Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  Our privileged position for trading has not lasted very long. We have now been anchored here ten days and woke this morning to find two ships in the offing, a Frenchman and a Bristol slaver named the Edgar, whose captain Thurso is acquainted with— a man named Macdonald.

  The presence of the French ship put our good captain thoroughly out of temper at once. It seems that the French are notorious for paying high prices, and this because they can sell their negroes dearer in their own colonies than can we in ours. And so they ruin the trade for the English. Thurso clenched his fists when he spoke of it and flushed up very dark, and those strangely unprotected-looking eyes of his that I have spoke of before went glancing all over the deck as if he hoped to find a Frenchman handy whom he could seize up to the grating and exercise his wrath upon. His deepest rages are always reserved for crosses to his will and especially when this involves any loss in trading—I have often remarked on it; but it is nevertheless strange to hear a man abuse a whole nation, as he did the French for several minutes on end, for popery and cowardice and poor seamanship and I know not what, when the true cause is only that they can obtain five pounds a head more for their negroes than you canforyours.

  He seems lacking in any sort of perspective beyond commercial advantage and without imagination for how others might see things.

  Barton, though I think him a wickeder man, at least in the sense of conscious wickedness, has greater perception of others and even humour of a certain kind, as I saw once again in the matter of the muskets.

  These, or rather the mutilations resulting from them, lived on in my mind with some special horror, I think because of the ludicrous display the men made of them. This was so much the case with me that I took the step— unusual these days, as he and I rarely have much to say to each other—of asking the captain directly if it were true that we sold defective firearms to these people. He denied it fiercely, being, I really think, incapable of admissions that might be weakening to his commercial prospects; but Barton later told me, with a good deal of chuckling and peering about, that English slavers have for many years been including inferior goods, bought at cheaper rates from the manufacturers, in their trade cargoes—not only weapons but metal goods generally and textiles too. ” They cheat us and we cheat them,” as Barton put it, ‘t is the way the world goes round.” I dare say it is, but I cannot help suspecting that it was we, rather than the Africans, who gave the globe its first spin in that direction.

  In the time we have been here we have acquired seventeen more slaves, bringing our total now to twenty-four, of whom eight are females.

  Several of them have inflammations from their burns and I have treated them as well as I can with dressings. There is a difference in the way they are branded, the men being marked on the breast, the women on the buttocks.

  They have been kept mainly on deck so far, under an awning that has been rigged amidships.

  Tapley was punished this morning for spitting on the deck. He received a dozen strokes with a rattan cane. He is the second to be caned since we came here; the other was Galley, who apparently tried to take hold of one of the women but she set up a shriek and prevented him. He escaped the heavier punishment of flogging, as it was seen he had done no harm. It is doubtful, I think, whether he meant any; he is in some dream of his own much of the time. The woman’s cry had so frightened him that he fell headlong on the deck and half knocked himself out.

  Thurso had him hauled up and caned there and then, as a convenient example, with the blood still running down from a cut in his scalp. Even thus dazed he struggled violently and four men were required to tie him.

  What the negroes think when they see their captors being thus treated, I have no means of knowing. The interpreter Thurso threatened the men with has not yet appeared.

  I was told by Simmonds, on whose watch it occurred, that there was an eclipse of the moon in the early hours of the morning. He says that he perceived the shade enter upon the moon’s disc shortly before four o’clock and it was wholly darkened by five, soon after which he lost sight of it in the haze, it being by then very near the horizon. I was sorry not to have been present at this, as I think I have only once before seen the moon totally shaded.

  Captain Thurso is not aboard at present.

  He has left Barton in command with orders to keep a good watch and to buy any likely slaves that are brought out to the ship, also to spy on the Frenchman’s activities as far as possible, and has had himself rowed out to the Edgar; it seems that Macdonald is returning further eastward along the coast, and will know the situation there. Thurso did not ask his surgeon to accompany him, for which that same surgeon is grateful.

  Not long after he had gone a party of men under Haines set off to shore in the yawl with water casks and a variety of cutting tools. What these last are for I do not know. There is much that is not explained to me; I do not mean kept from me—I suppose my knowledge is assumed; and it would be easy to resign myself to this, cease enquiring about this world of the present, into which I have strayed by some accident and which appears more grievous to me every day, just as I have ceased to speculate, or much to care, about what is to become of me. Perhaps that is all that would be needed: by an act of will to relinquish curiosity and so have no need to skulk away from God when he walks in the cool of the evening…

  But this, as he knew, was death in life. It was in a spirit of rebellion against his own self-abnegation that he abruptly closed his journal now and made his way up on deck. The weather was oppressively heavy and hot, with a darkening skein of cloud drawing over the sky from the distant headlands to the south. The wind had abated but the waves were high over the bar across the river mouth; he saw the glitter of the spray and heard the low thunder of the breakers. This distant violence of the surf, viewed across the calm expanse of blue unbroken water, appeared to Paris like the stealthy release of some vindicative mania long nursed. A sickening fetid smell came over the water from Macdonald’s ship lying to windward of them with its full cargo of slaves.

  Turning and looking down into the waist of the ship, he saw the negroes clustered under their canopy, their bodies patterned by shadows. The slight, continuous riffling of the awning made gleaming fluxions of light on the men’s chains. The women had been given a piece of calico to tie round their waists so as to cover the pudenda, and these squares of white held an intense purity in the thick light filtering down through the canvas. Johnson and Libby were standing guard, armed with pistols and whips.

  Forward of him, astride on the boom, he saw Hughes working on the tackle for the stay ropes, head and shoulders outlined against the sky. On the deck below Cavana was sitting cross-legged, with various bits and pieces laid out before him.

  Paris made his way forward and stood near the starboard rail. Cavana had glanced up at his approach but his eyes were back on his work now, and he showed no sign of being aware of the surgeon’s proximity. They had not spoken much together since he had treated Cavana for an inflamed condition of the eyes.

  “What work is that you are doing?”’ the surgeon enquired after an interval of some moments.

  “I am putting in new pins for these blocks,”

  Cavana’s voice was surprisingly soft and musical. After an appreciable pause he added, ‘They have wore loose. They were not well fitted to begin with.”

  This was the longest speech that Cavana had made for some considerable time; but he felt relaxed this morning, in the sultry weather, under the slowly thickening sky, with customary aggravation absent for the moment, Thurso away on his visit, Haines ashore with the boat party, Barton below somewhere busy with stores. Besides, though he would not have gone so far as to admit to a liking, he had formed a favourable judgement of Paris over the weeks, and this though the surgeon had started out with the black mark against him of being related to the owner. In this Cavana shared the general opinion of the forecastle.

  It was seen that Paris spoke fairly to people and that he was no crimp for Thurso—it was
remembered how he had stood out against the captain over treating Wilson’s torn back. Other things there were too.

  A ship is a public place and the Liverpool Merchant was little more than a hundred feet long from stem to stern. Paris would have been surprised to learn the extent to which his words and actions had been noted.

  Cavana maintained silence for some moments more to see if the surgeon had more questions. He discovered in himself a reluctance to let this conversation come to an end.

  He said, “They don’t use hard enough wood for it, these days. They should use greenheart or ironwood for the pins.”

  “I see, yes.” Paris thought he could detect the accents of Wales in the other’s voice, much muted. He looked up briefly to see Hughes still straddling the boom, his bare feet against the smooth projections of the saddle on the bowsprit.

  Beyond him the sky was darker now and there was a hush over everything, presaging rain.

  “There is quite some wear on the pins then?”’ he said.

  Cavana looked for some moments at the face of the surgeon. He saw nothing there but a serious and kindly attentiveness. “Well, the pins now,” he said at last. Unaccustomed feelings of friendliness rose in him. He was suddenly glad to have this work to do and to explain; and he felt something like gratitude towards this vague-seeming man for providing the occasion. “The pins,” he said, almost eagerly, “they have got to be as hard as you can get and they have got to fit snug because the wheel that is inside the shell of the block turns on them, d’you see; the hole is bored through the middle and the block-maker must take care to make it a one-tenth part less than the measure round of the pin.”

  Paris, to whom this had not been entirely comprehensible, nodded gravely. “Well,” he said, “I can see that the choice of wood is of first importance.”

  ‘I know about all manner of blocks,”

  Cavana said. He paused a moment, then added— and Paris did not know what a mark of favour was being shown him—”I was apprentice to a block-maker for the navy. I worked three years in the dockyards at Plymouth.”

  ‘Did you so? But you left it for the sea?”’

  “I took to the sea, yes.” Cavana looked down again to his work. He had spoken on a brusquer note which Paris at first thought due to the nature of his question, pressing too closely on the man’s past; but then he saw that Barton had appeared and was sniffing at the air on the starboard side of the mainmast. Facing that way, Cavana had seen him sooner. Paris knew he would not speak again now and felt sorry for an occasion lost.

  He turned away and moved to where Barton was standing. The mate gave him good-day and directed sharp looks towards Hughes and Cavana, whose head was now down over his work.

  “Rain before long,” he said. “The men ashore will get a good wettin”.”

  ‘What are they gone for? I saw that there were casks for water, but they had cutting tools in the boat also.”

  “Aye, they are gone to cut stanchions to make a barricado.” Seeing that Paris had not understood this, Barton gave his peering, strangely benevolent-seeming smile. There was nothing he liked better than the chance to deliver some felicitous phrasing. “The barricado,” he said, “is a fence we makes with wood stakes clear across the foremost part of the quarterdeck. Now you may ask what is the use of that. But you have to bear in mind, Mr Paris, that when we have our full copplement of slaves aboard, it might amount to two hundred and more. They will be kept below at night but in fair weather, in the daytime, they will be allowed up for air and exercise—they has to be let up if you want ‘em alive an” kickin’. Captain Thurso usually makes “em dance for a half hour or so in the mornin” an’ that gener’ly answers the purpose pretty well. Now you think of all them black heads gettin’ together an’ talkin’ soft in their own lingo—we don’t know what they are sayin’ an’ we can’t stop “em whisperin” together. You may not think it to look at “em, now that they are mallancholy and cast down, but they are treacly sly devils. If you could open up one of their skulls you’d find a plan of the ship printed in there. They knows all sorts of little things you wouldn’t suppose.

  They knows where keys is kept, they knows where the gun chest is, they knows where they can get hold of spikes to break their fetters. While we are in sight of land is the dangerous time.” Barton made a theatrical gesture towards the shore. “There it is,” he said. “Before their very eyes. They waits for the right moment, then they rushes the quarterdeck, an” they are desprit by then so they ain’t easy to stop. So we build a fence across an’ we stick two of the swivel cannon through it. Think of the effect, Mr Paris. There they are, plottin’ mischief agin us, like the varments they are. Then they see this fence.” The mate paused again to make a spreading gesture with his palms to show the breadth and impenetrable nature of the barricade. He rolled his ferret’s eyes to indicate the consternation of the negroes, faced with this obstacle to their plans. ‘They see the mouths of the guns pokin” through,” he said. ‘Think of the effect on ‘em. It’s all in the mind, sir.” Barton tapped his head and winked at Paris, to whom it came now that the mate was a considerable artist. The rain, which had been threatening so long, now began to fall, the first slow and heavy drops making distinct and separate sounds of impact on the deck and the stretched canvas of the slave awning.

  The rain came down on the shore party as they worked among the mangrove thickets in the tidal swampland bordering the estuary, chopping at the bases of the stems, knee-deep sometimes in the salt mud, stumbling and cursing among the arching roots of the mangroves. The rain obliterated all sight except of what was immediately before them and all sound but that of itself. It fell with a loud continuous drumming on the patient leaves, so thick and fleshy that they barely dipped under the onslaught. Within a minute the men were wet to the skin, their clothes clinging to them. Under the eyes of Haines they worked on without a pause, figures so completely beset by water as to seem almost submerged, the deluge from above indistinguishable from the sprays they shook on themselves as they wrenched at the branches.

  The downpour ended abruptly, as at some signal. The surge of the sea came back to them with a curious kind of tentativeness, like a vessel filling slowly. From somewhere nearby there came the low, bubbling celebration of pigeons, then a series of fugitive chatterings from further in among the dripping trees. It grew hotter. The sun was concealed but all-pervasive, spreading below the leaden skin of the sky with the energy of poison, until the whole was suffused and livid with it. Each of the men there, sweat replacing rain as they toiled on in the sickly heat, felt in some fashion that the sky was infected.

  Steam rose from the ground, from the foliage of the trees and their soaked clothing. Their sweat prickled them and the stinging creatures of the swampland, taking to the air again, guzzled the sweat as a sauce to the blood. There was a sweet heavy smell of flowers and odours of decay rose from the spongy ground and from the brackish slime of the fallen mangrove leaves.

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Sullivan groaned, slithering in mud, bedevilled by mosquitoes, grasping at the wet stems to force them down enough for a blow of his axe.

  “I thowt you had finished wi” that gibrish, long ago,” Billy Blair said, slapping at his neck, his small, blunt-nosed, belligerent face moist and furious beneath the red kerchief round his brows. ‘allyou said as much, anyway. But it is dawnin” on me that you canna be trusted, Sullivan.” Billy felt an equal fury at the wretched discomfort of the work and at Sullivan’s inconsistency in the matter of religion for adding to the baffling nature of the universe.

  ‘I was born for better things,” Sullivan said, pausing to wipe away sweat and mucus from around his mouth, and leaving a smear of blood from the numerous small cuts on the back of his hand.

  “Yeh,” sneered Billy, “playin” the fiddle in a crimp-house.”

  ‘allyou can keep your snot-box out of me fiddlin”,” Sullivan said, on a note of anger rare with him.

  These two might have fallen out further
if McGann had not chosen this moment to voice some thoughts. His life was given over to small stratagems; his motive for philosophizing now was to obtain a breathing-space. ‘Well, takin” it a’ in a’,” he said, ‘we are still men, aren’t we?”’ Sun and rain and a salty diet had set up a flaking process on McGann’s face; strips of dead skin hung from brows and cheeks.

  Amidst this patchy ruin his pale-lashed blue eyes surveyed the world with an expression of spurious calculation. “There is aye someone worse off than yoursel”,” he said. ‘We are free men, we can gang an” come as we please, not like them blackies we hae took on board.”

  ‘allyou try it, shipmate,” Wilson said, face narrow-eyed and sardonic below the stained white cotton headband, the heavy bones of his shoulder-blades standing out under his soaked shirt.

  “Ye dinna see what I am gettin” at,”

  McGann, said. “I am talkin” aboot freedom. I am talkin’ aboot -“

  ‘Get on, you Scotch runt,” hissed Haines from close behind him, having approached silently on purpose to startle and affright. “You make talkin” an excuse for not workin’, and I’ll make you sing while you work. You know what song, don’t you?”’

  The pile of trimmed stakes grew steadily on the clearing of shingle above the moored yawl.

  By mid-afternoon they had enough. While they were loading the stakes a bushpig came through the mangroves and briefly into the open. Haines fired his pistol at it but the creature fled, with no squeal to register a wound. However, the shot brought a prize of another sort: within twenty minutes of it a number of wary black men arrived by canoe from further upriver.

  They were armed with short, thick-shafted spears decorated with white feathers below the blade. And they were carrying palm wine in calabashes, which they offered with gestures and guttural sounds to sell.