Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [116]
TWENTY-SEVEN
Thurso had returned from his visit to the Edgar in late afternoon, in much improved mood, having learned from Captain Macdonald that trade was brisk further east along the coast and especially in the vicinity of the Kavalli River. Thurso was intending to do some business on his own account – business which no one but Barton knew anything about. The Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, to which his owner, William Kemp, belonged, had taken over the dilapidated old fort on the coast, previously the property of the Royal Africa Company, and refurbished it, installing new cannon, strengthening the garrison and extending the slave-dungeons. According to Macdonald they had established excellent relations with the traders on the river and with the chiefs in the interior. Macdonald had bought two hundred and twenty-three slaves in the space of two months, he assured Thurso; only sixteen had so far died, and three of those suicides. He was staying only to take on rice and yams before leaving for the West Indies.
Had it not been for this encouraging news, the boat party might have fared much worse at their return, and especially Haines, who presented himself some several hours later than might have been expected, haggard and bruised, his left eye blackened and half closed, his shirt blood-bedabbled, minus pistol and cartridge belt and two axes, and with two of his party missing. Haines knew he had been a fool. He expected a flogging and felt it was deserved – he had been flogged in his time for much lesser offences. In the event, he was roundly cursed by Thurso, struck in the face and confined in handcuffs and double leg irons for the night. The value of pistol and ammunition was deducted from his pay.
Much of this was done for the sake of effect. Thurso did not have high expectations of the boatswain, or any of his crew. He knew they would drink to the point of insensibility if they could get hold of liquor and that some would run if they saw an opportunity. He was angered by the loss of the two men, but the chances were that they would be recaptured. If not, he would save their wages. It was later, when the ship was fully slaved, that a full crew would be needed; and he felt fairly sure of being able to take on more men later, at Cape Mount.
Next morning, having provisioned the yawl for three days, he set off for shore, taking Paris and Simmonds with him and six members of the crew. The principal dealer along the Sherbro River was a mulatto named Tucker and he had sent word that he had slaves to sell. Four of his retainers had been dispatched to meet them and conduct them upriver to Tucker’s house. They were waiting in a light canoe in the shade of the raffia palms along the banks just within the bar, where the water eddied and sidled, flecked with muddy white.
The river was wide here and the current flowed strongly. The seamen at the oars had hard work of it to keep their guides in sight. These made against the current with astonishing swiftness in their light canoe, one man standing at prow and one at stern, leaning forward in unison to throw their weight on the long-handled paddles.
The sound of the waves breaking over the bar at the river mouth pursued them, growing sullen with distance. They were enclosed on either side by thick walls of glossy-leaved mangrove trees. Paris sought to distract his mind from the close heat and the zealous attention of various stinging creatures by noting, for future inclusion in his journal, the naked and adventitious-seeming roots of these trees, how they arched from the parent stem while some feet from the ground to form strange stilts and buttresses.
‘He is a big man in these parts, Tucker,’ Thurso said. ‘All the people you see here belong to him