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“Get them down in this
hold! Now!” The angry shouted command from the slave driver echoed up from
within the cavernous slave compartment below decks.
The rough wooden
flooring was littered with shackles mounted to the planks with oversized
screws. As the African’s were partially lowered, partially dropped into the
hold, a slaver would immediately manhandle them into position and clamp the
shackle down on the ankle of the slave. Once filled, the hold might contain
well over one hundred slaves, each existing in a space of six square feet—or
less.
Nadira’s descendants
were as fortunate as the newly captured Africans could be. Most of the direct
family was locked into the hold of the same ship. In spite of the maltreatment
on the trip from their tribal home to the coast, nearly all of the surviving
members of the tribe were in reasonable physical shape.
Jabari [brave,
fearless], King Chatha’s oldest son, stared grimly straight ahead. He had no
idea what the strange sounds from the white-skinned ones meant. But, through
tone and whip, he had learned do follow the men’s gestures or face harsh
repercussions.
Now he stood at the
edge of the opening to the slave compartment. He knew he was about to be beaten,
but he also knew what he had to do.
Two insignificant-looking branches were clasped tightly to his chest. He’d
nearly lost consciousness twice while being forced along the forest pathway for
not relinquishing the talisman. But, he’d memorized the stories of how his
ancestor’s used their mental abilities to gain and maintain their dominance. He
would die defending the artifacts.
“Jump down!” a slaver
screamed as he prodded Jabari with a rod. When the young man didn’t move, the
slaver moved behind him and shoved him over the lip of the hatch.
Jabari crashed to the
deck of the compartment with a resounding crack. A scream of agony filled the
space below deck as one of the branches pushed up through his armpit,
shattering his scapula, and dislocating his shoulder. Surprisingly, there was a
relatively small amount of blood—the wood miraculously missing the axillary
artery and the brachial and cephalic veins.
Two sailors assigned
to the task of escorting recalcitrant prisoners to their assigned shackle moved
to Jabari. One hoisted him to his feet—the branch still protruding from both
the top of his shoulder and his armpit. The other retrieved the remaining
branch. As the second sailor prepared to toss his branch into a distant corner,
the scream of a female flew across the distance between her position and the
second sailor where it embedded itself in eardrum.
“No!”
The sailor,
unaccustomed to hearing any non-African words from the slaves, stopped his arm
in mid-swing. He slowly turned to see which of the wenches had the audacity to
interrupt his actions. It took very little time for his gaze to lock on to the
perpetrator.
The defiant eyes of Chipo
[gift], Jabari’s youngest sister, met the sailor’s gaze—and her intensity
overwhelmed his intent. He dropped his eyes. Her hand stabbed outward towards
the man. Instinctively, he offered her the branch.
The sailor supporting
Jabari’s sagging frame took in the entire episode—but did nothing to intervene.
There was something about this slightly built slave, shackled to the floor—that
caused his heart to race as adrenaline diffused into his arteries and
stimulated his fight or flight response.
“That’s enough time
with this pair,” the first sailor announced as he shoved Jabari towards his partner.
“Shackle this one next to his girlfriend!”
When the hold was
overfull of slaves, the single hatch slammed shut. Only small, weak beams of
waning sunlight filtered through some shrunken decking. For all intents and
purposes, the mass of humanity was isolated in total darkness.
The ship cast off. As
it left the shallow harbor and entered the open Atlantic, the boat began to
rise a fall and sway side to side. Almost the entire slave population—none of
whom had ever been in a boat of any kind—discovered seasickness simultaneously.
By morning, the floor
reeked with the combine odor of vomit, urine, and fecal matter. And that was
just the beginning of day one. Depending on the winds, the last day at sea might be anywhere from 30-60 days hence.
Jabari lay on his good
side. During the night—working completely by touch in the pitch-blackness—the
two men closest to him hand combine to remove the branch from its scabbard of
flesh and bone. Chipo had collected Jabai’s impaler and slept her fitful sleep
with them crossed over her abdomen. She awakened with a throbbing headache and
memory of a vision of white-skinned men plotting to remove Jabari and toss him
into the sea at the first hint of fever.
Since, between the
ship’s rolling and pitching and the pain in her head, sitting up was
unbearable, Chipo lay back down. Unconsciously, she rubbed the fingers of her
right hand along the thumb of her left—ever conscious of the malformation of
that digit that found its tip angled toward her left index finger.
Two days later, the
two sailors who’d secured Jabari upon arrival waded through the cacophony of
human noise and waste. They unshackled the King’s Son, and dragged him to a
spot below the hatch—sparing not the rod on any who protested beyond
vocalization at their actions.
Chipo sat paralyzed.
These men were the men who’d been discussing Jabari in her dream. They were
doing exactly what she’d heard them
say they would do! She tried to stop the men, but her vocalization fell,
unheard, among the crowd of slaves that surrounded her. She vowed never to
allow something evil she dreamed would occur to happen—at least not without her
best effort to thwart that evil.
Tears eroded pathways
through the accumulated dirt on her face as she watched Jabari, too weak to
struggle, be held erect. At a command from one of the sailors, a rope dropped
into the semi-darkness. Once it was secure around Jabari’s chest, those on the
upper deck hoisted his limp, feverish frame into the sunlight. Seconds later,
the muffled sound of a splash was heard.
Jabari’s suffering had
ended.
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