Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [109]
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, ‘that 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 Calley, 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