Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [130]
‘We have thirty-six slaves already aboard, Mr Paris. When we leave this coast we shall have a cargo, God willing, of more than two hundred, and a crew possibly of twenty-five. And you talk of persuasion. I thought you had more sense.’
Paris found nothing to say in response to this. He did not mind losing ground with the crew, if indeed he had done so; he had no wish to be a spokesman for them or any kind of leader; never again to take up a voice for others had been one of the first vows he had made in the ruins of his life.
He remained there while the recalcitrant slave was taken below. Thurso repeated his orders for the thumbscrews, adding a caution of ‘not too sharp’ to the boatswain. This done, he surprised the surgeon with a request to accompany him to his cabin.
‘Have a seat, sir,’ he said. ‘You will take a glass of port?’
‘Thank you.’ Paris watched the captain take out decanter and glasses from the locker above his table. A certain feeling of wariness came to him. Thurso was predictable only in his determination to secure good profits. Otherwise, in the motions of his spirit, he unsettled expectation in the way that persons did who could not be accounted wholly sane …
‘Your health, sir.’ Thurso looked with concealed dislike at the man before him, taking in – yet again – the details of the surgeon’s appearance, the awkward frame, the ravaged look of the face, the pale eyes that did not retreat before his own. It seemed an inventory he had been condemned through eternity to go on making. He wondered how he had transgressed against his demon to be visited with this plaguey fellow on his last voyage, wondered why it should matter, with himself and Barton so soon to do their private trade. The gold dust they would get for the muskets and his share of the profits on the voyage, together with what he had already, would see him through comfortably. But he was accustomed to think of his career as a monument to fidelity and good profits and satisfaction to his owners – and this was his present owner’s nephew, and also a half-baked fellow who might carry tales back, garble things, cast reflections on a man’s reputation.
But a deeper reason underlay these, one that even now he was unwilling to acknowledge fully to himself. There was a quality in the surgeon he recognized as dangerous. Thurso understood the nature of power as he did that of the sea, by instinct and experience. He had felt the force of the surgeon’s intervention just now. Paris had obliged him to play to the gallery, something he did rarely …
‘I will overlook your words and manners just now,’ he said, ‘on the ground that you are ignorant of the usages of the sea. This ship and all aboard her are in my hands. No one quits the captain’s presence without a form of asking permission, whether he be the doctor or the cabin boy. I will request you to remember that in future. And no one makes remarks in any way reflecting on the captain’s judgement. I will request you to remember that too. Now as to this slave who refuses food, he does it out of a perverse desire to frustrate us and make himself awkward. There is a wicked, contrary spirit in these people, Mr Paris. I know ’em well. If they would make the best of their condition, a slaveship could be a happy ship. But our lot is made harder by their sly and sullen ways. And mark you this, such a thing will spread to the others, if they see it spoils our game to any degree. They are watching us all the time without seeming to. One man starts refusing food and before you know where you are they will all be doing it. Most of ’em find their appetites again soon