We lie chained together in pairs, naked, on the boards. The ship rolls and pitches, the boards scrape my flesh, and the shackles rub my wrists and ankles raw. It’s dark, and a tumult of sound is in my ears: rattle of chains, creak of timbers, voices that scream and groan and cry out in despair. How many days we lie here I don’t know. It feels like endless time, endless sound, endless pain. In our part of the deck there is one latrine tub for everyone. Many men are sick and can’t climb across others to reach it. They relieve themselves where they are. We lie in our filth. Men quarrel and fight.
Once a day the demons drive us up on deck and make us dance to a drumbeat. They feed us rice. Some won’t eat, and are forced with beatings. I am afraid, but I want to live. I eat.
I learn the demons’ language. The captives from the coast already know it. Most of them were traders and fishermen, and they understand many tongues: Kru, Fula, Arabic, English, French, Dutch, Portuguese. They also understand how to sail the ship.
This great water is called the sea. Some say it has no farther shore; they say we can never go home, that the demons will eat us. But there are men here who watch and learn. They stay strong in spirit and become our leaders. They say we will kill the demons and take this ship and sail it home. Others say that only through death can we go home. There is netting to stop us leaping into the sea, but some get under it. One day when the netting is lifted I see two women link hands, run, leap together. In an instant the sea churns and froths and turns red with blood. Sharks. They follow the ship.
We captives sing: songs of home, songs of sorrow. Songs travel throughout the belly of the ship; one starts, others join in, voices rise all around. We begin to learn one another’s languages. We pass messages through the songs. The women, who are kept on deck, steal tools and pass them to the men. Our leaders have a plan. My heart fills with hope. I will find my family and we will return to our village and rebuild it.
But the demons catch the plotters and flog them with knotted whips. They cut off the heads of our leaders and throw the headless bodies into the sea. Now that their bodies are mutilated, the spirits of those men are lost; they can never go home. The ship sails on, and I lie grieving and fearful in its dark, stinking gut.
At last we see land. The sailors begin to clean the ship. They empty the slop tubs, scrub the boards where we have lain so long, scrub and sand the decks, sweeten the air with herbs. The stench of the ship’s belly is masked. We captives are washed, oiled, our wounds tended or hidden. Some men are sick and have the runs; the crewmen plug their anuses with wads of linen. We are given loincloths to cover our nakedness.
I am afraid when they take us ashore. A great crowd of beak-nosed demons is waiting. We are put in groups, forced up onto a block. I stand there, chained, shaking with fear.