Chapter Eight
Late in the afternoon dark clouds, remarkably dark clouds, began gathering over the hills behind Freetown; they progressed against the wind for an hour until half the sky was black and the heat still more oppressive. Then much the same happened in the west, out at sea, but now the clouds were darker still, a fine solid black; and as the sea-breeze set in they swallowed the low sun entirely and hurried across to cover the whole sky with a hot, lowering pall.
The sea-breeze also brought in five ships, dimly seen but undoubtedly men-of-war bound for the Cape and India: the powder-boy that had sailed from the naval yard would certainly have been for them. And since a number of Kroomen had also put off in a schooner it was likely that among them was a merchantman, taking advantage of their protection until she turned off eastwards, trading along the Grain Coast, the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast for pepper, palm-oil, elephants’ teeth and gold-dust. There were some foolish rumours that the preventive squadron was back, rumours based on the bringingin and instant condemnation of the Nancy, now lying in the road; but they were dismissed on the grounds that the Nancy had been brought in by the Governor’s own sloop, no doubt acting as a privateer – Captain Wood, like his predecessors, could grant a commission: and who was more likely to do so than such a knowing officer? Besides, who had ever heard of the preventive squadron possessing a two-decker? For even in this light – a light that might well presage the end of the world – not one, but two of these important ships could be seen.
‘Thou art the father of lies,’ said a Syrian merchant. ‘Nothing whatsoever can be seen in this light, or rather this darkness visible. Though I admit it is very like the death of time.’
‘Thou art the offspring of an impotent mole and a dissolute
bat,’ replied his friend. ‘I can distinctly make out two decks on the second from the front: and on the third. They all appear to be bearing down on the Nancy.’
‘Balls,’ said the first merchant. But hardly were these words out before the first of the line turned to starboard until her side was parallel with that of the Nancy and at a distance of two hundred yards she let fly with a rolling broadside whose brilliant flashes lit the whole mass of cloud and whose voice, having deafened the town, roared to and fro among the hills. In the space of three astonished exclamations, no more, the whole of this was repeated, but with even greater force, with stronger, longer stabs of fire and the deeper, louder voice of thirty-two-pounder guns: and so it went, right along the line of ships until the last. The silence, with powder-smoke still billowing across the bay, was strangely shocking, and birds flew in every direction. But after the briefest pause there rose a universal sound of shrill amazement from the whole widescattered town, followed by conjecture: it was the French; it was the Patriarch Abraham come again; it was the captain of an English man-of-war enforcing the law against slavery. He had caught the wretched Knittel of the Nancy sailing under Spanish colours, had chained him and all his men to the mast and was now shooting and burning them to death. This explanation gained general support as the squadron wore and came back again, now thundering and bellowing two ships at a time, so that the spectators, the entire population of Freetown, could scarcely hear their own voices, though raised to a most uncommon pitch. And during the pause between this run and the next, when once again the starboard broadsides uttered their prolonged and deliberate roar, the Bellona alone flinging several hundred and twenty-six pounds of iron at each discharge, the news spread from deafened ear to deafened ear that Kande Ngobe, who had a telescope, had clearly seen the mutilated victims in their chains: so had Amadu N’Diaje, the clear-sighted man; so had Suleiman bin Hamad, who stated that some were still alive.
So was the wretched vessel: her side pierced through and through, she lay there yet, very low on the smooth sea, but, since she had never showed a strake below her waterline, still afloat. Yet now, after another prodigious crescendo that lit the sky and the town, filling the streets with shadows, the line moved in for the short-range carronades to come into play, and another voice of war was heard, the high-pitched barking crack of the genuine smasher, firing much faster than the great guns and with heavier shot than most, so fast and so heavy that the slaver could stand no more than a single passage before sliding down and down into sea now strangely thick with sand, as thick as a moderate gruel, the result of conflict between the changing tide and a local current.
‘House your guns, house your guns, there,’ the cry came down the line, and the grinning crews housed the hot cannon trim and taut. Supper was at last served out, shockingly late:
and when all hands had anchored ship in twenty-five-fathom water the watch below turned in, still smiling; for firing live, and at such a target, was one of the most gratifying occupations in a seaman’s life.
‘No Ministry could have asked for a greater éclat, a greater din,’ said Stephen, still rather loud, as they sat in the reconstituted, but still powder-smelling, cabin. ‘Nor a more convincing proof of the squadron’s presence.’
‘It really was a right Guy Fawkes’ night,’ said Jack. ‘I am infinitely obliged to James Wood for arranging things so cleverly and with such discretion – there were a score of details that I had not thought of at all, any one of which would have blown the gaff – that brilliant stroke of sending his own people out to bring the Nancy in, for example.’
‘A brilliant stroke indeed. Brilliant.’
‘Yes. But if the breeze sets in up the coast, as they swear it will, I believe our Guy Fawkes’ night will be put in the shade by tomorrow evening. I believe we may bring off such a stroke against the trade that Wilberforce and. . . what’s his name?’
‘Romilly?’
‘No. The other one.’
‘Macaulay.’
‘Just so. That Wilberforce and Macaulay will skip and clap their hands and get as drunk as lords.’
Well before the first dog-watch the next day all points of vantage in all the ships and vessels under Jack Aubrey’s command were filled with hands gazing fixedly at the cape that closed the bay; for round it, round Cape Sierra Leone itself, their friends, who had slipped away at the height of the gunfire, should soon reappear with the present kindly breeze, bringing with them shore-leave and perhaps the promise of prize-money to make the leave still more delightful. But prizemoney to one side, it was’the liberty itself that was so wonderfully desirable: there were the delights of palm-trees for those who had never seen them, and the young women of the Coast were said to be friendly. Chastity weighed sadly on all hands; besides, there might be fresh fruit for the picking. But in the present state of things, there was no such thing as liberty for ships moored right out in the bay – the few little blood-boats and the like were fit only for one officer at a time, or at the most two thin ones – no such thing as liberty without the squadron’s boats.
The cheering began aboard the Aurora, most to seaward of the anchored line, and quickly it spread right along the squadron as all the boats came into view, escorting an improbable number of prizes: at least five schooners, two brigs and a ship.
The Governor’s sloop left harbour to guide the prizes in before the eyes of the whole assembled town, even more astonished now than they had been the night before: never had such a catch been seen, nor even anything remotely like it. Those who had interests in the slave-trade, and they were not a few, turned pale or grey or yellow, as was convenient, silent, haggard and mournful, for they recognized each one of the captured vessels – they could not be mistaken. But most of the other inhabitants were excited, full of joy, smiling, talkative, not, except in the case of the Kroomen, from any zeal for the abolitionist cause, but from a candid, heartfelt pleasure at the thought of the money that would flow into and out of the seamen’s pockets. The bounty of £6o for a man-slave released, £30 for a woman and £10 for a child would already mean a considerable sum from the Nancy alone; from this new and unparalleled haul it would be prodigious, even without
the condemned ships themselves. And since Freetown was thoroughly used to the ways of seamen ashore, the townsmen, particularly the keepers of taverns and disorderly-houses, looked forward to their coming with lively pleasure.