Voyage of Midnight (15 page)

“I need the speculum orb,” I said.

Teags handed it to me. “Always keep it handy.”

It was a long metal instrument with a thumbscrew at one end. The screw operated two pointed arms that opened and closed like pincers. The idea was to insert the closed ends between the teeth of an unwilling jaw and then screw open the speculum, whereupon the jaw would have no choice but to open.

“Now everybody pay attention!” hollered Teags. “The surgeon’s at work.”

I stood next to the skinny slave. He stared at me with reddened, pus-filled, fear-filled eyes.

I’ll take him to the infirmary
, I thought.
After he eats
.

Swallowing hard, I opened his lips and tried to insert the metal end of the speculum through his teeth. Except there was no place to put it—no gaps, no missing teeth, no misaligned jaw.
I began to press the instrument against his teeth, trying to pry it between, wondering if this was how it was done or if there was a trick to it. He struggled.

“Eat!” I ordered him in the African language I’d been learning, praying he could understand. The speculum slid across his teeth, back and forth, as I poked here and there. And all the while, he struggled, shaking his head, his eyes clenched shut, moaning as if I were killing him.

This will never work
, I thought.
He’s stronger than me
. “Eat!” I cried, hearing the desperation in my voice.

The white men were near collapse in their fits of laughter when I finally figured out what was wrong.

Ikoro and the skinny man were not chained together.

The chains had somehow been released.

I knew it was a ploy—not of the whites, but a desperate ploy of the slaves themselves—when Ikoro snatched the speculum orb out of my hand and in one motion stabbed Teags in the stomach.

T
eags’ eyes widened.

He bent his head and stared at the object protruding from his stomach. At the black hand that grasped it.

We all stared.

Where before there had been the hubbub of mealtime, now every African, every white man, stared at Teags.

Again Ikoro stabbed him. And again.

All this took only a second, or half a second, but it lasted forever.

Teags groaned and sank to his knees, the cat-o’-nine-tails slipping from his hand.

Ikoro removed the speculum orb and cried to the crowd in his language, “Fight, Igbo warriors! Fight! It is war!” Then he bounded toward Mackerel, the nearest white other than myself, holding the speculum
orb over his head like a dagger. A scream ripped from Ikoro, an animal, warlike scream that set my scalp crawling.

The skinny slave with red eyes grabbed the cat-o’-nine-tails and ran after Ikoro. Other slaves followed. Roach was hollering, his eyes bugging out with terror, wrestling to unloose the whip at his hip. From the stern, I heard women shrieking and children crying.

Mackerel had disappeared under a mass of black bodies, his shocked face the last thing I saw before a hand wrapped about my neck from behind and yanked me down hard.

I slammed onto my back, the world suddenly topsy-turvy, black legs running all about, some still shackled, others loose.

They’re going to kill us all! I’ll be stabbed to death!

And then Pea Soup was leaning over me, eyes narrowed with hatred, his lips pulled back in a snarl exposing his hideous, pointed teeth.

“No!” I kicked, flailing wildly, trying to reach his eyes, to gouge them out. “No!” My teeth found the flesh of his hand and I bit hard. Tasted blood.

His forehead smashed my face. I heard bones crunch. My body seemed to melt, no longer obeying my commands to fight, to defend myself, to keep Pea Soup’s cannibal teeth away from my neck. Blood from my broken nose streamed down my throat. I heard myself groan. Heard gunshots. The crack of whips.

I’m sorry, Mrs. Gallagher
.

Then Pea Soup lay across my chest, pinning me down, and his voice was in my ear. “Do nothing. You will live.”

And so I lay under Pea Soup’s weight, his words spinning in my head like a distant light through a tunnel of darkness, dimly understanding that he was saving my life, protecting me from being massacred.

Within minutes, it was over. Pea Soup released me. I lay for
a moment, staring at the clouds scudding across the sky, surprised that the sky would still be blue, that the breeze still stirred, that the heavens seemed unchanged.

“Make certain they’re all shackled,” Uncle was bellowing. I heard the crack of a whip. “If anyone so much as blinks an eye, kill him.”

I sat up slowly, my head spinning, watching blankly as blood streamed from my nose like water pouring from a glass. Pea Soup was sitting beside me. He glanced at me. Turned away. Said nothing. His face registered nothing.

And while the flow of blood from my nose slowed to a trickle, then finally a drip-drip, having spattered my chest and soaked my trousers and the deck, the crew moved among the slaves, securing shackles, their curses and whips flying through the air. When a slave was found no longer breathing—shot through the head or the heart, perhaps—at a signal, two crew members picked up the body, one by the shoulders, one by the ankles, and heaved him overboard as if he were a sack of rubbish.

I watched it all, and knew. I knew as surely as I knew the sky was blue and the ocean deep.
Ikoro should’ve killed me. I was the closest white man to him, an arm’s length away—but he didn’t. Not only did Ikoro spare me, but Pea Soup protected me, saving my life from the mob. Why? Why?

A violent shaking overwhelmed me.

Nineteen dead. Fifteen blacks and four whites, including First Mate Numbly.

Ikoro was still alive, though several wounds glistened on his flesh.

Uncle wrapped a bullwhip about Ikoro’s neck and dragged him to the bulwarks. Ikoro tried to gain his footing, but failed.

“Philip!” Uncle screamed, the veins bulging in his neck. He scanned the deck. “Where in the bloody hell are you?”

Shaking, still dizzy, I stood. “Here, Uncle.”

“Get the hell over here!”

I stumbled through the crowd. No one moved for me. My nose started bleeding again. Throbbing and bleeding. It was some time before I finally stood beside Uncle.

Mackerel lay nearby, his body in a twisted and unnatural position, the speculum orb buried in his back, above his kidney.

Ikoro knelt before Uncle, gasping for breath, the bullwhip tight about his neck, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets.

“Interpret what I say,” said Uncle to me, and without waiting for a reply addressed the crowd. “You people have foolishly tried to rebel. You’ve taken up arms against us, the very ones who feed you, who see to your comfort and keep you safe from harm. But as you can see, you can’t defeat us. Our weapons are strong, and you are weak. And as punishment for this rebellion, six of you will die today.” Uncle turned to me, and I saw rage snapping in his eyes.

And for the first time, I was afraid of my uncle.

I stepped back, hesitated, then licked my lips free of blood and said, my voice a whisper, “You—you’d
kill
them?”

In a second Uncle whipped a pistol from his gun belt. He cocked the pistol and aimed it at Ikoro’s head. “Interpret, Nephew,” he ordered me through clenched teeth.

Heart skittering, knees shaking, I floundered through my interpretation, having no idea whether I was making any sense. When I finished, every African eye was trained on me. I looked away. Sails fluttered, snapping, the helm poorly manned.

“McGuire!” barked Uncle. “You’re my first mate now. Select five more male slaves. Those with the most wounds, preferably. Set six nooses on the main yard, and hang them along with this savage.” And so saying, Uncle pulled on the whip until Ikoro’s eyes bulged again and his tongue protruded, purple.

Those same eyes had burned into me as the brand had seared my flesh. But seeing Ikoro now, struggling to find his footing, gasping for air, clawing at the whip about his neck—knowing he could’ve killed me, but didn’t
…
“Please, you’re hurting him. Uncle, please, don’t do this.”

Uncle stared at me as if he couldn’t remember who I was. As if seeing me for the first time. His gaze took in the blood trickling from my nose, my blood-spattered appearance. He blinked.

Then, suddenly, there was a movement among the slaves. Pea Soup began running toward us. Screaming, screaming.

Uncle cursed, raised his firearm, and aimed.

“No!” I pushed his arm away, and the pistol fired harmlessly into the air.

Pea Soup reached us and, to my astonishment, flung himself beside Ikoro, tugging at the whip about Ikoro’s neck.
“Nnà!”
he shrieked.

“Father”…

The hair rose on the back of my neck and I knew. I
knew
.

Ikoro was Pea Soup’s father.

“Nnà!”

As I watched the display between father and son, tears poured out of me. Then Pea Soup turned and grasped me about the ankles, his tears moistening my bare feet, crying, crying over and over,
“Bik
! Mèel
ny
èbelè!”
—“Please! I beg you! Have mercy on us!”

I stood, weeping, my nose throbbing and dribbling, and in that moment all my fear of Pea Soup vanished, like a nightmare vanishes upon awakening. He was a boy, like me, desperate, begging to save the life of his father. “Spare him,” I managed to say. “Please don’t kill Ikoro. He’s—he’s Pea Soup’s father. Don’t you see? He’s Pea Soup’s father. Have mercy. Have mercy on all of them.”