Free The Book Of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

that you hoed the soil so that the rain, when it came, would kiss the soil and marry it—not kiss it and run away. Yes, I knew how to cultivate a millet field, and I had been shown that the mind had to be grown.
    A series of coincidences saved my life during the ocean crossing. It helped to be among the last persons from my homeland to be loaded onto that vessel. It also helped to be a child. A child had certain advantages on a slave vessel. Nobody rushed to kill a child. Not even a man-stealer. But, also, the child’s mind has elasticity. Adults are different-push them too far and they snap. Many times during that long journey, I was terrified beyond description, yet somehow my mind remained intact. Men and women the age of my parents lost their minds on that journey. Had I been twice the age of eleven, my mind might also have departed.
    On that slave vessel, I saw things that the people of London would never believe. But I think of the people who crossed the sea with me. The ones who survived. We saw the same things. Some of us still scream out in the middle of the night. But there are men, women and children walking about the streets without the faintest idea of our nightmares. They cannot know what we endured if we never find anyone to listen. In telling my story, Iremember all those who never made it through the musket balls and the sharks and the nightmares, all those who never found a group of listeners, and all those who never touched a quill and an inkpot.
    THE SHIP WAS AN ANIMAL IN THE WATER. It rocked from side to side like a donkey trying to shake off a bundle, climbing on the waves like a monkey gone mad. The animal had an endless appetite and consumed us all: men, women and babies. And along with us came elephant teeth, sacks of yams and all manner of goods that working homelanders hauled up in nets.
    Above the cries of the captives and the shouts of the toubabu and the working homelanders, Sanu’s baby wailed on and on. It seemed to sense our fate. It howled and gasped and cried again. Goosebumps covered my arms. I fought to keep myself from screaming. Instead, I choked on the stink of the ship and vomited. For a while, the nausea was a distraction.
    Around my right ankle, I had an iron claw which was attached to a claw clasped around Sanu’s left ankle. Beside her was Fomba, chained to another man. Person by person, we were hauled on board and added to the growing chain. One captive broke loose before they could clap the iron around his ankle and jumped out into the angry water. He was naked, except for one red bandana around his neck, and I felt sorry to see the man’s head and bandana bobbing in the water. I had hoped that he would get his wish and sink to a quick death. But homelanders working on the deck pelted the poor man with oranges, and other homelanders in the canoes followed the trail of raining fruit. They scooped the man out of the water, smacked him about the head, and sent him into the arms of a giant homelander standing on the ladder outside the ship. The giant carried the man right back onto the deck and held him until his ankle was clasped.
    Trembling in the wind, I feared that I would faint. I tried to steady myself and to keep from falling, because captives who went down on theirhands and knees were beaten until they stood. I tried to calm myself by imagining a mother soothing a hysterical child.
Look about
, I imagined my own mother telling me.
Look about, and do not fear
.
    Homelanders were hauling barrels up onto the deck. One of them fell through a hole in a net, crashed to the deck and burst open, spilling water over our feet. Amid the hauling and the shouting and the clasping of claws around captives, I was able to see a pattern. A toubab in fancy dress and another man were moving along a long line of captives, inspecting them one by one. Once inspected, the captives were sent down into the stinking belly of the ship.
    The toubab was a tall, skinny man with hair the colour of an