Chapter Eight
Landfall
“Captain!”
I jerked up slightly into a half rise at the urgency in the voice rousing me awake.
“Captain you’re gonna want to see this!” Flynn said and I quickly got up and came to his side.
The first thing I saw were the clouds. It seemed as if the clouds had come down to the surface of the sea and formed a misty veil of glowing effervescence. The whales ahead of us abruptly dived and disappeared from view. They didn’t resurface.
In a way I found myself missing them. They had been in a way a source of encouragement sent by God and now that they were gone I was left alone with my faith once again to fill in the gaps of my courage.
“I Am is still here. I’ve gone on before you and the way is clear.”
The words from within felt like a promise and they helped build up my courage once more to face the unknowns of this world and be confident that I could weather through them with God as my strength. I gripped a hold of the wheel and Flynn relinquished it to me.
“Unlock the handguns and give everybody one. Give one shotgun to Jim and keep the other for yourself. You and Ortega will remain on board the ship.”
Flynn eyed me speculatively, “Determined to go ashore then, are you, upon this strange coast that I feel lies ahead of us?”
“It’s why we came Flynn. Hate to break it to you, but there might not be any treasure to be collected while we’re out this time.”
Flynn laughed, “Who needs money when you have adventure like this! Besides I knew it was a one-way trip when I signed on to this little venture.”
I patted him on the back as he turned to leave. I had been blessed with a singularly great bunch of individuals to make up my crew. I couldn’t have asked for better people.
I kept the Celestia’s Prize headed for the glowing fog bank ahead. The fog didn’t glow as much as the overhead canopy, but it obscured whatever lay beyond it. Time passed by as we blindly headed forward toward whatever destiny God had put in place for us.
Christina stepped into the wheelhouse and I glanced down to the gun on her hip. I smiled warmly at her as I asked, “Flynn show you how to use that?”
“Jim showed me.” She said sounding nervous about something.
“What is it Christina?” I asked, as the fog started to dust over the ship’s surface and visibility became zero.
“I’m to go ashore then with the rest?”
“Yes.”
“Why? I don’t know anything about fighting or much of anything really!”
I patted her shoulder in a fatherly gesture, “It’s a good time for you to start learning. You’re one of us now Christina. I know you’re scared and I know you doubt your capabilities, but you’re wrong to do so Christina. You are a strong young woman and I wouldn’t be having you come along with us if I didn’t think you were up to it.”
She straightened under the weight of my hand slightly and I didn’t say anything more for a while.
Lost in the fog the Celestia’s Prize forged onward.
I was proud of my ship. All the abuse it had taken and yet it was still together in one roughed up piece giving me all it had. A man couldn’t ask for more from his boat. ‘Graceful degradation’ I believe was the terminology for it.
Graceful degradation was the term used to describe how much damage and loss of operating systems a fighter jet could suffer and still remain in the air and be operable. The Celestia’s Prize wasn’t a forty million dollar fighter jet, but she was still floating and under power ready for the next adventure.
The fog was starting to break up and I prepared myself for the view of an island crowned with an imperial city populated by Atlantean giants. With baited breath we pulled free of the last of the fog and the island was revealed.
There was no grand imperial city dominating the mainland. All I saw was a lushly forested island that had crop fields here and there. Some deep part of me relaxed at the sighting of no ancient city of advanced technology, but I re-tensed at what I thought for sure to be the signs of agriculture upon the land.
The Southern treasure fleet really had made it here and set up a colony. Was I about to be made over into a slave?
Time would tell on that one. I did know one thing. If white plantation owners were still enslaving people of my color then I was going to do something about it. What that would be was still a mystery, but God had brought me here for a purpose and if He wanted it done then it would be done.
It appeared to be a large island, but not the island continent of ancient fables. Perhaps it had broken up into smaller pieces when it had fallen through from the world above.
Maybe it wasn’t Atlantis at all, but the lone volcano spout lifting above the tall forests of the island seemed to testify to the fact that this was the remnant of the landmass that had been Atlantis at one time.
A harbor became prominent as I picked out the outlines of ships, houses, and even more evidence of cultivation. I wondered again curiously for the hundredth time as to why the whales had left us and hadn’t escorted us into port.
It took us over an hour for the details to start standing out to us and when they did it became apparent that we had been noticed as well. The ships in the harbor were what one could expect of the great sailing era of the seventeen hundreds and a little later.
I saw no ironclad battleships among the moored vessels. There had been several to make the voyage with the Southern fleet, but in retrospection I reasoned that they had probably rusted out long since. Even the wooden ships at anchor looked of a more recent construction than a hold over remnant from the Civil War era.
It had been roughly 150 years since these people had come here, but technology had seemed to stand still and didn’t appear to have progressed any. That was strange I thought to myself. Had all of Atlantis’s vast technology been destroyed along with everything else in the great flood?
It would seem so, at least, from outward appearances. I had half expected to have alien looking gunships hovering in the air all around us as we were threatened with being blown apart by death rays.
While I was glad that wasn’t the case I was surprised. Had these plantation owners really just been growing crops all this time?
They didn’t even have a market to sell produce to!
Or did they?
There were a lot of questions to be answered.
I could see people lining the docks in the distance. As we got closer I saw something in the water beside one of the ships at anchor. It was a whale and it was dead.
There were people up and down the length of the whale cutting it up and harvesting the carcass for meat and blubber. I looked around at the other ships at anchor. Each ship had a figurehead ornament of a whale tusk mounted to its prow.
I wasn’t opposed to the practice of whaling, but there seemed something off with this setup. All these ships were whaling ships. What need could there be for so many whaling vessels?
Why kill whales who appeared to not have it out for humans, but instead protected them?
I was starting to get uneasy about my decision to make a bold approach into the harbor. Maybe we should have just tried to slip ashore unnoticed somewhere and test the waters first.
Oh well, we were committed now. It was up to God to deliver us if I had made a mistake, as I even now feared that I had.
Matt looked along the dock and those gathered upon it in shock, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing! Eli I didn’t expect this!”
“Me neither.” I said grimly, as I felt my own shock at what the gathered crowd of spectators along the docks was revealing.
Irony couldn’t come close to describing the current of events that must’ve occurred in this colony at some point in the past.
“Maybe you should stay on board Matt.” I said, as I continued to look at the perplexing makeup of the crowd.
Matt shook his head stubbornly, “No, I’m going. You were willing to risk slavery coming on this quest and now it would seem that I must as well attempt a similar fate.”
I started to speak again, but Matt patted my shoulder and I remained silent.
I watched as the white slaves parted away from the dock to give way to their black masters dressed in the finery of plantation owners. It was an odd sight to behold and not a good one.
Slavery had been wrong the first time it had been implemented and to see things reversed wasn’t empowering to me, but rather it was one of the saddest sights I had ever seen. Instead of abolishing the yoke that people of my ethnic background had been burdened with they had continued it on in a spirit of petty vengeance against their former Masters, who they had made their slaves.
Perhaps vengeance could have initially been understandable, even excusable, but not now. Not a hundred and fifty years later.
The slaves I saw, which bore evident signs of abuse had nothing in common with the sins of their plantation owner ancestors of the old South. These white slaves were hopelessly caught up in a cycle of abuse and belittlement even as my ancestors had been.
There was nothing deserved or justified by the enslavement of these people for something their ancestors had done worthy of such a judgment. If anything, the reversal of roles in the sunken world was one of the strongest arguments ever to attest to the equality of all mankind regardless of skin color and ethnicity, because the same atrocities could be perpetrated equally measured by all colors of people against each other.
I fought against the overwhelming urge to just turn the ship around and leave this island that bore evidence of man’s fallen nature and petty hatreds of the past, but I couldn’t. What if the sixteenth president of the United States had decided not to push forward, not only with a costly Civil War, but also with an Emancipation Proclamation for a group of people that weren’t of his own skin color?
Did I in turn have any more right than Abraham Lincoln to turn away from the suffering of his fellow mankind, whether they be of my color or of a different color?
No, I did not.
I brought the Celestia’s Prize up alongside the dock, as I made the promise to myself to be a holy agent of change to affect the freedom of people under bondage.
“Shut her off Ortega. You and Flynn are staying on board. Don’t let anybody else on board!” I said briefly into the ship’s COM system.
I let go of the wheel and stepped free of the wheelhouse followed by Matt.
“It’s not too late Matt.” I said in an aside, as I fell back to walk beside him, as each of us was the subject of several hundred stares by master and slave alike.
Matt shook his head wryly and said, “This reminds me of the black hat brigades who fought for the North. If they were captured by the South they were shot on the spot instead of being taken prisoner, because of their Negro heritage. I knew this was a one-way ticket when I signed on Eli.”
I nodded in affirmation. Matt was showing me a special kind of courage that I would never have guessed was to be found in the quiet academia professor that always had his nose stuck in a book.
Big Jim stood with feet shoulder width apart as the shotgun in one hand trailed down to point at the deck. Christina stood slightly off to the left and behind him looking scared, but resolute at the same time. She’d back up Jim’s play should he have need of it.
Above all else, no matter what happened to the rest of us, I wanted to see those two free and clear to go on living.
I stepped up onto the dock as the silent crowd moved back from us. Matt stepped up beside me and together we waited.
An older black man stepped out from the crowd. His eyes flickered from Matt to me before he addressed me, “You are from up there?” He asked pointing upward with a finger.
“We are.” I said.
“How did you manage such a thing? It is an impossible journey to get to this place!” He exclaimed.
“And yet you yourselves arrived here at one point in time.” I responded succinctly.
He nodded, “This is true. Tell me why have you come?” He asked subtly.
The truth was always the best answer, but in this case I just wasn’t going to tell him all of it.
“I’m a treasure hunter. No offense meant, but I was hoping to find a sunken Southern fleet with quite a few boxes of gold lying around for the grabbing.”
The man tipped his head back and laughed. After a moment he sobered up and said, “What a disappointment on your part this must be then. Perhaps we can find something of value laying around to make your journey still a profitable one. It would be a tragedy on your part to have to come so far and have nothing to return with to show for all your troubles. I do assume that you can return to the world above if you should wish to?” The man asked craftily.
I smiled and my fear was that the fakeness of my smile would shine through as I responded with, “That’s the plan.”
I didn’t care for the man and I wasn’t about to reveal more to him of our purpose for being here then needed to be said.
His smile in response smacked of equal insincerity and it seemed that we both had come to a mutual agreement to keep our true intentions a secret from the other.
“The Governor wants to meet the first ever recorded visitors to our inner realm.” He infused gregariously.
“Lead on.” I said in response.
He started away from the dock and the crowd parted. I started after him. I glanced back to see Christina quickly step in behind me and Matt as Jim brought up the rear of our little group.
I looked beyond Jim to where Flynn sat cross legged on the deck of the ship staring down the hard eyed stares of the black overseers glaring at him from the dock. Flynn was not a man easily rattled and the shotgun cradled across his lap bore testament to his ability to back his own play should he need to. My concern for my boat was nonexistent with him on guard.
There is a loyalty that runs deeper than skin color or even the blood of a brother. It’s called a friend and I was waking up to the fact that I had more friends than I had realized.
It was a good thing to know, but it was a bad thing to know how much danger I’d put us all in.
“Fascinating!”
I turned my attention back to Matt beside me who went on, “It’s like we stepped into a time capsule!” He said as he glanced all around.
I couldn’t but help agree with him, but I didn’t feel so much wonder at the sight of a bygone era in working order around us. The sight of a white man’s scarred back, who was working a rudimentary water pump helped take any wonder there was at finding this community still rooted in the past away from me.
Matt saw the man’s back and visibly winced. Some of the wonder left his eyes and he glanced around with a new perspective.
“Not a very pretty sight is it?” I said.
Matt glanced at me, “No, it’s not.”
We continued to follow our self-imposed guide up the dusty lane as it picked up in elevation. In the distance I saw mansions arrayed against the hillside in the shadow of the dormant volcano that rose up massively beyond.
Matt spoke, “you haven’t said what you think of all this Eli. I’m curious.”
Off to our right I saw a slave girl shoved hard against an old-fashioned butter churn that she had momentarily stopped operating in order to watch us go by.
“Do you mean do I feel that the role reversal taking place around us is justified?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“No, I do not.”
It was a small statement to express how not okay I was with all this. No one deserved forced servant hood like this. What I couldn’t figure out was why there was the need for slaves at all?
Matt kept his voice low as to not be overheard, “The South attempted to biblically justify their enslavement of the black man. Did you know that Eli?”
“No I did not, but it doesn’t surprise me. I’m curious though, how did they go about that Matt?”
“They believed that black people were descended from Noah’s son Ham and they went off that line about where because of him seeing his father’s nakedness he was relegated to serve his brothers.”
“You’re serious? They got ripping apart people’s lives and using them for their own gain out of that line of the Bible!” I exclaimed under my breath.
“Yep. Ridiculously out of context isn’t it. They also used the example of the children of Israel having slaves to justify their practices, but there’s no resemblance. Israel’s so-called slavery was basically indentured servant hood. If a slave was mistreated he was to be set free by Jewish law. If he was killed by his owner his owner’s life was forfeit in turn. All slaves were also to be let loose every seven years and their lands restored to them. So you can see there really is no comparison between the old South and the biblical Israel.”
“And yet I wonder how these black masters have justified their role as the lords of this place?” I said reflectively and Matt nodded in agreement.
There likely was some half-baked justification for the continued use of slavery, but it likely didn’t make any sense just as the first round of excuses hadn’t in the old South.
Matt and I saw a group of slave women washing clothes off to the side of the trail and Matt reacted with surprise. Two of the five women were as black as I was and one was of a soft chocolate color in terms of skin color, while the remaining two were white.
I already knew the answer to his unasked question, “In the South if it was believed that a person had so much as a drop of Negro blood in their ancestry then they were considered black no matter how white they may have appeared. They were thrown in right along with all the other slaves. It would appear even that aspect of the old South has been copied over.”
The mansions were growing closer and all signs of slave housing were falling away behind us.
“Because of your ancestry did you ever feel like you were entitled to some version of justice or payment to make up for what was done to your ancestors who were slaves?” Matt asked softly.
“Never!” I said roughly.
“I make my own decisions and walk my own path. I want no part of entitlement and I have no use for those who think they’re owed something. You need to stand on your own two feet in life and earn your own way. My girls were perfect, but to these people they’d be nothing better than slaves. In the old South they would have been slaves even though Lacey was as white as your sister!”
Matt squeezed my arm and I glanced at him and saw understanding in his eyes as he said, “Your girls were perfect Eli and so was my sister!”
I nodded not trusting myself to speak for a moment.
“Yes she was!” I said finally.
I looked around, “She was not a slave and neither am I. No one should be!” I said my voice trailing off with the disdain that I felt for everything around me that had been built upon the affliction of people, who were looked down upon as less by others.
“Amen.” Matt said.
It was a town of mansions and the question as to the need for slavery was soon answered. Nobody with a skin color matching my own was doing anything or should I say they weren’t doing anything that could be called work. This too must’ve been how the old South had functioned.
It was pathetic whichever color side you picked. How was I going to put a stop to this?
I was just one man with a small crew.
Every Old Testament Bible story pertinent to such a thought of inadequacy came up to remind me that it wasn’t going to be me doing anything in order to break the cycle of bondage, but rather it would be God and I was just a willing instrument to be used as part of the process.
One mansion stood out from the rest and it was to this we were led followed along by our ever present gawking crowd of onlookers. I started up the stairs taking in the women arrayed along the railing up ahead of me decked out in the fine trappings of southern belles, only these southern belles weren’t white.
They whispered feverishly among themselves and some even giggled behind their lace embroidered fans. I felt myself the subject of intense scrutiny and a lot of admiring interest.
I wasn’t interested, but I had manners when I wanted them and I bowed slightly in passing before I was ushered into the expansive mansion decked out in opulence.
There were more important looking men of this little colony on the underside of the world inside. Questions were abuzz as they flew about the expansive foyer in hushed masculine undertones. Our guide cleared a way through the crowd before coming to a stop before a wide spiral staircase.
He turned to me and pointedly addressed me only, “If you would come with me, while your crew waits here.” He said smoothly, but I read between the lines.
He might as well as said, “While your low class slaves wait here for you.”
I was about to object, when I caught Matt’s slight negative shake of the head. He was right. Best to fly low for the moment. I started for the stairs alone.
“And leave your weapon behind as well.” The guide said in an ingratiating manner.
I found the man contemptible, but I stuck to the plan. Deliberately I turned and handed my pistol to Matt, whose eyes twinkled with repressed glee.
Symbolically I was handing my weapon to a slave in the eyes of all those around me, which gained us an aggravated murmur of dissension from them. I turned back to the guide to see his fake smile had hardened at the edges.
I smiled coldly at him and gestured to the stairs beyond him, “Shall we?” I invited and stiffly he turned and started climbing even as I took inventory of where I had knives stashed on my person should the occasion arise that I might need to use them. I also had a boot pistol.
When I reached the lofty second-floor I glanced back to see my little multicolored crew surrounded by a crowd of disapproving and even menacing black people. I’d never been so disappointed in a group of people my own color before as I was now.
To think such an inconsequential thing as skin pigmentation and differing ethnic backgrounds could divide humanity so!
Would there ever be a day when unity would be achieved or would there always be this infighting and innate hatred of differing physiological differences?
For some perhaps, but not for me. Not for people like Matt or Jim either, but they were exceptions to the norm.
Some people just had to hate each other and skin color was a good excuse to start the rivalry.
My guide opened a door and I stepped through it. Everything was beyond compare in terms of color and artistry within the room. The tiled floors of the room were so clean I wouldn’t have given a second thought about eating a meal off of them.
I was led through a series of rooms until I stepped out onto a veranda that had an ocean view. Traveling along the white railing I came to a table with two chairs. One was occupied by an older man, who rose stiffly as we drew near.
He extended out his hand in the most genuine act of welcome that I had experienced yet and I took it and shook the old man’s hand that had a surprisingly firm grasp to it.
“Winston Riley at your service, and who might I have the pleasure of speaking to?” The old man asked.
“Eli Warner.” I responded in kind.
He gestured to the second chair and said, “Won’t you have a seat and enjoy my ocean view?”
I sat down as I continued to study the older man. He seemed like a genuine individual, even a likable sort.
The governor, for that was who I took him to be, turned slightly to the guide and said dismissively, “You won’t be needed any longer Morgan.”
Morgan looked hesitant to leave, until the old man gave him a sharp glance that had some steel in it. Morgan hastily left and the governor sat back down in his seat.
He glanced after Morgan’s retreating form for a moment before switching his gaze to mine and asking, “Tell me stranger does that man annoy you half as much as he does me with his presence?”
I couldn’t help it. I genuinely liked this man and I let it show in the smile that creeped out in response to his question.
He smiled in return, “I see I have my answer.”
He glanced out at the sea and asked as a slave girl approached out of seemingly nowhere with a tray of drinks on it, “Well, you’ve been here all of about an hour now, what do you think of our colony beneath the world above?”
I glanced up at the slave girl dressed in the garb of a housemaid. She was very attractive and very much black. She again must be one of the unpure ones that had some white blood in her.
She didn’t meet my gaze, but instead she stuck very well to the servile nature of her task and position in life, even though I sensed it was not in her nature to be so.
I answered the governor’s question as I watched her walk away as silently as she had come, “Not very highly I assure you.” I said in complete honesty, as my eyes left the girl to meet the governor’s.
He nodded and glanced back out to sea before asking, “Tell me what happened up there in the world above. Are black men still slaves?”
“The North won, if that’s what you mean. The South was dealt with harshly and slavery is no more in the sense that it was. The country is united and while there’s still tension over color, time to time, for the most part it gets settled and the different sides get along and even intermix with each other. You could benefit from that lesson down here.” I finished bluntly.
He regarded me indepthly for a long moment, “You don’t pull your punches do you.” He said smiling a little.
“No, I don’t. I was never very good at lying or stomaching injustice when I’ve seen it.”
The Governor nodded, as the girl came back with a tray of food and set it down. There was something about her face. What was it?
“Thank you Mandy.” The governor said and the girl nodded before leaving again.
My eyes met the old man’s and his face took on a somber look as he said, “She’s my granddaughter.”
His granddaughter!
He looked away at the sea again as he explained, “My son raped a slave woman. I don’t hold with such practices, but many do it. I am but a voice in the wind against such occurrences, however regrettable they may be.”
He looked back to me and said matter-of-factly, “Everything I just said sounds terrible doesn’t it?”
“You know it does!” I said with emphasis.
He nodded, “I fear we’ve become even more barbaric than our former masters. Just as I fear that is the case I also fear that there is no changing it. It’s true what I said about being a voice in the wind.”
“That is still not an excuse to do nothing, when you know what’s right.”
He nodded his head and looked out to sea again, “I knew this day of change was coming. Whether it will be a good one or not I cannot tell.”
“What happened here?” I asked, as I was curious to know.
The Governor launched directly into the tale of this colonies origin, “The Southern fleet sailed guided by some device for many days and then as the account goes the fleet fell down through the world to land here in this inner sanctum. By all accounts it was a harrowing experience. Several ships were lost, but the bulk of the fleet remained intact. The navigation guide brought them here, which is where they commenced to build their utopia away from the threat of Yankee aggression. Twenty years went past and a sickness befell the white people. Almost all of them were laid low with it, which is when our slave ancestors took control as we were not affected by the illness. Many of the whites were brutally murdered. About a third of them managed to flee. The remaining ones were made over into our slaves as we took the position of master that they had lorded over us. That was fitting justice, but my granddaughter? Where is there any justice for her powerlessness over her own fate that she did nothing to deserve?”
He was silent for a moment and I said as if he didn’t already know it, “There isn’t any.”
He glanced up at me knowingly, “You didn’t come for any treasure of the South or for the ancient antiquity of this island did you? You came to free the slaves didn’t you?”
I wanted to refrain from it, but the truth came out anyway, “Yes.” I said.
I expected him to call out for the guards then, but all he did was nod again.
“What can I do to aid you in your efforts?” He said and I blinked in response.
“Are you suggesting t