Rebels of Babylon (38 page)

Thrusting myself through a doorway at the end of the long hold, I felt a craven relief. I had been right, my hearing had not failed me. The other shrieks were clearer now, close by. The wails and cries of women.

My relief did not last.

He stood before me, revolver in one hand, a cutlass in the other. He was so tall he had to stoop in the passage.

He smiled at me before he pulled the trigger.

Even then, Petit Jean underestimated me. He shot my companion, judging him the more dangerous of us. Despite our rooftop battle and bordello duel.

The falling Marine called out for his beloved.

Before he could work the action on his pistol, I had my blade free of the cane and swept it down across Petit Jean’s wrist. I struck with such ferocity the blow revealed white bone. The revolver clattered into the shadows and smoke.

The fellow roared.

What saved me? What made him an instant too slow? Fate twists and turns. I had been saved not only by Petit Jean’s flawed judgement, but by the madame of that bawdy house. You will recall that she shot him through the arm when she interrupted us. It had not done me much good then, but now I was paid with interest.

With a growl, the giant lunged at me. He appeared so vast in the cramp of the hold it seemed he might simply engulf me if
his blade failed to find my flesh. But sometimes the Lord favors men of lesser stature.

Bad leg or no, the advantage of size was mine now. I could squirm about, while Petit Jean banged into boards and beams. He used his arm and the cutlass as a scythe, but could not harvest me.

All the while, the screams only grew madder, the deep roar of the men to my rear and the high pleas of the women to the fore.

We dueled. Like two fellows in a tale of Mr. Scott’s. He did not give me leisure to draw my Colt and I did not give him space to pick up his revolver.

Steel it was, to the end.

Twas no easy struggle, that I grant you. If I was not slashed, I was not unscathed. My bones took a nasty battering on the timbers as we clashed and feinted in the smoke.

Fire began to spurt from a side compartment, threatening worse.

I believe I would have won in the end. For I was an instructor of the bayonet in my regiment in India and am a doughty fellow in a fight. But I will never know.

A pistol roared at my ear. Petit Jean fell.

Lieutenant Gray put another ball into my enemy, who was twisting on the floor and clutching his guts. The second shot stilled him.

“Big bastard, that one,” the lieutenant said.

I was already rushing past the corpse. Toward the women and their frantic cries.

The door behind which the women wailed was padlocked. I got out my Colt and tried to shoot it open, with no success. I was just about to turn back to the corpse of Petit Jean, in the hope in a thousand that he might have the key, when Lieutenant Gray fired from another angle.

The lock sprang free.

The women were packed as densely as the men, though in a smaller hold. They were not chained. Perhaps they were kept so at the pleasure of the crew. Beyond that, I shall not speculate.

“Magdalena!” I shouted through the smoke and the squealing confusion.

I could not hear anything clearly, not after that pistol had gone off at my ear. Twas all a great roar that refused to break into parts.

“Magdalena!”

Foolish women hurled themselves at my person and the lieutenant, pleading for rescue. Their wiser sisters slipped by us to flee on their own.

I fear my roughness was ungentlemanly. I spoke strongly, admonishing them to get themselves along and save themselves. Lucky they were to bear no chains, unlike their tormented brothers.

Dizzy from the smoke and with my hearing spoiled, I felt pressed toward madness. Now, I was ever a cool one in a fight. But not that day. Every burning man was on my conscience. Yet, I had turned my back on them, as purposeful as a beast.

“Magdalena!” I cried again, pushing raving negresses out of my way. The stink come high. You smelled it through the acid of the smoke. For they had been granted no greater allowance of sanitation than the men.

I saw her at last, toward the back of the hold. Collapsed against a wall, given up by her sisters. Her face was swollen from beatings. And she alone had been chained.

She
must
have heard me call, despite the ruckus. But she had not responded. Her eyes were shut, but she could not have slept through the tumult. Perhaps she had thought me yet another tormentor, come for a favor. Mayhaps her hopes were quit.

Her dress was ripped and ragged. All of her person was in disarray.

As I brushed aside the last confusion of lasses, she opened her eyes and saw me. God knows how I appeared amid the smoke.

But how she changed! Her tan face brightened as if she had gained a glimpse of the highest Heaven. Bruised and battered, she did not quite speak, though she tried to mouth a word.

I rushed to her and tore at the chains, which had been driven deep into a beam.

They would not give, of course. I roared in outrage, scorning all pain that might revenge my clumsiness. In a fury I was, made stupid. I did no good at all.

I tried to shoot the chains free of the wall. But that was hopeless. It only endangered the lass with ricochets.

So fast, it all happened so fast. I resolved that, if I could not free her, I would put a bullet through her forehead, rather than let the poor thing burn alive.

I did not think of the misery of hundreds. I forgot Lieutenant Gray. Who can tell the reasons of our hearts? My time might have been more wisely used to free others. But I had made a promise to Mr. Barnaby, a quick, unconsidered remark meant to lift his spirits. Now it was a crisis in my soul.

Perhaps it was my own knowledge of loss, my memories of India. The pain of the flesh is here and gone, the common coin of martyrs, but the miseries of the soul haunt the longest life.

God bless the United States Marines. The lieutenant had gone back through the smoke and brought not only a sledgehammer but a brawny Marine to wield it.

That hammer had been at work in the burning hold, saving the many. But the lieutenant had ordered it carried to my aid.

“Stand back,” he told me. When I failed to respond, he shoved me out of the way.

Perhaps that Marine once broke rocks for a living. He had a way with a hammer. I thought him wild and feared he would finish the girl. But each blow fell precisely, splintering the timber where it had embraced the fixture of the chain.

The poor child closed her eyes the while and wept.

Bless him, he freed her in a pair of minutes. Which was fortunate for all, as the fire was spreading and wrapping us in smoke.

Giving up the hammer to his lieutenant, the stout Marine drew the lass over his shoulder.

Gray and I followed, stepping over the carcass of Petit John. I recovered the sheath of my sword-cane and gave the corpse a last glance. What a tortured soul must have been his, not only to sell his brethren back into slavery, but to burn them alive instead of letting them live. Did he hate them so? Or did he hate himself?

He was a minor player in the drama. But I think on him.

Back in the main hold, horror flourished. The negroes were chained to the long rails with individual shackles. The rails could not be broken out and the prisoners had to be freed one at a time. The Marines had only found a pair of hammers. The others had likely been cast overboard with the buckets. All with an aim of letting the prisoners burn.

As we struggled back through the mass of them, one poor sod dug his fingers into my trouser leg so fiercely he cut the fabric and broke open my skin, as I found later. His eyes were huge and he would not let me go.

I had to thrash him over the head with my cane.

He wanted to live, as all men do. But I moved on. The smoke was deadly where he sat. I needed air myself.

The clamor and din were patterned after Hell.

Lieutenant Gray was younger by a decade, but I had the better shoulders of the two of us. One Marine was swinging away to free as many negroes as he could. I tore the other hammer from the lieutenant’s hands. Gasping, I told him to call for more tools from the
Cormorant.

“I already did,” he assured me.

“Then get you out of my way until they come. Here. Take my cane. And get yourself into the sunlight. Go away, man!”

You understand me. I could not stand by idly as they burned. I had to employ my own muscle, my own breath, to free as many poor souls as I could.

I began where I stood, to the joy of a poor, fat fellow who cried his gratitude unto the Lord.

Another negro, down the line, shouted that I should save him because he could read.

How do you choose? When you know that you cannot save them all, only a portion? How should we play God? Do we choose the comeliest? The strongest? The one who begs us nicely? The young? The old?

I refused to think. I surrendered sense to labor. I worked in order from the spot where I found myself, freeing one after another down the line. Ignoring cries, pleas, screams, jibes, curses, all the dissonance of human torment.

I tried not to look into a single face.

As a young lad, before I ran off and signed for John Company in Bristol, I had worked down in the pits for a pair of seasons. I know how to use a hammer, if not so perfectly as that bold Marine. Yet, I was in haste, half maddened and gagged with smoke. I smashed a poor fellow’s hand, instead of his shackles. Even then, he did not complain but begged me to strike again.

Men burned. Or suffocated. The clangor of chains and the failing cries surmounted the worst miseries of India. Or even the lot of the lads who burned at Shiloh.

I near pitched over. All of a sudden. Bleary and dizzy. I could not get the air back into my lungs.

I swung again, determined to do good, and broke a poor devil’s leg.

As I wobbled, dark hands grabbed for the hammer. Manacled, not one of them could have swung it. But each one hoped the tool might save his life.

I could hardly see any longer, barely grip.

A flurry of hands grasped me. Not by my legs, but higher. I tried to struggle, but could not.

Despite the thunder in my ears, I heard a white man’s voice say, “Get him out of here.”

They carried me off, and I did not protest.

Swooning, I heard the devil’s orchestra playing. For that is Satan’s tune, I do believe. The sound of human beings dying slowly, in great pain.

I am unaware of precisely how they got me back to the
Cormorant,
but when I awoke I had exceptional bruises.

I cannot say for certain. And am not confident that I wish to know. But I wonder if the fading of my consciousness down in that hold come honestly from drinking smoke and that infernal heat, or from the cowardice lingering in us all. Was it just exhaustion and no air? Or was I fleeing?

The
Cormorant
’s medical fellow brought me around with smelling salts, just as he would have awakened a dismayed dowager. I rose, stiff as a grampus and dizzy I felt as though not a few of the hammer’s blows had landed on me. My uniform reeked as sharply as the salts, smelling of ashes, sweat and the blood of strangers. But my cane stood waiting against a chair, preserved by the lieutenant. Twas good of him to save it. And kinder still to save me.

The dark was down, enlivened by the blaze consuming the
Anne Bullen.
We had only just begun to steam away. The wheels propelled us northward, back to New Orleans.

When I made my way out onto the deck, staggering like a drunkard, the river was livid with firelight in our wake. We had gained some distance, so I could not hear the concert of flames above our engine and paddlewheels, but I did hear muted sounds of shock and sorrow. Twas the rescued darkies, shivering in the cold upon our deck.

A lone voice rose and called upon the Lord to come unto the children of Israel and succor them. Fervent and rasping, he spoke as if expecting God to answer.

A sailor cursed and told him to be quiet.

I learned that we had saved thirty-nine women and fifty-five men before the smoke and flames drove our lads from the ship. Perhaps a hundred and fifty burned alive.