Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  That steady look of the negro exercised his mind in the days that followed, though it was not repeated. It was the first time he had actually been regarded by any of these people.

  He could not decide if it had been a look of enmity or a recognition of something. It was as if, he wrote in his journal, the life of the eyes was transferred from the man who spat at me, who died, transferred from him to the other…

  Fanciful, no doubt, he thought, sitting late in his cramped cabin, unable to sleep, for all the cradling motion of the ship. He felt that he was changed. He had become prey to superstitious fancies, as he had to impulses of violence.

  Close weather lately, with lightnings and variable winds. The slaves have had to be kept under hatches a good part of the time—Barber has fitted the platforms and bulkheads now. Tapley is in irons up against the windlass, and has been so since yesterday. It seems that he seduced one of the women to go with him below, and there lay with her brutelike in view of those of his companions not on deck. It was not a rape, all are agreed, so he may escape flogging. He is a sly, rat-like man, Tapley.

  At daybreak there came several canoes alongside us with traders to offer their services. They were sent back ashore by Captain Thurso to purchase slaves and rice, he having provided them on trust with trade goods. One came back within two hours with a man and two girls, bringing our number to eighty-three. There is in the offing now, as well as the Frenchman and a Danish slaver newly arrived, a London ship, the Astrid, Captain Cockburn. In mid-morning Thurso went over to her in the punt, having been told she had eight slaves aboard to change for ivory. He returned shortly with that clamp-jawed, staring look of his when he is in a rage; it seems he could not take the slaves on Cockburn1 s terms, which was sixty bars per head round. According to Barton, there were but three of the slaves sizeable and two of the remaining five under three foot six inches. “Sixty bars for dwarfs now,” Barton said, and laughed—though not so Thurso would hear. Barton keeps me informed, though not out of friendship—I do not believe he has feelings for anyone. It may be that he thinks to ingratiate himself for the sake of my uncle; but I believe he enjoys using some tone of disrespect to compensate for his usual sycophancy.

  Trade is slowing down. The local dealers will very seldom bring a slave to the ship to sell, and the boat trade is dearer and more precarious. As a consequence, whenever any do bring a slave, Thurso is obliged to accept him, being in fear that if he refuses, he will not get the chance of another.

  Meanwhile, the French are rumoured to be paying eighty bars for an adult male. ” The crappos are trying to ruin us,” Barton said. I do not know whom he means by “u”’; the ruin has been total for some aboard this ship already. I suspect we shall be leaving here soon and proceeding further along the coast to eastward, now that trade is slackening. We have lost two slaves and several more look very listless and low and will scarce move except they are whipped, though I cannot determine any disease in them. It is as if they cannot emerge from the shock of their capture…

  Sometimes in storm weather the shore had fluttered with disabled swallows. They crouched lower for his approach, without strength to escape. In his hands they pulsed with that same pulse. He had taken a bird and warmed it between his hands or inside his jacket, brought the life back until it was able to fly. Sometimes, released from his hands, they circled once around him before flying away; in gratitude, or so the child had believed— and the belief had survived all the man’s science.

  It was Wilson who had come upon the dead woman.

  He told the story at the time favoured for stories, in the first of the twilight, before the night watch was set, when it was still early enough for most men to be on deck.

  The captain was making his usual walk on the weather side of the quarterdeck, twelve paces forward, twelve back; Barton stood alone on the lee side and Johnson was at the weather gangway, mending a tear in his jacket by the lamp there.

  Haines, having seen to the coiling of the ropes, was smoking a pipe with Morgan in the galley. Two of those on half-watch, Hughes and True, were amidships guarding the slaves. The others were lying on the forecastle, smoking, talking together. It was a relaxed time on the ship, a time for speculation and hyperbole.

  “She were crawled right under the gangway,”

  Wilson said. “Behind the gangway ladder, up agin the side. Hardly space for a cat in there. She were crawled under, among some bread butts.” He had been sent forward with Calley shortly after turning-to that morning to wash down the deck, and had found her there, in the first light of the day, lying on her side, knees drawn up, in the narrow space between the butts. “Not a mark on her,” Wilson said.

  “She must have been took sick and crawled in there.”

  There were things about this discovery that Wilson did not speak of to the others. He had thought her asleep.

  Her back was to him and in the carelessness of her condition the waistcloth had ridden up over her buttocks to show the brandmark high on the left one. Calley was over on the other side of the deck. There was no one else near. Moving the butts clear, he felt half suffocated with eagerness. By good luck—as he thought —she did not wake. It was his idea to take her from behind while she was still too sleepy to make effective resistance. He had lowered himself against her and had a hand over her mouth before he felt the chill of the body and realized that he was jammed up against a corpse.

  “Shark meat,” he said now, with resentment; Wilson never forgot an injury and this death seemed one to him, cheating his lust. Light from the forecastle lamps glinted on his dark stubble as he turned his face slowly from side to side. “That’s all she were, shark meat.”

  “I never seen her,” Calley said. “I was on the other side. I seen her but I didn” find her. Wilson shouted to me come an’ looka this.”

  He wished he could have been the one to find her and have something to tell.

  ‘allyer couldn’t find yer own cock in the dark,”

  Libby said. The dead jelly of his eye emitted a thin, satiric gleam. “Yer lost yerself, didn” yer, and had to be brought back by the quashees?”’

  A rare moment of felicity came to Calley.

  ‘Well, I got two eyes,” he said, “so I got more chance o” findin’ things than what you have.”

  This unexpected riposte set Blair chuckling.

  ‘That’s reet, lad, you ha” twice the chance o’ some,” he said; and this support and the fact that Blair had laughed at his joke, secured him Calley’s affection for ever.

  ‘They dies of melancholy,” Barber said, round the stem of his pipe. “I have seen it over an’ over.

  They sets their minds on dying. I have been on ships where it spread like a plague. You put “em below just as usual, two by two, an” they looks just the same as ever, an’ in the mornin’ you find a dead an’ a livin’ man chained together an’ that is the first you notice any difference between “em.”

  “When one dies, others will follow,”

  Sullivan said, glancing about him as if disturbed in a dream. “It was Simmonds set it loose, God rest his soul. Death has sailed with every ship that ever put out of port. Once he gets loose, there is no conf” him again.”

  ‘He is the only free fuckster on this ship then,” Wilson said, “cept for the captain.”

  ‘It is true that a curse will sometimes fasten on a ship,” Davies said. “There was the Black Prince, Captain Bibby, which I sailed with in forty-four. We were tradin” on the Gambia an’ the captain was a tartar—this one is a saint to him.

  He would flog a man every day for one reason or another. I seen him drown a black woman in a swill tub with his own hands for tryin’ to pass a marlin-spike to one of the men slaves. I tell you, he was a devil. He had given out arms and ammunition to the natives ashore so they could make a war-party to take slaves, an’ in exchange he’d taken eight men aboard as pawns.”

  ‘What is that?”’ Blair asked.

  “They are relatives of the chief or people b
elonging to the chief that offers themselves for it, on the agreement that unless slaves are furnished within a certain time, or goods to the value of what has been loaned, the pawns will be carried off instead. Our agreement was for three days, but Bibby did not wait the due time, he took advantage of a favourable wind to up anchor and make off. The result was that another ship was attacked by the natives in revenge, the Molly, it was, for no other reason than she was a Liverpool ship. She wasn’t a slaver even, she was tradin” for beeswax an’ pepper. The captain an’ the mate an’ five crew were taken an’ tied to trees an’ had their throats cut. The English sent a sloop from Goree with a platoon of troops an’ a cannon to punish the blacks for this outrage, an’ they burned their village over their heads an’ killed several of them an’ one of the soldiers was killed in the fightin’. Now all this blood was on Captain Bibby’s head, as he had broke the bond. But there was a curse on that ship from the moment of leavin’. Bibby lost two-thirds of his negroes by the bloody flux on the Middle Passage, includin’ all but one of the pawns he had taken, an’ so it was paid back to him.”

  ‘Paid back to him?”’ Blair said. “What became o” Bibby then?”’

  ‘He retired shortly after. He had put savin’s by. He went to live in Kent, with his unmarried daughter. He was a Kentish man, d’you see, Captain Bibby.”

  “I have seen blindness spread on a ship,”

  Wilson said. “There is a skin grows ower the eyes. Tha wakes up in the mornin” an’ tha cannot see owt. The negroes come aboard with it already about them, an’ it gets among the crew. I were on a ship once when everyone were goin’ blind with it, skipper an’ all. We were out in the Gulf o’ Guinea when it started, bound for Barbados, but we had to put back to San Tome. I were talkin’ to the bos’n, name of Billy Fox, talkin’ away one minute, next he says, “Christ, give us a fin, mate, my eyes have gone.”

  ‘Did he get better?”’ Calley, whose sleep would be troubled, had been following this story with round eyes.

  “Get better? He didn’t have no chance to get better. Billy couldn’t keep off the women. He went to a crackhouse back in San Tome an” fell down some steps an’ broke his neck. There were a canary on board an’ that went blind as well.

  Soon as it went blind it started singin’—it were dumb before.”

  There was a pause at this. Wilson was an unpredictable man and no one felt inclined to risk provoking him by seeming not to believe it. After some moments Libby gave it out as his opinion that Africans were able to put an end to themselves by holding their breath, this being the only explanation for deaths among fed slaves with no injuries or marks of disease.

  ‘A man canna kill himself just by holdin” his breath,” Blair said, with some beginnings of the confused anger he always showed at contradictory or illogical statements. ‘If he holds his breath, he’ll fall down in a faint, an” when he falls down in a faint, he’ll start breathin’ again.

  If you dinna believe me, try it for yourself.”

  ‘no use askin” me to try it.” Libby laughed and spat over the rail. ‘I’m a Englishman, ain’t I?”’

  “A Englishman cannot do it,” Tapley said.

  “Only these here blacks can do it. They are closer to animals than what we are.”

  “If they are closer than what you are, Tapley, they must be amazin” creatures indeed,” Blair said. “I agree with what Barber says. It is melancholy kills them.”

  “I will be dyin’ of malincholly meself aboard of this ship,” Sullivan said. “I am playin” me fiddle for them blacks ivery mornin’ an’ the sound of the clankin’ they make is drownin’ out me notes. I am goin’ to have a word with the captain about it.”

  ‘The only word you’ll ever have wi” the captain is “aye-aye, sir”,” Blair said.

  ‘allyou said the same thing about me buttons, but I spoke up to Haines.”

  “Aye, an” wha’s still got “em? Speakin” up to Thurso is a different matter. You have only to look at him wrong, an’ it’s bread an’ water in the bilboes.”

  ‘A man with justice on his side will always be listened to,” Sullivan said.

  “Ye’re all gab, Sullivan,”

  McGann said. “We might tak ye more serious if ye’d put money on it. Will ye tak a bet in even shillin’s? My shillin” says ye’ll never hae the brash to speak up to Thurso.”

  ‘The Scotch were always doubters,” Sullivan said. “My shillin” says I’ll speak to him, man to man. Billy, you are me witness.”

  31.

  With the slaves” numbers now so much increased, the enforced periods below decks rendered their quarters noisome; it was Paris’s duty to see the platforms well washed down and the area between decks smoked for some hours to purify the air. Relations with the coast negroes had worsened. The Frenchmen’s yawl had driven ashore at Little Bassa and been smashed and plundered, and her crew roughly handled, by the natives.

  The news had perturbed Thurso, who was afraid that this success would encourage other attempts.

  “These villains will copy any bad example,” he observed to Barton, “but show them a good model of behaviour and they will sheer away from it as if it were the devil. They are inclined by nature to every kind of mischief and evil-doing.” The thought of losing the ship’s boat worried him a good deal; there was no trade anywhere along the Windward Coast without a sloop of some sort. “You can trade with ‘em for twenty years,” he said, “then some other white man does ‘em an injury and they pretend to believe we are all tarred with the same brush.”

  “They are wrong there, Captain,” Barton said. “It is them what have been tarred.”

  Thurso regarded his first mate with a displeasure he took no trouble to conceal. He was an enemy to jokes, feeling an energy in them beyond his controlling.

  “Barton, I do not like levity,” he said. “You know my feelings and still you go on with it. I advise you to be careful.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “We will be going on round the coast very soon, down to the company fort. We will do our private business for the gold dust there, upriver, as we did before. This voyage will be our last together. What course you set afterwards is no concern of mine, but while you are mate on my ship you will keep to my mood. I was remarking on the fickleness of these dogs and their readiness to follow any bad example.”

  Then the yawl returned from six days’ trading upriver, with eight slaves, a tusk weighing nearly forty pounds and two quintals of camwood —and with Johnson in the waist half conscious and shivering with fever and True hardly able to stand to his oars.

  It was this that decided Thurso. Two of the crew were dead already and one had run; any more, and he could not keep the yawl manned and the negroes guarded at the same time and so would not manage to bring off slaves anywhere on this side of the cape. Next morning he sent ashore for water and more rice; they had more than a thousand pounds of it aboard now. Later he sent Haines and four men with twenty fathoms of remnants to exchange for yams, plantains and palm oil, but these supplies could not be brought aboard till next day, as there was so great a sea across the bar that Haines did not dare to venture over.

  When they came they brought with them also a single slave, a well-grown boy of fourteen or so, bringing the total number to ninety-seven, of which thirty were women.

  In the course of the day the ship’s sails were loosed and aired and the spare sails brought up and overhauled.

  It was found that the rats had done some damage to these; the ship was by now overrun with them, as the three cats they had brought out from England were all dead, and they had been quite unable to find one ashore. Under Barton’s supervision—Johnson being too ill—the small arms were discharged and reloaded. With nightfall, the slaves were herded to their quarters below and the hatches fastened down on them, Thurso knowing from old that to leave slaves on deck, men or women, when the ship was leaving their home shores, was to invite trouble of the most serious kind.

  “I have seen it
happen,” he said that evening to Barton and Paris, whom he had invited to sup with him on this eve of departure. “They become desperate when they see the ship putting out to sea. They will sometimes throw themselves over the side, chained as they are. And in their shackles, d’ye see, they cannot long stay alive once they are in the water. They are gone under before you can lower a boat for ‘em. I have known ‘em shout and laugh with the joy of cheating us. It is a dead loss to the owners, since we are not underwritten for suicide.”

  They were sitting over brandy after the meal. Thurso was in a more than usually expansive mood this evening, with his trading done here and half his cargo already purchased. Since hearing Paris’s report he was less troubled at the thought of being left undermanned.

  Johnson was still weak and complained of racking pains in head and limbs; but True’s fever had left him.

  Both men had been drinking heavily and sleeping in native huts on shore. It was the surgeon’s opinion that they had exposed themselves to malignant ground vapours and thus contracted marsh fever, though it seemed of an ephemeral kind.

  “If the men have to sleep away from the ship,” the surgeon said, “they should be sure to have a fire lit in their close vicinity, just sufficient to raise a gentle smoke. This would render the night airs less noxious.”

  “Aye, it is the same practice we use aboard ship,” Barton said, “to clear the air between decks.”

  Thurso looked from the mate to the surgeon. He could not suffer men to show any accord in his company without prior reference to himself. “You may be right, Mr Paris,” he said. “But you will never get any discipline or good governance from these men. They will take no notice of advice that might tend to their good. Hard labour aboard, debauchery ashore and an early grave—that is the way of it for nearly all of ‘em.”

  Thurso paused for a moment, looking closely at the surgeon, feeling the customary irritation of moral constraint the other put upon him, by his silences as much as his words. “We are living in the real world, Mr Paris,” he said. “We have to shape our course to the weather.”