“Maybe. . but suppose he meant what he said.”
Cringle kicked at me in rage. “Will you wake up, boy! Can you take his side after what they did? They were about to kill you too, Rutherford, or are you so wet you’ve forgotten that?”
“I’m not on anybody’s side! I’m just trying to keep us alive! I don’t know who’s right or wrong on this ship anymore, and I don’t much care! All I want is to go home!”
“Well”—he backed off a bit—“I’m not snapping at you. I owe you my life. I doubt if anyone would thank you for saving me, certainly not my family, seeing how I’ve failed them, but I’m grateful none of my sides were knocked off tonight, and I’ll do whatever you say, God help me.” He clapped me on the back. “That much I owe you.”
The Allmuseri prepared their ceremony to sanctify the ship, to make it a kind of church, and enlist their gods as guides in our seafaring. Cringle and I canvassed the ship’s storerooms and underbasements, looking for survivors, and to no avail until we descended into a tiny shotlocker full of saltpeter barrels in the lowest cell of the prow. I heard moaning — it was distinctly moaning — from the tiny cubicle, and called Cringle, who squeezed inside with an old Swedish poop lantern, then crawled back out, his free hand leading two figures I had given up as food for the sharks: Baleka, Squibb. Immediately, the girl squeezed me around my waist, both her hands bunching my shirt in the back.
“You’re all right, Josiah?”
“Passable, Mr. Cringle. We come down heah soon as the fracas broke out.” He folded his arms across his chest. “The others, I was wonderin’. . Are they. .”
“Dead? All but four of us. The Negroes have the ship now. It’s their move. The only protection we have from them, I’m sorry to say, is Calhoun.”
I mustered a smile. “Y’all better be nice to me.”
The mate frowned, clambering back up the ladder. We sent Baleka up next, followed by Squibb, but I tarried below for a time, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over me, and I noticed spots on my forearm, which I dismissed. Once the wooziness passed, I pulled my sleeve down to my wrist and wearily climbed back into open air.
Thus things stood on the Republic for the rest of the day. Come nightfall, the fifteen Allmuseri who had survived the ship’s takeover gathered on the starboard side. Their women had fashioned loose, baggy gowns for themselves from old sail. Although they had given better than they got in the fight, many of the men were injured. Six were carried to the ceremony, another five hobbled on crutches cut from top-mast timber. Baleka pulled the skipper’s goat to a hastily built altar inside a red circle they had splashed by the foremast. The sky was full of sea gulls, the sea calm now, shimmering as brightly as a mirror the way it reflected the moon. Cold, light breezes fluttered in the lower sails, so light you needed to wet your finger to feel them. Rags of gray vapor played round the topmost spars. Sitting on a crate beside Squibb and me, the mate shivered and pulled his peacoat close around him. He was jumpy from lack of sleep, his face ashen. “Mark my words, all of you. We’re going to need that animal in a few days.” Out of tobacco now, he sucked his pipe, which made a gurgling sound from spittle backed into the steam. “The storerooms are flooded. There’s nothing left to eat”. He grinned sourly, then coughed. “Unless we’re ready to start eating each other.”
Squibb stiffened. “Sir?”
“There’ll be none of that,” says I. “Only Falcon speaks of eating flesh, and he’s under lock and key in his own cabin.”
Squibb’s belly rumbled. He looked down the deck to where Nacta stood with a rifle outside the skipper’s door. “Who’s gonna be captain, then?”
“Cringle, I guess. He’s next in line. And one of their people to watch him.”
The mate looked straight at me.
“Would to mercy I do get my hands on the helm,” said he, rocking his head, “then I plan to steer us to America, so help me. We could steer the ship toward Africa during the day, as the blacks want, then toward the States at night when they’re sleeping.” Again, he sucked his long pipe. “We’ll be docking on Long Island before the Negroes know what hit them.”
“Can we do that?” asked Squibb.
I left a silence.
“What if we don’t find land?”
Again, I could vouchsafe no reply.
“Mr. Calhoun. .”
“Rest easy, Josiah. Whatever we do, the Allmuseri have the next move.”
Which was now, I saw, to complete their peculiar cleansing ritual. From what I could understand, the blacks were not simply offering the skipper’s goat to their god; they were begging him to wash the blood of the Republic’s crew off their hands. Perhaps even more important to them than freedom was the fact that no leaf fell, no word was uttered or deed executed that did not echo eternally throughout the universe. Seeds, they were, that would flower into other deeds — good and evil — in no time at all. For a people with their values, murder violated (even mutilated) the murderer so badly that it might well take them a billion billion rebirths to again climb the chain and achieve human form. Ngonyama wondered, I could see, if it had all been worth it, this costly victory in exchange for their souls, for that indeed was what was at stake. Ironically, it seemed that Falcon had broken them after all; by their very triumph he had defeated them. From the perspective of the Allmuseri the captain had made Ngonyama and his tribesmen as bloodthirsty as himself, thereby placing upon these people a shackle, a breach of virtue, far tighter than any chain of common steel. The problem was how to win without defeating the other person. And they had failed. Such things mattered to Ngonyama. Whether he liked it or not, he had fallen; he was now part of the world of multiplicity, of me versus thee.
And so they placed their foreheads on deck in shame and supplication, praying that the killing would not be carved forever into their nature, and that some act other than the traditional payment for murder — their own deaths in exchange — might be accepted to balance out their world again; that the Republic would be a ferryboat to carry them across the Flood to their ancestral home. When they were done and Ngonyama walked quietly to where we sat, his voice splintered as he spoke, his eyes hardly focusing on me at all.
“We are finished, Ndugu, my brother.” He wiped his forehead with his fingers. “All is in order and ready for the return. We should start at once. My people have decided to sail for Senegambia. You must convince your captain to plot a new course for us.”
Cringle sneered, “Good luck.”
“If he does not,” said Ngonyama, “I can guarantee that all of you will die.”
This was no idle threat. Therefore, twenty paces found me at the skipper’s door. Nacta would not step aside, his wide-legged stance a challenge of sorts as he jiggled in his left hand the ring Falcon wore to unlock his firearms. Down the deck Ngonyama ordered him to step aside. As Nacta moved away, I entered, limping a little on my left side, for the last interview anyone on this earth would have with Ebenezer Falcon.
Entry, the seventh SAME DAY