The warden scowl at me, keep shuffling him papers. ‘Ever since you took up arms against your master, you lost the right to have a place on this island. A place where you were tended and cared for. A home, where you belonged. Now you belong nowhere. Belong to no one. Isn’t that what you Negroes wanted? Freedom to choose, to come and go as you please?’

Why the warden telling me this? Haven’t I already done me time?

Transportation is what happen to slaves when they talk back too many times, refuse to work, run away, get caught. Get branded on them cheeks, sent to one of the other islands. If backra not able to break them, they sent cross the seas to one of the big cotton farms up north, where backra work them till they dead.

‘Leave? And go where, sir?’ I praying is not to one of them cotton farms.

‘You are to be put on the next packet ship heading north. One sails in two weeks time. Then you will be transferred to another ship and transported to our newest colony. The colony of New South Wales,’ him say with pride. Then he push back him chair, straighten him jacket, the sunlight reflecting off him shiny buttons, and say, ‘May God rest your soul. If the sea monsters don’t get you, then the natives will,’ before him stamp the papers in front of him with a big bang.

It make no sense. I already serve time in the workhouse breaking rock. Spend three years wondering when the soldiers going come marching down the stone path. Drag me out the workhouse to the back of the courthouse, where backra do the hanging. In that moment, the words of my beloved leader Sam Sharpe come back to me.

‘Knowledge is power. It gives you choices. Choices about what to do, how to do it. Without the power of knowledge, you are just grovelling around in the dirt.’

So I bow me head, buck up me courage and ask the warden.

‘Why, sir? Why me must do this transportation business?’

The warden look at me like I am a fool.

‘It is not my place to question the wishes of the governor. I don’t make the rules. I just follow them. If I had my way, I would have had you executed.’

Just like the way backra killed all the leaders in the rebellion and many, many other slaves.

‘Over four hundred,’ the watchman tell me when him dragging me back to the cells.