home. He was back.
Madshaka grinned. He could no longer help it. He had never felt so alive, so happy, so hopeful in his life. He was the hero returning, the conquering hero. Come back with a ship full of plunder from clean across the Atlantic. Come back with an army.
He thought of his darkest moments, a month into the Middle Passage, when he was so near death, even with taking food from others. He had despaired then of ever arriving at the place he was at now. Foolish man! As if the gods would ever abandon their most perfect creature!
He felt the after end of the longboat lifting with the first effects of the surf. He spit on his hands, took a hard grip on the sweep, gave it a slight pull to starboard to get their bow aligned. Two more strokes and the big craft was starting to buck, the white water was boiling around her gunnels. He could see wide eyes staring out at the foam, frightened eyes.
“Stop!” Madshaka ordered, and the men froze, their blades in the water. The surf lifted them again, and then they fell, this time with a sickening motion.
Madshaka stood on the stern thwart, his ears attuned to the sound of the water, his eyes judging the frequency of the rollers, his legs feeling the rise and fall of the boat. He was the lion, timing his pounce, the cheetah knowing by instinct just the second to bolt. The stern came up, up, then settled, and Madshaka called with all the urgency he felt, “Pull! Pull!”
And the men pulled, pulled hard and fast, and the boat shot ahead, all but keeping pace with the breaking water. Madshaka felt the stern slough around. He leaned into the sweep, using that great lever to haul the boat back in line.
The wave passed and another had them and their speed built as it lifted them and hurled them toward the shore and despite himself Madshaka could not help letting out a great whoop, a battle cry, an expression of pure exhilaration as he alone, through strength of arm and mind, took that overloaded boat and those frightened children through the surf, the surf that had killed so many weaker men.
Another wave, but they were through the deadly part now, and Madshaka felt the blade of his sweep grind in the sand and then the forefoot of the boat struck with an impact that made the boat shudder.
He began to order the men out, to tell them to haul the boat up the beach, and he was wondering how many of them would actually dare get out of the boat, when he saw James and Cato and Quash and Good Boy and Joshua leap over the gunnel and take the boat in their hands, pulling it forward when their feet found bottom, letting the boat take them when they did not.
There was something disappointing in that, and Madshaka felt as if a part of his victorious landing had been sullied by someone other than himself displaying knowledge and bravery.
But it did not matter. James could have his last little moment before he died in battle.
The men in the water hauled the boat further and further onto the sand, aided by the surging water, until those others judged it safe to leap out. One by one they went over the side, lightening the longboat and adding their effort to pulling it along, until soon it was high and dry, beyond the reach of even the most powerful surf. And only then did Madshaka unship his sweep and step ashore, regal and dry.
He savored the feel of sand underfoot, the constant but subtle undercurrent of sound: surf breaking, wind rustling the fronds of tall palms.
The French pilot had brought the ship to just the spot. Madshaka knew that stretch of beach as well as any place on earth. The curve of the tree line, the well-beaten trail-all but a road, really-through the forest, the palm trees like columns in front of some stately home, it was as if it were all his.
He remained silent, let his army wait for his next word as he enjoyed the moment. He moved past them, up the beach, toward the trees. Then he stopped, turned back to them, raised his arms over his head.
He had their attention now, every eye locked on him. It was a moment of high drama and he held it, let it build, then turned and brought his arms down like twin axes, pointer fingers extended, gesturing toward the dark road. With a wave he began to trot off up the beach and behind him his silent army of black pirates surged after.
Once they were on the wide trail, once they were enveloped by the woods, Madshaka slowed his pace. It would be better to arrive at the factory fresh than to arrive quickly. There would be no pickets along the road, no guards until they reached the actual gates of the factory. Slavers felt perfectly safe in Whydah and took no more than the most elementary precautions.
The moon might have set; Madshaka could not tell. Little light would penetrate the thick canopy of the forest. But he did not need much light, because he knew that trail so well, and what little illumination he got from the stars was enough to tell him where he was, how far from the factory.
They walked for half an hour through the forest before they saw the first flash of earthly light, a lantern or a fire, glimpsed through a gap in the trees left by some quirk of nature.
Madshaka raised his hand. “Hold up.” He said it in Kru but the others understood his meaning and stopped. “I see to the guards. Wait until I return,” he said, translating it into each language, and then when he knew they understood, he slipped away down the trail.
One hundred yards and the trail widened out like the mouth of a river, opened onto twenty or so cleared acres of forest, and in the middle of that, an English slave factory.
It was not the only such storehouse for slaves in Whydah, not even the only English factory, but the others did not matter. This was the one. These were the men who had betrayed him.
He paused for a moment and let his eyes wander over the familiar sight. This factory, where Madshaka the grumete had become Madshaka the slaver. Where he had learned that the real wealth was to be had by plunging into the forest where the white men dared not go and rounding up those sorry people and marching them here, where they could be sold to the white men who possessed unlimited amounts of money, rum, gunpowder, guns, swords, knives.
The lion and the antelope. It was the way of things.
He was better at that game than any, and soon he controlled nearly all of the slaves coming into that factory from the backcountry. The white men did not care for that. It made Madshaka too powerful by half.
The white men at the slave factory did not care to have a lion in their midst.
So they had hit him on the head and sold him as a slave himself. There would be others to take his place, others more easily controlled than was Madshaka. It was not the first time white slavers had pulled such tricks. But they were not to be pulled on him.
The factory’s outer defense, if such it could be called, was no more than a mud wall built up to a height of six feet. The wall formed a great square, each side two hundred feet long, that defined the courtyard within. In the middle of the front wall was the main gate, two wood plank doors shut tight. The worn trail ran from under those doors in a straight line to where Madshaka was standing and then past, a trail beaten by the hundreds upon hundreds of people who had come through that gate and made the one-way trip down to the beach and the ships beyond.
Over the top of the wall Madshaka could see the tall thatched roofs of the guards’ house, the factor’s house, and the trunk, a big common prison where the slaves were kept, awaiting their turn.
Torches mounted along the wall every fifty feet or so threw wide arcs of light, discouraging any clandestine approach over the open ground between the forest and the factory. It might even have given Madshaka pause, had he not known perfectly well that the one guard making his desultory tour along the top of the wall was the only sentry on duty, that the factor and his men would be drunk at that hour, and that barring any cry from the man on the wall they would continue to drink in peace, as sure of their safety as a child abed. Slavers did not feel threatened in Whydah.
Of all that, Madshaka was certain, but because he was smart and cunning as well as bold he remained crouched at the end of the trail for a full twenty minutes and watched, just watched. The sentry-he recognized Higgens’s slovenly form-continued his slow, lethargic patrol. There was no other movement.
At last Madshaka moved, swiftly, crouched low, making his way along the tree line, completely invisible to anyone staring out through the torchlight. He skirted off to the right, stepping carefully, keeping his eyes on Higgens, who was moving away from him toward the left end of the wall.
When he was at the point where the forest made its closest approach to the factory wall, and when Higgens’s back was turned, he raced across the open ground, powerful and silent.
He reached the corner of the factory and stopped himself with his hands against the wall, let his arms absorb the impact of his great momentum. He pressed his back against the dry mud and he waited.
