GRADUALLY, CAPE ST. ANN COULD BE PICKED OUT, THE MEASURELESS emerald-dark continent piled up in stages behind it, the coast thickly verdant, fringed by dull white sand and overarched by tree canopies choked with vines. Just ten leagues south of the cape mount, several high-prowed canoes came out from the mouth of the Lofa River, and Enterprise signaled Yunis to heave to; this was the Krepo country, and aboard the largest pirogues were several persons of consequence. Perhaps the consequential people recognized Yunis, or perhaps they decided to parley with the largest ship, for the canoes ignored the xebec and converged with smiles and waving, open hands on Enterprise. Now and again the sound of Pelles’ voice came over the water as he bargained and wheedled with one of the headmen until at last a hoist of signals broke out at the mizzen. Curran ordered the lateen hoisted, and Yunis came under the frigate’s lee. Curran stood on Yunis’s quarterdeck looking across and up at Enterprise.
“Yunis, ahoy,” Pelles called, “I believe you have aboard your ship a Krepo named João.”
One of the freedmen came aft to the quarterdeck, his face beaming. It was the same man Nolan had spoken to on the smoldering deck of Ar R’ad. “I believe this is your man, Mister Curran,” Nolan said.
Curran cupped his hands and called back, “I have him, sir.”
“These are his people,” Pelles said. “His father is the chief man hereabouts. You may let him leave the ship.”
As Nolan translated into Portuguese, the man’s smile expanded until it shone. In an instant, the Krepo kissed Nolan and Curran, bounded three steps toward the taffrail, and threw himself over the side. His dive was so outrageous and agile that no one could think to stop him. In a smooth arc the Krepo cut through the air, splashed deep, and popped up like a duck. Nolan and Curran watched as the swimmer heaved aboard the closest of the canoes. It was moving to see the tears and embraces of friends who welcomed him back as though from the dead.
“Remarkable,” said Curran. “That man swims like a garfish.”
“It is,” Nolan assented. “In these parts the Krepo are called shark men. They are bred to the water from birth.”
Two canoes came toward Yunis with paddles flashing. There was another splash beside Enterprise as a hatch cover was thrown over the side. With much joyful laughter, men on the largest of the canoes took it in tow.
Pelles’ voice droned between the hulls. “Mister Curran, I have arranged with these people to relieve you of your prisoners. They have agreed to convey them to shore.”
“Oh, God,” Curran said. “I would have hanged them if I thought they would be eaten.”
Nolan smiled wryly. “They are more likely bound for the seraglio than the stewpot. The Krepo are not cannibals, nor do they keep slaves. They do, however, participate in the trade.”
“What do you mean?”
“They are a rigidly commercial people. They work as guides and coastal pilots for slave ships, and when they can, they serve as brokers, arranging the sale of prisoners taken in war or captured upriver.”
“Now you are practicing on me, Philip.”
“I am not. The Krepo will not keep an African in bondage. But they do not feel bound to protect a slave taker who finds himself in reduced circumstances.”
“What will be done with them?”
“If any should be wealthy, they will be ransomed. The Arab corsairs will be sold to the Portuguese, or perhaps the Brazilians, but certainly to the next slave ship to call here for water. There is a pronounced appetite for light-skinned eunuchs in the harims of the Nijad.”
“You astound me, Nolan.”
Hackman and his Marines opened the fore hatch and the slavers were yanked out on deck. Smeared with soot and shame, they stood blinking in the nearly vertical sunlight. The canoes were then alongside, and the Krepo climbed aboard the xebec in dozens. Singing and grinning, the tribesmen pitched the slavers off the forecastle and over the side.
Those that were nonswimmers flogged the water and went gasping below the surface, but no matter to what depth they sank, they were pulled up by divers and dragged to the hatch cover. Abdur Rahman and a few others who could swim tried vainly to avoid capture. The Krepo children took a special delight in swimming them down, climbing onto their heads, and dunking them into surrender. Beaten with paddles and jabbed with fish spears, the last of the slavers were soon clinging exhausted to the hatch cover.
In the largest canoe, the headman waved a flywhisk at Enterprise and shouted, “Bom! Good!” as the canoes towed the hatch toward the river mouth. The slavers had now been made slaves.
“Our captain has an exquisite sense of irony,” Nolan said.
Beside Nolan, Curran looked vaguely contrite. “The noose would have been mercy.”
A heavy, dangerous surf was pounding on the river bar, but the Krepo paddled toward the combers with flippant disregard. They were at home among the waves and as nimble as otters. Curran could see a shared expression of dread on the faces of the slavers, and even after the desperate fight for the ship it was difficult not to feel sympathy for them. Stroke after stroke brought the castaways closer to the surf booming on the bar, and soon the small crowd on the hatch cover was pitching between the swells.
As the canoes came into the break, men in the sterns crouched and hallooed, piloting their craft over the sandbar and skittering down the giant waves. A child dived from the transom of the largest canoe, and a flashing knife cut loose the hatch cover. At once a wave loomed up behind it, blocking out the sun. The slavers crouched together as a wall of breaking water peeled off and smashed over them. Hatch splinters and passengers disappeared into a chaos of foam.
Aboard Yunis, Curran turned away from the rail. The scene might not have been without some element of justice, but it was terrible to watch.
“Prepare to get under way,” he said to helmsman. “Petty Officer Kanoa, you have the conn. I will be below.”
The Krepo and their canoes went in through the surf effortlessly, passing the floundering, gasping, expiring corsairs. Nolan remained on deck, looking at the river bar. One by one, the slavers were consumed by the breaking waves and smashed upon the sand. Most, unable to swim, thrashed helplessly as they were drawn up and pitched over by the gigantic combers. Now and then a hoarse, panicked shout came out to the ship.
Riding the breakers, the Krepos’ canoes were run neatly onto the beach, and the tribe gathered to see what would come out of the surf. One head appeared amid the tumbling whitewater, then another and another. These were the chosen. The Krepos knew that their gods would select the living; that was their wont and will. The surf was their winnowing basket.
In a vicious reversal of fate, the drowned were lucky and the living cursed. For the Krepo, the iniquitous were meant to suffer and the righteous to drown as free men. Nolan watched as those the gods had cursed were rolled upon the beach, dragged to a fire pit, and branded as property. The wicked would enter a hell beneath the palms—the others, drowned in the sea, went at once to their reward. For the Krepo, there was no joy or triumph in this, or even a token of revenge. It was simply the business of the world.
NOLAN STOOD BY THE GANGWAY IN THE BRIGHT SUNLIGHT, AND BEAZEE PANTED at his feet. The harbor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, enclosed a moderate number of merchant ships, mostly British, some Dutch, and a few rather disreputable French and Portuguese brigs. Though the forest had been beaten back in places, the hills of the peninsula remained heavily wooded. To the southeast, the brown tidal flats of the Bunce River wound away into dark, apparently primeval forest. Almost a hundred stone-and-timber houses were visible in the cleared part of the land, a dozen or so of them four or even five stories, framed and gabled. Yunis was anchored in six-fathom water, on the Middle Shoal grounds, the mouth of the Sierra Leone River just to larboard, Kortright House off the bow, and Aberdeen Point just south of west, all triangulated to Curran’s satisfaction. Enterprise, at single anchor, rode in the fairway in front of Government House.
The morning was hot, without a breath of wind, and already the sun was beating back from the water’s surface; it would be hellish by afternoon. For all the commotion on deck, Nolan could still hear cheers and laughter drifting across the harbor from Enterprise as the last of the freedmen were rowed across the harbor and put onto the beach under the terrace of Government House.
Every one of the frigate’s boats and Yunis’ own launch had been put into service to transport the freedmen to shore, and they were welcomed happily. Only about twenty freedmen remained aboard Yunis, watching as the skiff came back alongside for the last load of passengers. One after another, departing men and women came up to Nolan and pressed his hand to their foreheads. Nolan was humbled and moved by their joy and gratitude. The last dozen passengers (mostly women and children) required careful handling down into the boats. Padeen and Kanoa were everywhere, urging sailors to clamp on and shut up, and directing the passengers firmly but politely to get over the side. As the launch pulled away, Nordhoffjumped down from the poop and pulled his newly bought sennit hat from his head.
“Beg pardon, Mister Curran. Signal from Enterprise, sir.”
Curran looked across the harbor. The frigate was simultaneously winding her anchor and recovering her boats. Half a dozen colored flags wafted from Enterprise’s halyards, emphasized by a windward gun. Before Curran could even think of cracking a codebook, Pelles’ voice came across the harbor, literally echoing back from the walls of the English fortress. “Mister Curran! Is this going to take all damn day?”
“One more boatload, sir, and we’ll be away,” Curran called back.
The debarkation had not started until nine in the morning; there had been some miscommunication between the port admiral and the governor, and though things were now proceeding smoothly, Pelles had been increasingly short tempered.
Another signal hoist went up on Enterprise: “Prepare to get under way”—this even though most of the boats were still engaged with passengers.
“The captain is in a hurry,” Nolan said.
“I swear, it is the mere presence of the British that aggravates him,” Curran said quietly. “He had a bee in his bonnet ashore and hardly even spoke civil to the port admiral, though he seemed a pleasant man and quite willing to help.”
The Old Mogul had spent most of his life fighting the British, and though he was thankful that the governor of Sierra Leone had agreed to take the freedmen, he did not want to linger. Pelles had been Stephen Decatur’s exec aboard President when she was defeated and taken by a British squadron off New York. He had argued vehemently with Decatur before he struck to the British, and the event still rankled twenty years later. Enterprise’s officers could scarcely credit Pelles’ ill temper to the sight of the Union Jack; in fact, it had the same effect on him as a red cape on a peevish old bull.
Now the captain’s voice boomed across a hundred yards of water: “We are under way at once for Cartagena. Recover your boats, sir!”
Curran lifted his hand in acknowledgment as Padeen came up to the ladder to the quarterdeck. “Begging ’yer pardon, sir,” he said, touching his hat, “but there’s one of ’em that won’t go.”
“Who is that?” asked Curran.
“The big one.”
Curran saw Fante standing beside the mainmast. With his arms crossed over his chest the Mozambequean looked like a monument made of onyx.
“Philip, will you speak to him? If we don’t get these boats recovered and the anchor shipped, we shall likely be roasted and sold in Ma Komba.”
Nolan went forward, stepping over the anchor cable as it was hauled aboard and stowed.
“There he is, Mister Nolan,” Padeen jerked his thumb at Fante. “Watch it, now, he’s stronger than a bear.”
Nolan addressed the big man. “I am told you won’t go ashore.”
There was a silence of about ten seconds, and then the big man sniffed: “Why would I?”
“You are free, sir,” Nolan said. “Why won’t you go home?”
“Why don’t you?”
That was more question than Nolan could answer, and as he considered a response he placed his hands behind his back.
Fante jerked his thumb at the shore. “This is no place for a man. It is where ants live.”
“Where is your country?” asked Nolan.
“Beyond all the continent. The Angoche in Mozambique. The nation of the Ekoti.”
“This is as close as we can get.”
Fante’s eyes burned. “Bah, that means nothing. My home is gone. Not just far away. Gone. When the Portuguese come, my people fought. By the Powers, we fought. Women and boys too. All murdered. My villages. Burned. All. It was my dishonor to be taken prisoner. Taken half dead after they split my head.”
Nolan listened, his mouth slightly open, his face reddening.
“I am dishonored in my nation,” Fante said. “I can never go home.”
Nolan was speechless. Fante could not read the look on Nolan’s face, and took it as a mere dismissal. The big man said, “Do you have honor?”
“I do, sir,” said Nolan softly.
“Then you understand what it is to be a man without a country.”
The words hit Nolan like lightning. It took him a long moment to ask, “What is your name?”
“Fante Nampula Mabu’wase, abdahun—headman—of Ekoti and Enes.”
Nolan stopped Padeen as he headed forward. “Padeen, there is an extra jersey and spare trousers among my kit. Will you please see to it that this man has them?”
“Ain’t he supposed to go ashore?”
“I will speak to Mister Curran.”
“As you wish, sir. This way, my man.” Padeen led Fante belowdecks, the companionway ladder sagging under their combined weight. Nolan turned to find Curran standing directly behind him. The expression on his friend’s face indicated that he heard it all.
“I have no authority in this ship,” Nolan said. “And I have offered perhaps more than I can give. But I would ask you, humbly, if this man be allowed to stay. He has no place to go. No place left . . . I will bear responsibility for his conduct and feed him from my own ration.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Curran said. “He may sail with us.”