A Long Arduous Journey, Prayer and Quest for Freedom: Olaudah Equiano's Dream
Author: Arthur Edgar E. Smith
Category: Arts and Entertainment
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Throughout his enslavement from Africa across the Atlantic on to America and all through the numerous expeditions with his master Pascal,and subsequent masters Olaudah Equiano kept longing and equipping himself to be free one day. Education and enlightenment was thus his constant prayer and quest.
A Captain Doran approached and addressed him as his slave. Equiano hotly contested maintaining that his master, Pascal, could not sell him to him, or to anyone else. "For I have served him many years now, and he has taken all my wages and prize-money, and besides, I have been baptized; and by the laws of the land no man has a right to sell me. This was what I overheard a lawyer telling my master. So I wouldn't entertain any further thoughts of anyone else purchasing my freedom beyond this point."
This argument went on until the captain growing irritated, threatened: "Look will you shut up, for if you don't I have a method on board to make you shut up and behave yourself."
Convinced of his power to execute his threats and reminded of his sufferings in the slave ship Equiano shuddered. He thus left the cabin, filled with resentment and sorrow.
Thus, at the moment that he expected all his toils to end, Equiano found himself being plunged into a new slavery which seemed worst than his previous experiences. Horrors, which always occupied his mind, now rushed on it with tenfold aggravation. He wept very bitterly for some time: and began to think that he must have done something displeasing to the Lord that has made him subject to such sever prolonged suffering.
He reflected with more calmness on his current condition: Trials and disappointments, he now thought are sometimes for one's good, so God might permit them in order to teach wisdom and resignation. These reflections comforted him a bit. He rose at last from the deck with dejection and sorrow marking his countenance. But yet he had mixed feelings of some faint hope for his deliverance.
Soon, as his new master was going ashore, he called him to talk to him in confidence. He implored him to behave well, and work diligently on the ship. For it is his diligence, he emphasized, that would promote him in life.
He asked if he could swim, but Equiano replied that he couldn't. Then he ordered him to go under the deck, whilst being closely observed.
The ship got sailing and soon arrived at the Mother Bank, Portsmouth; where she waited a few days for some of the West Indian convoy. While here Equiano tried every means he could devise for his shipmates to get him a boat from ashore. A sailor on board thus took a guinea from him under the pretext of getting him a boat; and kept promising him every hour that it was on its way. Equiano watched long enough but all was in vain. He saw neither the boat nor his guinea again. And the worst of it all, as he realized later to his utmost dismay, the fellow had been informing on him all the while to the mates, of his intention to flee.
The next morning, their ship set sail depriving him of receiving the promised relief from his friends. Tumultuous emotions of hopelessness agitated his soul as their convoy sailed off with Equiano a totally hopeless and dejected prisoner on board.
The turbulence of his emotions however subsided as he reconciled himself to the belief that one's fate could not be overturned. The convoy sailed on without any accident, with a pleasant gale and smooth sea, for six weeks, till February, when they ran down another vessel of the convoy, and she instantly went down and was engulfed in the dark depths of the ocean. The convoy was immediately thrown into great confusion. On the 13th of February 1763, from the mast-head, they saw their destined island Montserrat.
At the sight of this land of bondage, a fresh horror ran through all Equiano's weakened frame chilling him to the heart. His history of slavery now rose in dreadful review to his mind, displaying nothing but misery, stripes, and chains. In the depth of his grief, he called upon God's thunder to strike him, rather than permit him to remain a slave being sold from lord to lord. In this state of mind their ship anchored, and soon after discharged her cargo. He was made to help to unload and load the ship. To compound his distress two of the sailors robbed him of all his money, and ran away.
Towards the middle of May, 1763 Equiano was sunk in depression , all the time believing that Fate's blackest clouds were gathering over his head, and expecting that upon their bursting would mix him with the dead and when the ship on which he was engaged was about to sail for England, it was then Captain Doran sent for him ashore.
Equiano was frightened as to what was going to befall him now. But then Doran's messenger intimated him that his fate has been determined. With fluttering steps and trembling heart Equiano came and found with the captain one Mr. Robert King, a Quaker, and the first merchant there. The captain then told him that his former master, Pascal, had sent him there to be sold; but with an expressed desire for him to get Equiano the best master possible, as he told him he was a very deserving boy.
Doran then confirmed that he himself would endorse Pascal's approval of Equiano's conduct. If he were to stay in the West Indies, he went on, he would have been glad to keep him for himself; but just that he could not venture to take him to London, fearing that if he should take him along with him there, he would desert him. Upon hearing this, Equiano burst out crying, and pleading to be taken to England with him. The Captain calmed him down, assuring him that he had secured him the very best master in the whole island, with whom he should be as content as if he were in England: " It is for that reason that I chose to let him have you, he is quite a good fellow. If otherwise I could have sold you for a great deal more money than what he offered."
"I agree with all what you have said about the young man here. I have heard much good reports about him and seeing him now I have no doubt that he is the good man assured me of. Let me go on to assure you and the young man here Olaudah Equiano that he would be taken good care off even beyond his last master's wish. Iive at Philadelphia. I am moving there with him now. There I will put him in school, and then engage him as a clerk as I had learnt that Equiano understood some of the rules of arithmetic."
This conversation relieved Equiano's mind a little. He thus left them considerably at ease than before he came to them.
Equiano took leave of all his shipmates the next day as the ship sailed off. He was at the waterside looking at her with a very wishful and aching heart following her with his eyes drowning in tears until she was totally out of sight. He was so much weighed down with grief that he could not hold up his head for many months. His grief was so intense that if it were not for his new master's kindness to him he believed he should have died.
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Keywords: olaudah equiano, prayer, long quest, education, sailing, slavery, searching for freedom, masters, sufferings
View Count: 711
Date Submitted: 6/2/2008
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