Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [184]
Two days later there was a change for the better in the weather, raising the spirits of all, though it was to prove no more than a respite, the crueller for its promise. A fair wind sprang up from the east, variable at first, then settling. The Liverpool Merchant made good way, tacking to begin with so as to take best advantage of the breezes. The fair spell coincided with a lull in the progress of the dysentery. For nine days there were no deaths. However, the slaves were much weakened and when they were got up on deck for washing, a number of them could not stand without support, despite whipping. Losses had been considerable. According to Barton, whose task it was to keep the tally, seventy-six negroes had died aboard ship since they had taken on their first slaves at Sierra Leone.
In spite of this, Thurso seemed in better mood now that the weather had quickened. He invited Paris and Delblanc to sup with him, Barton making the fourth. There was still part of a side of fresher beef, taken on board ready-salted at Cape Palmas and reserved for captain and officers. This was minced with biscuit, onions and rice to make a stew. Over it – and a bottle from his stock of Bordeaux – Thurso became communicative, informing the others that the longitude of Kingston, Jamaica, by Dr Halley’s Chart, was seventy-six degrees and thirty minutes from London, and that they were therefore, by his reckoning, one hundred and forty-two leagues from it, provided he was right in his computation of the longitude of Cape St Ann. And as he squared his shoulders and stuffed his pipe with the rank black tobacco and glared before him at a possibly relenting demon, everything about the captain’s manner indicated his belief that the computation was indeed correct.
Paris, still worried at the presence of scurvy aboard, took advantage of this better mood to ask the captain for some of his claret to dilute and serve out to the crew.
‘My claret?’ Thurso looked at him with genuine astonishment. ‘Your wits have gone astray altogether, Mr Paris. I am to give up my claret for that mutinous scum in the forecastle?’
‘McGann died of scurvy,’ Paris said. ‘And there are three others who show signs of it. It is due to some lack of nutriment. I thought perhaps the wine might do something, it is the juice of the grape after all. I thought I might mull it with a little sugar and some dried sage that I have.’
‘Did you so? I am obliged to you for thus disposing of my wine. McGann was a pox-ridden little beast and he died because there was no more marrow left in his bones. There is nothing wrong with salt beef. Our navy has fed on it for centuries. Why are all the crew not down with scurvy, if it is owing to the food? They have all eaten the same.’
‘That I do not know exactly,’ Paris said.
‘Ah, so there is something you do not know? Take my word, those three you mention are dragging their feet. If I catch any man scanting his work he will get a good dozen. What he will not get, Mr Paris, is any of the captain’s wine.’
This was final enough and left no grounds for appeal. Paris was driven to ponder again on the green peppers that had been served to the negroes. Without speaking of it to anyone, he took a bag of dried peas from the stores and kept them rinsed in his cabin until they produced shoots. These he persuaded Morgan to add to the men’s lobscouse just before serving. But as things turned out, he was not allowed time enough to detect any improvement, nor indeed to continue very long with his cultivation.
Hughes the climber, high in the rigging, saw long-tailed tropic birds above him and shoals of brightly coloured sunfish below – signs that they were coming into more enclosed waters. He saw also, full in the wind’s eye, a luminous halo on the edge of a distant cloud and knew it for the precursor of stormy weather. But the storm, when it came, struck with