A Short Story - Slave Ship Captain

justiceforall (64)in #story • 7 years ago

There once was a slave ship captain who had made a fortune sailing the seas and trading his human cargo. He was a wealthy man with plenty of gold, but this greed of his had left him lacking in morals and basic human decency. He had made many enemies.
But so it was that this slave captain had grown old and it was coming time for him to retire. He decided to make this his last journey and to make it a big one. So he had filled his ship with more slaves than he had ever done so, cramming them tightly together below deck and above, and then caste off the over-filled ship where it slowly lurched onto the open seas.
That night a strong storm came and tossed the ship violently until it finally capsized. Some of the crew made it onto life rafts but most were flung into the sea along with all of the slaves. Luckily the slaves were excellent swimmers, so as most of the ships crew drowned, most of the slaves had made it safely to a nearby island.
Among the wreckage was the ship captain, who after so many years living on water, couldn’t swim for the life of him and would most certainly drown. As he took his last breath he began to sink, deeper and deeper he sank, but as he was just about to drown, a blind dolphin came and brought him to the surface.
The ship captain was amazed he wasn’t dead by the extraordinary circumstances of a dolphin coming to his rescue that he was speechless when the dolphin began to talk.
“My friends and I were nearby when we saw the ship capsize. When we realized it was a slave ship we have been helping the slaves and letting the crew drown. You don’t smell like the crew, you must be a slave.”
The captain realized the dolphin couldn’t see his uniform, as he hadn’t worked the decks in a long time he must contain a different scent than the rest of the crew, so he decided to lie to the blind dolphin as he would definitely die otherwise.
“Oh yes, my savior. I have been taken from my home as prisoner by an awful man who plans to sell me as slave. Please bring me to safety and I will do my all to reward your kindness”
The dolphin smiled and nodded, then explained that the nearby island was where everyone was going for now and that they would signal for help to come later for a rescue. But as the captain was riding on the dolphins back toward the island a shocking realization crossed his mind

All the slaves would be on this island

So the captain thought quickly,
“Please dolphin, could you bring me back to the mainland. I miss my family so, and they must miss me just as much. Would you be so kind?”
The dolphin only shook his head saying he couldn’t make the trip alone. He must drop him off on the island before his friends went for help.
"But please mister, I may know of someone to heal your eyes if you would only be so kind." the captain begged
But the dolphin only shook his head and continued swimming,
"That would be expensive, the type of money a slave would not have."
So the captain pleaded with the dolphin,
"I have a savings, bring me to the mainland and I could have you healed as soon as the next day."
Just as they were drawing near to the island, another dolphin came swimming by and noticed the uniform of the captain and came up angrily saying,
“What are you doing you blind fool! That is one of the crew… Let him drown!”
The blind dolphin only shook his head and laughed,
“I am no fool. I knew all along this was the slave ships captain, his sweet perfumes and smells of luxury is first class. No slave could smell like that like. But I couldn’t let him die.”
This shocked the captain, he surely had thought he had fooled the animal and the other dolphin replied,
“Couldn’t let him die? But he deserves it most of all! He is the captain!”
The blind dolphin gave a smile to remember that sent chills down the captain’s spine,
“Perhaps he will die… it will be a show in any regards though to let the slaves at him.”
And so the blind dolphin brought the slave ship captain to all the slaves on the island who were more than eager to extract revenge on the very man responsible. Needless to say, another ship came a few days later to rescue the survivors, though the ship captain was not among them, nor was he dead.
Instead, he was left on that barren island, where he very might well be today…