Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [128]
‘Well,’ Paris said, as one of his oarsmen pushed barefoot against the mooring post and the canoe edged out towards midstream, ‘I hope your Mandingo priest will get to the bottom of things.’ It was the only hope he felt able to express for Owen. As the river began to curve away he turned to look back. The factor was still there, diminutive and lonely, standing on the bankside amidst the detritus of palm leaves and dead crabs, watching him out of sight. At the last moment Owen took off his hat and waved it once. Then the canoe took the bend and he was cancelled abruptly; the forested banks resumed their sway, concealing all traces. That scrape of human lodgement, focal point of wretchedness, the house, the compound, Owen with his longing for salad and polite manners, the shackled slaves in the stinking barracoon, no smallest hint of it remained.
The river was the only reality here. The river was the link of trade. Slaves came down from the upper reaches, perhaps hundreds of miles. The river bore them down to its bellowing mouth, the terrible ordeal of the surf, the open sky, the waiting ships. Wherever on this coast that there were rivers it would be the same. The rivers of Africa admitted the slavers to her vitals …
The long, light canoe was making good speed. The oarsmen set up a rhythmic cry as they thrust on the poles, perhaps in warning of their approach, as the channel was winding and the craft in midstream. But the men who were rowing him were so like those he had seen in the barracoon, in colour and in general cast of feature – he was beginning to notice such things now – that this wild cry of theirs seemed irresistibly to Paris like a cry of mourning for those in chains, who were too lost to mourn for themselves.
TWENTY-EIGHT
When Paris got down as far as Tucker’s he found the yawl ready to leave, with only Thurso waited for. The slaves lay bound amidships, crowded promiscuously together. Sitting apart was a slightly built, smiling African in cotton singlet and drawers. This was the newly hired linguister, Simmonds told him – a protégé of Tucker’s. Simmonds did not look well, he noticed: the mate’s eyes were heavy-lidded and he held his head as if movement gave him pain there.
Thurso came down to the landing stage with the dignified and gravely smiling Tucker by his side. After they had exchanged civilities and assurances of further trade, the yawl was cast off. The wind was up and there was a heavy sea over the river mouth, obliging them to make a wide tack westward so as to get more easily over the bar.
Back on board they found the carpenter, with four men to assist him, busy constructing a barricade of stakes across the fore part of the quarterdeck, lashing the upright stanchions to long horizontals of inch-thick board that extended from side to side, with gates above the companion ladders. The starboard side was already complete; Johnson and Libby had run the swivel cannon out of its port so as to turn the muzzle through the fence, down on to the slave deck below.
The captain had scarcely set foot on deck when Haines came to him with a complaint against one of the negroes. Bullies need not be cowards and in fact Haines wasn’t one; but hireling bullies need the countenance of their chiefs and the boatswain had been more than usually officious since his disgrace, in an attempt to recover lost ground.
‘Morgan reported it to me, sir,’ Paris heard him say. ‘I checked it myself this morning and found it to be true.’
Thurso, with the boatswain at his side, took some steps away and Paris did not catch the rest of what was said. Haines had strange eyes, he thought. There was a constant glitter in them that seemed nothing to do with his mood or feelings … The surgeon felt tired, after the broken sleep of the night before, and at the same time curiously heartsick, as if at some loss or shock whose nature he could not precisely determine.
‘Fetch the man aft,’ he heard Thurso say with a sudden, hoarse ferocity. ‘And bring the linguister.