n a matter of minutes the Amistad rebels had turned the ship’s woodenworld upside down. They captured the two men who had consideredthemselves their owners, José Ruiz and Pedro Montes, clapped them inmanacles, and sent them below deck as their prisoners. They took control ofthe ship and organized themselves to do the hard work of sailing it. But intheir new-won freedom lay a dilemma: they wanted to return to their homesin southern Sierra Leone, but none of them knew how to navigate theschooner. After some debate they decided to keep the surviving Spaniardsalive in order to help them sail the vessel eastward, toward the rising sun,which had been at their backs as they made the Middle Passage on a slaveship two weeks earlier.