Jade and the Ivory Hand

Jade and the Ivory Hand

The captain of the Connecticut Clipper ship christened the Topaz cursed out loud as he scanned the shoreline just three hundred yards off the California coast not knowing he was less than thirty miles from his destination to the port of San Francisco. With a hole packed with Chinese opium and English whiskey he’d be paid handsomely if the ship could clear this dam fog and treacherous rocky reefs of this rugged coastline . It was 1855 some six years after the 1849 gold rush but money was still to be made if you dealt and traded in pain and misery something the captain of the Topaz was well adjusted and thriving at. Now the captain knew the dangers of his trade and the slowness of death these pacific waters could bring as many of his kind rested deep in the ocean below him. But the promise of pockets filled with gold and silver coins swirled  like devil wind’s in selfish mind’s filled with greed erasing the pain with inflict on innocent others .  Captain James Finley who captained the Topaz was no stranger to he ways of the sea first cutting his teeth as a stowaway from his native Ireland to escape the potato famine that starved so many of his kinsman to death. He was more of a pirate than anything else with more than one hangman’s noose waiting for him in ports from China to Haiti but San Francisco welcomed him like a long lost son. 

After losing a hand in the lucrative Africa slave trade over a dispute involving money and an African Chief’s daughter, Captain Finley stayed just long enough to have the missing hand fashioned and carved from ivory. A weapon of sorts and tipped with razor sharp silver claws on each fingertip he gutted several who failed to obey and maimed many others. He himself deserved to die so many times over and it was only a matter of when and not where. As the Topaz sailed northward in a blinding blanket of thick grey fog the chains below began to stir for it was more when just opium and whiskey that fuels this voyage. With fresh whore’s needed to quench the thirst of men in the bars, saloons and back alleys of the city, Captain Finley picked up thirty live ones during a layover in Haiti. Some as young as ten years old he kept the finest for himself and forced his way on the others under threat of death. “These pretties should awaken those stinking dead Frisco flounders”, he’d yell out to his man. But many jumped overboard when given the chance choosing death at sea over life on board if you could call it life.

Once several young girls managed to free themselves from the hold below deck and stabbed a shipmate with a marlin spike. Captain hung the girl responsible and left her body swinging from the mast for a week this was after the crew fired endless rounds into her body for sport. The others where tied below the ships head and the crew took turns relieving themselves before cutting the ropes allowing the girls to drown. Captain Finley made it clear to the other girls that they were just an afterthought and it didn’t matter to him if they survived or not. With no law to speak of and forced by the tip of a blade, Finley made his own rules to follow until you were sold and paid for that is. Chained below deck sat Jade a Haitian girl about twenty years old but looked much younger for her age. Her brown skin now stained with blood and filth her arms and legs were worn raw and infected by the iron shackles that imprisoned her but her deep dark colored eyes where the doorway to her soul and they always stepped forward with the will to survive.