SISTERS OF THE SEA Slave Seed

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

Pollyanna Nottingham held her nose dramatically as she slid down a halyard line from a wooden platform nested high in the aft mast. She handed a stolen Dollond & Aitchison telescope, finely-crafted in London, to her captain.  “There, just off the port bow,” she said. “My keen sense of sewage takes it to be a rotting barrel filled with darkies … probably bound for the Virginia coast or some other skin market!”

Loretta DuPont took the expertly crafted optical device, part of the booty taken from an English freighter, and after scanning the horizon for a few seconds agreed with Polly. “It’s a slave ship all right!” She handed the instrument back to her first officer and called to the women lounging about the stern wheel. “Marry us to the wind and load two guns with grapes on the port side. We’ll wake the nasty buggers up and let them know we mean business!”

The frigate, Sea Witch, sped up as she turned thirty degrees to port and a brisk breeze off the coast of Africa filled her square sails.

  Loretta could see movement on the enemy deck and in the rigging, but the vessel was still too far away to see exactly what the slave haulers were doing. Suddenly three fire flashes erupted in quick succession from near the enemy stern. “They’re hailing us with a deck gun.” Polly laughed as the first two cannonballs splashed into the water at least a hundred yards short of the Sea Witch. “Pull us alongside and we’ll have Rella lecture them on the proper use of powder!” Fiorella Estella Mendoza had once been Loretta’s handmaiden but after following her mistress into a life of piracy was now one of the Atlantic’s best cannoneers.

            “Let’s not be too hasty …” Loretta said. She and Polly looked upward as the shriek from a falling projectile grew louder. “Bed the planks!” Loretta ordered. Thirty women flung themselves flat on the deck as an eight pound cannonball exploded almost exactly in the center of the stern-deck throwing broken chain, shattered decking and wood splinters high into the aft sails.

            “That was close!” Polly exclaimed as the air cleared. None of the crew members around her appeared to be harmed.

            “Too close for one!” Margaret Waldheim moaned. Gretchen Lewis, the ship’s apprentice navigator, who had been attending the ship’s steerage, now lay among the broken and twisted wreckage, a pool of blood, skin and bone was being partially drained into a large jagged hole in the decking. “We’ve lost a superior ship’s rudder … and a much finer Helm’s person!”

Death silenced the crew for several long seconds. “No time for a funeral,” Loretta finally said. “We owe it to the dead … to keep ourselves alive.”

The slave ship began circling around meaning to approach the disabled Sea Witch from the stern. “We’re in trouble,” Fiorella shouted. “With that big hole in the planking. I can’t roll a deck gun into position to keep them murdering dogs at bay!”

The converted cargo ship was now close enough to read D’or Chasseur carved just below the stern castle as it rotated one-hundred eighty degrees to port.

            “We won’t make it easy on them nasty buggers!” Loretta vowed as Polly began to pass out loaded muskets from the ship’s ordinance lockers.

Just before the slave ship came within boarding-line range she dropped sail and stopped dead in the water.

Loretta, Polly, and the other forty-two female crew members stared in awe as the captain and crew of the slave ship who all appeared to be in some sort of disorientation formed five orderly lines and began jumping over the starboard railings, plunging into the water like the fabled lemmings at the end of a four-year birth cycle.

Fiorella lifted one flabby hand high in the air and sniffed carefully around her arm pit. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper bath,” she muttered, “still … I didn’t think I smelled all that rank!”

By the time the crew of the Sea Witch boarded the D’or Chasseur the French captain and his men were all bobbing helplessly about in the sea waves like corks in a large laundry tub. “I’ve never seen seamen act this crazy before,” Polly said as she and Margaret lowered four longboats equipped with oars and water barrels over the side. “There must be a bad barrel or two of pork open in the hold.” She shook her head as she watched the drowning sailors flounder toward the boats. “Cast adrift in the South Atlantic in boats might be more than these ruddy buggers deserve …. but I’ll sleep better if I don’t have to listen to their piteous cries in my dreams!”

“Let’s see what barreled-poison lies below shall we?” Loretta lifted the hatch exposing wooden stairs going down into the ship’s hull and the other’s followed her. Halfway down they all pinched their noses.

-------2-------

Polly gagged and Margaret actually threw up. Four sputtering oil lamps mounted to iron plates attached to deck supports were all that cast illumination on the dank and deplorable gloom that saturated the hold. Four hundred and eighty dark sweltering bodies lay side by side … packed, layered and chained like salted sardines in a merchant’s crate. About a fifth appeared to be corpses … or almost there. The others appeared to be slowly succumbing to the nausea, heat, and misery of a nightmarish voyage only a week gone from the coast of Africa.

“I believe we were too generous with those long boats!” Polly turned her head away as she covered her mouth and nose with a scarf. “Most of these wretched souls are children!”

“Let’s get them on deck and see how many are still alive,” Loretta commanded. “I’ve a mind to burn this tub … once greed begins its rot … the stains become permanent!”

“Puis-je t'aider ?” a dark female face rose from one of the rows nearest the stairs. The voice quickly changed to English when there was no immediate reply. “I want help you!”

“Yes,” Loretta said. “I know nothing of African languages. If we are to transport you and your companions back to your homes, I will need an interpreter.”

-------3-------

Two days later, the African translator Uba stood on the stern deck with Loretta and Polly. She didn’t understand when they ask her how old she was but Loretta thought she couldn’t be much more than fourteen.

They watched as the French slave ship, set afire after all useable equipment and cargo had been salvaged, burned in the distance. The twin sisters Penny and Renny, master carpenters before they took up the pirate trade, were just finishing repairs to the ship’s wheel and rudder rigging. “I don’t understand why the captain and crew of the D’or Chasseur just jumped overboard,” Loretta said. “It was as if someone else was directing their minds.”

Uba pointed to a young black woman who appeared to be pregnant lounging with others near the main mast. “Dee na … she carry da seed an brings you to dis ocean. She no need the bad mans no more … so she give them fins … an makes them think day be like da fishes.”

Loretta was astonished. “Are you saying that Deena made the French sailors jump overboard?”

            “Dee na carry da seed,” Uba said easily. “She have all da power she need to do anything.”

            “If that be the case, then have your young Seed Queen conjure up a gale so that we can hurry you people back to Africa,” Polly smirked as she pointed to the ship’s wheel. Renny and Penny were testing the repairs and the rudder and steering system seemed to be working properly.

Loretta, Polly and Uba all stared as the pregnant black woman raised her hand in the air and smiled. A few seconds later a brisk wind filled the sails and the Sea Witch began to move. “Me and my quick mouth,” Polly moaned. “I should have asked for a white lace gown and a parasol.  A looted chest with a fashion dress inside is a rare bit of plunder!”

Fiorella plucked the strings of a lute. The sails were full - and the crew of the Sea Witch began to sing …

           

            “Hoist the sails and trim the winds, with rudder steady go.

            From morning light beneath the sky, till sunset’s wounded glow.

            With musket ball and chain and whip, and cannon’s lusty roar.

            No Royal fleet can yet defeat, we mighty forty four.”

-------4-------

            A week later, the Sea Witch dropped anchor just outside of an African port city on one of the many branches of the Bandama River emptying its waters into the Atlantic. “Are you sure this is where you were taken from?” Loretta questioned Uba to make sure they had the right location.

            “Bonauku lead many white men up river to burn villages,” Uba said. “They take small children … easy to catch … not run fast!”

            “Don’t the African villagers fight back?” Polly was disgusted. “Where are the children’s parents?”

            “Many villagers come … try get children back,” Uba said. “White men have many guns build wall … many villagers die!”

Polly was studying the river behind the port city with her telescope. “It looks like they’ve built a fort right on the river. Uba and these other slaves will never get past it to reach their homes. If they try, they’ll just be caught and sold again.”

            “Can we bombard the stronghold?” Loretta asked Fiorella as she walked over to one of the deck cannons. “Create enough of a distraction for the slaves to slip past the guards and make their way upstream to their villages?”

            “The fortress is too far away,” Fiorella told her. “Even if we anchor right next to their docks and I tamp the barrels half full of powder and adjust elevation for maximum range the iron balls will still fall almost a quarter of a mile short!”

            Deena had been watching the conversation with interest. She waddled over to where they stood. Her round belly showing she had to be at least six months pregnant. She stood next to Uba and spoke to her in a strange language. “Dee na want some of dat magic dust make thunder throw iron,” Uba told them after listening. “She want feel wid her fingers!”

Fiorella opened a barrel next to the cannon and used a metal scoop to pour some of the black powder into Deena’s outstretched hand. The pregnant black woman first smelled the gunpowder and then squeezed it firmly in her fingers as she closed her eyes. A few seconds later she opened her eyes and smiled. She held her hand over the fuse opening in the top of the cannon and allowed the powder to sift between her fingers into the torch hole. Loretta, Polly and Fiorella were all astonished. The black gunpowder was now as white as snow.

            “I don’t know what she did to my black powder but if this white stuff doesn’t burn I’m going to have to clean this cannon inside and out,” Fiorella grumbled. She found a place on the deck where a small amount of the white powder had spilled. She signaled to one of the deck women to bring her a torch. “It’s like she sucked all the black out of it!”

The torch was still several inches from the spilled powder when a violent explosion knocked all four women onto the deck planking. “I don’t think we have to worry about this stuff not burning,” Polly said as they struggled to their feet.

-------5-------

            It took another day for the Sea Witch to sail north up the coast so that Fiorella and the other gunners could practice with the new explosive.

            The new white gunpowder was so powerful that a six-inch cannon barrel ruptured on a first attempt and even tamping in a third as much powder sent the iron balls flying twice as far.

Loretta asked Deena if she could make the white powder in large quantities and the pregnant girl just smiled and pointed to one of the barrels, When Polly pried off the lid, the contents were as white as the powder that had first slipped through the black woman’s fingers.

            “I think that slave trading fort better batten down its hatches,” Polly laughed. “cause they be a big storm a coming!”

-------6-------

            Loretta made sure all the slaves were in the longboats and were nearly to shore before the barrage started. Twenty-six  cannons roared in sequence sending eight pound iron balls crashing into the fortress walls that guarded the port town from the native villagers. Twenty minutes later, the entire town and military complex appeared to be in flames. The crew of the Sea Witch  cheered.

            “Do you think the slaves made it back to their villages?” Loretta asked Polly.

            “If I was guarding that river I’d be gone after the first shot,” Polly said. “People who profit from slavery have neither courage nor honor!”

            “It’s too bad they had to leave,” Loretta said. “I rather liked Uba, and Deena was like a secret box that had something different inside it each time it was opened. Can you imagine the ships we could capture using that powerful white gunpowder?”

            “I think we’re going to find out,” Polly said. “The last time I looked in the hull every barrel of gunpowder we have is now as white as snow!”

-------7-------

            It wasn’t until the Sea Witch docked in the busy New Orleans harbor that one of the crew members found Uba and Deena huddled behind a stack of fresh water barrels in the hull. “Why didn’t you return to your homes?” Loretta was astonished.

            “Dee Na carry seed to new world,” Uba explained. “She friend … where she go I go!”

            “This is a big city with laws that protect the rich,” Polly gasped. “I don’t think we can stop the slavers from selling you in the market!”

            “Dee Na not worry … Uba not worry!” Uba smiled. “Big magic in seed!” she pointed toward Deena’s now extra-large belly.

            “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Loretta told her.

-------8-------

            It was almost a month later that Loretta and Polly attended the slave auction in a warehouse near the dock area. They waited for first Deena and then Uba to go up for sale.

Everyone could see that the young black girl was pregnant and the bidding started almost double what it did for others. “Fifteen hundred Dutch Ducat!” A rich plantation owner bid. The bidding had reached three thousand when a richly dressed businessman burst through the crowd and bid an astonishing five thousand.

            “You must have a large plantation and are looking for more breeding stock,” the auctioneer commented as the man paid for his purchase in gold.

            “I really don’t know why I bid on her,’ the bewildered man said. “I’ve never owned a slave in my life!”

Uba was being led onto the auction platform just as Deena and the wealthy merchant left. Suddenly the man turned “I’ll take that one too,” he said. Nobody bid against him.

-------9-------

Loretta and Polly watched as the rich merchant drove away in a buggy with his human purchases. “I wonder if he knows what he has there?” Polly said.

            “If he’s not a plantation owner I hope he’s at least a farmer,” Loretta replied.

            “Why’s that?’

            “A new kind of seed has been transported all the way from the dark continent of Africa,” Loretta said. “It has to be planted in just the right location and by just the right people for the magic inside it to grow.”

Polly remembered all the strange things that had happened over the last three months. “Somehow I believe that it will,” she said.

THE END ??