The life became much more pleasant - Harry decided he liked the army. During the remainder of the Dry Season he was hot but not too uncomfortable and his young lady provided him with all of the comforts of the home he had never had. She soon came to speak a few words of English and showed him about the small town in his off-duty hours.
She pointed out all of the sights - there were not too many - and showed him where the mad priest lived, the black man who thought he was a whiteskin.
"Father Quaque, he one from here, isn't he. Goes to your place, come back, say he a priest like the white man in the church."
A few weeks after taking up with his Mollie - that was almost her name, as near as he could come to it - he met Father Quaque, was amazed to be accosted in good English, better than his own.
“Good morning, soldier. And what is the state of your soul?”
“Whassat?”
Harry was suspicious, wondered just what part of his anatomy this vicar fellow might be referring to.
Father Quaque had met soldiers before; he had never converted one, found them much more committed to the practices of heathenism than any of the local population, but he was an optimist by nature. He needed to be; he had been taken to London as a young convert and had displayed intelligence and determination such that he had achieved ordination in the Church of England. He had returned to Africa, much to the relief of the Church, and had sent regular reports back to the Church Missionary Society in London, none of which were ever answered, but he persevered in his travails on the Slave Coast, knowing that all must come right in the end. He had opened a small school and was slowly developing a tiny population of literates in the township and it was becoming recognised that reading and writing was useful – the white clerks the traders brought to the Slave Coast died within weeks almost invariably while the local men cost less in wages and also remained in their work.
Father Quaque was accepted by the authorities as a result; unlike the great bulk of missionaries, he was useful. His attempts to convert the soldiery were viewed with toleration and some amusement – it was harmless and wasted only his time.
“Can you read, soldier?”
Harry knew about reading and writing now, and Sergeant Hollis had told him that he could never be promoted as an illiterate, because all sergeants had to be able to keep the Company Books. Only the literate could rise to the heights of non-commissioned officers. Sergeants earned more money than a private soldier, nearly four shillings more every week, and they lived far more comfortably, having a mess of their own and access to any number of fiddles as well. Sergeants often had the chance to grow fat, something that never was to be seen among the private soldiers.
“No.”
“Would you not like to learn, soldier?”
He would, but everything had its price, he had learned that in the Army. Nothing came for free.
“Yes. What do you want?”
“I wish only to open your eyes to the Glory of God, soldier.”
That sounded very risky to Harry, but if he learned to read then he could be promoted, or even get to work for the Quartermaster, in the stores. Even a private soldier in the stores was an important figure, with access to all sorts of extras which could be sold or occasionally given away to his mates. It was said that some of the Quartermaster’s people had managed to desert to work for the African Company of Merchants in other forts along the Coast, the authorities turning the blind eye because the Company was powerful. Reading was a way to get places, especially it seemed on the Coast where the fevers thinned out the numbers of whiteskins so regularly.
“I wants to learn to read. Does I ‘ave to pay?”
“I will teach you to read and to write, soldier, and you will learn and then you will help others to gain the same great benefit. I demand nothing, except to offer you the chance to help yourself and all of humankind.”
The concept of something for nothing made Harry deeply suspicious; why would any man give away something that could be sold? Quaque must, he thought, have some sort of hidden aim of his own, but Harry was not stupid; he would take what he could gain and watch out carefully for the sting in the tail.
“What do I ‘ave to do?”
“Come to my Church room when you are free and I will teach you your letters. Then I will lend you simple books to read and you may copy letters and words in the sand outside the barracks. I will help but you must do the work.”
Quaque did not approve of the girl on Harry’s arm, but he had sufficient experience of the realities of local existence to say nothing. She was fed for free and could often find a penny or two to put in her mother’s hands, and even a tiny cash income could help her whole family, and if there should be a baby, well, what was one more young one among so many?
Mollie herself was pleased with the good luck that had brought her a soldier of her own. She occupied a dry room in the Castle and did the laundry for all of Harry’s mess and polished boots and belts as well, and earned as a much as a ha’penny a week from each man; she was able to lay her hands on arrack at cut price in town and make an extra penny or two selling bottles to the men as well. It could not last, she knew that, but she was well off while it did and had bought herself a brightly-coloured print dress all of her own already.
Harry entered the Church room very nervously, with no idea of what he might find there. The battalion had no chaplain – the Slave Coast not attracting even the poorest of curates to take the post – and he had never been exposed to any form of religious activity since leaving the Magdalen and he could barely remember that; he had hardly even heard of the idea as an adult. He had seen a church in the distance in Bedford but had never been inside and would indeed have been very rapidly thrown out if he had attempted to enter in a red coat. Church was for the respectable, and soldiers did not qualify.
The building was poor – thrown up cheaply from green timber with palm leaf thatching. It was dry inside but very little else could be said for it. The walls were mostly open, allowing cooling breezes to sweep through in the Dry Season, and hopefully lessening the humidity in the Wet Season, but offering no protection from insects or the attentions of small boys hooting and hollering at the whiteskin soldier in their place.
Father Quaque welcomed Harry and assured him that the children would become used to his presence, he must not be intimidated by them. He did not know what intimidated meant but said that he was not afraid.
Reading was hard, and not especially rewarding because there was nothing of particular interest in the books he first came across. The religious stuff left him unmoved – his experience of life said that the first and greatest need of any man was a full belly. Only after that might he consider other matters such as the possible existence of a God. It was difficult to accept the existence of a kind, beneficent Maker when all he knew was the Magdalen followed by the pit. He knew that the Army was the best thing that had happened to him in his short life, and he was getting a suspicion that the military existence was still less than perfect.
He persevered, as much as anything because it was something to do – the life was very boring otherwise. Duty took up only a tiny part of each day except when the company kept guard, and with eight companies that was infrequent. They paraded once a week, at dawn, before the heat became impossible, and he had been told that they would not even do that in the Wet Season. It was too hot to go out on the drill square, or to the butts for musketry practice. On most days Harry spent an hour on his uniform, brushing and polishing, and another thirty minutes with his musket, keeping that spotless and in perfect order; the rest of his time was his own to fill.
The bulk of the men sucked at their bottles of arrack or palm toddy – very popular among the aficionados of alcohol. Toddy, made variously from fermented fruits with raw cane sugar added, was powerfully alcoholic and rarely toxic. Very few men went blind after a session with the toddy while arrack, distilled locally, often contained wood alcohol and crippled or killed only too frequently. Arrack still
had its takers in the serious drinking population – it was stronger than gin and guaranteed a drunken stupor after less than a pint while a man on toddy often needed half a gallon to put him down.
A few, Harry one of them, stayed sober, to the approval of the sergeants. Most of the officers were as drunk as the men and noticed nothing at all, but a very few of commissioned and non-commissioned remained alert and effectively ran the fort.
The Grenadiers’ own lieutenant, Atkins, fell to the fevers before the Dry Season was out, having made the error of repeatedly inspecting the sentries on guard duty just after dusk, when the miasmas were at their worst. He came back one night from the most distant post, which was at the far end of the outer wall, just by the swamp land, slapping at his wrists and complaining that he had been bitten by a new sort of mosquito, big and with spots on its wings. Sergeant Hollis had noticed nothing, but the sleeves of his coat fell low over the backs of his hands, having lost weight sweated off in the unaccustomed heat. Atkins had made up for the heat by increasing his intake of alcohol, was if anything fatter than when he had landed, his uniform even tighter about him.
Atkins was in rarely good humour, however, having caught one of the sentries with two buttons undone on his coat, and made little of his itches. He instructed Sergeant Hollis to note the man’s name to come up before the colonel’s desk next Tuesday morning, when he dealt with Defaulters.
“Out of Uniform when on guard duty, Sergeant! He can have five dozen for that. I’ll show the undisciplined Irish how to go about things in my company, see if I don’t!”
Sergeant Hollis knew better than to argue – he would lose his stripes if he showed himself an enemy to discipline. The colonel wanted only a quiet life and he would always support his officers unquestioningly. He left to give Patrick the good news.
“You heard my whistle, you damned fool! Why did you not do your buttons up?”
“Sure, and I almost did, Sergeant me dear – for I was not wearing the coat at all when I heard you!”
“Five bloody dozen, and in this place that is as like as not to kill you!”
“It will not be so bad as that, you will see now, Sergeant Hollis. A mouthful or two of arrack first and I shall hardly be noticing a little dose like that.”
Hollis made his note in his rough draft for the books. He wrote them up each month, painstakingly in ink, in best copperplate, taking the whole of a day to achieve a respectable result, and never made any entry before the actual event. Punishments were recorded only after they were delivered, so that the correct number of lashes could be written in without need for amendment. On this occasion he made no entry at all.
Four days after Patrick was caught Atkins was carried semi-conscious to the care of the Surgeon, his batman having been unable to stir him out of bed of the morning. He was moaning and complaining, only half alert, of pains; every joint hurt, it was agony to move arms or legs.
“Breakbone Fever, or the Dengue as it is sometimes called.”
The Surgeon was proud of his instant diagnosis, but then did nothing other than to instruct his orderly to sponge Atkins down with warm water.
“There is no treatment, none at all! None of my medicines will do the poor man any good at all. The fever is low, and so bark will do no good. When he is next sufficiently awake to swallow safely, then I shall give him laudanum against the pains.”
Sergeant Hollis cautiously enquired of the prognosis.
“Oh, that is a certain event, Sergeant. He is a drinker and will undoubtedly die. Thin men will sometimes survive the Breakbone and be quite well again inside as little as six months, but a fat individual such as this must surely perish. I saw it in the Sugar Islands, you know! Those who take rum or arrack always die; yet drinkers of gin are invariably preserved! I believe there is a powerful specific in the juniper berry that preserves against the ailment – I shall, one day, read a paper on my cure before a Learned Society! Unfortunately, we have no juniper berries here on the Fever Coast.”
Presumably Lieutenant Atkins had not been a gin drinker; he fell deeper into malaise each day, eating nothing and hardly able to swallow a mouthful of water. To add to his distress, he was taken by the lack of alcohol in his system as well and began to shake and vomit. His weakened body fell to dehydration and he died on the fourth day, earlier than the Surgeon had expected.
"Still, it saved him another three days of the miseries, and takes him off my hands the quicker. There was never a hope for him, you know."
Patrick was saved from the lash, never having to stand before the colonel. Unfortunately, the Dengue mosquitoes had found him while he had his coat off and flesh exposed; he was brought to the Surgeon just hours after Lieutenant Atkins and lasted no more than two extra days.
The recurrent fevers had all recovered, those who were going to, and the company waited the onset of the Wet Season at almost two-thirds of its original strength.
Sergeant Hollis was quite hopeful, told Harry that it might have been much worse.
"We shall be losing few more to the mal-arias, Harry, because once you have had it and come through then the next dose is far the lesser. Men only die first time round, apart from the unlucky ones, that is. The Wet Season will be the big killer - Yellow Jack, if it comes, will take one half of the men, while Typhus will only kill one in three, and the Typhoid fever might not drop as many as one fifth - for the rest, the dysentery will take some, it always does, but we should be safe if we are careful. Dysentery never kills men who wash their drinking jacks and plates and eating utensils, Harry. Boiling water poured over them, then you live! Wash yourself with soap every day, all over, in the Wet Season, and you stands a better chance, or so it was in the Sugar Islands."
"Will the fever come for sure, Sergeant?"
"Not every year. Yellow Jack might not come for ten years, then might be here for three years in a row, or so they said in Antigua. Typhus the same. Typhoid is less of a killer, but it comes more often, but sometimes it's only the scarlet rash sort of fever, and that ain't so bad at all. It's all luck, boy, all joss!"
Chapter Four
The heat grew more intense and the humidity climbed a little more every day. The whole fortress stank of the men in it, a reek of dripping humanity in every barrack room and corridor. It was impossible to stay dry and clean when each step taken meant another exudation of sweat and standing still was simply sticky.
The men had to wear their shoes - not merely because of the regulations but for fear of the worms and insects that infested the ground and would burrow into bare skin. ‘Chiggers’ was the generic term for the foot parasites, and the only remedy was to cauterise them, to burn them out with a red-hot wire. The shoes were worn inside the barracks as well as out and foot cloths were soaked with sweat before five minutes had passed, stank within ten. Harry changed and washed his feet and the cloths four or five times a day, and it still made no difference - they smelt.
The remainder of his uniform was as bad - sweat-stained and rancid despite his every care. English woollen cloth was not suitable for the high tropics and there was nothing to be done to make the uniform comfortable. They sweated; they itched; they stank; that was the reality of the Doldrums month.
The wind died and clouds built high above them.
"The storms come," Mollie told him. "Big and loud. Then come the Wet. It better then."
The sky darkened in the afternoons now, black, tall thunderheads building impossibly high and then, as the heat became wholly intolerable, exploding into lightning strikes and intense rain for up to two hours that cooled the air and the buildings, for another hour or two until the heat crept up on them again.
Harry had never dreamed of tropical lightning, could not believe the storms were possible. He had experienced the English thunderstorm, so called, when a dozen or so lightning strikes might come near - here the storm stayed directly overhead and the flashes seemed nearly continuous. The castle itself was struck repeatedly during each storm, but it did no noticeable harm to
building or people - they lost no soldiers dead to the storms. The native town fared less well, some of the wooden shacks hit and burned, a few of their people injured or killed, but even they seemed to come off lightly.
"They is mostly on the hill top, not down low where the people are." Mollie shrugged fatalistically. "Some folks, they got to live up high, for bein' no land left down below. Not so good, not in the storm. Watch the goats, Harry. They stays down good and low, under the bushes by the water. You don't never see one of they got hit by the storm flash. Maybe they more clever."
A few of the men were terrified by the power of the storms, hiding their heads from the lightning, trying to cover their ears; most became used to the noise as soon as they realised that they were safe; a few revelled in the chaos and destructive power. The great bulk sucked at their bottles and ignored everything outside of their alcoholic dreams.
One morning, three or four weeks after the storms started, there was a wind off the sea and rain swept in upon them. Driving, torrential rain, two and three times as heavy as the worst downpour Harry had ever seen in England. It was impossible to see across the parade ground, the falling water was so intense. The temperature fell almost to the level of an English summer; Harry shivered.
Sergeant Hollis came up to him as he stood and watched the rain.
"This is when we finds out if the storm drains, the big ditches, is blocked, Harry. If the sides 'ave fallen in and dammed 'em then there'll be a flood all across the square. Then some poor sods get sent out with shovels to clear the ditch!"
Harry watched anxiously for signs of flooding, but the water seemed to be flowing away.
"It looks right to me, Sarge."
"We'd be seein' it already if it was blocked. We're not in trouble this year. Lucky!"
"It ain't too bad, just shovelling a bit of dirt, is it, Sarge?"
"You don't want to be out in this, Harry. The snakes are all tryin' to escape, to get up where it's drier. The spiders as well. Add to that, there's always a chance of a bloody crocodile strayed up from the swamps. As well, if the flood water suddenly breaks as the dam goes then you can get swept away. Saw that in the Sugar Islands once, years back. There was mountains there, up around the barracks. Bit of a valley got blocked, like, and the water was backin' up to us and we got the men to clearin' it and it all went at once. Killed a corporal and all of the platoon!"
Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks Page 7