Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [81]
Next day the slave rooms were marked off and work was begun on the forward bulkhead. The stateroom had already been stocked with an assortment of goods from the hold; now a new main topgallant sail was bent and the old one primed as soon as taken down with resin and oil, so as to make an awning for the quarterdeck, where the shipboard dealing would be conducted. Johnson, the gunner, began making cartridges for the swivel guns. Two hogsheads of spirits were drawn off, to sweeten the native dealers.
‘Them fellers has got holler legs for the stuff,’ Barton said to Paris, with the peering relish characteristic of him. ‘All the marrer has been lickified out of their bones, I do believe. An’ there will be work to keep our lads off it, once it has been broached. A flogging won’t keep ’em off drink, when the smell of it is about, any more than it will keep them off the women, Mr Paris. That is only human nature.’
And still Thurso did not know precisely where he was. He had seen no land since sighting the highlands of Tenerife. There was no means known to navigation, in that summer of 1752, which could have helped him to determine his longitude. The water continued a deep-sea colour, giving him hope he was not too much out in his reckoning. According to this he should have been at least fifty leagues north-west of Cape St Ann. All the same, he was anxious. The banks lying off the cape were the dread of all Guinea traders. Thurso had encountered powerful indraughts there on previous voyages and he knew cases of ships drawn into the shallows, sported with by fickle breezes for days or weeks or grounded in the shoals. He took soundings in thirty fathoms and the lead showed coarse red sand and fragments of shell, indicating they were further eastward than he had expected, nearer the coast. To make matters worse, the weather was thickening to the west. He gave immediate orders for the ship to be put about.
Hughes the climber, on lookout in the crow’s nest, heard the shouted orders and felt the ship quiver through her length as she was brought closer to the wind. A mackerel sky was building to westward, with dark banks of stormbreeders low on the horizon. But there was some sun still, lying flat on the sea. He watched the gulls which earlier that day had found the ship. They were following on the starboard side, fewer now, but in good number still, which made him think they were in for no more than light squalls. He tried to count the birds, but lost himself in the rising, dipping dance of their flight, the constant changing of position among them. Thirty at least, completely silent. Sea-birds were mute at the approach of bad weather, he knew that about them and much else besides – whatever could be understood from close watching. Animals and birds, any creatures other than human, he had always liked to watch. He noted again how the birds rode the wind, how the dying sun flashed on their breasts. Below them the sea was riven with gashes. The wind was rising. He looked away from the birds at last, to eastward. The horizon on that side was pale and clear still and Hughes saw, faint and ragged but unmistakable, the shapes of land. He cupped hands to mouth and bawled the fact to the darkening sky.
Thurso, standing forward of the helm, heard the cry from aloft and the boatswain’s long-drawn lamentation of response. ‘Whe-e-re aw-a-ay?’ He did not wait for the lookout to answer but at once raised his glass. When the answer came, with a rough bearing to larboard, Thurso had already found them, shifting, evanescent, but no shapes of cloud or sea, a line of deep, irregular serrations. A rippling swell swept the ship up and dropped her and he lost his view. But he knew he had seen the mountains behind the Sherbro River; and in these moments of pause, in the cool breath before the onset of the squall, Thurso made proper acknowledgement to his counsellor for having brought them so far eastwards in deep water, beyond the sucking evil of the shoals.
TWENTY-THREE
Throughout the day the wind had been rising, smelling of rain on the way. It