James Nelson - The Blackbirder

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.

Five minutes, ten minutes, and then he heard Higgens’s sloppy footfalls on the crumbling wall overhead, coming closer, closer. Madshaka shook his arms, limbered them up, tested the spring in his legs.

The crunch of shoes was just over him now, a bit of dirt knocked loose, falling on his neck, and then Madshaka sprung like a snake striking out. He saw Higgens’s startled face, his recoiling body, heard the beginning of a shout as he grabbed the guard by the ankles and jerked him off the wall. Higgens fell in a great, awkward heap, arms flailing out, his musket coming to rest on the wall where he had dropped it in surprise.

Madshaka pounced, rolling Higgens over, knees on his chest, pinning him, one hand over the man’s mouth, his dirk flashing in the other. He could have killed him that instant but he did not, because in the last seconds of his life he wanted Higgens to know who it was who had killed him. So he held the man down and grinned at him, a horrible leer, and thought of how Higgens had once grinned at him the same way as he jerked the chain attached to the iron collar around his neck.

He saw Higgens’s eyes, already wide with terror, register recognition, and then go wider still.

Higgens began to thrash, to try and dislodge Madshaka, but it was futile, like trying to push over a stone wall. Madshaka leaned close, whispered, “That’s right, Higgens. It’s Madshaka. I’m back. And now, time for you to die.”

A muffled shriek under his hand and then he cut Higgens’s throat, sinking the blade of the dirk down through soft flesh until he felt it grate on bone. He held the white man down as he writhed in his death agony, felt the hot blood pulsing over his arm and hand, and then Higgens was still.

Madshaka leaned back, looked around. No one else in sight, no indication of any alarm from within. He sat and listened to the silence for a moment more, until he was certain that Higgens’s murder had gone unnoticed. He wiped the blade of his dirk on Higgens’s breeches and sheathed it, then trotted back to the tree line and followed it back to his waiting men.

“I kill the sentry,” he whispered. “Now we go, silent, silent, like the leopard.” This he said in all their languages, slowly, so they would understand the import of his words, then said, “Follow me, stay close, yell when I do.”

He turned, headed back toward the factory, felt the powerful and dangerous presence of the men at his back. He moved along the wide trail, paused where it opened onto the clearing, but still he could see no sign of alarm. He glanced back at his men, their faces set and determined. Their blood was up, he could see. They were ready for mayhem and slaughter.

He headed off along the tree line again, the same route he had taken to get close to Higgens. Behind him, the padding of sixty pairs of feet made no more noise than the wind in the trees. Less, in fact. He arrived at that point where the tree line was closest to the wall and stopped again and let his men assemble for the final assault. He bounced on the

balls of his feet, his whole body tensed, ready for this moment.

No one betrayed Madshaka and lived long to brag on it.

He drew his cutlass, and all along the line his men drew their edged weapons as well. He held the steel aloft, looked left and right, checked his men’s readiness, then stepped out, leading the charge at the wall, and behind him the others followed. He picked up his pace as he moved over the open ground, the wall less than one hundred feet away, the madness building, building with his speed and momentum.

And then he was at the wall but it seemed as if it was no impediment at all. His foot found a chink in the crumbling surface and his legs carried him up and his hands were flat on the top and the next thing he knew he was standing on the wall, and the factory, that familiar factory, lay spread out below him.