My Name Is Not Angelica Read Free Page A

that the boy had fingers like sticks and sent him down with a ropearound his waist to poke strips of oiled cotton into the crack. After Madi worked for a while the seawater came in more slowly.
    They pulled him in, gave him a sip of rum, a bowl of corn and fresh meat, and sent him down again. His sticklike fingers worked cotton into the rest of the crack. The leak stopped.
    It was dusk by now, and we were sailing along fast when they began to pull him in. One moment he was there, dangling with the rope around his waist, the next moment only half of him was there. Sharks had gotten the rest.
    His death came close to bringing a revolt. We slaves talked of little else, until the sailors went around with whips, guards got out their muskets, and Captain Sorensen warned us that unless we quit talking he would give us water to drink but nothing to eat. He would also throw the leaders of any revolt into the sea.
    The food got worse. The salted meat had green spots on it. The water in the mossy casks had things swimming around. And the ship stank. She was washed out every other day. Slaves were sent below to burn powder and kill the smells, but still the ship stank. Those in the two deepest decks began to die, three or four a day, and were thrown overboard. A school of gray sharks began to follow us.
    Then everything changed. The food got better and there was more of it. One of the sailors told me that Master Sorensen was fattening us up.

    "In less than two weeks," he said, "we will reach the islands. He wants everyone to look healthy."
    I passed the news to the rest of the slaves, thinking that everyone would be happier, now that we were near the end of our journey. It had another effect. They had gotten used to their lives, bad as they were, and feared what would happen after they reached land.
    All that Captain Sorensen had told me about the islands of St Thomas and St. John proved to be true. As we came into the harbor of St. Thomas and I saw the crowd in the streets, as many blacks as whites, gathered around the auction place, flags flying everywhere and bands playing, I remembered everything he had told me.
    It seemed as if I had been there before. Even the slave pen with its rusty iron bars and swarms of black guards swinging whips I had seen many times.
    Only when we were led onto a platform and I looked down into a ring of white faces sweating in the sun did I wonder if the other slaves were right after all. Perhaps these white men gazing up at me with their mouths half-open really were cannibals who ate people.

5

    Captain Sorensen had decided to sell three of us together, Konje, Dondo, and me. Lenta looked grim and unhappy. She still grieved for her son, so she was kept to one side.
    A man rapped his hammer on a stone. He was the auctioneer Captain Sorensen had told me about. "We have three prime slaves of the three hundred slaves
God's Adventure
brought to the island this day," he said. "Here is Konje, chief of the Barato tribe." He put a hand on Konje's shoulder. Konje flinched. "A great breeder of sons and daughters. A magnificent specimen."
    Konje did look magnificent. They had covered him with palm oil. He was naked to the waist, and his muscles rippled in the broiling sun. He towered above the black guards standing against the wall and the man with the hammer.
    The auctioneer said, pointing to me, "Raisha the daughter of a subchief. Comely, strong, mother of many strong, comely children. She also speaks theDanish language. And Dondo, trained as a slave in a chieftain's family, is the perfect household servant."
    He wiped his brow and banged his hammer. He banged it again until the crowd was quiet.
    "These three, the finest Africa has to offer, will be sold as one," he said. "And no bid under two thousand rigsdalers will be considered. What do I hear?"
    The auctioneer heard silence, then whispers among the planters. A man who stood just below me said to a woman wearing a pink dress and a flower in her hair, "What do