—
Janet leaned across the wooden railing on deck of the large Blackwall frigate Carina, staring out upon the dark gray Atlantic Ocean. The Carina was a fast-moving sailing ship with three masts and a crew of thirty. It was carrying silk, spice, pepper, and tea from Murat in India to London via the Cape of Good Hope. The ship had stopped briefly on the African coast to pick up a supply of ivory, where Henry, Janet, and the African girls had boarded after a two-month stay in Kilwa. Henry had used Livingstone’s journal as collateral to pay for their passage, promising that Gordon Bennett would compensate the British East India Company upon their arrival in England. Of course he kept the journal close to his side and would not let anyone take possession of it.
It was twilight. The sea was calm and moving like a night sky filled with tufts of clouds, their silhouettes rolling evenly through moonlight. But there wasn’t any moon, nor stars to speak of, only the sound of the wind and the sails and the great rising masts creaking. A few sailors worked on deck, pulling ropes, repairing sails, or keeping watch for anything that lay ahead. From one of the corners in the bow, a few of them crooned a sea melody.
Farewell an’ adieu to you fair Spanish ladies,
Farewell an’ adieu to you ladies of Spain,
For we’ve received orders for to sail for old England,
An’ hope very shortly to see you again.
We’ll rant an’ we’ll roar, like true British sailors,
We’ll rant an’ we’ll rave across the salt seas,
Till we strike soundings in the Channel of Old England,
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-four leagues.
Janet turned to listen to them and thought she heard some resemblance to the work songs the caravan members sang with a leader, usually the loudest voice among the men, who sang a line while the rest of the group or crew repeated it. She remembered when she first heard the Africans singing, and how she soon grew bored by their constant repetition and unchanging pattern of sound. She didn’t feel that anymore, not with the Africans, not with the British sailors on deck.
I am in my second life. Everything is sharper now and more alive. Even a small song reminds me of how grateful I am to be able to be here and have use of all my senses. From now on, I’ll take nothing for granted. Live every moment as though it could be my last.
She had left Henry below deck, talking to the young sailor apprentices about Africa. She had left him in the midst of a crowd of boys like him, poor street urchins who dreamed of adventure and travel to exotic lands, and they clung to his every word.
“What is it like to hunt and kill lions?”
“Why, there’s no greater sport on this planet, and no greater challenge to the hunter who kills them.”
“Did you, yourself, kill a lion?” one of the young sailors asked.
“I bagged one near Lake Tanganyika, just as he was about to leap at me.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Let me tell you, the man who says he’s not afraid is either a liar or a coward.”
He bragged on and on about how he found the lion—he used the male name—alone in the bushes, how the lion crouched and leaped at him, how he pulled out his rifle and shot it twice, killing the lion instantly as it arced through the air.
“And as he came down, he fell on top of me, his body knocked me down, and he bit into my shoulder before he died.”
Henry showed them how he crouched, and he fell back on the deck, holding his right arm still bound in a sling, while the young sailors watched with complete attention.
Janet thought of Goma as Henry talked, how Goma was also a master showman, that first day in Bagamoyo when he mocked Henry in front of a crowd. She remembered how she loathed Goma then. Just as I loathe Mr. Stanley now. I wonder where Goma is. I hope his leg will heal completely. I hope he will walk again.
Ever since they left Cape Town, the ship’s first and only stop, where Henry found out that his discovery of her brother had already made headlines in England, on the front page in both The Herald and The Times, that is when he began to change. That is when he reverted to his former self, leaving any talk of the injustice of slavery far behind, but Janet was not surprised.
He is not the kind of man who can change his habits and personality, no matter how hard he tries. His own personal ambition always comes first.
She left his performance down below to breathe in fresh air from the top deck. Before they had left East Africa, they paid off the porters and guards, and said their goodbyes. They had entered Kilwa shaken and humbled—yes, even Mr. Stanley, who had suddenly become a different man. When he stared death in the face, he felt he had to atone.
I was not afraid. I looked into the soul of the lioness, and she looked into mine.
It had been three months since the caravan had entered Kilwa on that fateful day after Janet faced the lioness that let them pass.
Kilwa was a small seaport town like Bagamoyo, only smaller and more isolated. In Kilwa, seafaring ships came, but rarely, usually bringing in commodities to trade for ivory or slaves. Kilwa was the assembly center of the slave trade in southern Tanganyika, a starting and ending point for caravans in the region. The traffic was not as large as Tabora. Nevertheless, Kilwa housed hundreds of slaves imprisoned in pens, guarded by soldiers and surrounded by fences, leaving the slaves to sleep under open skies.
“See these slave pens,” Mr. Stanley said. “We should tear down these fences and walls. Let all the slaves free.” He spoke out to the African Muslim governor of the town, to the Catholic priests, to the fishermen and sailors.
It started immediately on the day they arrived, after the porters and guards helped him walk from the footbridge, after Henry found a local doctor who dressed his wounds and put him into a hospital, the only one in the town. While he was recovering, he spoke out to anyone who came near him, anyone who would listen, as though he were on a mission or crusade.
“It’s unjust, I tell you. Slavery is killing and destroying the African people, leaving lost children wandering in its wake. It’s evil and it’s wrong, this filthy trade of human beings.”
No one believed what he said. Indeed, to others, he looked crazy, and they avoided him—just another white man who had lost his mind, just another white man trying to spread his Christian faith.
A few days later, after she and the girls had found food and shelter and received medical attention at a Jesuit mission, Janet noticed Henry avoiding her. True, he lay in a hospital bed for days, but even when she went to see him, he wouldn’t talk to her. Even after she had saved his life, he withdrew whenever she was around and avoided her eyes.
She realized he did this not out of arrogance or disrespect as before, but because he was completely baffled by what she had done, so he was frightened, troubled, and anxious in her presence. He was unable to speak to her, as though he were traumatized, not unlike the symptoms of African fever. One day he got up his nerve and spoke, but only once, their last real conversation in Kilwa.
“Back there near the footbridge.”
“What do you want to know?” she asked as she sat by his bedside.
“What happened? I mean, I have never seen anything like it before. What did you do?”
“I did nothing, Mr. Stanley.”
“Come on. You did something to stop the lioness. What was it?”
“I didn’t stop the lioness. She let us go. She held all the cards. She decided to let us pass.”
“But why?”
“For reasons, Mr. Stanley, you’ll never understand. You see, lions are like people. They have their pride, and they love each other like we do. Mothers love their children, and they love their families. All I did was to show the lioness, the same lion we had been trying to kill, I tried to show her I understood her, and, like her, all I was trying to do was to protect my family as she had done. We both had lost children, so she believed me. You see, lions are sentient beings, not mere beasts to be shot and killed; they do not harbor evil inclination. I told you once I respected Africa. Now I hope you see what I meant.”
“I wish I could say I do—that I do understand—but I don’t.”
“You won’t let yourself understand.”
“No. I only know one thing, how to survive through force. A man is nothing unless he fights, fights for what he wants in this world. If not, he will surely die. There’s only weakness or strength, nothing more.”
“But what about belief? What about love? What about faith and hope? What about forming relationships with others: men, women, animals? You see, how we treat the animals depends a lot on how we treat ourselves. And how we treat ourselves depends on how we treat animals.”
“I don’t know about those things. Maybe I never will.”
“I was once like you in some ways. I feared anything and anyone different. It is possible for people to change, even you.”
Now on the deck of the ship, Janet stood, leaning against the railing, watching her life go by as quickly as the waves on the ocean. The light had faded but she could hear the ocean whispering all around like a sky with invisible angels.
She had left Mr. Stanley below, bragging to the sailors. She also had left the girls down below in the mess area, studying for an English lesson she would be giving tomorrow, but it was difficult to study, for they were crammed in a small space, eight of them inside ten square feet with water leaking down and cockroaches and rats and a foul odor wafting in and out.
Every day now, since they left Cape Town, in the morning from eight o’clock till ten, she taught the girls English, speaking and reading. That is, when days were calm. If a gale or storm came along, all they could do was find something to hold on to as the ship pitched and rolled, causing the girls to vomit. Now that the girls no longer had seasickness, were no longer fighting off dizziness and dysentery, she intensified their lessons to prepare them for what was to come.
As soon as they got to Scotland—and it would be soon—the girls would have to adapt to new ways. They were no longer Africans. They were two weeks away from London. The girls knew it. So did Janet. All of them thought about what it would be like, eight African girls in British streets, fresh from the African jungle. What would the British people think of them? And when they got to Scotland, how would Janet’s people in Blantyre treat them?
I know how I thought about Africans before I left. Will my relatives and neighbors be able to change like I did? Will Reverend Ewing help me with the girls?
All of the answers to these questions were still unknown, like traveling through Tanganyika for the first time.