Slave Ship by Jerrold Mundis

Author:Jerrold Mundis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wolf River Press
Published: 2014-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

THEY SET OUT WHILE the sky was still dark, with only a thin arc of gray beginning to spread across the rim of the eastern horizon. There were twelve of them, armed with muskets and cutlasses. Meredith led the sailors, but followed the two silent black men.

My God, oh my God, what am I doing? Dunbar thought. He had begun recently, needfully, to believe in God. Something had to offer assurance, mercy, hope. Clearly, none of these were to be obtained on earth; therefore he had to turn to the supernatural, or go mad.

He had witnessed and written about battles—even, infrequently, participated in them when his life hung in the balance. But then he had fought against voluntary combatants, and the killing had been formalized and absolved because it occurred under circumstances rendered acceptable by being called war. And even the few times he had taken up a weapon he had still felt himself more a detached observer than anything else.

Now he was carrying a gun, and he was on his way to commit murder.

His companions, though cursing the difficulty of the trek, were in generally good spirits. They would each receive a five-dollar bonus for this venture.

It was chilly. Fog suffused the jungle, limiting visibility and dampening clothes. It was quiet, except for the grunts of the men, a few bird calls, and odd scurryings in the brush. Huge silk-cotton trees with trunks fifteen and twenty feet in circumference towered into the air, their peaks only dimly visible. Thick lianas drooped from the uppermost branches, sometimes coiling all the way to the ground.

Broad-leaved ferns rose to twice the height of a man, and creepers and thick, vigorous stands of bushes abounded.

As the sun rose, the fog was burned away, and for a while it was a relief to be free of the night’s cold and the large droplets that fell incessantly and with such stinging force from the branches far above. But then a slow heat enveloped the men, increased, and soon the jungle was sweltering and steaming, and breathing became difficult. They were following the course of the river. The first few miles out of Hyak, the going had been difficult; now, deeper into the jungle, it was grueling. Save for a few flat mudbanks, the vegetation grew to the very edge of the river, if not a few inches into it.

The sailors were drenched by their own sweat. Sword arms grew leaden as they hacked through the brush, chopped vines thicker than cable-ropes, slashed in frustration at skin-tearing, nettly branches. Clouds of insects buzzed about their heads. Birds screeched and unseen animals snuffled and coughed in the foliage to the side. Once a man screamed and fired his musket. The others turned quickly and saw him frantically trying to reload. Poised on a branch above him, tail flicking, was a leopard. The large cat hissed, then turned, leaped to another branch, and disappeared. The black guides laughed. The sailor drew his cutlass and shook it menacingly. Meredith strode back and hit him on the side of the head, then the march went on.

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