It was April when the Amistad docked in Mystic, Connecticut, to unload its captured cargo. It was a blustery 40 degrees, and the West Africans were dressed in rags. Iron neck yokes and chains connected one to another and prevented them from wiping the brine and dirt from their eyes.

The guards pushed them over the gap between dock and plank, then up a narrow staircase. Buakey, the littlest one, stumbled and fell but couldn't rise because his hands were locked together.

The swaying line continued forward, forced on by the guards, and he was dragged along the ground by his neck, still yoked to the man in front of him. He shut his eyes.

And Steven Spielberg yelled cut.

The line of extras stopped moving, the medic rushed over, and Derrick N. Ashong '97 opened his eyes again.

"My jaw hurt, my neck hurt, I was scared stiff," he remembers. "All I could think was that they said cut, they said cut and it was over. But in real life someone could have died that way and no one would have cared."

For once, Ashong is completely serious. It's eerie to see him step out of his role as the comedian into that of the orator.

"I learned to appreciate the physical and spiritual strength of those who survived the Middle Passage and slavery and the terrible things they went through," he says.

He leans forward intently. "It was a terrible thing they went through," he repeats. Then eases back in his chair. The focus abates, and he relaxes.

"And man, I was seasick. We were on that boat, huddled together, wearing loincloths. It's tossin' and rockin' and shakin' and there's water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink, and the sun's beating down," he says. His face cracks into a grin, a slice of white in a blue-black oval.

"I just threw up right there in the boat," he says. "When it came time to eat lunch, I just sat there and looked at it. It took me like half and hour to eat a cookie."

He unleashes a big baritone laugh, and half the Currier dining hall turns to look at him. Ashong's laugh is loud and confident and completely unabashed. After his momentary intensity, it's reassuring.

It's peculiar, to take absolutely everything to heart, yet seem to take nothing seriously. This is a guy who pokes his friends and snickers while watching "Braveheart," then proceeds to incorporate the film's moral into his own personal philosophy?

Heavy and light, little and large. That's Derrick Ashong.

He's short, barely 5'8". But he was man enough to date a six-foot tall woman earlier this year. His confidence level probably outweighs him. Last February, he cold-called Skip Gates to ask for contacts in the music industry and then followed up on the names he was given. And on location this spring, clothed in rags and a turban, he went right up to Morgan Freeman and introduced himself.