Hungry Harry: An Orphan in the Ranks

by Andrew Wareham

  "Ain't no mountains just 'ere, Sarge. Bloody good thing, by the sound of it!"

  "So it is. Don't like bloody mountains - a real bugger if you got to go out in them, campaignin' like."

  Harry wondered occasionally about that part of Army life, of going out to fight. Perhaps, he thought, he would find out one day.

  The rain continued unbroken for three days and then eased off very slowly. After a month it was rare for it to pour for more than twelve hours at a time. The small river that had flowed through the swamp and into the bay was now nearly a furlong wide, brown with topsoil from inland and with trees floating in the swirling waters. The swamp itself was flooded - looked more like a lake with just the tops of reeds and grasses showing above the surface. Harry could see why the snakes and crocodiles would have taken up residence elsewhere.

  Mollie told him this was the dangerous time, the weeks when the children died, crawling on the floor playing and coming upon snakes that had entered the shacks for shelter. No matter how careful their parents were, the reptiles would sneak their way into their places and every year some would be unlucky.

  It seemed a dangerous place to live, Harry thought. Then the fever struck and he discovered just how perilous it was, especially for the outsiders who had no immunity in their blood.

  In the space of a single day more than thirty men were taken to the Surgeon's care. Nearly one man in ten of the battalion succumbed almost simultaneously. All came from barracks rooms on the one side of the castle.

  "Surgeon says its scrub typhus, Harry. That's a bad bugger, but it don't always spread like the others do. We got to burn sulphur in their barracks rooms, with all their gear left in. That stops it by driving out the bad air what carries it, so the Surgeon says."

  They carried lit charcoal braziers into the rooms, cloths carefully wrapped over their own noses and mouths to protect them, and then scattered the sulphur on top and ran away from the noxious fumes. The burning sulphur disguised the smell of the sweaty rooms, as promised; it also killed or drove off the bugs that actually carried the typhus.

  "Good Surgeon, that one, first thing in the mornin' at least. Brought sulphur with 'im, so 'e did, reckonin' it might come in useful."

  The Surgeon must have been correct in his diagnosis and preventive action, Harry thought, for no others fell sick. That was a fortunate thing for more than twenty died and the remaining handful were left weak and wheezing, fit only to sit in the shade and try to regain their strength.

  "They won't never amount to anything, Harry, poor buggers! The recurrent fevers will kill them all over the next twelve months - they'll never grow fit again. Seen it before, in the Sugar Islands."

  "Why in hell do we bother with this place, Sarge?"

  "Sugar and cotton, and tobacco and rice, that's why, Harry."

  "But, I ain't seen none of they growin' hereabouts, Sarge."

  "Nope. What you seen, boy, is the slaves what grows them in the Sugar Islands and in America and down in the Spanish countries to the south. The Company buys them from the tribes inland and then sells them to the traders when the Season starts. As soon as the Wet ends the Asante will be comin' in with strings of slaves; they'll put 'em into the cells here, to join with the ones that didn't get taken last year because they come in too late, and then off they'll go across the sea. Don't know 'ow many, because no bugger counts 'em. We'll be busy for a week or two, standing guard when the warriors come in to trade with the Company; there's always one or two takin' a look round and you can see 'em wondering like, whether it might not be an idea to kill us all and take everythin' they want."

  "Why don't they? Got to be more of them than us."

  "Because they ain't stupid, that's why. They know that the ships will come back every year provided they behaves themselves. Thing is, the slaves don't cost them nothin' - they fight their wars anyway and these are the prisoners they take, together with a few of their own they don't want. Tread on their king's toes and you get sent off across the sea. Get into debt, and they sell you. Try bein' a criminal in Asante and you're sat aboard a ship before you can turn round! The slavers are sort of handy, and they give somethin' for nothin'. Add to that, time was if you lost a war with 'em then you got chopped, every last one of your tribe, except for some of the pretty girls maybe. Now, you lose a war and you get sent across the sea - what ain't very pleasant, maybe, but it's a damned sight better than a spear through the guts."

  "So, we're useful and they let us stay. What about the big guns?"

  "They know them and they don't like 'em, but they ain't afraid of 'em. If they ever gets really angry then they'll attack out of the bush and sod how many gets killed by the cannon. Some of 'em will get past the guns, and then they'll kill the gunners and all the rest of us too. They got muskets and they knows 'ow to use 'em."

  "So, to beat 'em would need a big army with warships and big guns and a lot of us."

  "That's right, Harry, and that would cost too much. They just send a few soldiers so that we can deal with any who turns into bandits. Keeps the Frogs and Dutchies and the Spanish out as well."

  Harry thought it over for a few days, and then he realised that they were there solely to protect the money of the slave traders. A battalion of four hundred soldiers to remain for two years and return home one hundred strong, at most, for no reason other than to ensure that a few merchants stayed rich. It made sense, he supposed, because soldiers were cheap; they were paid pennies and were the dregs of the gutter - who cared if they died?

  No man or woman on earth would notice when Harry died, except maybe Sergeant Hollis, who knew that he was learning to read and had marked him down to become a corporal as soon as there was a place for him.

  "Next one who dies, Harry, you gets his stripe."

  "Do I have to change company, Sarge?"

  "No. You sticks with the Grenadier Company. Unless we has too many die, that is - they might 'ave to put the companies together acos of they 'aven't got the officers for eight companies no more. Not this Wet, the fevers 'ave been kind this time. Maybe next one."

  The winds turned and the Wet ended abruptly; dry airs blew in from the deserts to the north and the rivers shrank and the swamp drew back to its original bounds and for a few weeks the land was pleasant to live in, warm rather than intolerably hot.

  A month and the lines of slaves started to come in, trotting under guard of their captors, disciplined regiments of musket-carrying Asante.

  The battalion mounted guard at the gates of the castle and the gunners made a show of manning the big eighteen-pound cannon. The Asante weighed them up, their chiefs and officers taking careful note of how many they were and how efficient they seemed, just in case one day they received the order to wipe the foreigners out.

  "They don't like us, Sarge."

  "They hates our guts, Harry!"

  "Why?"

  "The traders don't pay very much for the slaves, and they ordinary blokes don't see none of it anyway. It's like us, Harry! They blokes do the fightin', and the dyin', while some big fat bastard of a chief sits on 'is backside and gets the gin and the muskets and the beads and the cloth and gives it all away to 'is favourites and to 'is women. They sees as much of it all as we do - sod all! So they don't like us; we do them no good at all!"

  "We ought to talk to 'em, Sarge. We kills off their chiefs and they do for ours and then we're both of us better off!"

  "Try talkin' to 'em, Harry! You talks to one of they soldiers and 'is chiefs will 'ave a knife in 'is back within the hour. And they'll tell our officers and you'll be swinging by next morning. They knows what's what, Harry!"

  "Well, it was a thought, that's all!"

  "Good soldiers don't think, Harry. And if they do, they keeps their bloody mouths shut!"

  The first slave ships sailed in and filled their water barrels before taking their cargoes. Harry watched as they ran the prisoners into their boats and then ushered them onto the ships and below deck. He could not understand why none tried to refu
se, not even showed reluctance.

  "They never do, not from what the slavers says, Harry. There ain't nothing left for them 'ere. They don't get aboard those ships then the Asante will kill them for sure. They lost their war, and as soon as they did that they was dead men walking. Better alive than dead, or so the poor buggers thinks! Give 'em a couple of years and they might 'ave changed their minds, but they don't know that yet."

  "They ships don't look the same as the ones we came on, Sarge."

  "They ain't, Harry. Twice as fast and newer, and kept in good nick. They old tubs we was on was fallin' to bits, acos of they ain't never spent any money on 'em. Slavers is rich. Brigs or schooners mostly, though the Americans I saw was mostly what they call brigantines, what is faster still. They got to get to the Sugar Islands good and quick, so they says. From what I been told, the slaves start dyin' after they been thirty days aboard. They can last out for four weeks but after that its downhill for 'em. So the faster they get there, the more money they make, and the crews are all on a share of the profits, so they look after the ships."

  Slaves were worth money; soldiers came far cheaper.

  "Why do they die, Sarge? We was longer than thirty days on the ships."

  "They pack 'em in tight, Harry, and keep 'em out of sight below decks. They're always worried that the slaves might take the ship over. Most years there's a slave ship just disappears; sails off and don't never get seen again. Maybe they get caught in a big storm, or the fever kills the crew and the slaves can't sail the ship; but they thinks maybe some of them are lost acos the slaves take them over and make 'em sail to someplace else."

  "Where?"

  Sergeant Hollis shrugged - fairyland, he implied.

  "I reckons pirates gets 'em. There's still a few left, so they reckons. Down south in the Indian Ocean there’s some still in Madagascar; maybe they raid west up into the Atlantic. They might take 'em and run 'em down to Brazil to sell 'em. Biggest markets for slaves, down there and no questions asked."

  "How long does the season last? They weren't any slave ships here when we came."

  "From what they says, no more than two months, Harry. The early ones come straight after the Wet and they takes the risk of loading last year's slaves what 'ave been kept in the cells in the castle. Thing is, they ain't fed that well, and they've been locked up for months, so they ain't so strong as the new ones that come in. But, and it's important, they get a full cargo loaded within a day of getting 'ere. In and out, real quick. With luck, the crew don't get no fevers and they can make a quick passage. The ships that come later might not get as many as they want and could be they'll have to call at three or four places to make up a load. The slaves don't like it - from different tribes and maybe enemies to each other - and the chance of fever is higher, and the first slaves they take aboard might stay an extra two or three weeks before they sail."

  "They got to pay the crews good money, don't they? The fevers is a big risk."

  "They tells me that if you works the slavers for three seasons in a row you can pick up two 'undred quid, cash in 'and. You been paid a wage and your keep already, so that's all profit. Buy a cottage of your own for forty or fifty, and that's with a good bit of garden; another fifty sees a good fishing boat, new and big, and ten more puts nets and sails into it. And you still got money to live on for a year and enough to pay a hand and a boy to sail with you on the boat. Made for life, you are, so long as you don't die first."

  Harry began to wish that he had taken to the sea.

  "Some of 'em stays ten years on the slavers, Harry. They makes 'emselves into officers, or what they calls officers, not real ones, and they make a couple of thousand, and then they're on the way to being rich. Buy yourself four or five boats and pay men to do the fishing for you, or, more likely, get a bigger boat and join the Gentlemen, running across the beaches at night. Time you're forty, so long as you ain't caught, then you're a big man with an estate of your own. That or you're dead."

  It came back to that same proviso, every time. If it came off, then you were comfortable, rich even; if it went wrong, you were dead.

  "I reckons, Sarge, thinking on it, that there's a damned sight more dead men than rich men."

  "You ain't wrong there, Harry! Most seasons you get one or two soldiers who deserts and gets aboard a slaver without being seen, off to make their fortune. If they've had the fevers then they need hands aboard ship and they ain't going to ask questions. But, it's a fair old risk, boy!"

  "I'll stick to soldiering, I reckon, Sarge."

  "And me, Harry. I ain't never made no money out of the regiment, but it's always there. If it ain't this one, there's another what'll take a man on who knows 'is way about. You make corporal, boy, and then you'll always 'ave the chance to sign on again even if we gets disbanded."

  “Disbanded?”

  “When we gets back to England. If there ain’t a war on and they don’t need men urgent-like, then it’s cheaper to just pay us off when we gets into port. Us specially, like, because we been down ‘ere on the Coast and we’s full of fevers and they probably goin’ to ‘ave to look after us when we gets sick again. If they just dumps us, they don’t ‘ave to worry no more.”

  “What about the officers?”

  “Most of they ain’t ever goin’ back to England – they’s just boozers and they ain’t likely to live through two wet seasons. Them what do goes onto to what they calls ‘alf-pay, which ain’t exactly ‘alf, but near enough, you might say. If they can find a regiment to take ‘em then they stays in service, but if they could ‘ave done that, they wouldn’t be ‘ere now.”

  “So, we just get thrown out, you reckons?”

  “That’s most likely, unless the wars start up again.”

  “So what do we do, then, Sarge?”

  “Walk. Along the coast until we gets to a town wi’ a barracks. Then it’s up to the gate and ask ‘em, good and polite, if they got a place for a soldier. You still got your old coat and shows ‘em the stripe on your arm. Nine times out of ten, they’ve ‘ad a man die or run and can take on another. If not, then they can tell you who’s recruitin’. Course, while you’re footin’ it you can always look for work. There might be something, but it ain’t likely; they don’t like soldiers much in England and more likely turns ‘em away than gives ‘em jobs.”

  Harry was left with much to think about. A little while and he realised that he was wasting his time; it did not matter how much he thought, he could actually do nothing. He did his job, tried to keep his uniform up, stood his guard duties, kept off the bottle and showed nothing on his face. The officers agreed, those who cared and were sober, that he was a good soldier.

  The last slaver sailed and the guard duties came to an end. The cells underneath the castle were empty for the while and there was nothing to do other than enjoy the Dry Season.

  Nearly a year on the posting and Harry was acclimatised, as much as one could be; he found the drier heat to be pleasant and was able to walk briskly through the days, occasionally whistling to himself. He could just remember when he had arrived and the heat had almost prostrated him; he thought it was quite funny.

  A trader from a station just up the coast came sailing into the harbour in a small boat. There were two black men minding the sail and another white lying wounded in the bottom. The sentry on duty raised the alarm and the Acting-Governor came running.

  Four companies, half of the battalion and including the Grenadiers, were paraded an hour later. Their sergeants issued powder and ball.

  Allowing for the sick and those detached as servants there were ninety men on parade, plus a local man brought in as an interpreter.

  The gate was opened and they marched out and onto the track leading up the coast, never a word of explanation given.

  The Light Company led the way across the mile or so of thin grassland and into the shade of the rain forest. The word came to march at ease but to stay alert. Smoking was permitted.

  Experience had shown that tobacco s
moke could discourage the insects, to an extent. Sergeant Hollis marched at the front of his tiny company, occasionally dropping out to watch the rear ranks as they came past him.

  “What’s the griff, Sarge?”

  “Later, boy!”

  Harry said no more, concentrated on keeping the pace.

  There was a track of sorts between the trees, easy to walk at this time of year, dry underfoot and the scrub between the forest giants still low. The leeches stayed in the damp places during this season; in the wet they dropped from every branch. They saw no snakes and the few spiders were at a distance. The rain forest was friendly for these few weeks of the year.

  The path climbed a few feet over a spur from the hills inland and they passed a pair of skeletons and a more recent but well-decomposed body.

  “Sick slaves fall off the pace when they go uphill. They gets chopped then, Harry. They ain’t allowed to slow the whole column.”

  “Killed off by their own people, if they don’t get sold.”

  “That’s right, boy. Tell me how slavery’s different from transportation to the Sugar Islands? Suppose you gets put before a judge back in England, don’t matter what for; you’ll get sentenced to death but you’ll be transported, unless you’re a cripple.”

  “What ‘appens to cripples, Sarge?”

  “They bloody ‘angs ‘em. What do you think’s goin’ to ‘appen, Harry-boy! You can’t cut sugar-cane if you needs a crutch to stand up with.”

  “It’s all money, ain’t it, Sarge.”

  “That’s right, boy. And you and me ain’t got any, so we keeps our mouths hut and does what we’re told.”