Chapter2: Departures

The days passed quietly offshore in general. The climate had been favorable for sailing and the sea was in calm. Martina and Lio kept withdrawing each other's eyes, ignoring. They couldn’t stop being pending one of the other, despite themselves.

One of those calm nights of starred sky, Martina was walking the deck when she saw ahead the misfit group that liked to lash out undefended and in distress damsels. She kept out of their sight. They were talking about plantations, slaves and slaving. Not few of their families had made their fortune by this last method, and due to abolitionism, had to evolve to new ones, sometime related. More than fifty years had passed since slavery was abolished in many countries, but people still kept their retrograde and inconceivable ideas, according to Martina’s way of thinking, who loved Dominga, her mulatto nanny who assisted her birth, and raised her as her own, after her mother died in labour.

Something they said caught her attention. She sidled toward them to hear better. Daniel Collins’ speech was related to his family’s business trading slaves to Brazil, which had not yet abolished slavery. Martina turned red with rage when heard it. Anyway she kept engaged in listening what they said to find out Lio’s way of thinking about the subject. He remained in silence listening attentive and bowing with his head from time to time. Daniel‘s monologue condemned the abominable abolishing laws (as he saw them), the projects in that respect that had been pushed in Brazil, and his family’s struggle among other influential families to stop them. He was concluding his journey in Rio, where he was going to help his father in negotiations with some congressmen.

“Can you believe it? Many other countries joint England and the United States in closing their eyes to a scientific truth”, said with impunity. “How  they can’t see that medicine has demonstrated that blacks are inferior to us?.” Martina felt twisting her guts with that infamous lie. “It has been proved that they don’t have the same human blood. Not many years ago it was very well known by everybody that they were not human. What if that was the real truth and they are wrong now? Don’t you think?” said Collins looking for approval. “Lio, you study medicine, What do you think?”