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you white folks do. Why shouldn’t I care if you drown or are cut to pieces by a propeller?”
    Emotion flooded Lester’s face. “I’m sorry. I guess I’ve just had my brain filled with the wrong ideas. Please forgive me … and thank you for saving my life.”
    When the ship had been on the Atlantic for six days, two of the slaves were feverish and unable to work. Thomas Green called for the captain to look at the slaves and see if he knew what was ailing them.
    It took Kimball only minutes to pronounce that the slaves had dysentery. He explained that there was no treatment for it. All they could do was give them plenty of water and hope they lived through it. When Green brought up that they were carrying a limited supply of water, Kimball told him he should still give them plenty. He would put in at Bermuda and replenish the water supply.
    By the seventh day, three more slaves had come down with the sickness, including Robert and Nannie.
    By the ninth day, some twenty-one slaves were down with dysentery and the water supply was getting seriously low.
    The next day, three slaves died and were buried at sea. On the eleventh day, Robert and Nannie were at the point of death. Benjamin labored over them to relieve their suffering and gave them his meager share of water, trying to keep them alive until they reached Bermuda.
    As he stood between their cots, he said, “Mother … Father … you would not have this sickness if we had not been forced at gunpoint to board this ship. If we could live free in Transvaal, as we wanted, you would not be lying here at the point of death. Slavery is a wicked and vile thing. If there
is
a God that lives above the sky and cares about people here on earth, why does He allow this?”
    Nannie looked up at him with dull eyes and said weakly, “Please, my son … do not become bitter. It will only dry up your heart and take away the goodness in you. Some questions cannot be answered. Just go on being the good son you have always been since you were born to us.”
    “Yes,” said Robert, hardly able to speak. “If we do not live to see America, please remain our kind and generous Benjamin.”
    That day, more slaves died, and the water supply was now depleted.
    On the thirteenth day, Nannie died, and Benjamin wept inconsolably. His father was so sick that he was unaware when Nannie’s body was carried out of the room. Neither did he know how Benjamin wept when he saw his mother dropped into the ocean.
    The next day, Robert died only moments before the Bermuda islands came into view. Benjamin’s heart felt like stone as he watched his father’s body sink into the sea just ten miles from Bermuda’s main island.
    Thomas Green brought two doctors aboard to examine his slaves. When the doctors had completed their examinations, theytold Green there were one or two slaves who probably would die yet, but now that he had plenty of water, the others would have a good chance of pulling through.
    As the ship steamed away from Bermuda and headed southwest toward South Carolina—still eight hundred miles away—Benjamin and a small group of young slaves sat on the deck and discussed their future in America.
    A slave named Wasson told the group he had learned from one of the ship’s crew that most of the rice and cotton plantation owners treated their slaves well, and they fed, clothed, and housed them decently. But there were also those who beat their slaves for various reasons, fed them poorly, and made them live like animals in cheap and run-down quarters.
    Benjamin ran his gaze over the faces of his fellow Africans and said, “I … I believe that if there is a God up there above the sky, someday this loathsome treatment of human beings will surely be brought to an end.”

T HE WINTER OF 1855 was a mild one in South Carolina, and by the second week of March, spring had come with its balmy days and summery nights.
    On the Finn Colvin plantation, a few miles inland from Charleston, the