Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  However, they could never altogether agree.

  Delblanc’s contention was that any people, any nation or group, could change their condition immediately and radically by changing their habits of mind. “Let the most oppressed people under heaven once change their thinking and they are free,” he said, his brown eyes shining with that extraordinary openness and undefendedness of expression, his hands—which were shapely and strong— gesturing sharply. He had recently developed a habit of gesture curiously at odds with the gentlemanly nonchalance of his bearing, abrupt, almost fierce, controlling and delimiting, cutting off possible dissent. “Even these people on the ship,” he said, “both black and white, for they are imprisoned both.”

  And Paris, weary and oppressed, suffering these days from a sort of feverish insomnia, would marvel at this pristine shine of Delblanc’s, the freshness of his face and clothes, his philosophical empressement, the increasing eagerness of his manner, in which, though this was not to occur to the surgeon until later, there were already the signs of that fanaticism which would so profoundly affect them all. “We can change our situation by thinking, you say,” Paris would reply. “But whence comes this faith of yours that thinking can be changed? You are like a man who wants to build the upstairs rooms before he is sure of the foundations.

  Do you believe that habits of mind can be so easily reversed? For myself, I do not believe so.”

  “If ideas are not innate—and they are not— they cannot be so deeply lodged as to be beyond uprooting,” Delblanc would say, with one of his eager, delimiting gestures. “It is only a question of supplanting one set of associations with another. I am convinced of it… I know it in my heart and mind, Paris. Man can live free and not seek to limit the freedom of others so long as no one seeks to limit his.”

  So these discussions between them took usually an accustomed course. But Delblanc’s sense of mission was growing and he did not limit himself to Paris. Anyone at all—the weasel-faced Tapley, swabbing down the decks, a disgruntled Billy Blair coming up from scraping the slaves’ quarters, Morgan in his galley trying to find some new disguise for the rotten beef commight find himself addressed by Delblanc and asked whether he did not agree that the state of society was artificial and the power of one man over another merely derived from convention.

  Delblanc’s manner was the same with all, friendly and open. At first, tactics lagging behind conviction, he made no concession to any imperfections of understanding in his audience. “By nature we are equal,” he said on one occasion to a vacantly smiling Calley. “Does it not therefore follow that government must always depend on the consent of the governed?”’ He was bookish and he used the language he knew. He even spoke to McGann, asking him whether he did not think it true that the character of man originated in external circumstances and could be changed as these were changed.

  The men listened, or appeared to listen, out of deference, because he was a gentleman, because he was paying for his passage. Delblanc saw soon enough that he was using the wrong language with them and was beginning to try out a different one until warned by Thurso in terms not very civil that if he persisted in thus distracting the crew, he would be confined to his quarters for the rest of the voyage. “I will silence his blabbing,” he swore to Barton. “I will board him up in his cabin.” This proved unnecessary. One look at the captain’s face was enough to convince Delblanc. It was in his reaction to this threat that he showed the quick grasp of realities that later came to distinguish him. A man can do no good locked up in his cabin. He went more circumspectly thereafter.

  In this he was wise. Thurso’s punishments now were mere savagery—there was no pretence of justice in them. Davies, elected as spokesman, went aft to complain about the quality of the beef, which was offensive to the smell and visibly putrid. Though he spoke respectfully and kept his eyes down, he had hardly got out a dozen words before Thurso, in an access of fury, had him seized up to the gratings and flogged him with a rope’s end, groaning and panting himself with the force of the blows, only desisting when obliged by exhaustion.

  “Davies will niver forgive it,” Sullivan confided to Paris. “Niver, not if he lives to be a hundred. He feels it was not deserved.

  Davies is a steady man, that is why he was chose, an” he spoke to the captain fair. It would have been the cat, but Thurso couldn’t wait for it to be fetched, he was in such haste for blood-lettin’.”

  ‘These are difficult days,” Paris said. He had made it a point of principle not to join in any direct criticism of the captain.

  Sullivan hesitated briefly, then said, “I know it is not me place to speak, but there is bad will buildin’ up towards the captain an’ the mate..

  .” Again he checked, this time for longer. His next words came in a rush: “I don’t care a farthin” what befalls Thurso, he has treated us worse than the blacks. But you stand close to him, Mr Paris, because you are related to the owner, beggin’ your pardon… I wanted to say you should keep a weather eye open.”

  ‘Thank you, I will remember it,” Paris said.

  Sullivan gave his gap-toothed smile, relieved that his words had not been resented. Ever since the surgeon had spoken kindly to him in the matter of dancing the slaves, he had felt a loyal affection for Paris. He had come partly to utter the warning, partly to ask for a favour: he wanted Paris to act as witness for him.

  “McGann will not believe I did it,” he said. “We had a shillin” on it, McGann bet me a shillin’ that I would not dare to face Thurso. Well, he knows I went, but the miscreated Caledonian pretends not to believe I spoke as I did.” Sullivan shook his head at McGann’s obduracy and his long, unkempt black hair swung round his face. ‘He says he won’t part with his shillin” till he gets proof it was me music I spoke of to Thurso, an’ the fact that I could not hear meself playin’ owin’ to the clankin’ of the chains.”

  ‘allyes, I see.” Paris saw from the other’s expression that this was a serious matter for him.

  Sullivan was naked to the waist and terribly thin now, the bones of his shoulders standing out clearly; but his eyes had their usual look of glancing after some vision of splendour glimpsed and lost only moments before. “I don’t believe McGann has a shilling,” the surgeon said after a moment. “He hasn’t had any wages, has he? You will remember that he came aboard in rags and every stitch was taken off him and burned.”

  “I remember it well. They done the exact self-same thing with me, only I was turned out smarter than McGann by far, I had a good coat on me with a set of brass buttons. Thim buttons have niver, to this day, been give back.”

  “I didn’t know that. But I wanted to say that if McGann came aboard with nothing…”

  “It is not for the sake of the money,” Sullivan said. “If it was the money, he could give me a note of hand. I know somethin” of the law, bein’ a travelled man, an’ I know a note of hand is legal tender. But then again, what is the use of wavin’ a note of hand about when there is niver a drop left in the bottle? No, he has got to admit that I won the bet, that is all I am askin’. McGann has the scurvy very bad, he could drop off tomorrow, I have seen men go sudden with that, jokin’ one minute an’ dead the next, an’

  McGann is beginnin’ to have the look of it about him.

  The matter must be set straight before he goes, that is what we mean by justice, Mr Paris. An’

  I thought, since you were present and heard what passed, you might find it in you to tell McGann how I put me request to the captain with a firm voice an’ meanwhile lookin’ him straight in the eye.”

  ‘Very well,” Paris said. “It can do no harm to try. I will confine myself to your actual words, I think, and leave McGann to imagine how you bore yourself.”

  But before he found an opportunity for this McGann had been put in irons for begging rice from the bowls of the negroes. These last would sometimes give food to the men who had so illused them, a charity mysterious and moving to Paris, but rousing the captain to particular rage as
tending to weaken the slaves further and reduce their chances of survival.

  The surgeon had to make his way forward in order to see McGann, past the slaves grouped together on the main deck, guarded at present by Wilson, Lees and Hughes armed with whips and weighted sticks —Thurso had ceased to issue small arms to the crew. The men slaves were still fettered in pairs, the women and boys and girls allowed free. Paris noted in passing that the woman from the fort was there among them, that she seemed well enough, though emaciated.

  He had learned from Jimmy that she was not from the Gold Coast at all but much further west. She was from a people of nomads called Foulani, who lived by herding cattle. She did not look at him now as he went by.

  McGann sat in his heavy leg irons on the forecastle deck. He listened to Paris’s testimony with head lowered, the ragged cap drawn down over his brows. The pale, yellowish hue that had marked his face at first had darkened now and he had visible difficulty in breathing. Paris took the opportunity to look again at the blotches on his legs and found that they had degenerated into ulcerous wounds.

  “That is what passed,” the surgeon said.

  “I was present at the time and I heard Sullivan say the words. He asked me to come and tell you, so that you would be satisfied he had won the wager fairly.”

  McGann glanced up at this. There was a blankness now in his gaze but the lines of his face were set in their old expression of dogged and fruitless calculation. “Ye’re on Sullivan’s side then,” he said. His breath wheezed. “I am not done out of a shillin’ sae easy. Put in a word with Thurso for me, get me out these irons, an’ ye can hae the money.”

  ‘I have already asked Captain Thurso to free you,” Paris said gently. “I will ask him again in any case. It does not depend on what you decide to do about your bet with Sullivan.”

  Whether McGann believed this or not Paris never knew. He made no reply at the time, merely lowered his head with a sort of bitter obstinacy. He remained in irons all night, despite the surgeon’s pleas. He was still alive and able to talk when Haines went to strike off his fetters, but when they began to help him to his feet he groaned loudly once and fell dead to the deck. Within an hour he had been sewn in canvas and weighted and committed with the scantest of ceremonies to the sea.

  Two days later there was a change for the better in the weather, raising the spirits of all, though it was to prove no more than a respite, the crueller for its promise. A fair wind sprang up from the east, variable at first, then settling. The Liverpool Merchant made good way, tacking to begin with so as to take best advantage of the breezes. The fair spell coincided with a lull in the progress of the dysentery. For nine days there were no deaths. However, the slaves were much weakened and when they were got up on deck for washing, a number of them could not stand without support, despite whipping.

  Losses had been considerable. According to Barton, whose task it was to keep the tally, seventy-six negroes had died aboard ship since they had taken on their first slaves at Sierra Leone.

  In spite of this, Thurso seemed in better mood now that the weather had quickened. He invited Paris and Delblanc to sup with him, Barton making the fourth. There was still part of a side of fresher beef, taken on board ready-salted at Cape Palmas and reserved for captain and officers. This was minced with biscuit, onions and rice to make a stew. Over it—and a bottle from his stock of Bordeaux— Thurso became communicative, informing the others that the longitude of Kingston, Jamaica, by Dr Halley’s Chart, was seventy-six degrees and thirty minutes from London, and that they were therefore, by his reckoning, one hundred and forty-two leagues from it, provided he was right in his computation of the longitude of Cape Still Ann. And as he squared his shoulders and stuffed his pipe with the rank black tobacco and glared before him at a possibly relenting demon, everything about the captain’s manner indicated his belief that the computation was indeed correct.

  Paris, still worried at the presence of scurvy aboard, took advantage of this better mood to ask the captain for some of his claret to dilute and serve out to the crew.

  ‘My claret?”’ Thurso looked at him with genuine astonishment. “Your wits have gone astray altogether, Mr Paris. I am to give up my claret for that mutinous scum in the forecastle?”’

  “McGann died of scurvy,” Paris said.

  “And there are three others who show signs of it. It is due to some lack of nutriment. I thought perhaps the wine might do something, it is the juice of the grape after all. I thought I might mull it with a little sugar and some dried sage that I have.”

  “Did you so? I am obliged to you for thus disposing of my wine. McGann was a pox-ridden little beast and he died because there was no more marrow left in his bones. There is nothing wrong with salt beef. Our navy has fed on it for centuries. Why are all the crew not down with scurvy, if it is owing to the food? They have all eaten the same.”

  “That I do not know exactly,” Paris said.

  “Ah, so there is something you do not know? Take my word, those three you mention are dragging their feet. If I catch any man scanting his work he will get a good dozen. What he will not get, Mr Paris, is any of the captain’s wine.”

  This was final enough and left no grounds for appeal.

  Paris was driven to ponder again on the green peppers that had been served to the negroes. Without speaking of it to anyone, he took a bag of dried peas from the stores and kept them rinsed in his cabin until they produced shoots. These he persuaded Morgan to add to the men’s lobscouse just before serving. But as things turned out, he was not allowed time enough to detect any improvement, nor indeed to continue very long with his cultivation.

  Hughes the climber, high in the rigging, saw long-tailed tropic birds above him and shoals of brightly coloured sunfish below comsigns that they were coming into more enclosed waters. He saw also, full in the wind’s eye, a luminous halo on the edge of a distant cloud and knew it for the precursor of stormy weather. But the storm, when it came, struck with such suddenness that they had barely time to get the slaves battened down between decks. The ship staggered with the shock of a huge sea that seemed to rise on them from nowhere. The tornado that accompanied it came from eastward and attacked with awesome force and fury.

  Above the creaking and straining of the ship Haines bellowed for all hands. Thurso stood at the mainmast beside Barton, who bawled out the captain’s orders. The men at the clew lines struggled to hoist the stubborn, thundering canvas to the yards. Up above, Hughes and Wilson and Cavana and Blair, swinging on the cross-pieces while the ship reeled below them, fought to subdue the topsails and get them furled. The men were debilitated but the habit of discipline and the long practice of endurance kept them to the work and with surprising speed the ship was hove to under reefed fore and main topsails.

  Thereafter she was driven by heavy squalls that struck at her repeatedly, with scarcely a pause. For six days the slaves could not be brought on deck.

  Their meals were served below in lulls between the squalls.

  Because of the rough seas and heavy rain, the air ports set along the sides of the ship between decks had to be closed, and tarpaulins thrown over the gratings, thus effectively cutting off all the means by which air could be admitted.

  The sufferings of the negroes, already weakened by their privations and many of them with dysentery, were of the most appalling kind. Their rooms soon became insufferably hot. The confined air grew stifling through lack of oxygen and noxious with the breathing and sweating and excreting of so many bodies so close together. There was little more than two feet of headroom and the boards they lay on were of unplaned plank so that as they rolled helplessly in the hot, suffocating darkness, the rough surface of the wood took the skin from their backs and sides. In lapses of the wind Paris heard calls for help come from them and wild, demented cries.

  Sometimes he saw steam rise through the gratings.

  Several times, when conditions permitted, he went down among them, accompanied always by three men, one to
hold a lamp, the others carrying loaded sticks to prevent the slaves from biting at their legs and ankles. To Paris the place seemed like some infernal slaughterhouse. The floor of the rooms was slippery with the blood and mucus that had resulted from the dysentery, making the footing hazardous.

  He brought bread soaked in water to refresh the slaves and tried to discover any who had fainted so that they might be brought up and revived. He always pulled off his shirt before going down, but he could never stand the heat for very long. On the last occasion he was already feeling sick and feverish before descending. After no more than ten minutes he was so overcome with the heat and stench and foul air that his senses swam and he would have fallen had it not been for the assistance of the men with him.

  This heralded a bout of the fever which had visited him earlier in the voyage. For a day and a night he lay in his cabin, sweating, shivering, sleeping in troubled snatches, while the squalls slowly grew less violent and the weather began to settle again.

  It was while he lay thus that Thurso had his idea. It was a simple idea, but Thurso was a simple man, being an incarnation, really, of the profit motive, than which there can be few things simpler. His idea was based on certain undeniable facts. Deaths among the negroes during the six days of bad weather had amounted to eighteen—ten men, five women and three boys. The ship had been blown considerably off course and a good number more were likely to die before Jamaica was reached. Those that survived would not look attractive to the planters that came to bid for them.

  Cargo dying aboard ship of so-called natural causes was quite worthless, whereas cargo cast overboard for good and sufficient reason could be classed as lawful jetsam and thirty per cent of the market value could then be claimed from the insurers…