Death was everywhere. Nalla had seen so much of it since her village was raided, and she wondered if she was dead now. Finally dead and free of the nightmare. Finally dead and now on her journey to be reunited with Mosi and her little boy.
The women heard other voices and drew closer together, but they were the calm voices of men approaching. A group of Africans appeared down the beach, walking their way. Four men, one with a rifle, and three women from the ship. When they saw Nalla and her group, the women ran to greet one another with hugs and tears. There were other survivors. Perhaps there could be many more.
The men watched and smiled. They were shirtless and barefoot but they wore the same odd britches as the white men on the ship. They spoke in a tongue the women did not understand. But their message was clear:
They followed the men down the beach to a slight bend where the shore curved around a small bay. They slowed as they saw two dark objects in the surf ahead. Figures. Bodies. Two naked African men bound at the ankles, dead now for hours. They pulled them out of the water and across the sand to a dune where they would bury them later.
The sun was up now, and the women, elated to be safe for the moment, were mumbling among themselves about food and water. With hand and sign language, Nalla communicated with the leader, the man with the gun, and managed to convey the message that they needed food.
As they were leaving the beach, they stumbled upon three more women cowering near a dune. They hugged them and cried with them. At least they were alive.
The rescue party followed a trail around the dunes until it led to thick vegetation. Soon they were walking through a forest of old elms and oaks with moss hanging from the low branches. The forest grew thicker until the trees and moss blocked the sky and sun. The women smelled smoke. Moments later they walked into a settlement, a village with rows of neat houses made of wattle and mud and covered with thatched palm-leaf roofs.
The women, eleven in all with six children, were surrounded by their new friends. The men wore britches that fell to their knees. The women wore fabric dresses that flowed from their necks to their feet. They were all barefoot and wore broad, happy smiles of grace and pity. They reached out to their new sisters and their children from Africa.
They, too, had made the passage. They had endured the ships. And now they were free.
The Camino Island newspaper,
Bruce read each edition from cover to cover, and Bay Books spent a thousand dollars a month on advertising. Touring authors could always expect a nice little story on page two, along with a photo.
Nothing, though, riled the island, and sold newspapers, like the gossip that yet another high-rolling developer from “down south” was gobbling up property and planning a million condos. “Down south” always meant Miami, a place famous not only for its drug traffickers but the legions of bankers and developers who laundered their money. For most Floridians, every project originating from down south was to be treated with great suspicion.
Because of an arbitrary decision made by a long-forgotten Spanish explorer centuries earlier, Dark Isle was considered to be under the jurisdiction of Camino Island, as was one other undeveloped spit of land near the Georgia state line. When Florida became a state in 1845, the name stuck and “Dark Isle” became official.
