The boat was over-loaded and sluggish in the water. Looking back towards the shore, Hector thought he could make out Karp’s body lying on the strand. There was the puff of smoke from a musket, but the bullet flew wide. A group of Moors was clustering around one of the dugout canoes. With the help of some blacks, they were beginning to shift it down the beach. Dan had been right. The dugout was an awkward burden, and they were making slow progress. There was still time to reach the anchored vessel.
Bourdon had recovered from his fright. He began to search for something to help the oarsmen. There was a wooden paddle lying half hidden in the bottom of the boat. The Frenchman tugged out the paddle and began to take great scoops at the water. The speed of the little boat increased. They were almost out of musket range.
Moments later they had reached the anchored vessel. Her side was low enough for them to scramble aboard without difficulty. On deck there were the usual heaps of rope, some sacks, wooden buckets. But no sign of life.
A musket shot, and this time the musket ball slapped into the side of the ship. The Moors had succeeded in launching their dugout, and it was now being paddled out from the beach. There was a single marksman in the bow. He had fired the shot. There must have been a dozen men in the leading dugout, and a second canoe was being launched.
Dan sprang into action. He ran forward to the bow, and began to throw off the coils of the anchor line. But the knots had jammed. He turned towards one of the two black men who had come aboard with them, and mimed a cutting gesture. The negro understood him at once. He groped under a piece of sacking. A moment later he produced a long-bladed knife and running up to the bows began to saw through the anchor line. The first strands sprang up as they were severed. The river current was so strong that the anchor line was taut as an iron bar. Half a dozen more strokes of the blade, and the anchor cable parted. Hector felt the vessel fall back as the current took hold of her.
‘Come on,’ Dan was standing at the foot of the mast beckoning. He had a rope in his hand. ‘Here haul on this! Jacques, you help him.’ Hector limped over and took the rope. Dan and the two blacks had begun to unfasten the bands which held the sail along the boom. Then he and Bourdon heaved on their rope and the upper spar rose, the sail opening beneath it. The blacks and Dan joined them and added their weight. There was no one at the helm so the boat was spinning slowly in the current. The riverbank was sliding past and above their heads the sail flapped three or four times. The gap between the vessel and the pursuing dugout was widening. ‘Almost there now,’ called Dan. ‘Make fast!’
The vessel began to gather pace. Looking aft, Hector saw the paddlers in the dugout had given up the chase. They were turning back to shore.
‘THERE WAS MUCH sickness on the ship,’ said a deep, husky voice. Hector swung round in surprise. The speaker was one of the blacks who had rescued them. The man noted his astonishment. ‘My name is Benjamin. I speak French and Portuguese also as I work with the foreign ships on the coast. When you ran down the hill, I thought you are runaway slaves so I wanted to help. I too was a slave once. Now I have been given my freedom. The foreign sailors call me a Laptot.’
‘We were slaves too, at one time.’
Now it was Benjamin’s turn to be taken aback. ‘Your dark-skinned friend here was a slave, that I understand. But I have never met white slaves before.’
‘We have reason to be grateful to you. Thank you for picking us up.’
Benjamin regarded him hopefully. ‘You are a ship’s captain?’
‘No. The most I’ve ever been is a captain’s secretary, or a galley slave. I’ve never been in charge of any ship.’
‘This ship needs a captain. The old one is dead, and so are the first and second mates. All died from the sickness. That is why we were anchored. We did not know what to do. Maybe it is your turn to help us.’
Benjamin went on to explain that he and his companion, another Laptot, had been hired when the sloop called at the Residence of St Louis, the French trading station at the river mouth. The two of them had helped bring the vessel upriver until, two weeks into their journey, a fever had broken out aboard. The hard-driving captain had refused to turn back. He insisted on proceeding until finally the crew were so short-handed that they had been forced to anchor and wait for the sickness to abate. But the fever had raged all the more fiercely. One by one the foreign crew had died until only the two Laptots were left alive. Unable to handle the vessel by themselves, they had been marooned.
‘What about the cargo?’ Hector asked.
‘We have touched nothing,’ Benjamin answered. ‘I will show you.’
Hector hobbled behind him as the Laptot led the way to a hatch, opened it, and disappeared below. As Hector’s eyes got accustomed to the gloom in the hold, he had a vivid recollection of the interior of the ship in which he had been carried away by Hakim Reis. But what he saw now was different. Along each side of the hull were built rows of shelves as if in a trading post. On them were stacked what looked like trade goods. There were bundles of chintz cloth, axe heads, knives, and iron agricultural tools, trays of brass medals. But many of the shelves were bare. They also seemed unnecessarily wide and the gap between them was barely eighteen inches.
‘Our captain had planned to go far upriver where there had been a native war. He was sure he would fill the shelves. He had already laid in stocks of food and water for the captives.’
Hector realised that he was looking at the interior of a slave ship. The wooden shelves were where the slaves would lie during the long passage to the Americas.
‘Where did the captain keep his papers?’
Benjamin showed him into a small cabin in the stern of the vessel. A quick search of the dead captain’s documents revealed that the vessel was the L’Arc-de-Ciel from La Rochelle. There were maps and charts of the west coast of Africa, of the mid-Atlantic, and the Caribees. There was no doubt that L’Arc-de-Ciel was a slaver.
Benjamin and Hector returned on deck. It was growing dark. Soon there would be the short tropical dusk, then nightfall. ‘Should we anchor for the night?’ Hector asked Dan. The Miskito seemed confident in his ship handling.
Dan shook his head. ‘Our remaining anchor is not heavy enough to hold us in this current. With a little moonlight we should be able to avoid the mudbanks. We had best keep going.’
Hector turned to the Laptot. ‘How far to the mouth of the river? When we get to St Louis, we can put you and your companion ashore. But we cannot visit the place there ourselves. One of us,’ he nodded towards Bourdon, ‘is a rowing slave who has run away. His former masters were French and would seize him.’
Benjamin looked doubtful. ‘What will happen to the ship?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Hector. ‘My friends and I are hoping to go to the Americas.’
Bourdon spoke up. ‘Then why don’t we try to sail this boat all the way?’
Hector looked at Dan. ‘Is that possible?’
Dan thought for a long time before replying. ‘It could be,’ he said cautiously. ‘We’ll need good weather. And our greatest difficulty is that we are so few aboard. Jacques, Hector and myself – that’s not enough to manage the ship.’
‘Then take us with you,’ said Benjamin suddenly. Hector blinked in surprise. Benjamin spoke urgently to his companion in their own language, then turned back to face the others.
‘If we return to St Louis, the governor will want to know what has happened to the ship. We will be accused of failing in our duty to the captain, or even of killing him and the foreign crew. We may be hung and certainly we will lose our freedom and be sold again as slaves.’