The spilling of captors’ blood fueled our efforts. Those assigned to weapons found them and distributed guns, machetes, and sticks with which we destroyed one pale crewman after another. When the lad with the key fell, an enemy confiscated it, leaving half our men bound. Yet, even in that state, we fought. Some wrapped their chains around enemy necks and pulled until air ceased flowing. A few slammed steel shackles against pale foreheads. All shouted names of gods and ancestors whose help we so desperately needed. Allah, won’t you come? Yemaya, give us strength! Baba Kwesi, where are you? Ogun, show your mighty power! Shango, set your people free! For a moment, a precious fleeting moment, we were delivered.

Then more pale faces appeared. They seemed to materialize from the very floor of the ship. They pointed guns at our heads and hearts. The battle was over. The deck of the ship was covered with bodies of our comrades, some only half dead. The warrior lay among them, pride beaming from his eyes. We, the living, were hurried belowdecks and chained once again.

With a strap called a cat-o’-nine-tails, we were beaten for our insurgence. Blood covered our backs. Humiliation covered our spirits. When angry captors left, silence lingered. We didn’t look at one another or say a word. We didn’t hum, we didn’t moan. We didn’t grunt, we didn’t shout. We didn’t even move. We simply lay there, staring at planks above and beside us, promising that, one day, we’d try again.

In the weeks that followed, we thought of other ways to resist. Starvation was the common choice. Many simply clamped their mouths shut. Crewmen used an instrument called a “speculum” to pry them open and shove food down their throats as if they were insubordinate beasts of the field. They often gagged and gave it back. Sometimes they lost their lives. Other times, they simply starved.

Just as before, some decided to die. We’d heard from our sages of the power of the mind over the body. It was an issue of consciousness, they’d said, of one’s mastery of the Will. So, one or two simply closed their eyes and willingly took Death’s hand. It was a kind of melancholy of the soul, a choice to exit the flesh and dwell forever in the spirit. Only the most mature among us could do it. The rest had not reached that level of initiation. Captors frowned at perfectly healthy bodies suddenly devoid of life. They didn’t know what we knew. They didn’t know who we were.

Our people had studied such things for centuries. Priests and sages spent years mastering universal knowledge, learning the secrets of the cosmos. Day and night they searched to understand the relationship between the earth and the moon, the sun and the human heart. They kept records of the coming and going of seasons that we might plant with precision and harvest with abundance. They taught the importance of living in harmony with the earth’s rhythm. Pregnancies were monitored by the rotations of the moon, deliveries made easier with the assistance of the earth’s pull. We caught rain from our thatched rooftops and thus were rarely desperate for drinking water. Some discovered ways to subject their will to the will of God. They were the ones who died without captors’ assistance. They stepped into the everlasting simply because they chose to.