Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [106]
In his delirium, Kunta saw flashing glimpses of his Grandma Yaisa lying propped up on one arm on her bed talking to him for the last time, when he was but a small boy; and he thought of old Grandmother Nyo Boto, and the stories she would tell when he was back in the first kafo, about the crocodile who was caught in a trap by the river when the boy came along to set it free. Moaning and babbling, he would claw and kick when the toubob came anywhere near him.
Soon most of the men could no longer walk at all, and toubob had to help them up onto the deck so that the white-haired one could apply his useless salve in the light of day. Every day someone died and was thrown overboard, including a few more of the women and two of the four children—as well as several of the toubob themselves. Many of the surviving toubob were hardly able to drag themselves around any more, and one manned the big canoe’s wheel while standing in a tub that would catch his flux mess.
The nights and the days tumbled into one another until one day Kunta and the few others from below who yet could manage to drag themselves up the hatch steps stared over the rail with dull astonishment at a rolling carpet of gold-colored seaweed floating on the surface of the water as far as they could see. Kunta knew that the water couldn’t continue forever, and now it seemed that the big canoe was about to go over the edge of the world—but he didn’t really care. Deep within himself, he sensed that he was nearing the end; he was unsure only of by what means he was going to die.
Dimly he noted that the great white sheets were dropping, no longer full of wind as they had been. Up among the poles, the toubob were pulling their maze of ropes to move the sheets this way and that, trying to pick up any little breeze. From the toubob down on the deck, they drew up buckets of water and sloshed them against the great cloths. But still the great canoe remained becalmed, and gently it began to roll back and forth upon the swells.
All the toubob were on the edges of their tempers now, the white-haired one even shouting at his knife-scarred mate, who cursed and beat the lesser toubob more than before, and they in turn fought with each other even more than they had before. But there were no further beatings of the shackled people, except on rare occasions, and they began to spend almost all the daylight hours up on deck, and—to Kunta’s amazement—they were given a full pint of water every day.
When they were taken up from the hold one morning, the men saw hundreds of flying fish piled up on the deck. The women sang that the toubob had set lights out on deck the night before to lure them, and they had flown aboard and floundered about in vain trying to escape. That night they were boiled with the maize, and the taste of fresh fish startled Kunta with pleasure. He wolfed the food down, bones and all.
When the stinging yellow powder was sprinkled next against Kunta’s back, the chief toubob applied a thick cloth bandage against his right shoulder. Kunta knew that meant his bone had begun showing through, as was the case with so many other men already, especially the thinner ones, who had the least muscle over their bones. The bandaging made Kunta’s shoulder hurt even more than before. But he hadn’t been back down in the hold for long before the seeping blood made the soaked bandage slip loose. It didn’t matter. Sometimes his mind would dwell on the horrors he had been through, or on his deep loathing of all toubob; but mostly he just lay in