Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [143]
‘Did he get better?’ Calley, whose sleep would be troubled, had been following this story with round eyes.
‘Get better? He didn’t have no chance to get better. Billy couldn’t keep off the women. He went to a crackhouse back in San Tomé an’ fell down some steps an’ broke his neck. There were a canary on board an’ that went blind as well. Soon as it went blind it started singin’ – it were dumb before.’
There was a pause at this. Wilson was an unpredictable man and no one felt inclined to risk provoking him by seeming not to believe it. After some moments Libby gave it out as his opinion that Africans were able to put an end to themselves by holding their breath, this being the only explanation for deaths among fed slaves with no injuries or marks of disease.
‘A man canna kill himself just by holdin’ his breath,’ Blair said, with some beginnings of the confused anger he always showed at contradictory or illogical statements. ‘If he holds his breath, he’ll fall down in a faint, an’ when he falls down in a faint, he’ll start breathin’ again. If you dinna believe me, try it for yourself.’
‘No use askin’ me to try it.’ Libby laughed and spat over the rail. ‘I’m a Englishman, ain’t I?’
‘A Englishman cannot do it,’ Tapley said. ‘Only these here blacks can do it. They are closer to animals than what we are.’
‘If they are closer than what you are, Tapley, they must be amazin’ creatures indeed,’ Blair said. ‘I agree with what Barber says. It is melancholy kills them.’
‘I will be dyin’ of malincholly meself aboard of this ship,’ Sullivan said. ‘I am playin’ me fiddle for them blacks ivery mornin’ an’ the sound of the clankin’ they make is drownin’ out me notes. I am goin’ to have a word with the captain about it.’
‘The only word you’ll ever have wi’ the captain is “aye-aye, sir”,’ Blair said.
‘You said the same thing about me buttons, but I spoke up to Haines.’
‘Aye, an’ wha’s still got ’em? Speakin’ up to Thurso is a different matter. You have only to look at him wrong, an’ it’s bread an’ water in the bilboes.’
‘A man with justice on his side will always be listened to,’ Sullivan said.
‘Ye’re all gab, Sullivan,’ McGann said. ‘We might tak ye more serious if ye’d put money on it. Will ye tak a bet in even shillin’s? My shillin’ says ye’ll never hae the brash to speak up to Thurso.’
‘The Scotch were always doubters,’ Sullivan said. ‘My shillin’ says I’ll speak to him, man to man. Billy, you are me witness.’
THIRTY-ONE
With the slaves’ numbers now so much increased, the enforced periods below decks rendered their quarters noisome; it was Paris’s duty to see the platforms well washed down and the area between decks smoked for some hours to purify the air. Relations with the coast negroes had worsened. The Frenchmen’s yawl had driven ashore at Little Bassa and been smashed and plundered, and her crew roughly handled, by the natives. The news had perturbed Thurso, who was afraid that this success would encourage other attempts.
‘These villains will copy any bad example,’ he observed to Barton, ‘but show them a good model of behaviour and they will sheer away from it as if it were the devil. They are inclined by nature to every kind of mischief and evil-doing.’ The thought of losing the ship’s boat worried him a good deal; there was no trade anywhere along the Windward Coast without a sloop of some sort. ‘You can trade with ’em for twenty years,’ he said, ‘then some other white man does ’em an injury and they pretend to believe we are all tarred with the same brush.’
‘They are wrong there, Captain,’ Barton said. ‘It is them what have been tarred.’
Thurso regarded his first mate with a displeasure he took no trouble to conceal. He was an enemy to jokes, feeling an energy in them beyond his