by Wilbur Smith
‘Hoist the colours, Mr Tippoo,’ he called, and as the gaudy scrap of cloth dropped from the mainyard in the windless air, he watched through the lens of his telescope the consternation it caused upon the gunboat’s bridge. That was the last flag they had hoped to see.
They were now close enough to discern the individual expressions of chagrin and alarm and indecision of the naval officers.
‘There’ll be no prize money for you – not this time around,’ Mungo St John murmured with grim satisfaction, and snapped the telescope shut.
The gunboat came on and then rounded up to Huron, within easy hail, showing her full broadside, the long 32-pounder cannon gaping menacingly.
The tallest officer on her bridge seemed also the oldest, for his hair was white in the sunlight. He came to the gunboat’s near rail and lifted the voice trumpet to his mouth.
‘What ship?’
‘Huron, out of Baltimore and Bristol,’ Mungo St John hailed back. ‘With a cargo of trade goods for Good Hope and Quelimane.’
‘Why did you not answer my challenge, sir?’
‘Because, sir, I do not acknowledge your right to challenge ships of the United States of America on the high seas.’
Both captains knew just what a thorny and controversial question that reply posed, but the Englishman hesitated only a second.
‘Do you, sir, accede to my right to satisfy myself as to your nationality and your ship’s port of registry?’
‘As soon as you run in your guns you may come aboard for that purpose, Captain. But do not send one of your junior officers.’
Mungo St John was making a fine point of humiliating the commander of the Black Joke. But inwardly he was still seething at the fluke of wind and weather which had allowed the gunboat to come up with him.
The Black Joke launched a longboat on the heavy swell with an immaculate show of seamanship, and it pulled swiftly to Huron’s side. While the Captain scrambled up the rope ladder, the boat’s crew backed off and rested on their oars.
The naval officer came in through the entry port, so lithe and agile that Mungo St John realized his error in thinking him an elderly man. It was the white-blond hair that had misled him – he was evidently less than thirty years of age. He did not wear a uniform coat, for his ship had been cleared for action, and he was dressed in a plain white linen shirt, breeches and soft boots. There were a pair of pistols in his belt and a naval cutlass in its scabbard on his hip.
‘Captain Codrington of Her Majesty’s auxiliary cruiser Black Joke,’ he introduced himself stiffly. His hair was bleached in silver white splashes from the salt and the sun, with darker streaks beneath and it was tied with a leather thong in a short queue at the nape of his neck. His face was weathered to honey-golden brown by the same sun, so that the faded blue of his eyes was in pale contrast.
‘Captain St John, owner and master of this vessel.’
Neither man made any move to shake hands, and they seemed to bristle like two dog wolves meeting for the first time.
‘I hope you do not intend to detain me longer than is necessary. You can assure yourself that my government will be fully apprised of this incident.’
‘May I inspect your papers, Captain?’ The young naval officer ignored the threat, and followed St John on to the quarterdeck. There he hesitated for the first time when he caught sight of Robyn and her brother standing together at the far rail, but he recovered immediately, bowed slightly and then turned his full attention to the packet of documents that Mungo St John had ready for his inspection on the chart table.
He stooped over the table, working swiftly through the pile until with a shock of discovery he straightened.
‘Damn me – Mungo St John – your reputation precedes you, sir.’ The Englishman’s expression was strained with strong emotion. ‘And what a noble one it is, too.’ There was a bitter sting in his voice. ‘The first trader ever to carry more than three thousand souls across the middle passage in a single, twelve-month period – small wonder you can afford such a magnificent vessel.’
‘You are on dangerous ground, sir,’ Mungo St John warned him with that lazy, taunting grin. ‘I am fully aware of the lengths to which the officers of your service will go for a few guineas of prize money.’
‘Where are you going to pick up your next cargo of human misery, Captain St John?’ the Englishman cut in brusquely. ‘On such a fine ship you should be able to pack in two thousand.’ He had gone pale with unfeigned anger, actually trembling slightly with the force of it.
‘If you have finished your investigation—’ St John’s smile did not slip, but the naval officer went on speaking.
‘We have made the west coast a little too hot for you now, have we? Even when you hide behind that pretty piece of silk,’ the naval officer glanced up at the flag on the mainyard. ‘So you are going to work the east coast now, are you, sir? They tell me you can get a prime slave for two dollars – two for a 10-shilling musket.’
‘I must ask you to leave now.’ St John took the document from his hand, and when their fingers touched, the Englishman wiped his hand on his own thigh as though to cleanse it of the contact.
‘I’d give five years’ pay to have the hatches off your holds,’ he said bitterly, leaning forward to stare at Mungo St John with those pale fierce eyes.
‘Captain Codrington!’ Zouga Ballantyne stepped towards the group. ‘I am a British subject and an officer in Her Majesty’s army. I can assure you that there are no slaves aboard this vessel.’ He spoke sharply.
‘If you are an Englishman, then you should be ashamed to travel in such company.’ Codrington glanced beyond Zouga. ‘And that applies equally to you, madam!’
‘You overreach yourself, sir,’ Zouga told him grimly. ‘I have already given you my assurance.’
Codrington’s gaze had flicked back to Robyn Ballantyne’s face. Her distress was evident, unfeigned. The accusation had shattered her, that she, the daughter of Fuller Ballantyne, the great champion of freedom and sworn adversary of slavery – she, the accredited agent of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade should be travelling aboard a notorious slaver.
She was pale, the green eyes huge and liquid with the shock of it.
‘Captain Codrington,’ her voice was husky and low, ‘my brother is right – I also assure you that there are no slaves aboard this ship.’
The Englishman’s expression softened, she was not a beautiful woman, but there was a freshness and wholesomeness about her which was difficult to resist.
‘I will accept your word, madam.’ He inclined his head. ‘Indeed, only a madman would carry black ivory towards Africa, but,’ and his voice hardened again, ‘if only I were able to enter her holds, I’d find enough down there to run her into Table Bay under a prize crew and have her condemned out of hand at the next session of the Court of Mixed Commission.’
Codrington swung on his heel to face Mungo St John again.
‘Oh yes, I know that your slave decks will be struck to make way for your trade cargo, but the spare planks are aboard and it won’t take you a day to set them up again,’ Codrington almost snarled, ‘and I’ll wager there are open gratings under those hatch covers,’ he pointed down at the maindeck, but without taking his eyes from Mungo St John’s face, ‘that there are shackles in the lower decks to take the chains and leg irons—’
‘Captain Codrington, I find your company wearying,’ Mungo St John drawled softly. ‘You have sixty seconds to leave this ship, before I have my mate assist you over the side.’
Tippoo stepped forward, hairless as an enormous toad, and stood a foot behind Codrington’s left shoulder.
With a visible effort, the English captain retained his temper, as he inclined his head towards Mungo St John.
‘May God grant we meet again, sir.’ He turned back to Robyn and saluted her briefly.
‘May I wish you a pleasant continuation of your voyage, madam.’
‘Captain Codrington, I think you are mistake
n,’ she almost pleaded with him. He did not reply but stared at her for a moment longer, the pale eyes were direct and disturbing – the eyes of a prophet or a fanatic – then he turned and went with a gangling boyish stride to Huron’s entry port.
Tippoo had stripped off the high-necked tunic and oiled his upper body so it gleamed in the sunlight with the metallic lustre of the skin of some exotic reptile.
He stood stolidly on flat bare feet, balancing effortlessly to the Huron’s roll, his thick arms hanging at his side and the lash of the whip coiled on the deck at his feet.
There was a grating fixed at the ship’s side and the sailor who had been at the masthead lookout when they had raised the African coast, was spread-eagled upon it like a stranded starfish on a rock exposed at low tide. He twisted his head awkwardly to look back over his shoulder at the mate, and his face was white with terror.
‘You were excused witnessing punishment, Doctor Ballantyne,’ Mungo St John told her quietly.
‘I feel it my duty to suffer this barbaric—’
‘As you wish,’ he cut her short with a nod, and turned away. ‘Twenty, Mr Tippoo.’
‘Twenty it is, Cap’n.’
With no expression at all Tippoo stepped up behind the man, hooked his finger into the back of his collar and ripped the shirt down to the belt. The man’s back was pale as suet pudding, but studded with fat purple carbuncles, the sailor’s affliction, caused by salty, wet clothing and the unhealthy diet.
Tippoo stepped back and flicked out the lash so that it extended to its full length along the seamed oak planking.
‘Ship’s company!’ Mungo St John called. ‘The charge is inattention to duty, and endangering the ship’s safety.’ They shuffled their bare feet, but not one of them looked up at him. ‘The sentence is twenty lashes.’
On the grating the man turned his face away and closed his eyes tightly, hunching his shoulders.
‘Lay on, Mr Tippoo,’ Mungo St John said, and Tippoo squinted carefully at the bare, white skin, through which the knuckles of the spine showed clearly. He reared back, one thickly muscled arm thrown high above his head, and the lash snaked higher, hissing like an angry cobra, then he stepped forward into the stroke, pivoting the full weight and force of his shoulders into it.
The man on the grating shrieked, and his body convulsed in a spasm that smeared the skin from his wrists against the coarse hemp bonds.
The white skin opened in a thin bright scarlet line, from one side of his ribs to the other, and one of the angry purple carbuncles between his shoulder blades erupted in a spurt of yellow matter that ran down the pale skin and soaked into the waistband of his breeches.
‘One,’ said Mungo St John, and the man on the grating began to sob quietly.
Tippoo stepped back, shook out the lash carefully, squinted at the bloody line across the white shuddering flesh, reared back and grunted as he stepped forward into the next stroke.
‘Two,’ said Mungo St John. Robyn felt her gorge rise to choke her. She fought it down, and forced herself to watch. She could not allow him to see her weakness.
On the tenth stroke the body on the grating relaxed suddenly, the head lolled sideways and the fists unclenched slowly so that she could see the little bloody half-moon wounds where the nails had been driven into the palms. There was no further sign of life during the rest of the leisurely ritual of punishment.
At the twentieth stroke, she almost flung herself down the ladder to the maindeck and was feeling for the pulse before they could cut the body down from the grating.
‘Praise be to God,’ she whispered as she felt it fluttering under her fingers, and then to the seamen who were lifting the man down, ‘Gently now!’ She saw that Mungo St John had got his wish, for the white porcelain crests of the spinal column were jutting up through the sliced meat of the back muscles.
She had a cotton dressing ready and she placed it across the ruined back as they laid him on to an oak plank and hustled him towards the forecastle.
In the narrow, crowded forecastle, thick with the fumes of cheap pipe tobacco and the almost solid reek of bilges and wet clothing, of unwashed men and mouldering food, they laid the man on the mess table and she worked as best she could in the guttering light of the oil-lamp in its gimbals overhead. She stitched back the flaps and ribbons of mushy, torn flesh with horsehair sutures and then bound up the whole in weak phenol solution, treatment which Joseph Lister had recently pioneered with much success against mortification.
The man was conscious again and whimpering with pain. She gave him five drops of laudanum, and promised to visit him the following day to change the bindings.
As she packed away her instruments and closed her black valise, one of the crew, a little pockmarked bosun, named Nathaniel, picked it up and when she nodded her thanks, he muttered with embarrassment, ‘We are beholden, missus.’
It had taken all of them time to accept her ministrations. First it had been only the lancing of carbuncles and seaboils, calomel for the flux and the grippe, but later, after a dozen successful treatments, which included a fractured humerus, an ulcerated and ruptured eardrum and the banishing of a venereal chancre with mercury, she had become a firm favourite amongst the crew, and her sick-call a regular feature of shipboard life.
The bosun climbed the companionway behind her, carrying the valise, but before they reached the deck, an idea struck her and she stooped to him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
‘Nathaniel,’ she asked urgently, but in a low voice, ‘is there a way of entering the ship’s hold without lifting the maindeck hatches?’
The man looked startled, and she shook his shoulder roughly. ‘Is there?’ she demanded.
‘Aye, ma’am, there is.’
‘Where? How?’
‘Through the lazaretto, below the officers’ saloon – there is a hatchway through the forward bulkhead.’
‘Is it locked?’
‘Aye, ma’am, it is – and Captain St John keeps the keys on his belt.’
‘Tell nobody that I asked,’ she ordered him, and hastened up on the maindeck.
At the foot of the mainmast, Tippoo was washing down the lash in a bucket of seawater that was already tinged pale pink; he looked up at her, still stripping the water off the leather between thick hairless fingers – and he grinned at Robyn as she passed, squatting down on thick, brown haunches with his loin cloth drawn up into his crotch, swinging his round bald head on its bull neck to follow her.
She found herself panting a little with fear and revulsion, and she swept her skirts aside as she passed him. At the door of her cabin she took the valise from Nathaniel with a word of thanks, and then slumped down upon her bunk.
Her thoughts and her emotions were in uproar, for she had still not recovered from the sudden avalanche of events that had interrupted the leisurely pattern of the voyage.
The boarding by Captain Codrington of the Royal Navy overshadowed even her anger at the flogging or her joy at her first view of Africa in nearly two decades – and now his accusations rankled and disturbed her.
After a few minutes’ rest she lifted the lid of her travelling-chest that filled most of the clear space in the tiny cabin, and had to unpack much of it before she found the pamphlets from the anti-slavery society with which she had been armed in London before departure.
She sat down to study them once again, a history of the struggle against the trade up to the present time. As she read, her anger and frustration reawakened at the tale of unenforceable international agreements, all with built-in escape clauses: laws that made it an act of piracy to indulge in the trade north of the equator, but allowed it to flourish unchecked in the southern hemisphere; treaties and agreements signed by all nations, except those most actively engaged in the trade, Portugal, Brazil, Spain. Other great nations – France – using the trade to goad their traditional enemy, Great Britain, shamelessly exploiting Britain’s commitment to its extinction, trading political advantage for vague promises of suppor
t.
Then there was America, a signatory to the Treaty of Brussels which Britain had engineered, agreeing to the abolition of the trade, but not to the abolition of the institution of slavery itself. America agreed that the transport of human souls into captivity was tantamount to active piracy, and that vessels so engaged were liable to seizure under prize and condemnation by courts of Admiralty or Mixed Commission, agreed also to the equipment clause, that ships equipped for transport of slaves, although not actually with a cargo of slaves on board at the time of seizure, could be taken as prize.
There was America agreeing to all of this – and then denying to the warships of the Royal Navy the right of search. The most America would allow was that British officers could assure themselves of the legality of the claim to American ownership, and if that was proven, they could not search, not even though the stink of slaves rose from her holds to offend the very heavens, or the clank of chains and the half-human cries from her ’tween decks came near to deafening them – still they could not search.
Robyn dropped one pamphlet back into her chest, and selected another publication from the society.
ITEM, in the previous year, 1859, estimated 169,000 slaves had been transported from the coasts of Africa to the mines of Brazil, and the plantations of Cuba, and to those of the Southern States of America.
ITEM, the trade in slaves by the Omani Arabs of Zanzibar could not be estimated except by observation of the numbers passing through the markets of that island. Despite the British Treaty with the Sultan as early as 1822, the British Consul at Zanzibar had counted almost 200,000 slaves landed during the previous twelve-month period. The corpses were not landed, nor were the sick and dying, for the Zanzibar customs dues were payable to the Sultan per capita, live or dead.
The dead and those so enfeebled or diseased as to have little hope of survival were thrown overboard, at the edge of the deep water beyond the coral reef. Here a permanent colony of huge man-eating sharks cruised the area by day and by night. Within minutes of the first body, dead or still living, striking the water, the surface around the dhow was torn into a seething white boil by the great fish. The British Consul estimated a forty per cent mortality rate amongst slaves making the short passage from the mainland to the island.
