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Rough Passage to London(134)

By:Robin Lloyd


“What was his name?” Morgan whispered.”

“In the village they called him Enitan,” the man replied. “I was told that in the Yoruba dialect that means a person with an important story.”

Morgan sat transfixed as the tale unraveled. Reverend Wall looked up at one of the glass skylights above him, and then turned his glance back to the captain’s face.

“Please continue, Reverend. I am most interested in your story.”

The man clasped his hands together and placed them on his lap.

“I went over to the woman named Adeola and attempted to talk with her, but she only spoke her African dialect mixed with the Jamaican patois and I couldn’t understand exactly what she said. All I could decipher was that they were in a shipwreck and had escaped from a slave ship. They lived on some uninhabited sandy islands off the eastern end of Jamaica until they built a raft from the wreckage and paddled their way to the big island. They walked up into the mountains and wound their way up the footpaths until they came to where they are now. She pointed to the blind man and indicated that at that time he could still see, and she pointed to her own eyes, which were partially closed. It was clear to me they had been stricken with some kind of eye disease, Captain. Strangely enough, she remembered the name of the ship, something like the Karen or Charon.”

At that point, Morgan jumped to attention.

“The Charon! When did this shipwreck occur?”

“As I said, the village elder told me it was many years before emancipation, possibly ten to fifteen years before I arrived in Jamaica.”

“What was the blind man’s Christian name?” Morgan asked breathlessly.

The Baptist minister smiled. “I do not know, but your reaction was exactly the same as the one I received when I first told this story to a Royal Navy captain. He was there visiting Jamaica as part of the West Africa Squadron. When he heard the ship’s name he wanted to go to that village immediately. He said the blind man was a criminal, a slave trafficker, and needed to be arrested.”

“Did you tell him where the man was?” Morgan asked with a note of urgency in his voice.

The minister shook his head.

“I was about to reveal the location of the village when I looked into this man’s face and suddenly felt like I should not. He had a reckless look, dare I say it, a ruthless look, and the simple fact was I could not accept his assertion that the blind man had ever been a slaver. He seemed too gentle a man, and he was clearly familiar with Scripture. So may God forgive me, I lied, and told him I had put the blind man on a trading schooner leaving for America.”

Morgan now suspected he knew the reason why Lord Nanvers had sent Edgars to Lyme to inquire about Abraham all those many years ago. Hope rose up deep inside of him like a sharp gust of wind filling a sail.

“Go on, please tell me more. Did you ever see this blind man again?”

“Years later, I went back to that same village. This was during the period before 1838 when slaves were desperate. They had been freed, but England had allowed a new form of slavery even worse than the old system. We abolitionists campaigned hard to have this fiction of apprenticeship repealed. Planters flogged slaves at random and put women on the treadmill, all in a desperate move to keep the slaves working. Scores of runaway slaves were leaving the plantations and seeking refuge in the caves and the forested hillsides of Cockpit Country. I saw him again then. He was still blind, but working in the fields. He seemed to understand many things about farming and how to till the land even though he was blind. He had several children then. His wife was pregnant with another. I asked him again if he remembered anything more about the past, but he just shook his head.”

Morgan looked perplexed.

“Is the man still there?”

“I believe so,” he replied. “And that is the reason why I am here telling you this story.”

“Please go on,” Morgan said.

“Before I left just a few months ago, I went back to that village and to my surprise I learned from one of the village elders that the blind man had recovered some parts of his memory. I rushed over to talk to him. I asked him what his Christian name was. He didn’t respond, but he began to tell me about the harrowing voyage that had brought him to Jamaica so many years ago. He even remembered the year, 1816. It was an extraordinary story. He was young and had only been to sea for one year. He told me how he had been shanghaied by slavers, English slavers, to my shame, and that his entire ship had been infected by an eye disease.”

Morgan was mesmerized at the story that was unfolding.

“We walked down to one of the nearby waterfalls not too far from the Quick Step Trail. It was familiar to him because he walked without fear, using a cane to make his way along the footpath. Several of the village boys followed along behind. It was lucky they did too. I have never forgotten that walk because he suddenly stopped, and whispered for me to stop as well. He talked to one of the boys in patois and pointed with his cane. I still hadn’t seen anything. A brownish mottled snake about eight feet long slithered out onto the path, lifting its arrow-shaped head up as if to strike us. I had seen them before. It was a fer-de-lance, which I knew was deadly. The boys had picked up rocks and started throwing them at the snake. One of them produced a machete from the cane fields and he eventually cut its head off.”