no remedy , or, more loosely, there was no option , or there was no other way .
The words come to us from Cerreño’s testimony and might only be conveying the fatalism often associated with Catholicism, heightened, in this case, by a harrowing ordeal. But Islam, too, has its fatalistic dimension. Like Christianity, it wrestles with the idea of free will, trying to understand the role that human action plays in a universe where a sovereign God determines all things.
Three weeks had passed since the revolt, restoring to the West Africans what their forced voyage across the Atlantic and America had nearly taken from them: their sense of time as the ordering of meaningful activity. For over a year, from one Ramadan to another, they had fought off their powerlessness by counting the months of the Islamic calendar, fulfilling, by sheer force of intellect and resolve, the Qur’an’s promise of deliverance, when God would intervene in history: “Therein come down the Angels.” They had risen up and seized the ship. But now the new moon of Eid had passed, and though life was hardly normal, another cycle had started.
Having taken control of their destiny, the rebels now found themselves lost in a strange sea on a meandering ship with dwindling supplies, perhaps trying to reconcile their belief that history was guided by some unknowable combination of free will and divine providence with the fear that they were drifting aimlessly, that the power to control the circumstances of their lives was again slipping out of their hands.
January nights in the South Pacific near the coast of Peru and Chile are extremely clear. The new masters of the Tryal would have been sailing under a firmament of stars and a low summer moon, settling on the idea that Aranda had to die immediately for them to keep the power they had so audaciously seized. As Mori told Cerreño, there was “no other way.”
* * *
Just after dawn, Mori ordered Matunqui and Liché to bring Aranda on deck. They entered the forecastle, where Aranda had been confined since the uprising, with their knives drawn. Aranda was asleep in his bunk. His executioners raised their weapons and brought them down into the slaver’s chest. Aranda’s clerk Lorenzo Bargas was in the adjoining berth. Opening his eyes to see black arms and slashing daggers and feeling Aranda’s warm blood spray his face, he threw himself out a porthole into the sea to drown.
Aranda was dragged on deck half dead and the women again began to sing a dirge urging the men to finish the deed. Matunqui and Liché tied Aranda’s hands behind his back and, lifting his body by his head and legs, threw him into the sea. The rebels then did the same to Aranda’s brother-in-law, Francisco Maza, and his other two clerks and, perhaps looking to save water and food, a number of sailors who were wounded during the uprising. The Tryal ’s boatswain , Juan Robles, was a strong swimmer and he kept himself the longest above the waves, saying acts of contrition that could be heard on the deck of the ship as he drifted away, his last faint words begging Benito Cerreño to sponsor a mass in the name of Our Lady of Succor to save his soul.
* * *
When the killing ended, Mori turned to Cerreño and said, “All is done.” He then threatened to kill the rest of the prisoners if the captain continued to stall in delivering the West Africans to Senegal.
Mori repeated the threat for the next two days. On the third day, he, Babo, and Atufal approached Cerreño and proposed signing “a paper.” The West Africans had drawn up what in essence was a contract, perhaps in Arabic, whereby Cerreño would take them home and they, in exchange, would return the ship and its cargo once they reached their destination. “Even though they were raw and from Africa,” Cerreño later said, “they knew how to write in their language.” The three men signed the document, and with that, Cerreño testified, the West Africans
The words come to us from Cerreño’s testimony and might only be conveying the fatalism often associated with Catholicism, heightened, in this case, by a harrowing ordeal. But Islam, too, has its fatalistic dimension. Like Christianity, it wrestles with the idea of free will, trying to understand the role that human action plays in a universe where a sovereign God determines all things.
Three weeks had passed since the revolt, restoring to the West Africans what their forced voyage across the Atlantic and America had nearly taken from them: their sense of time as the ordering of meaningful activity. For over a year, from one Ramadan to another, they had fought off their powerlessness by counting the months of the Islamic calendar, fulfilling, by sheer force of intellect and resolve, the Qur’an’s promise of deliverance, when God would intervene in history: “Therein come down the Angels.” They had risen up and seized the ship. But now the new moon of Eid had passed, and though life was hardly normal, another cycle had started.
Having taken control of their destiny, the rebels now found themselves lost in a strange sea on a meandering ship with dwindling supplies, perhaps trying to reconcile their belief that history was guided by some unknowable combination of free will and divine providence with the fear that they were drifting aimlessly, that the power to control the circumstances of their lives was again slipping out of their hands.
January nights in the South Pacific near the coast of Peru and Chile are extremely clear. The new masters of the Tryal would have been sailing under a firmament of stars and a low summer moon, settling on the idea that Aranda had to die immediately for them to keep the power they had so audaciously seized. As Mori told Cerreño, there was “no other way.”
* * *
Just after dawn, Mori ordered Matunqui and Liché to bring Aranda on deck. They entered the forecastle, where Aranda had been confined since the uprising, with their knives drawn. Aranda was asleep in his bunk. His executioners raised their weapons and brought them down into the slaver’s chest. Aranda’s clerk Lorenzo Bargas was in the adjoining berth. Opening his eyes to see black arms and slashing daggers and feeling Aranda’s warm blood spray his face, he threw himself out a porthole into the sea to drown.
Aranda was dragged on deck half dead and the women again began to sing a dirge urging the men to finish the deed. Matunqui and Liché tied Aranda’s hands behind his back and, lifting his body by his head and legs, threw him into the sea. The rebels then did the same to Aranda’s brother-in-law, Francisco Maza, and his other two clerks and, perhaps looking to save water and food, a number of sailors who were wounded during the uprising. The Tryal ’s boatswain , Juan Robles, was a strong swimmer and he kept himself the longest above the waves, saying acts of contrition that could be heard on the deck of the ship as he drifted away, his last faint words begging Benito Cerreño to sponsor a mass in the name of Our Lady of Succor to save his soul.
* * *
When the killing ended, Mori turned to Cerreño and said, “All is done.” He then threatened to kill the rest of the prisoners if the captain continued to stall in delivering the West Africans to Senegal.
Mori repeated the threat for the next two days. On the third day, he, Babo, and Atufal approached Cerreño and proposed signing “a paper.” The West Africans had drawn up what in essence was a contract, perhaps in Arabic, whereby Cerreño would take them home and they, in exchange, would return the ship and its cargo once they reached their destination. “Even though they were raw and from Africa,” Cerreño later said, “they knew how to write in their language.” The three men signed the document, and with that, Cerreño testified, the West Africans
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