Voyage of Midnight (19 page)

“No, of course not.”

“Unless they regain their sight, they’re useless to me. A dead slave is worth more to me than a blind slave.”

“Of course, Captain. I understand.”

I heard the knife edge return to Uncle’s voice. “That’s all, McGuire. Now get out of here.”

Quick as a blink, I slipped into my cabin and shut the door. My ears roared with the frantic beat of my heart as McGuire trod the passage.

Finally the sounds of his passing faded. All that remained was the scrape of the fiddle, the rattle of chains, and the
thump-thump, thump-thump
of feet on the deck.

Three hundred thirty-six remaining slaves. All of them blind now. And if Uncle had his way, they’d be
jettisoned
, thrown into the sea. Why? So Uncle could collect his insurance money for their deaths and still make good on the voyage. A dead slave was worth more to Uncle than a blind slave.

It was the wee hours of the morning and I sat at my desk in my cabin, candle burning in the lantern as usual, unable to sleep.
My eyes kept watering, aching with weariness. What was I to do? I was the surgeon of the
Formidable
, responsible for the well-being of every person aboard, black and white. How could I sit idly by and let 336 of them be murdered? Tossed into the sea, still alive, still shackled, to drown—or worse, to be devoured by sharks? There were girls and boys, men and women—some of the women pregnant.

That my uncle would consider such an act no longer surprised me. I was only mortified that it’d taken me so long to understand his true character.

In approximately one week we’d arrive at port; in only six days Uncle planned to jettison the cargo. I agonized over what to do. How could I stop it from happening? I considered begging for their lives, but remembered my piteous begging for the life of Ikoro and my uncle’s callousness in executing him anyhow. No, begging would be quite useless. What, then, could I do? Me, Philip Arthur Higgins, of no particular importance in the world? Me, Philip Arthur Higgins, who was the sport of the crew, whom no one took seriously?

And as I sat there in my cabin, a great helplessness seized me, and I laid my head upon my desk and sobbed.

It’s not fair that I should be in this position! It’s not fair!

An ache heavy as a millstone weighed upon my heart, and I longed to be home.
Home
. My real home, where the Gallaghers waited for me, loved me. For the first time, I knew with a simple clarity that they were, and had been, my family—my foster mother and father.
Oh, forgive me for not realizing it before! I promise I’ll make it up to you, if only I can be home again! I promise! I promise I’ll be a true son, as you deserve!

I sobbed myself to sleep, my forehead pressed onto my quill pen. When I awakened—an hour, two hours later—to a sharp rap on the door, my room was black as coal dust.

“Philip, take your trick at the wheel. Must we wake you for everything?”

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.

F
or 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 the 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.”