Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [260]
In the landfall itself, where others saw merely a refuge, Delblanc must have seen also a violent birth. Paris thought of that dawn, the unreal calm after the long bufferings of the wind, the listing ship with her decks washed clean by the night’s rain, the sight of the long, sickle-shaped sand bar fretted with waves, and the curving sweep of the inlet. It was afternoon before they could bring the ship into the channel, but the sun was high enough still to cast a band of light across its mouth, making it seem like a glorious threshold.
In the event, however, more suffering had lain beyond. Those early days had been the worst. Weakened by hunger and privation, huddled together on the rim of the limestone pineland, they had lived as they could on beach plum and palm berries and a species of blackberry growing along the shore. These fruits, insufficient as they were, had probably prevented deaths among the crew, several of whom were suffering from scurvy; but more negroes died in those first days and some ran off and were not seen again.
More would have run and almost certainly died, if the fate of Haines had not come as a fearful warning. He and Barton had disappeared on the first night, Barton to return two days later, half raving, bearing still the ripped jute sack that had held the gold dust, as if this evidence of his loss could somehow, as well as proving his words, exonerate him, plead in his favour. The story he came back with, garbled afterwards in pidgin and a variety of African languages, had lived in the minds of them all.
The two had returned to the ship with what speed they could. In spite of their enfeebled state they had brought the sacks off her. Their first plan, of making off in the longboat, was frustrated because she was fouled and they were too weak to free her, and too much in haste – they were possessed by fear of being surprised at their work. Ever the actor, even in his state of shock, Barton had sought to convey this fearful haste to his listeners. He wanted them to understand, to see that his conduct had been rational, laudable even. ‘We had to get clear of the vessel,’ he said again and again, rapidly and tonelessly. ‘You can see that, shipmates.’ And then, with his inveterate fondness for the polysyllabic flourish, ‘It was iniquitous dark, lads, we didn’t dare to show no light …’
Paris found himself smiling involuntarily as he lay there. Barton’s impudence surpassed everything. The thin face bloodless with exhaustion, staring with a fear still not overcome, the ripped sack – his gauge of truth – still in his hand. And the incorrigible flourish of the phrase.
They had blundered with the sacks for some distance and settled down to wait for daylight. This, when it came, brought further problems. Their idea was now to bury the gold, but the ground was too marshy. They had stumbled through thickets of mangrove and swamp willow, carrying the sacks, looking for a place. Eventually they had come to the edge of a shore hummock, where a stream ran like a tunnel into thick vegetation. Here, above the stream, there was a deep mould of leaf and soil. But now a difficulty arose, strangely unforeseen in the midst of all their labours: they could not agree on a hiding place because neither man could trust the other not to return to