The Passage to America........Nero's Story...............Part 2.......LSR

Each chain of men was herded into a pen. Here we were finally allowed to sit. The walk to the shore had never seemed a long way before, often my brothers and I had made the trip to fish for our food, but today with a shortened pace and being chained to others it had seemed like 100 miles.

We sat for a short time, watching other chains of men emerge from the trees and join us on the sand. Eventually all the pens were full. There were men from many tribes, some that I knew and others that I had never encountered before. These unknown men looked tired; they had had a far longer walk to get here. We slept in the pens that night, guarded by the men with their shouting sticks. The tribe in the pen next to mine frightened me, they had the filed, pointed teeth of a cannibal tribe, these were the men that our father had warned us to stay away from.

I awoke the next morning from a fitful sleep. My body was aching from the shackles around my ankles, wrists and neck and the damage I had sustained trying to free myself. The ships had sailed closer to the shore overnight and there were many, many pale men standing around us. My stomach was screaming with hunger, I was thirsty and my mouth tasted sour.

Chain by chain we were herded aboard the ships. I had never stood this high above the water before, it felt like I must surely fall and be drowned. If only I had realised back then what a sweet release death would have been I would have certainly tried to jump. My spirits lifted a little, I knew how to swim, perhaps I might survive the fall to the water and be able to swim ashore. My light heartedness was not to last though, the doors to the hold were opened and we were pushed roughly below deck.

The hold was dark, it smelt unclean and damp. It was like descending into a filthy cavern. Rows of wide slatted shelves stood side by side in the darkness, it took me a moment to realise that these were to be our beds. One by one we were released from the chain that had held us together for many hours. We were pushed towards the shelves and shouted at. I did not understand immediately what the men wanted me to do but they grabbed my wrists and ankles and threw me onto the middle shelf. The shackles on my ankles were fixed to the uprights of the shelving, now there was no hope of jumping overboard and swimming back to my homeland.

The loading took hours. Dozens of men packed into a tiny space, stacked one on top of the other and chained to their beds. By nightfall it was finished, time to sail across the seas to lands unknown. To me the horizon had always been the end, the end of my world and all that existed. I had never imagined that there could be anything further than I could see.

The silence in the hold was almost unreal, broken only by the terrified whimpers of women and children. I had thought initially that the whole cargo was made up of men and boys of my age, but I was wrong. As the ship lurched the sounds changed, the sharp sound of people retching as the seasickness set in replaced the gentle whimpers of before. Quickly the air grew foul, the acrid reek of vomit and excrement filled the air, this only served to increase the sickness, it was a never ending circle of despair.



© Val Ruscoe 2004

Part 1: http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm376739.html

Part 3: http://www.unsolvedmysteries.com/usm376746.html

To Be Continued....

Show all stories by   Author:  46527 ( Click here )