• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1363 0

which is black and glazed over and clearly putrid, as I have myself verified … Barton sends those he does not favour to scrape and swab out the slaves’ quarters, a task much hated by reason of the poor creatures sometimes being so enfeebled by the flux as not to have strength to reach the necessary-buckets. There are four of these in each of the apartments. It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets, in endeavouring to get to them, tumble over their companions in consequence of their being shackled. These accidents, though unavoidable, are productive of continual quarrels, in which some of them are always bruised. In this situation, unable to proceed and prevented from going to the tubs, they desist from the attempt; and as the necessities of nature are not to be resisted, they ease themselves as they lie.

There followed now several pages which some particular wear or friction, or perhaps the poorer quality of the ink, had rendered illegible. Erasmus felt hot and half stifled in the close confines of the cabin. The sweetish smell that rose from the pages came like some repugnant claim on him. He had retrieved this record from its journey to dust, and the rescue seemed to make him for the moment his cousin’s accomplice. Perhaps in the final pages Paris might have written something to incriminate himself. The writing here was more hasty and ragged, though still for the most part clear enough.

This morning we consigned to the sea Evans, who had been declining these two weeks past with a low fever and died on deck. Also two slaves, a man of the bloody flux and a boy of the gravel and stoppage of the urine, thus bringing … McGann in irons for the second time, for begging rice from the negroes’ bowls. Now that supplies are running low, the slaves get more than the crew, which is reasonable from Thurso’s point of view since he has no hope of selling the latter and may save their wages if they die. Water too is growing scarce – the men are rationed to one pint a day. McGann is sick with scurvy, but his appetite seems not to be affected. On being detected he was beaten by Barton with a rope’s end, then set in irons on the deck. He sits there in his shackles with his face screwed up tight and the red bonnet, which he has worn all the voyage, still hanging over his brow … not far from death, in my judgement, but still has not relented in the matter of his wager with Sullivan.

He is not the only one of our people to beg thus. I have been surprised to see the negroes give sometimes from their own portions, notwithstanding the grievous condition they are themselves in. It cannot be pity, how could they pity the men who have brought them to this pass? Crew and slaves are in the embrace of a wretchedness so profound that it precludes all animosity, all personal … my cabin here, I can hardly breathe in the mid-parts of the day and seek what breezes I can get on the weather side. The stench of the ship is truly terrible, there is not only the reek that rises from the bilges, but the smell of the slave quarters grows daily less supportable, for all our applications of vinegar and sulphur. My fancies grow sick, I feel the breeding of disease in the pores of her timbers and … We are a foul breath on the ocean that bears us.

May 15

Not only fancies are bred in these days but memories dredged up as it were from the sea. I have been thinking much of you lately and of our child that we never saw. It haunts my thoughts that you cried out for me and I was not there. Worse than this, against all reason and yet beyond my power to suppress, there is the fear that you were there in the crowd, that you saw me, head and hands thrust forward in that grotesque position, my face bleeding and fouled, and it was this memory of my face that you carried to the grave, while yours in my memory is flawless and … these ugly thoughts, my dearest.

I know that if I had not persisted in publishing my opinions – which I did out of arrogance … into prison and ruin. Because of this I took Kemp’s offer, not from any necessity of a material