Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl Read Online Free PDF

against the door. He opened it and cried, ‘Freshen up, demoiselles. Your hour is come.’
    “There were four sailors in the small boat below the sisal ladder. Each wore an unsheathed dagger at his waist. Spaniole explained to us with gestures what they and we must do. As the ship bobbed above the black hills of the sea, we were carried down the rope ladder and set into the boat. I think it so strange now that although we all believed in a better life in Heaven to come, there was no inkling of hastening that day by leaping to our deaths. I never thought of such an avenue until I met up with the Africans. No: we had been taught to see ourselves as Heaven’s supplicants, not Heaven’s instruments. Not Heaven’s tools emerging from the fire and the blows.
    “In silence we were carried down and set on benches by our guards. We were left untied, for we must wade ashore from the swells and not pull one another down like awkward weights. Hope … hope it was, bred into us, that made us think a better day surely must wait onshore. What the Africans have is more … apt, wiser … than hope.”
    Peter Coote gives his head a little shake. He has almost fallen into a doze to the lilt of her unceasing voice. He’s stopped writing; but now he hastens pen to pot and then to paper, for he has heard her link herself with Africans for the first time. “Stop,” he commands. When he has caught her missing words or what he imagines them to be, brusquely he says, “Continue.”
    “Water,” the woman Cot replies.
    A wave of ill humor washes over Peter Coote. The breakfast fruit has soured his mouth and furred his tongue. His hand is cramped, the top knuckle of the middle finger stained with ink. He flips his cuffs well back. “No,” he insists. “You will speak until I have had enough, and then be done for today.”
    The woman is silent. He finds her wide mouth sullen. “Don’t try me, biddy,” he warns.
    “You are right,” she says. “ ’Tis ye who are trying me, is it not? On behalf of your … master.” She draws herself in under the shawl until she seems to have no shoulders: she has a slight back to hold so many lashes, he thinks. He sits there, pen poised, prepared to learn of Africans and the treachery which took root in her small, primitive Christian soul, sent to be obedient to her betters on the island of Barbados. But she returns to the story of the girls: “We put out in the small boat. We were going to our doom, and we knew it; the black-haired girl called out to Christ to receive her.
    “Yet how could doom be upon us? For the sailors were conversing merrily as they rowed. And halfway to shore a silver school of dolphins joined the skiff and danced beside us. There were two longboats of indentured men already up ahead of us toward shore. Those few who had signed on sat unmanacled, rowing beside the crewmen. The others leaned, lashed together loosely at the waist. Some held their heads down, some looked bold and brave ahead. One man cursed steadily as if he told a litany. One young lad, I remember, was singing about a place named Drummossie. I recall that place-name although not one of the girls’ names I billeted with on that long voyage to hell. Only the colors of their hair, sprayed out around their caps by the sweet breeze.
    “Yes, I remember best the colors. For there is a glow to hell, and from it came so much light that while my mouth stuck shut with fear, and many of my fellow humans made noises like grieving animals, I was transfixed by the blue bath of the sea and the gilded arcing fins of fish which sliced the air then plunged again.
    “I felt nothing, save for cool spray on my forearms.
    “I heard the clacketting of palm leaves on the shore over the tears of women in my boat.
    “I marveled at a thread of yellow in the rigging of a sloop in the bay ahead of us; an orange banner snapping crisply above a Dutch low-bellied trader; the tan sand below the ever-paling water, which our prow now shot