Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [137]
Thurso, made anxious by symptoms of melancholy and lethargy among the captives, has instituted a joyless ceremony known as ‘dancing the slaves’, which Barton tells me is an old practice among slavers. After the morning meal, Sullivan is brought out to play reels on his fiddle while the women, who are not shackled, dance about the deck and the men jump in their irons as best they can, though it is a torture to men with swollen limbs. Thurso is too absolute in his habit of mind to grant any exemptions and so they are forced to continue till their ankles are raw and bleeding, the sailors keeping them to it with whips. There are those among the crew, the more brutish, who visibly enjoy this exercise. I have seen Libby and Tapley and Wilson grin to do it and laugh at the sad antics that they oblige the negroes to perform. They are made to sing also and sometimes they independently set up a wavering song among themselves. Jimmy, our linguister, tells me that these songs are full of sorrow, as one might expect. That their slow movements and this sad singing are at ludicrous odds with the brisk tempo of his fiddling seems not to trouble Sullivan at all. It is clear that he loves his fiddle and he plays it here with the same spirit as I have no doubt he would at a country wedding in Ireland.
I have spent some time in talking to Jimmy, who is very friendly and open, sensitive too, I believe – he conceals a good deal under that smile of his, which is due more to an inveterate habit of the nerves, I think, than to any real amusement. It is his ambition to be a teacher with a school for local children here on the coast, at Cape Palmas, under the protection of the English garrison there. He hopes to accompany us back to England and find an employment that would allow him to improve his knowledge of English.
If Jimmy feels that he is betraying his enslaved fellows by thus acting as intermediary with their captors, he gives no sign of it; perhaps he does not feel that they are his fellows at all. Because they have all black faces we suppose them close in fellowship, but when have we been so towards people only because they are while-skinned like ourselves? I have not noticed much affection and loyalty among us towards the Dutch or the French. Jimmy does not know how old he is – I should say about thirty. He is of the Hausa people, he has told me, and was brought to the coast as a child when his parents were enslaved by the Ashanti.
The captives themselves are not united: I have seen a good deal of squabbling and bad feeling among them. Yesterday, not long after Simmonds’s death, I saw one throw his rice in the face of another. They are of different races and tongues and reach the ship by diverse routes – this too I have learned from our linguister. Some are prisoners of war, others have been domestic slaves already and are sold now by their masters to pay off debts or provide wedding portions; yet others have been seized by local slavers such as the late Yellow Henry. But however varied the routes by which these unfortunates reach the deck of the Liverpool Merchant, once here they are brought to a uniform condition with remarkable –
He was interrupted by Charlie, who came knocking at his door to tell him that one of the negroes was thought to be dying. ‘The one that won’t take his grub, sir,’ Charlie said, his starveling face full of wonder.
Up on deck, however, there was no opportunity to see the man alone. The captain had been informed and was standing in colloquy with Haines on the quarterdeck at the head of the companion ladder. As always, because of Thurso’s stillness and the unchanging pitch of his voice, his feelings were not at first apparent; but as Paris drew closer, he saw the furious look of the