That evening, on the way back to Lagos, Hickman and Portway were taken ill, together with another member of the crew, a man named Neville. The Captain told us that in the light of these further casualties, we would not stay on the coast, but set sail for Jamaica as soon as we were clear of Lagos. He told Wain to move the sick men together into the forward part of the sleeping deck, which would become an isolated “sick bay”.
During the night three more slaves died and the bodies were brought up and pitched overboard. Wain made no secret of his fear that the whole ship might be stricken by an epidemic, and was continually asking one or other of us whether we felt any symptoms. Hawkshot, Wain and Jarvis now carried small bags of camphor round their necks.
On the following afternoon, the Captain again ordered Limbrick and myself to relieve Helm and Cooper in the hold. This time we started our search for dead bodies without waiting for orders from Wain. Both of us at once became aware of a dampness, a fluid thinly covering the floor around several of the slaves. Limbrick drew his fingers through a patch and sniffed.
“That’s shit; and it’s all over the place.”
“Diarrhoea. And can you wonder? We’d better tell Wain right away.”
Wain, having sent this latest information to the Captain, ordered first, that Limbrick and I were not to come up for the present, for fear of spreading the trouble; and secondly (which we did not learn until later), that none of the slaves in the hold was to be given food until further notice. (Empty stomachs, he said, would leave the malady nothing to bite on.)
The Captain did not think it necessary for Limbrick and me to remain in the hold. He ordered us to strip naked and come up, carrying our clothes. These were put at once into boiling water, while we were hosed down and each given a dose of some kind of medicine in the Captain’s personal possession. It worked. That is, we did not develop the ailment we had never had.
I don’t know how the hold was cleaned: no doubt with vinegar, the only disinfectant in the ship. Nor did I hear whether the diarrhoea was cleared up by the starvation imposed upon the slaves. Except for meals, I kept out of the way as much as possible, and the only news which reached me was that Shergold had died and that Cooper was down with the fever, together with two more of the crew. “That’s five of us took bad, now,” said Helm. “With Townley gone, that leaves only seven nigger-bashers. Jack seems worried stiff.”
The ship stopped at Lagos for fresh water and general resupply. No one was allowed on shore, probably for fear of desertion, although the prospect of Hawkshot’s pay struck me as a strong disincentive.
So we sailed from Lagos, bound for the Venezuela coast and then Jamaica, with (from the Captain’s point of view) a disappointing cargo, and that subject to continual depletion. Thorn told me that he thought the voyage might take eight weeks, though there was no telling. If the sea remained calm and the wind favourable, we might do it in less.
* * *
The further we went, the worse our plight became. About a week after our departure, Portway and Cooper died, and a few days later Hopkins went down with the fever, together with two more of the crew. Everyone now lived in continual anxiety. One evening in the messroom, I overheard Rawlings saying to Simpson that he believed there was a curse upon the ship, and that she was doomed to become a drifting derelict, without a living man on board. I interrupted with a threat to tell Wain if I heard Rawlings coming out with this sort of nonsense again. He answered that he believed Wain himself thought this, or something like it, more strongly than anyone else. I let it go at that.
With the number of fit “slave-conductors” now diminished to seven, the Captain discontinued his rule of requiring two men always to be on duty in the hold. Instead two of us, in rotation, had the task, every morning, of searching the hold for dead bodies and getting them hauled up for disposal overboard. This was at least better than having to remain in the hold for hours at a time.
For all I knew, the Captain might have come to think that it was in the hold that we contracted the fever, although I myself believed that we had brought it with us from Lekki and that with luck it would soon exhaust its power to infect.
I still believe that I was right, for no more of us went down with the fever. Matthews and Hickman died, but Hopkins slowly recovered.
The Captain’s practice of avoiding other shipping by sailing to the south of the frequented routes now turned to our disadvantage, for we might have taken our chance of enemies and reached Jamaica sooner. What we needed now was the quickest possible end to the voyage, and with this in mind the Captain changed our course from west to north west. Although we sighted one or two ships in the distance, none came near us and, with the continuance of fine weather and a favourable wind, we were at least able to make the best of our sorry condition.
The weeks passed without further illness among the white men, although the death rate in the hold remained as grim as ever. About sixty slaves had died, but as many more were ill and seemed unlikely to recover. Thorn told me that the condition of the women, who were the responsibility of the ship’s crew, segregated by screening aft of the hold, was little better than that of the men. “This will turn out a bad business for Hawkshot,” said Thorn. “He may not actually lose money, but he won’t make anything like his usual profit.”
We were in the twelfth week of the voyage when we entered the Caribbean. On the Captain’s orders we made no further progress for two days. He called a meeting of the ship’s officers, Wain, Jarvis and Pentland, the boatswain, together with us seven “slave-conductors”.
“I must make it clear to you,” he began, “that we are in a serious situation. In the first place, we’re running dangerously short of water, and on this account we shall have to sacrifice some lives in order to save others. Secondly, having thought the matter over most carefully, I have been forced to conclude that all those slaves who are ill must be thrown overboard. This will be a more humane course than allowing them to linger in pain until they die.”
“On this account, Wain, I must now order you to take three slave-conductors with you into the hold, and to pick out all the sick. The gangplank used by slaves when coming up for exercise is to be fitted now. The remaining three slave-conductors will remain on deck under my personal command and will take charge of the sick as they are brought up. All the sick are to be thrown into the sea.”
The Captain said no more and a silence fell. I was not the only man — I am certain I was not the only man — to wonder whether he could believe his ears. If I had not spoken first, I am sure that some other man would have done so.
“Captain,” I said, “I beg you to give this matter further consideration. Although the supply of water is not my responsibility, if I’m not mistaken the whole ship’s company are on full rations and we can expect rain before long. Besides, we’re not far from land.”
“Daniel,” replied Hawkshot, “I have already weighed this matter very fully. I am the Captain of this ship and the decision is for me and not for you. I rely on your loyalty and your compliance with my orders. Wain, select your men and take them into the hold.”
No one else spoke. Wain, having told Helm, Rawlings and Simpson to accompany him, set about opening the starboard side hatch to the hold and fitting the gangplank. I myself felt close to hysteria. I still could not believe that we were about to commit mass murder. Surely I must have misunderstood the Captain. Yet I knew I had not. The Captain could not sell a dead slave. Likewise he could not arrive at Kingston with a ship half-full of something like a hundred sick slaves. How was he to dispose of them? The authorities would not be anxious to help him; they might even refuse to allow the ship to remain in port and compel it to return into the Caribbean to find some other destination. The Captain must indeed, as he said, have thought the matter over; and he had come up with the only possible answer. All sick slaves must be disposed of before we arrived at Kingston. I knew that the Captain had, in the past, made several slave-voyages, but in all probability had never before encounter
ed sickness on this scale; or if he had, must have done what we were about to do now.
Both Jarvis and Pentland had remained on deck. Jarvis was conversing with the Captain, but Pentland was standing by himself, filling his pipe. I hardly knew Pentland, but felt that I must speak to a person in some sort of authority.
“Can I have a word with you?” I asked. He tamped down the tobacco, looked round at me and nodded.
“This reason the Captain’s given about the water,” I said. “There’s plenty of water, and he knows that a number of the sick slaves might recover, given the chance. And the ‘more humane course’ – that’s all my eye, isn’t it? He must have some reason he hasn’t told us for drowning the whole lot of them. What do you suppose it can be?”
I had deliberately limited what I said, because I wanted to know whether he, like myself, believed that the Captain’s real motive must be to take no chances, but to get rid of all the sick slaves before we reached Kingston. I wanted to find out whether Pentland would tell me this of his own accord, unprompted by anything I had said to him.
Before replying, he paused for quite some time. I had begun to wonder whether he meant to reply at all, and was about to turn away when he said, “You don’t know, then, darkie?”
I shook my head.
“About the insurance?”
“The insurance? No, I don’t. Can you explain?”
“If you don’t know, I’m not sure whether I ought to.”
“I promise you it won’t go any further.”
He relit his pipe. “Well, slaves who die of illness on board ship are a total loss to the Captain. He can’t claim insurance for them. Underwriters won’t insure against death by disease. But if sick slaves are thrown into the sea, then he can claim insurance. Insurers will pay for cargo thrown overboard in order to save the rest.”
“And that applies to living human beings? They’re ‘cargo’?”
“Well,” said Pentland, “of course the rule was meant to apply to ordinary trade goods, not to human beings. But I’m in little doubt that the Captain means to claim insurance for all slaves thrown alive into the sea, and that’s his real reason.”
He half-turned away and stood looking out to sea with an air of indifference. As I grasped the full implication of what he had said, my bowels loosened and I began to tremble. My feelings were less of horror or indignation, than of fear. I realised that I, an ingenuous simpleton, had been pitched headlong into a world of wickedness that I could never have imagined; a remote region, far from my humdrum, commonplace life. In this world there were no constraints whatever upon evildoing. Indeed, the words “evil” and “wicked” had no meaning here, since no distinction between good and evil was ever made. The only distinctions were between profitable and unprofitable, and between practicable and impracticable. If I protested against the Captain’s orders, killing me would certainly be practicable.
This fear was well founded. The Captain was going to order me to throw black slaves alive into the sea, but I had no choice between “obey” or “disobey”. The fact was that I knew I could not do it, on account of sheer revulsion. Even if morality had not come into the matter at all, still I could not have done it. At Lekki I had been involved in one piece of cruelty after another, and again and again had abandoned my self-respect on account of fear. But here, now, was the end of the road, a physical revulsion so strong that it left me no choice.
Wain was bringing up the first batch of slaves. I could avoid the sight of them but not the sound or the smell. There could be no temporising now. I made my way to where Hawkshot was standing.
“Captain,” I said — and I could scarcely utter an intelligible word, but spoke chokingly, between gasps — “Slaves – overboard – I can’t — d’do this — b’beyond my —”
He gripped my shoulder so hard that I winced. “What are you saying, Daniel?”
I was now virtually stupefied with fear. I mouthed one word, but my voice failed me.
“What?” said the Captain.
This time the sound came. “Insurance.”
The Captain paused only a few moments. Then, holding my arm, he took me across to the starboard rail, out of earshot of the others.
“What did you say, Daniel?”
“Insurance, sir.”
He turned me to face him, and his eyes stared intently into mine.
“I will excuse you from duty for the rest of the day. Go below now, and stay there. If I hear from anyone else that you have been talking about what you have just said, you will lose your life. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
He turned and left me. I heard him call to Wain, “Take them to the stern deck.” I stumbled forward and down the hatch into the empty messroom. The cook, a kindly, good-hearted fellow, came in from the galley and asked if I was feeling all right. I replied “Not too good”, whereupon he gave me a tot of rum, for which I was grateful. After a while, the stupor passing off, I slung my hammock and lay pondering.
The Captain’s sole motive for this voyage was to make money from bartering goods in exchange for Africans. At Lekki he had shown appalling inhumanity in the course of obtaining as many live Africans as possible. Experience had taught him that he must expect a number to die. Yet in the normal way, he could still make a large profit from the sale of those who survived the voyage — far more than the purchase value of the bartered goods plus the victualling of the ship and his employees’ pay. In the present case, however, he must have lost many more slaves than usual during the voyage and stood to lose still more. Dead or ill, he could not sell them. Yet there remained a loophole. The insurance people would (he hoped) pay up for slaves thrown overboard alive, though not for those who died from disease.
Pentland had guessed this, but did not care to make an enemy of the Captain by objecting. He preferred to be sure of his pay. (And how many more? Wain? Jarvis? And I wouldn’t put it past Wilkins.)
The Captain had threatened possible objectors with a horrible fate. When Basil Townley refused to do the work, he had said he could hang him for mutiny. Yet when Basil, undeterred, had persisted, he did not in fact hang him, but handed him over to Ushumbo. This was not a crime and he could not be indicted for it. I had virtually told him to his face that I knew of his cruel intention, but he had not murdered me. He had only threatened to do so, as in the case of Basil. So he must — must he not? — fear exposure if he summarily executed a white man without trial. However, he had disposed of Basil without laying himself open to any charge. Would he dispose of me? Basil had persisted in a maritime crime. I had not. It suddenly occurred to me that if I could only muster the courage, I was in a position to strike a bargain with the Captain.
After supper that evening I sought him out in his cabin, where he was apparently writing up the log.
“Didn’t I tell you to stay below?”
“Captain, I have come to say something of great importance.”
He frowned, then laid down his quill. “Well?”
“Captain, if you will not compel me to throw live slaves overboard, I promise you that I will not mention to anyone the matter of which we spoke this morning.”
He paused. “And if it is mentioned to you by anyone else?”
“I shall say that I know nothing about it and wish to hear nothing.”
“How old are you?”
I told him. “Why, sir?”
“Well, you always seem so young to me. Sort of immature.”
“If I appear to you such an innocent and so uncorrupted, sir, you have the more reason to trust my word.”
“Wise boy, huh?”
I said nothing. His smile was like the grin of a skull. “Very well. And this, Daniel, is entirely between ourselves.”
* * *
Later that night Wilkins came up to me.
“You weren’t on the stern deck this morning.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not answerable to you, Wilkins. Go to blazes.”
<
br /> “You missed a treat. Do you know how many darkies we chucked in the drink?”
“No, and I don’t want to. Aren’t you a darkie yourself?”
“Fifty-four: that’s how many.”
I made no reply and he left me for more congenial company.
We sailed very slowly towards Kingston. Every morning Wain went down into the hold. Three days later, as Wilkins did not fail to inform me, twenty more Africans were drowned. The following week, when we were only a few miles from land, the Captain saw to the drowning of another sixteen.
It must at length have occurred to him that the longer slaves remained in the hold, the more likely they were to become ill. At all events, we docked at Kingston the next day.
As Wain had told me, the Captain had no difficulty in selling the remaining slaves, though what his net profit might have been no one, of course, knew. Of the deliberate murder of ninety diseased slaves, nothing more was said, then or ever. I personally believe that in the world of the slave-trade such cruelty was more common than is generally known.
The slaves were auctioned in the market at Kingston, some singly and some in lots. Hopkins and I went to see this final disposal of our “cargo”. They were not treated as human beings. Prospective buyers were free to handle their limbs and bodies and to force open their mouths to look at their teeth – the usual way of estimating the age of a slave. All, men and women alike, had to stand passive and almost naked. Several of the women wept and might have resisted but for the white men with whips who were standing by. Yet this was not the worst. Towards the end of the business, when only a huddle of the least valuable slaves remained, the auctioneer announced that there would now be a “scramble”, whereupon the purchasers were let loose among the slaves to scuffle and wrangle among themselves and their victims to seize those they wanted. For the slaves, ignorant of what might be going to happen to them, this was the climax of all the suffering and humiliation of the previous months.
We had little or no time to frolic in Kingston, for almost at once the Captain set us to cleaning out the hold with stiff brooms and strong solutions of vinegar. I am not going to try to describe the state of the hold. Suffice it to say that of all the tasks that fell to my lot during my time on board the slave-ship, this was the worst.
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