Scene Six

PROJECTED TEXT: PASSAGE OF THE SPINDLE SHANKS.

A few days later. Dembi, Cranston, Joe and Balthazar prepare for their voyage in various stages of excitement. On the docks are demijohns of water, casks of salt beef, salted cod, beans, biscuits, gunpowder. Balthazar sharpens cutlasses. Dembi oils pistols. Joe reads some charts as he speaks. Cranston mends a rope.

JOE: It’s unheard of! Unheard of to refuse your captain. It’s said you sailed from Newport that May and on to the coast of Africa, to Annamaboe, from there to Accra where the vessel got the chief part of her slaves, and from thence to the West Indies. Then a slave was taken sick, which you took to be the pox . . . Go on.

CRANSTON: Can’t remember it clear.

JOE: Don’t be a muckworm, cough it up—

CRANSTON: You’re so damn keen on the story, you tell it.

JOE: But we want to hear it from you! (To the others) They say that for Cranston’s day in court, the Quakers dressed him up like a gentleman, gave him a book to flash at the judge so he’d presume him a tar of culture.

DEMBI: But he can’t read.

JOE: The judge didn’t know that!

BALTHAZAR: Was the slave woman or man?

JOE: A woman.

DEMBI (To Cranston): What was her name?

JOE: Why try and stop your captain from throwing her overboard? That was mutiny, man.

CRANSTON (Angry): Damn you. Let it rest! It’s behind us now.

(All are quieted some moments by Cranston’s angry outburst. Joe buries himself in his charts again. Balthazar nicks himself on a cutlass.)

BALTHAZAR: These cutlasses got more rust on them than iron.

CRANSTON: Gunpowder’s damp.

DEMBI: I’ll wager these won’t fire nothing but air.

(Joe looks up from his charts.)

JOE: I never say no to a bargain.

BALTHAZAR: A bargain? He should have paid you to cart this shite away.

DEMBI: Why won’t you show us the vessel?

JOE: She will show herself when she’s properly dressed. I’ve got a man on her at this very moment.

BALTHAZAR: And this man, I’m sure, is drunk.

JOE: He has assured me that he can stand, despite the barrel fever, for long periods at a time, and wield a hammer and nail.

BALTHAZAR: I paid for half these provisions. Don’t you forget it.

JOE: The money you spent you got from Cranston’s drowning, so don’t grouse.

BALTHAZAR: If I had my choice, I’d commandeer a mighty navy ship, with eight hundred crew to sail her. And I’d go up and down the coast, plundering and warring any nation’s vessel I come across. I’d be the terror of the ocean. I’d be wanted on three continents. I’d be the famed United Irishman Pirate. And all of you would tremble at my name.

JOE: We tremble now, Bal, for fear of you tangling yourself in the shrouds and pitching yourself overboard. (Beat) Though he can steer.

BALTHAZAR: I should be captain. You drove us into that squall, near killed the both of us and surely the others drowned. It’s my turn.

JOE: Balthazar. You’re my first mate.

DEMBI: Must we have a captain?

CRANSTON: Aye, we must. I won’t sail without one. When things get bad—

JOE: And they will.

CRANSTON: When we’re sick with the flux—

JOE: And we will be.

CRANSTON: When we hit a storm and we’re sinking—

JOE: Two or three times at the least.

CRANSTON: When one of us crew tries to desert at port in London, most likely me—

JOE: I’ll have to use the pistols.

BALTHAZAR: I was thinking I’d jump ship in Lisbon—

CRANSTON: We’ll need a captain to keep our manners about us—

JOE: —to see our corpses through to the end, even if it’s down to the bottom of the ocean where we’ll say to one another a polite “adieu.” Any more questions?

BALTHAZAR: That’s one blackamoor who don’t speak like a slave.

JOE: Ah. But I was born on a slave ship, and as an infant given to Lady Stretmore of Liverpool.

BALTHAZAR: Rumored to have the finest spindle shanks in the city!

JOE: She wore me on her arm like a jewel.

DEMBI: You were a dog, then?

JOE: Oh yes. But a jewel of a dog, a priceless pet. I wore a collar with diamonds encrusted ’round. Noli me tangere. White servants bathed me. Though I admit they pinched me when they could and called me a mungo, a little black bastard. And then one night—

BALTHAZAR: Here comes the shipwreck.

JOE: —the duke tore me from her innocent arms. You see, once little black boys become young black men they are no longer trusted with the ladies. Our collars are too tight and they fear we will break them.

DEMBI: How many voyages you make so far, carrying poor souls back to Africa?

JOE: I’ve made two voyages. This will be my third.

DEMBI: What happened with the other two?

BALTHAZAR: Don’t ask him.

JOE: May they rest in peace. There is nothing more difficult than reversing the Atlantic passage. But third time is lucky, I’m sure.

CRANSTON: And Joe here didn’t have John Cranston on board then. And remember, even if I can’t, that I’m the best.

JOE: You people have no idea what ingenuity it takes to buy or steal a ship when you’re a sable captain. The vessel waiting for us now, her name was Friendship. I have given her a new name.

CRANSTON: It’s bad luck to change a vessel’s name.

JOE: But general bad luck is always specific good luck for Liverpool Joe. Her new name is: the Leak. I have acquired papers on her, and good forgeries they are too.

DEMBI: The Leak?

BALTHAZAR: What the hell name is that?

CRANSTON: The Leak?

BALTHAZAR: God help us.

JOE: No one will hanker after our ship with such a name. Her name is her protection. And the bitch will aspire to prove me wrong in naming her such. I’ve promised her if she carries us safe to Afric I’ll rename her “Never.” (Beat) “A Leak.”

CRANSTON: How’s the hull on this ship?

JOE: She’s got two cannon. Will come in handy if we’re attacked.

BALTHAZAR: And her hull?

JOE: I admit there are a few holes where one can see the most curious kinds of fish swimming below her . . . But once we set sail, Cranston will keep her afloat, being half carpenter himself.

CRANSTON: I am?

DEMBI: I don’t care if we sail on two boards with a sack for a sail. We’re ready. And if we all drown, Mami Wata will pick our bones ’til we clean as coral and carry us home.

JOE (To Dembi): You’re a tough young buck. Brave. Thirsty for adventure?

DEMBI: I never been to sea, Captain.

JOE: Ah. (Beat) Then you will be my cook. Can you cook?

(Dembi nods yes. Joe sensually touches Dembi’s cheek.)

Curacao, San Domingue, Tortola. The blackamoors rising. And this new bastard world will be ours, friend. They can kill and enslave us one by one, but together we are indestructible as a people. And our cause is just, for “the destroyers and enslavers of men cannot be Christians, for Christianity is the system of love.” Cugoano again. Though that’s actually my line; the scum bucket stole it from me. There’s one man in San Domingue who is so powerfully strong he can lift a boat, and his mind’s so wide he can suck up the ocean, swill its currents in one breath, and spit it out again! Toussaint L’Ouverture.

BALTHAZAR: I bet this Toussaint plays the harp like you, eh Joe?

JOE: Toussaint has a lieutenant named Dessalines. (To Dembi) They say Dessalines is so beauteous that the enemy is momentarily stunned when they encounter him. Perhaps you are his distant cousin, for you are quite handsome, too.

DEMBI: Adjua’s my woman. I’m handsome for her.

JOE: On a ship, the line between woman and man becomes . . . Well. A wee bit blurred, and when a tar is lonely any sweet hole that’s warm and moist will—

CRANSTON: Lay off him, Joe. A captain should keep a little distance.

JOE: So he should.

(Joe trails his finger across Dembi’s mouth and down to his neckline as he speaks.)

What’s your story, Dessalines? There’s a hint of conundrum about you . . . I’ve a wee hunch you were gentled by your master. Well cared for? A sparse handful of us were, though we’re ashamed to admit it, coddled. Honey-gummed.

BALTHAZAR: A word-pecker, our Captain Joe.

DEMBI (To Joe): My mother was his slave: Master Samuel. On Tuesdays he’d give me a biscuit. Thursdays a wedge of apple. Saturdays he tied me to his bedpost and flogged me. For years the same thing.

(Joe stops caressing Dembi’s neck.)

Biscuit. Apple. Then the flogging. Coddled? He didn’t swive me like he did the others, men and women both, but he liked to make me wail with the pain of the flogging. There was a sound he liked especially. So I learned it well. Some days he didn’t need the whip ’cause I’d start to wail before he could lash me. Honey-gummed, huh? Want to know how it sounded? That squall that he was looking for, that moan the masters are living for?

(Dembi begins a strange, sorrowful sound, but Joe gently puts his hand over Dembi’s mouth and silences him. Joe nods to Dembi, in acknowledgment that he was wrong.)

JOE: All right men. Listen up! I am your captain. Balthazar here, my first mate. Cranston my quartermaster, boatswain and carpenter. Dembi, our cook. We’re a crew now and I will respect you if you respect my vessel. I will protect you with my life. If you bring trouble to my ship, I will tie a cannonball to your neck and pitch you overboard without breaking my stride.