When the storm subsided and the ship settled, we fell into a deep sleep. Our spirits wandered other realms, discovering lifeforms we’d never known and dancing with loved ones we thought we’d never see again. They told us that death was only a fleeting moment, that there was no pain at all. They said that in the blinking of an eye, they’d arrived in another time and place. They told us not to fear. Whatever we endured couldn’t last forever. They told us that when we died, we’d see God and understand everything.

We awakened to shouts and curses. It was time to eat. Many of our stomachs were too upset for food. Others didn’t want it. They had decided not to swallow another morsel of the captor’s mush. They were going to the land of endless day. Now we were three fewer than before. Their bodies went overboard.

Several recalled the story of the first time our people were captured and taken away. It was centuries before pale people arrived. The others were brown, some as dark as us, with shiny, straight, black hair. They, too, raided our villages and plundered our culture. They took our people northward, across the great Sahara, into a land always desperate for rain. The story seemed too fantastic to be true. According to legend, these invaders slaughtered our people simply for amusement. Before they were defeated, they had taken more than nine million souls. The story was too big for our imagination. We did not believe it. The storytellers said, “This is pure truth!” They begged us to hear and to understand why others wanted our strengths, our gifts. We dismissed them as overzealous lovers of ourselves, as artists committed to the art of speech. Then, on ships, we wept as storytellers’ voices echoed in our consciousness. We were living again the tale we’d thought impossible.

The evening and the morning were the one hundred and sixth day.

* * *

Talking practically ceased. Shouts of anger and protest dwindled to mere whispers. We felt overwhelmed and belittled. A few grunted and beat planks but, for the most part, we closed our mouths and shivered with shame. We couldn’t believe we’d let ourselves be captured by those with half our might. We were warriors! We were people of extraordinary achievements. Men and women of triumphant courage. Now we realized that, amidst those great accomplishments, we had missed something critical, something that would’ve saved us.

A Wolof man told us what it was. Earlier in the journey, we had wasted considerable time arguing. Whether from stepping on another’s fingers on the way to dancing or disagreeing about the course we should take to overthrow the ship or fussing about whether it would be correct to spill Frank’s blood or haggling over whether to set the ship ablaze and destroy ourselves in the process, tempers flared and our character diminished. We knew better. We’d been taught that character is never situational. So, again, we’d failed our own teaching. We unleashed anger upon one another because there was no one else to bear it. And each time we fell below our standard, the Wolof man lifted his hands, spread his fingers apart, and shook his head sadly. He never said a word. Most didn’t notice. Not until mid-journey, when, after a fierce encounter between two men of once-warring tribes, he screamed so loudly it frightened us. Still he didn’t speak. He lifted his hands and spread his fingers wide. Angry, bulbous eyes forced our attention. Then, slowly, he brought the fingers together until they melded into a tight fist. We understood. They had captured us because we had been divided. That was our lesson.