Captured

Captured; Entry Four

August 19th, 1703

Hell, is the only way to describe this. For four days we've been locked in darkness. The only exception being when we were dragged across the canoe house's planks to the top deck. A boy I recognized sat against a colossal mast, chained to the floor, feebly tapping a patterned drum. The pale-faces demanded us to do things in a language I had never encountered before. Strands lashed on my back causing searing pain - again and again. So I moved. From side to side, jumping feebly from foot to foot. If this was a form of exercise it would be inevitable that by the end of the journey we would all have become useless bundles of flesh and bone. Men waved their hands towards us and the next thing I knew I had buckled and was rolling on the floor in agony. Water, saltwater, had been thrown into my wounds and it stung like being branded with a flaming coal. The humiliation was the most awful thing I had felt in my lifetime, that wasn't physical pain.

We'd been dragged down below yet again and chained by our wrists, ankles and necks to each other. Beneath me the planks were wet, slimy and smeared with waste that smelled so pungent that my head was spinning around faster than the 'cat's tails' moved. All we'd been given to scoff was bland, tasteless, revolting mush that must have been boiled for days before serving. I had to force it down my throat with several massively noisy swallows for each mouthful. And then wait until it surged back up and spilled across my face. Another more than unpleasant stench to add to the collection that swamped the air. Every now and then the canoe house rocks uncontrollably triggering groans, vomiting and frightened screams. With people pressed to my sides the temperature was soaring and beads of sweat trickled down my forehead and my neck. Constant shouts of the words 'monkey' and 'negro' were yelled in my ears along with more strings of sounds that didn't make a hint of sense. It was as if now I was under the pale-face's control I had lost my whole identity.

Elders from our village had been carried out, limp, eyes pressed shut and mouths hanging open like fishes'. People were dying in here under their care, good and honest people. I had screamed in rage for hours and hours. No one came to my aid. And I understood that this was the way my life was going to be now. And yet again, the cloud of hopelessness covered my life.