, “He say you the captain, when we fighting, just like Madshaka say the pirates do.”

James nodded. Kabu Malinke prince to slave to freeman to pirate. Royalty to outlaw.

Kusi continued. “He say we must go back to home…he mean Africa…must take all the people back to their homes.”

Madshaka translated the words for the others, switching from one tongue to another, and heads nodded and voices rose and one did not need to understand the words to catch the tones of agreement and assent. Africa. They would go back to Africa.

James’s clan did not look so sure. “ Africa?” Good Boy said. “What we do in Africa?” James imagined that Good Boy was, at that moment, as far from Virginia as he had ever been in his life.

“I don’t know,” James said, talking low. He did not want Madshaka and Kusi to overhear him, though he was not sure why. “We got to do it, for these people. Then, I don’t know what we do. We think of something.”

The four men muttered agreement. It seemed more like resignation.

More fast talk, translated arguments, hands waving, impassioned speech. Madshaka said, “They argue over where in Africa to go.” He turned back to the group, called out something, the men were silent. He called out again, one language at a time, and the men of each tribe in turn responded. Voting, deciding. James felt entirely removed from this process, as if he were something less than a member of the group.

At last Madshaka turned back to him. “We go to Kalabari. It is decided, we go there, and these people go home, upriver, overland.”

Kalabari, in the heart of the Niger River delta. Far from the slave factories of Whydah and Popo and Sierra Leone. There the people could use the great Niger River to carry them into the heart of their lands, and from thence over the savannahs to their homes. It was decided. James had not even understood the debate.

“Very well…”

Africa. The name whirled around in James’s head. Africa. He never thought he would see it again.

A prince when stolen, what was he now? He did not even know if his city was still standing, if his people still existed. He had not seen either for twenty years. The Malinke might have been wiped out years before, for all he knew.

Twenty years, and all that time he had fantasized about this moment, when he would return to Africa. And now that that dream was taking form and substance he did not know how he felt about it, did not know what if anything there was for him now in his motherland.

“We gots to get the boat sailing,” Madshaka urged him, gently.

James nodded. “Yes, we do.”

He would think about Africa later. Right now they had to get under way. For more reasons than the others knew.

James knew, had realized it even as they were voting on their destination. It had dawned on him as he had wallowed in his regret at missing the chance to go privateering aboard the Elizabeth Galley.

They would blame Marlowe for this, those people in power in Williamsburg. There would be no letter of marque, not for a man who had brought this terror on the colony of Virginia.

There would be only one way for Marlowe to regain his precious place, and that would be to hunt the black killers down, to bring them back. He would not want to do it, would recoil from the thought, but in the end he would agree because he would have no choice. He would do it for Elizabeth.

“Get them men together.” James turned to the grumete. “Madshaka, get them in three groups, we’ll organize them by mast. Cato, Joshua, you each go with a group, show them how to do what I say. Madshaka, Kusi, you all translate what I say. If we going to live we got to start learning these people how to sail this ship.”

They had to get the boat sailing, the half-rotten, festering, leaking tub. Because in their wake would come the Elizabeth Galley, new, fast, well armed, determined.