The negroes did not understand what was happening; they had no notion of rescue, but only of some change of captivity, probably for the worse; they were frightened; at the same time they were desperate for their food and water. Whewell tried to reassure them in a variety of languages and the lingua franca of the Coast: apart from some of the small children, they did not believe him.
The men had not been let out yet, but now the hatches were lifting and the first group came staggering up the ladder, still writhed and bent from their all-night crouch with headroom of two feet six inches at the best. Jack, Stephen, Whewell and Bonden went down into the unbreathable fetor, watched nervously by the slaver’s hands, who held their whips in an uncertain, awkward fashion. The slaves farthest aft came out, scarcely looking at them, rubbing knees and elbows and galled heads: they were chained in pairs: their expressions upon the whole were inhuman – apathy with underlying dread – but no evident single emotion.
The files seemed endless, scores and scores of bowed, thin, wretched men, naked and a lightless black; but in time it thinned and almost stopped. Whewell said ‘Now we have reached the sick, no doubt. They are always stowed forward, where there is a little air through the hawse-holes. Perhaps you would like to come and see, Doctor?’
Stephen, who had known some shocking prison infirmaries, lunatic asylums and poor-house wards, had a professional armour; so, from his voyages in a slaver, had Whewell; Jack had none – the gun-deck amidships in a hard-fought fleet action, the slaughter-house as it was called, had in no way prepared him for this, and his head swam.
He walked forward doggedly after them, bowed under the low beams: he heard Stephen give orders for the removal of the irons, saw him examine several men too weak to move, in the dim light and
stifling air, understood him to say that there was dysentery here, that hands were needed, water and swabs.
He reached the deck; the slaver’s men looked at him in dismay, and in a strangled, savage, barking voice he ordered six below with buckets and swabs, six to the pumps, and four to look alive there in the galley – all whips overboard. Some of the slaves looked at him, but without much curiosity; some were already washing; most sat there on the deck, still bowed.
‘Bellona,’ he hailed.
‘Sir?’
‘Send that fellow over, with his men. A file of Marines and an officer; the armourer and his mate. The surgeon’s assistants.’
He called for the ship’s steward, told him to spread all the cabin bedding out on deck, and as the sick came up, supported or carried, he had them laid upon it. The Nancy’s master came aboard. ‘Take this swab,’ said Jack, bending over his appalled face as he climbed the side. ‘Take this swab and clean up below, clean up below, clean up below.’
There was never at any time the least question of disobedience in the slaver: on the contrary, all hands showed an obscurely disgusting zeal. And now, as the Marines took up their station, a double rank right aft, with their muskets at their sides, food was coming from the galley in mess-kits for ten, and the slaves formed their habitual groups, almost filling the deck: five hundred at the least.
‘Mr Whewell,’ said Jack, ‘Can you tell them that they are not to be harmed, nor to be sold, but to be set free when we reach Sierra Leone in a couple of days?’
‘I shall try, sir, with what smattering I possess.’ This he did, loud and clear, in several versions. Half a dozen black men showed some interest, some comprehension: the rest ate wolfishly, their eyes fixed on vacancy or on a world that had no meaning.
‘Mr Whewell,’ said Jack again, ‘are you of opinion that it would be safe to knock off their irons?’
‘Yes, sir, so long as the Marines are here. But I believe the hands should be taken off before nightfall: and a strong prizecrew, well-armed, would prevent any trouble in the darkness.’
Jack nodded. ‘If there is anything the Doctor needs – boats, hammocks, stretchers or the like’ – for Stephen had set up a
sick-berth in the ravaged cabin – ‘let Captain Pullings know at once. You will be relieved before the end of the watch. Davies,’ he said to one of his bargemen, a big, ugly, violent seaman who had followed him from ship to ship, ‘you see that those fellows at the pumps and down below are kept busy. You may start them if they are slack in stays.’
He returned to the Bellona, took off all his clothes, stood long under a jet of clear water, retired to his cabin and there sat considering, revolving the possibilities open to him, thinking closely, taking notes, and writing two letters to Captain Wood at Sierra Leone, the one official, the other private.
During this time, or part of it, Stephen sat with Whewell on the slaver’s capstan, the wind being abaft her quarter and the air clean as the squadron stood south-east. He was reasonably satisfied with his patients; he had put salve and clean linen on many and many an iron-chafed wrist, and there was a somewhat more human feeling on the wellfed deck.
‘From your experience, would you say that this vessel was in a very bad condition?’
he asked.
‘Oh no, not at all,’ said Whewell. ‘For a ship fourteen days
out of Whydah, I should say she was doing rather well. No. It is ugly, of course, and I believe the Commodore was sadly shocked; but there was little dysentery, and that in an early stage and it can be far, far worse. Perhaps the ugliest I ever saw was a brig called the Gongora that we chased for three days, off the coast. All that time the slaves were of course kept below – no food, precious little air with her running before the wind – and when at last we took her and opened the hatches there were two hundred dead below: dysentery, starvation, suffocation, misery, and above all fighting before they grew too weak to beat one another to death with their irons. The wretched brig carried almost equal numbers of Fantis and Ashantis, mortal enemies who had been at war, each side selling its prisoners in the same market, and they crammed in together.’
‘I beg pardon, sir,’ said a tall master’s mate, rising up the side, ‘but I am come to relieve Mr Whewell. The Commodore wishes to see him when he has washed and changed.’
‘Mr Whewell,’ said Jack, ‘correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it is the rule at Sierra Leone to saw captured and condemned slavers in half, with an estimated auction-price being distributed as prize-money.’
‘Yes, sir. Formerly the really fast craft were simply bought by the merchants and used again in the trade.’
‘Very well. You have also told the Doctor and me about the Kroomen, described as capital seamen, pilots for various stretches of the Coast, intelligent and reliable.’
‘Yes, sir. They have always had that reputation, and I have found them to deserve it through and through. I have had a great deal to do with them, ever since I was a boy. And what is more, most of them speak Coast English well and understand it even better.’
‘I am glad to hear it. Now here are two letters for Captain Wood, the governor. I ask him to have this ship, this Nancy, condemned at once, out of hand, and for her to be moored in the roads once she is empty. And I ask him to have a powderboy, a loaded powder-hoy, ready for me when the squadron arrives. If he will do these things, and I have little or no doubt of it, I desire you to use your very best endeavours to recruit at least one good Krooman for each of the squadron’s boats from the six-oared cutter up, in order to guide them by night to raid Sherbro Island and perhaps the Gallinas river. Do you think this feasible, Mr Whewell?’
‘With this steady leading breeze, perfectly feasible, sir. And I have no fear for the Kroomen. There is a Kroo town in Sierra Leone with some hundreds of them, men I have known these five and twenty years; and they hate slavery – will have nothing to do with it.’
‘I am very happy to hear you say so. Mr Adams will give you your order and whatever money you judge necessary for the Kroomen. You will go aboard the Ringle as soon as possible and proceed to Sierra Leone without the loss of a minute. Take Mr Reade with you: he handles her beautifully. And you may carry a press of sail, Mr Whewell. Good day to you.’