There is no purpose in recalling what then transpired, our long flight, our final defeats. We sailed that day. Then there was, that night, the storm, and ships which had cut their anchor cables to escape the assaults of rebellion were now incapable of mooring, and so were dragged ineluctably toward shore. The Dunmore’s mizzenmast, cracked by shot, collapsed, and took with it the main topmast. Two ships sank, their crews screaming for aid in their longboats.

At first we starved; the second day, I procured some tallow candles for Bono, Nsia, Olakunde, and myself, and we ate them with thanks. As we ate, we watched two sailors eye Vishnoo, this time with no jest in their appraisal. I recalled Slant’s words: “Another thing can’t die. Not one more thing.”

Days later, I could not find the tortoise, and apprehended that hunger had wrestled custom and comity and triumphed over them both. It was with despair that I related this circumstance to Olakunde, stern Olakunde, who bid me not to weep for the tortoise.

“It is not for the tortoise,” said I, “but the remembrance of our friends.”

We were, that day, sent ashore on a foraging detail; and while we herded sheep, Olakunde drew me apart from the others to a place where we were embowered, and he lay down his drum and loosed its fastenings. Within lay Vishnoo. “One of us live,” quoth Olakunde, and we lifted out the animal. We set him at liberty in the wood.

Vishnoo stood uncertain upon the leaves. We urged him to flee, Olakunde tying the head back upon his drum. That amiable animal stood uncertain of the solid ground, and would not move. We could not longer tarry; he stood.

We abandoned him to a kinder fate and the dictates of nature. None knew how long he hath already lived; he may still thrive a full century more, there upon that isle. He shall perhaps be the last witness to our history, the final creature to have seen Lord Dunmore’s Royal Ethiopian Regiment and its deeds.