The Itinerant Slave

By Jacque Aaronsen

BOOK DESCRIPTION

A handsome young school teacher from Chicago time-travels to Ancient Rome, Antebellum New Orleans, and 1940s Arabia to learn first hand what its really like in a slave society - and he turns out to be the slave! His handsome good looks and winsome personality find him first a near-naked litter-bearer, then a liveried groomsman, and finally a chauffeur - among other things! He returns to his Chicago classroom with tales no one will believe. Or doesnt want to!

A psychologist tackles the difficult question of how ordinary persons, suddenly thrown into conditions of abject slavery, can adjust to a reality where they are now possessions, not people. Slaves discover that bondage magnifies the value of even the simplest of lifes pleasures; that being denied expression doesnt stop thoughts and feelings; and experiencing social death doesnt deny their humanness. But survivors must learn to think very differently about themselves, their owners, and their society.

Sadly, one of the most recurring themes of human history is mans quest to subject and exploit others to his direct benefit. The extreme case of such exploitation, human slavery, goes back as long as recorded history and, for many parts of the world, was a predominant segment of society until only recently. How could such huge numbers of people allow themselves to be so completely exploited? How did they adjust to the realities of being totally subject to anothers will? And how did loss of freedom (or never experiencing freedom) alter the cognitive functioning of the enslaved, both at the time of enslavement and, for some, after being freed? Slaves themselves usually had no opportunity to record their reactions to enslavement (and were usually illiterate if such an opportunity were presented), but more importantly, slave societies were carefully constructed so that those in power were neither interested in the questions or any answers that might be forthcoming if the questions were asked. In fact, most slave societies viewed slaves as mere non-thinking animals who happened to conveniently possess limited ability in verbal communication and who were so brutish that they had limited, if any, human feelings.

In The Itinerant Slave, the author, a developmental psychologist, explores slavery from a slaves viewpoint with special emphasis on probable psychological reactions to the initial loss of freedom, adjustment to a life totally controlled by others with the minimum amount of pain, and the psychological reformulation necessary to survive somewhat intact. Its fiction, but the reader cannot help but identify with the plight of the novels hero as he copes with enslavement in three very different historical slave societies.

For most Americans, slavery was a racial exploitation unique to the South and ending with the Civil War. For the rest of the world, slavery was a fact of life from pre-recorded history, had nothing to do with the color of ones skin, involved huge segments of the population, and extended itself well into the twentieth century. Indeed, slavery still exists in certain areas of the world (e.g. Mauritania, the Sudan, etc.), albeit in slightly different forms (e.g. contract labor, coerced prostitution, prison labor, etc.).

In an effort to challenge the way we see the institution of slavery and especially how we judge those enslaved, "The Itinerant Slave" was written as a psychological historical adventure/time-travel novel which goes back in time rather than forward. The book describes the adventures of a young, handsome, bright, and articulate high school teacher from Chicago who time-travels into three distinctly different historical slave societies: Ancient Rome, the American Antebellum South, and Arabia in the 1940s. In each society, he falls into the hands of slavers, has to deal with the expectations imposed on slaves inherent in those particular societies, and eventually finds

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 10, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462800315

Jacque Aaronsen

Jacque Aaronsen, the author’s pseudonym, is a Ph.D. psychologist, who has served as a college professor and administrator, a clinical services provider, writer and scientific researcher for the past 30 years. One of his lifelong intellectual interests has been the study of slavery from ancient times to the present and this novel reflects that expertise. Dr. Aaronsen notes that slavery has been with us since the dawn of time. Although a few have always viewed slavery as abhorrent and inhumane, only in comparatively recent times has it been viewed as a moral issue. Slavery was commonly viewed as an inevitable part of human society and, indeed, a necessity for advanced civilization. Technology released us from the urgent need for forced labor, but slaves remained as convenient luxuries and symbols of wealth, status, and importance. These things are hard to give up and, even today, a few societies still condone slavery.

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Copyright © 2000 by Jacque Aaronsen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

CHAPTER I:

ANCIENT ROME

CHAPTER II:

CHAPTER III:

CHAPTER IV:

CHAPTER V:

CHAPTER VI:

CHAPTER VII:

CHAPTER VIII:

CHAPTER IX:

ARABIA

CHAPTER X:

CHAPTER XI:

CHAPTER XII:

CHAPTER XIII:

CHAPTER XIV:

CHAPTER XV:

CHAPTER XVI:

CHAPTER XVII:

CHAPTER XVIII:

CHAPTER XIX:

THE AMERICAN ANTEBELLUM SOUTH

CHAPTER XX:

CHAPTER XXI:

CHAPTER XXII:

CHAPTER XXIII:

CHAPTER XXIV:

CHAPTER XXV:

CHICAGO

CHAPTER XXVI:

CHAPTER I:

TEACHING IN CHICAGO

The unrelenting wind was whistling outside with hints of warmth in it, which is about the best you can expect for spring in Chicago. As usual, I was puttering around with my grand experiment as I liked to refer to it—a time machine right out of an H.G. Wells’ novel. The theory was that this little baby could transport a human back into history via the fourth dimension. Actually, it was an extension of Einstein’s relativity theory and, as such, the time warp back was really an illusion more than an actual physical transport, or at least that’s what I thought at the time I was working on it.

I did understand the whole process worked at the speed of light and consequently, it was extremely hard to control just exactly how far back in time you would go. You couldn’t just dial in a date—more like an era at this point in development, give or take a few decades one way or another. And your physical presence there required a de-atomization in the present, a re-atomization in exactly the same pattern at your destination, and the whole process reversed when you were to return. No wonder I thought Star Wars was a neat series! They had it all down pat except for the time travel thing. That was the new twist I was working on.

In my eyes, it would have been much neater to time-warp into the future. Think of the profits you could make once you returned. Every stock market investment would be guaranteed, and you could guide your whole life solely around winning trends. But, sadly, all my puttering in that area had led to absolutely nothing whereas working toward transportation to the past was looking quite promising.

The machine I had constructed looked not unlike an upright coffin with a lot of circuitry, electronic processors, timers, and transducers attached all over it—so much so that it was now taking up a whole room down in the basement of my small house located some twenty miles northwest of downtown Chicago. The project had literally absorbed every spare dime I had from my job as a high school science teacher who had also managed to get a part-time job working for a computer programming outfit downtown to make ends meet.

And I’m afraid, as I felt success in my bones, I was becoming almost compulsive in working on the project. So much so that my mother pleaded with me to get a life, baby and constantly worried over the long-distance phone about my health, my prospects for marriage, losing my job as a teacher, and not taking time to visit her as often as she wanted. She had a point. It seemed my whole life was teaching people who weren’t too interested in being taught, fussing around working on minute details of some damn software program at my part-time job, and working down in the basement on the project. My social life had disintegrated into the big nothing. A few dates now and then, a few drinks with some fellows after work, and pretty regular workouts at the local college gym were about it.

I do have a name—Michael Roberts. Born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago to a perfectly normal family as an only child, my dad died when I was 17 leaving my mother to nag me the rest of her natural life. As good Catholics, I had been sent to St. Agnes School for Boys when I was six years ago and never left the place until graduation shortly after my father’s untimely death. The good sister’s there had taught me all they knew and then some, probably. Despite it all, I prospered there and became a very good student, even if I do say so myself, especially in math and physics. At any rate, I was good enough to garner a full scholarship at the University of Chicago and four years later graduated there magna cum laude and landed a teaching job in the Winnetka School System which thrilled my mother no end in that it gave her something to brag about with her friends now that she couldn’t milk the University of Chicago thing much longer. Of course, her big disappointment was that I wasn’t going on to medical school, but, golly Mom, you can’t have it all.

Physically, I’m not what you probably expect—a bespectacled frail little asthmatic scared of his own shadow. I’m about 6’2, weigh about 190 or so, work out pretty vigorously in that I’m rather seriously into body building as a sport, and inherited my father’s very good looks and pretty ample sexual equipment. In fact, I have been approached more than once with serious offers for ad agency modeling but always turned them down because I felt it was sort of sissified somehow and I just didn’t want to stand still that long posing for a bunch of gay photographers who always called you dear, honey, or stud." The pay offered was outstanding, but, hey, money isn’t everything. Although, if this damn time machine takes any more new circuitry, I may have to take them up and start posing for the sake of science.

My social life to date has been amazingly bleak. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to date with my good looks but my personality seems to be so inward that one date and the affair is over. I’m sure it’s my fault. I am inward and usually express little interest in who I’m dating, mainly because I honestly am not interested in them and they quickly sense that. It’s not that I’m into myself all that much though. It’s that I’m always thinking about my work or mainly my project and it gives me a constant aura of preoccupation that drives people away. The lack of social life doesn’t bother me so much because I’ve never been one to experience loneliness. But it sure hurts my sex life. The only ones who would think that was a big success would be the nuns back at St. Agnes who viewed no sex as the only good way to go. I had remained a virgin until the age of 19, and even now at the ripe old age of 22, have only scratched up four experiences as the manuals call them and not all of those were successful in my opinion, let along theirs. And it’s significant that those four episodes are all with different women—no female has ever been interested in me a second time! Not too enriching for much of a self-concept in this area, I’d say. No wonder I more or less retreated into areas I was very successful with: scientific invention, math and science.

I do have another strong interest, though, and that’s history. I just can’t get enough of it. But history as a discipline has some real problems I quickly discovered. You can read seven different authors about exactly the same event in history and come up with seven vastly different interpretations. To a scientist, it’s the most exasperating phenomenon. What the hell did happen, anyway? And how do you separate historical opinion from historical fact? And how do you prove a historical fact? The only way, in my opinion, is to live it yourself, and the only way to do that is to develop the ability to go back into the event yourself as a historian. It was this thinking that got me going on development of a time-warp apparatus and the main motivation for that invention has never ever left me. In fact, I’d say I’m more interested now in time-warping as a historian than I was when I started because the more I study history, the more I see the need to experience it yourself.

The area of history I was really most interested in was slavery. I just couldn’t understand why millions and millions of people had allowed others to exploit them so totally. Why didn’t they rebel? Usually, they outnumbered their supervisors and owners combined by a long shot. And how could they allow such a degree of exploitation, humiliation, shame, and manipulation? I just couldn’t understand people being led around like sheep, so to speak, doing all the things others didn’t want to do themselves. And sometimes slaves were forced into activities that really had little work contribution, but were simply pleasure contributions to their owners. Still other times, slaves seemed to be status symbols more than work objects. The whole thing absolutely perplexed me and the history books offered little other than the most simplistic explanations if they offered any explanations at all.

There’s a difference between being a good employee and being a good slave. An employee gets direct benefits and can choose to quit. A slave usually gets no direct benefits and has no choice as to whether they do the activity or not. Slavery was usually a hereditary condition, totally unlike being an employee, no matter how exploited or manipulated. So that comparison didn’t stand up. The comparison between prisoners and slaves isn’t totally fruitful either. Prisoners are interned as punishment—that’s often not true in the case of slaves who can be born into slavery. And prisoners are notoriously bad workers—so much so that we don’t even bother much anymore trying to get them to do serious work. The effort of getting them to work is often more trouble than it’s worth. The status of prisoner is never passed heritably. A prisoner, in the worst possible scenario, can be put to death but his or her children aren’t incarcerated or punished directly.

No, too many questions remained despite a number of books on the subject of historical slavery. And I felt the only way to resolve some of those questions was to get back myself into a time when slavery was widely practiced. In fact, the first historical periods I wanted to use the time-warp machine for was the Roman Empire where slavery was at its zenith. That period of opulence and excess always intrigued me anyway!

I was smart enough to know that I wasn’t too far from success. I had placed a little rabbit in the machine just a week or so ago and presumably had warped the little bunny back into approximately the sixth century A.D. At any rate, I hadn’t seen him since and I assume he was happily hopping around the Byzantine Empire by now if he wasn’t being served up as rabbit rarebit by some Constantinople cook. And just this week I had added the all-essential timer than would allow me to return to present day Chicago within a given time frame—as long as I could manage to be in the exact same place I was time-warped to start with. And I’d added a back-up generator to power the timer in case the electricity got shut down somehow. That timer and generator had set me back another $2200 so the modeling job was probably getting closer and closer if the expenses didn’t slow down.

Just yesterday, I tested the equipment again and it seemed it was as complete as I could make it. All that remained was to test it with a real human. And I knew the only human willing to take that risk was me. So I had better start thinking about the ultimate investment, namely my very life, and start making arrangements at work for an extended leave along with some elaborate explanation to my mother who would simply die of a heart attack if she got anywhere near the truth.

Since I was a high school teacher, summer was the perfect time to time-warp and I could program myself back before school started up again. It would be easy enough to take a three-month leave from my part-time work at the software developer without jeopardizing my long-term employment there. My social life was so incredibly bleak I honestly felt no one, outside my mother, would really notice I was gone if it was for only three months of so.

Let’s see. School would be over in three weeks. That would give me enough time to arrange a leave at the software company, explain to my mother that I had received an alumni grant from the University of Chicago to visit a new science project in Siberia or some other place she couldn’t contact, and check and double check the machine itself. I could also get vaccinated for every conceivable disease known, take lots of vitamins to build my resistance up to its maximum, and work out especially hard so I’d be in top shape for the big trip.

The first trip I wanted to take was to Ancient Rome during the Empire Period, around A.D. 50 or so. Now if I could program the machine to center in on Rome or its surrounds, a 1,951 year backward leap in time, and leave me intact in the process I would be in business. Three more weeks!

ANCIENT ROME

CHAPTER II:

THE LATIFUNDA

Suddenly, I found myself in a field about 15 feet from a stone road which looked to be about 15’ wide. From the shadows it looked to be mid morning and the most noticeable difference was the heat. It must have been at least 85 degrees F. or so, but the humidity wasn’t bad. And something else was really different. The air smelled so incredibly fresh. I looked down and my clothes were the same as I’d had on piddling around in my basement lab over the weekend: Calvin Klein low ride briefs, Levis 501s, my faithful white lowtop Adidas, my bright red Polo golf shirt, my Seiko watch and that was about it. I couldn’t imagine where I was. What country; what time; even what era. But I had a pretty good idea that I had time-warped and the fact I’d done it simply sent tremors of excitement through me.

I really did feel like shouting and jumping with pure joy. After all that time, all that work, all the failures—at last I’d done it. It took a good five minutes of pure joy and excitement until the sobering thought hit me: how in the hell was I going to get back to good old Chicago in the present day of 2001? I had 90 days before the automatic timer clicked in to warp me back, but I had to be in exactly the same place and where was that? And exactly what was I going to do in wherever I was?

I checked the pockets in my tight jeans and found the keys to my trusty old Volvo, my wallet containing my Illinois driver’s license, the photo ID card to the software company’s offices where I worked part-time, my membership card in the local teacher’s association, my VISA and Shell Oil cards, and exactly $44.35 along with a crinkled packet of one lonely pre-lubed Ramses condom just in case . The only other item was a small comb in the left hip pocket and an old Kleenex. Wonderful! Just what I needed to cope with life wherever I was!

I did have sense enough to check my coordinates. In a field near a stone road. That was real impressive! How precise. What stone road? Near what town? I was beginning to think I should have thought this time warping thing out a bit better. Since no one seemed to be around, I climbed over to the road and started walking primarily looking for something to eat. I’d skipped breakfast at home and noted my hunger had certainly traveled with me. When you’re 6’2" and weigh in at around 200, it takes a lot of food to keep going and today was no different no matter where I was. Maybe I’d run into a Taco Bell I told myself and even my lousy $44 will feed me for several days.

But something in me said this was kidding myself and I was in for more change that not finding a Taco Bell. How much change I had no idea at this point!

After walking along in this heat for about 20 minutes, I really started to heat up and the sweat starting pouring off me even dressed as lightly as I was and thirst was now added to hunger as something I was going to have to do something about.

After rounding a bend, I saw my first sign of life. Some workers seemed to be planting something or another, but as I got closer, it got more and more strange. First off, the workers seemed to be clustered in small groups of about ten each. And each group seemed to have a supervisor who was carrying what looked to me like a pretty mean looking whip! As I got closer, the dress of the workers seemed odd. Most had no shirts on which seemed downright sensible in this kind of heat. But instead of having pants or shorts on, they were either wearing what looked to me to be a very short little dress or just a loincloth which just covered their front and ended up as just a few cords in the back—one of which ran right up their ass crack. For the ones not wearing the little dress, it looked like the little outfit weight-lifters wear when they’re being photographed. As I got closer, I saw the work gangs who weren’t shirtless were actually females and they were all clothed in kind of a simple sleeveless shift which stopped at their thighs. But I gasped as I got up closer yet. The men in the gangs were all chained: each man had both ankles cuffed and his feet tethered together between these cuffs with a chain that looked to be about 18" long. Enough to walk, but too short to run. And what I thought was just shadows under their necks were black iron collars, each with a ring attached. I glanced over at the women gangs and they had the collars around their necks too, but no chains attaching their legs at least.

Well, I’ll read that in the South back in the 20’s and 30’s they used to chain gang prisoners who worked prison farms and so I began to suspect I had been moved from Chicago to Alabama or somewhere—the heat certainly matched that assumption—and that somehow I’d stumbled across a prison farm. But I never realized Southern prisoners were dressed in loincloths and wore iron collars and, the more I thought about it, I didn’t recall my history books telling me the supervisors carried whips—I thought the guards carried guns. And weren’t a lot of the Southern prisoners black—I saw no blacks among this group—they were all whites. Well, maybe it was a segregated prison. And maybe it was earlier than the 20’s or 30’s, but still, it just didn’t quite fit somehow.

About that time, I heard something snap and crack like a tree limb breaking, followed by a man’s piercing scream. I jerked around and saw one of the overseers winding his whip back into a coil, and noticed blood running down the back of one of the workers whose scream had turned into a loud groan. All of the other workers seemed to frantically pick up their pace, but none seemed to say anything about it, or turn on the supervisor or try to stop the bleeding, or do anything at all except work a little harder it seemed. In fact, they acted like this was just business as usual and, from the look on their faces, seemed glad it was someone else and not them who caught the whip’s vengeance. Even the women paid no attention at all to the incident except to speed up in their efforts it seemed. What a dumpy prison, I thought, and it was hard to feel very sorry for people who seemed to care so little about their fellow worker’s mistreatment. At any rate, these people must have really done something wrong in their lives to warrant treatment like this. What the government doesn’t tell us sometimes!

I was sort of embarrassed at not intervening in this sordid scene and so hurried up my pace and tried not to look at the workers directly. But I did notice how small everyone seemed to be. No one seemed to be much over 5’6", including the supervisors, and there seemed to be a lot of nationalities at the prison. Some looked Asian with their hairless bodies, dark slanting eyes, and golden skin; some like they were from the Middle East or North Africa with olive skin and dark eyes and hair; some looked like they were from Norway or Great Britain with their matted blond hair, blue eyes, and often sunburnt skin. Quite a mixture for a Southern prison! Where would Alabama get Asians and Middle East type people in their prisons, especially in the 1920’s? And why was everyone so small in stature? Yes, they were very muscular but why not working in the fields all the time. But why so smallish?

My curiosity made me take a much harder look. Many had scarred and pitted skin, mainly on their face but sometimes on their backs and fronts as well. It was like some of them had suffered severe acne or smallpox when they were adolescents. And it really detracted from their appearance. These weren’t just scars from whips or anything like that, although I admit their backs and legs had plenty of whip scars on them also. The scars I most noticed were the scars that just pitted your skin. But not all of them had it—but I would say a good 20 to 30 percent. About 100 percent seemed to have their backs coated with whip scars though.

And their teeth were really bad. A lot of dead black teeth were visible along with a lot of missing teeth. A good dentist could make a fortune here I thought!

I heard another whip crack followed by another scream and, looking around, I saw another back gashed and bleeding. Those supervisors didn’t even bother warning the prisoners first—they didn’t even seem to give voice commands—they just appeared to crack the whip on some poor unfortunate’s back and saved their voice. Again, everyone sort of speeded up their work pace, but no one seemed concerned about their coworker now reduced to sobbing. Insensitive clods, I thought.

My new inspection of the work crews yielded even more startling information. The workers seemed filthy dirty, like they hadn’t showered in months. Their hair seemed to be hacked off with lawn shears at the ear level but it was matted to the point of being clumpy, and if they were fairly hirsute their facial hair was just gross: untrimmed beards that were filthy and gave them an animal-like appearance. Why in God’s name didn’t they get a decent haircut and why didn’t they take the time to shave themselves or at least trim their beard appropriately? I didn’t know of any prison, even in the 20’s, that didn’t provide for those amenities. But it got worse!

I saw one of the prisoners pull his penis out of his loincloth and start to urinate standing still in the process. A whip came cracking down on him and urine was flying around as he was knocked to the ground with the blow. I really wondered and checked closer. It was obvious how most of them handled this dilemma. They simply urinated as they worked right through their loincloth, so most of the loincloths were wet most of the time apparently. It seemed to be the lucky ones who wore the skimpy little tunics. And worse yet, the same seemed to go for defecation judging from the soiled appearance of the tunics in back. Now I could see the sense of that simple little string up your ass crack for those who had on loincloths. Maybe they were the lucky ones after all, but even there, their own waste was dried on their butt where it had failed to fall off on the ground. Gross, I thought—really dirty. No one could live like this, even in a Southern prison.

But then I ran across a gang where not one of them had a stitch of clothing on—no loincloth, no little tunic, no nothing. At least they didn’t have to worry about urine-soaked stinking loincloths or tunics with their own waste on it. But stark naked? They couldn’t cover themselves and work at the same time so they didn’t even bother and I couldn’t help but stare a little. One oddity, I thought. All of them were uncircumcised, it seemed. Even in the 20’s, circumcision was pretty common—even with the poor. What was going on? One poor soul was having some sort of fantasy as he worked and sported a huge erection, but no one seemed to pay any attention to it, least of all the guy who was erect, and he made no attempt to cover himself even though a female work gang was working right next to him. These prisoners must really be from bad backgrounds to be so shameless I thought. It would really be gross to even supervise them, let alone associate with them in anyway.

About that time, one of the supervisors spotted me walking along the road and started shouting wildly to the other overseers as he pointed at me. The workers just keep right on working and didn’t even turn their heads up—I guess I would do the same considering the whip cracking around like it did. But it did more than alarm me. What was wrong? Why were they all staring at me? As I tried to make out what they were shouting, I couldn’t understand a word of it. Some strange language I’d never heard of—oh, the sounds were the same as English, but everything they said was totally unintelligible. They seemed scared to leave their workers and so they just keep shouting at each other, staring, and pointing at me.

I picked up my pace fearful I was going to start a riot and finally broke into a run because it was all so weird. What language were they speaking, anyway? And why were they all so excited by me? What had I done? The heat was bad enough, but the run really did me in. I was sweating by now to the point where I thought surely my deodorant has failed, I’m probably beginning to stink a little, and even my hair was getting sort of stringy like it does when I really get a sweat up.

My run got me past those work gangs and the shouting supervisors at least and after a quarter mile or so I began to slow down feeling quite a bit safer, but even more confused. Down the road looked like a little coastal village because I saw a very blue sea at the end of the road about another half-mile away. What sea or lake was this? What village was this anyway? I’d never seen any sea so blue in my life and the building style looked very unfamiliar to anything I’d ever seen before. A whole new feeling of apprehension swept over me.

CHAPTER III:

WELCOME TO CAPUA

I’d gone no more than another three blocks down the road then two guys on horses came galloping up the road from the village toward me at full pace. As I stepped to the side of the road for them to pass, they flung a huge hemp net over me, leaped off their horses yelling in that same strange language, and tackled me in the net dragging me to the ground beneath them. Before I had the vaguest idea of what was going on, they had bound the net around me and secured it tightly with several ropes—I couldn’t even move—hefted me up between them and slung be over the back of one of the horses with the bound net tied tightly to the horse. Then the two of them got on the remaining horse, grabbed the bridle of the horse I was draped over, and we trotted the short distance into town with me thrashing, bucking, and yelling—all to no avail—all the way down to the shoreline and the town’s dock area where a lot of ships were loading and unloading.

Since I couldn’t understand a word being said, I panicked all the more and jerked around all the harder. My two assailants didn’t seem very impressed by all this and scarcely paid me any attention at all until they dismounted, came back to the mount I was tied to, and methodically and carefully untied the net, lifted me and the net to the ground, and then pinioned me to the ground while they slowly loosened the net enough to grab my hands and tie them behind my back. Then they tied my ankles together so I literally was what I called hog-tied. All I could do was buck around and scream for help. When that was done, they got the rest of the net off of me and let me thrash around a little while, totally ignoring my yelling, shouting, cursing, and bucking with a casual disdain (they seemed to be telling little jokes to each other ) that was really disarming until, as they seemed to know in advance, I wore out and simply ceased to rebel out of sheer exhaustion.

When I quieted down, they picked me up by the shoulders and, despite my unsuccessful efforts to bite them, dragged me into one of the low brick warehouses adjoining the dock area. Once in that dingy building, I really perked up. The place was filled with tiny iron barred cells like a prison, except the cells were arranged around a central area like stalls in a barn and the floor of each cell was covered with