Book 17 - The Commodore Page 23

  '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 prize-money 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 £60 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.

  This charming anticipation was felt even more strongly aboard, and when in answer to the Commodore's signal the Ringle and many of the boats headed for the anchorage and their mother-ships, they were greeted with renewed and even stronger cheers. In a trice they would become liberty-boats, ready and willing to waft Jack ashore, and several members of the watch below hurried off to beautify themselves, whilst others less sure of their desserts, sought out their midshipmen or divisional officers to see what an earnest plea, a becoming deference, might do, and whether fourpence might be advanced.

  It was while the talk of coming joys was at its height that a horrid rumour began to spread. First a sour-faced young bosun's mate stumped into the gundeck, plucking his best Barcelona silk handkerchief from his neck. 'No liberty,' he told the world in general. 'No shore-leave after sunset in Sierra Leone. Doctor's fucking orders.'

  They told him he was wrong—the rule applied to him alone, because of his ill-conduct: and splay feet: and dismal Jonah face. It was nonsense to say that there should be no liberty. But presently the news was repeated so often and by so many people that it could no longer be disbelieved. No shore-leave anywhere on the Coast after sunset: Doctor's orders, confirmed by Captain and Commodore.

  'Damn the Doctor.'

  'Rot the Doctor.'

  'The Doctor's soul to Hell,' said the lower deck, the midshipmen's berth, and the wardroom.

  The Doctor himself, busy sewing up the radiant Whewell's arm—slashed in a brief encounter and roughly bound up with a dead slaver's shirt-tail—listened to his report, his informal verbal report to the Commodore. In consultation with the lieutenant, midshipmen and warrant-officers he had divided the flotilla into four groups of about equal strength, keeping shipmates together as much as possible, two for Sherbro and two for Manga and Loas, quite close on the mainland. 'We were to go to the western market on Sherbro first, the leading boat to paddle in, the chief Krooman to hail quietly, asking was So-and-So in the way, the boat coming alongside as he talked, and the moment it touched we hurried aboard, instantly bundling the anchor-watch below, making the hatches fast and swearing they should be blown to Hell if they lifted a finger, cutting the cable and putting out to sea with as pretty a breeze as you could wish. It was as easy as kiss my hand'—Whewell laughed aloud—'they had no guard, no notion of any possible danger, and they made no fuss. It was the same with the next three, all prime schooners—we could hardly believe it—and so till we came to the ship. We were a little slow in getting aboard, for she was under way, with all hands on deck, and there was a little trouble—that is where I got this'—nodding to his wound—'But it amounted to nothing; and having stripped Sherbro, west and east, we joined the others in the offing and proceeded to Manga and Loas, where we did much the same; though I am happy to say, sir, that there they fired on us.'

  'Very good,' said Jack with satisfaction, for any vessel firing on a man-of-war, even if she were no larger than a four-oared cutter, was guilty of piracy and therefore forfeit, whatever its colours or nation: condemned without a word. 'But no ill effect, I trust?'

  'Only a few flesh-wounds, sir: for as the first brig let fly, a Portuguese, the clouds parted and they was how many we were, prizes and all. One tried to cut and run, but that did him no good: the rest, those that were awake, pulled for the shore like smoke and oakum in what boats they had alongside or in tow. So having cleared those two places, sir, we shut their people up below, put prize-crews aboard, and keeping them well under our lee in case of any foolish attempt, we shaped our course for home.'

  'Very well done, Mr Whewell, very well done indeed,' said Jack: and after a pause, 'Tell me, what did you do about their papers?'

  'Well, sir, I remembered what the Governor said about a legal quibble getting in the way of what was obviously right, and I think they were mostly destroyed in the battle or lost overboard. I did leave a couple of Portuguese captains' manifests and registers alone, to look better: not that it made any odds, since the Portuguese are not protected north of the Line. The pirates I never troubled with, but clapped them in irons directly. And now I come to think of it, sir, there was someone in Government House, one of the gentlemen of the Vice-Admiralty Court, I believe, who observed that a man who had no papers, whose ship had no papers, and who could not certainly identify the person who arrested him was in a hopeless state: he could not make out any kind of a case at all, even with the best of counsel and even if some foolish legal clause was in his favour.'

  'That was your view, I believe, Doctor,' said Jack.

  'There, Mr Whewell,' said Stephen, cutting his thread and taking no notice of the indiscretion. 'There. I should advise the holding of the limb in a sling for a few days, and the avoidance of anything like excess in meat or drink. A dish of eggs for dinner, or a small grilled fish, followed by a little fruit; and a small bowl of gruel before retiring, thin, but not too thin, will answer very well. And this will answer very well for a sling, too,' he went on, his eye having been caught by Jack's best superfine cambric neckcloth, draped over the back of a chair fresh from Killick's iron. 'There,' he said, inserting the wounded arm with the ease of long practice. 'Now let me ask you to recommend a reliable middle-aged Krooman, given neither to whimsies nor the drink,
who will show me the way in Freetown, where I must go shortly after sunset. My dear Commodore, may I beg for a suitable conveyance?'

  'My dear Doctor,' said Jack, 'I shall allow you no such thing, nor will Captain Pullings or Mr Harding or anyone else that loves you. Was you to be seen going ashore within half an hour of forbidding the same indulgence to the entire ship's company, you would be the most hated man in the squadron. I do not say they would offer much in the way of physical violence, but their affection would be killed stone dead.'

  'If first thing in the morning would do, sir,' said Whewell, 'I have the very man, coming off with papers for me and Mr Adams to sign about the number of slaves released. A Krooman elder by the name of—well, their own names being hard for us to pronounce, we often call them Harry Nimble, or Fatty, or Earl Howe. Mine is known up and down the coast as John Square. The very man for you.'

  Square was seaman's hyperbole, but only a pedant could have objected to Rectangular, for Whewell's Krooman was a very broad-shouldered, deep-cheated man with short legs and long arms. His small round head was topped by greying wool and his face bore two blue lines on the forehead and another, broader, right across from ear to ear, but on him neither these nor his filed incisors looked any more bizarre than a ruffled shirt on a European. He was as black, or even blue-black, as a man could be, which gave his smile a more than usual brilliance; yet it was clear that he was not to be trifled with in any way.

  He came at sunrise, paddling out in one of those flexible, apparently frail canoes that the Kroomen used for landing through the monstrous surf so usual along the coast, ran up the side as nimble as a boy, saluted the quarterdeck and called out, 'Papers for Lieutenant Whewell, sir, if you please,' in a tremendous bass.

  He was perfectly willing to take Stephen ashore and show him anything he wished to see in Freetown; and as they made the passage, rising and falling on the long, heavy swell, Stephen asked him whether he knew the inland parts, the wild country, and the animals that lived there. Yes, said he: in his childhood he had lived part of the time at Sino, in the Kroo country, on the coast, but he had an uncle who lived far up the river, and there he spent some years when he was old enough to hunt: his uncle had showed him all manner of creatures—which were lawful, which were holy or at least protected by ju-ju, which were unclean, which were improper for a young unmarried man of his condition; and this knowledge, delightful and necessary in itself, proved of the greatest value later, when he was engaged by a Dutch naturalist to show him the serpents of the region, an engagement that allowed him to buy his first wife, a brilliant dancer and a cook.

  'Serpents alone, was it?'

  'Oh no, no. Deary me, no. Elephants and shrew-mice, bats, birds, giant scorpions too: but serpents first, and when I showed him Kroo python, three fathom long, coiled round her eggs, he gave me seven shillings, he was so pleased—seven shillings and a bright red wool hat.'

  'I hope he wrote a book. Oh how I hope he wrote a book. Square, will you tell me his name now, the worthy gentleman?'

  'Mr Klopstock, sir,' said Square, shaking his head. 'No book.'

  'No book at all?'

  Square shook his head again. 'Mr Klopstock, he dead.' Poised on the back of a moderate roller he assumed a shrunken appearance, trembled convulsively and made the gesture of one vomiting in the last stages of yellow fever, all perfectly convincing and all within the seconds needed for the wave to curl, run bellowing up the shore and set the canoe down on the sand. Square stepped out, barely wetting his feet, gave Stephen a hand and hauled the canoe above the high-watermark, calling to a little Krooboy to mind it and the paddle in his singularly precise English. The Krooboy could make nothing of his words, however, and he was obliged to repeat them in the local dialect.

  'So no book, sir,' said Square gravely as they walked up the strand. 'But he was a very good man, and kind to me. He taught me English, London English.'

  'I believe you said he was a Dutchman.'

  'Yes, sir; but he spoke English well, and he was happy to come here because he thought we spoke English too. London English. But he showed me prints of cobras, pangolins and shrew-mice, or drew them himself, telling me their names in London English. So I got used to his way of talking: like missionary. Now, sir, where would you like to go?'

  'I should like to see the town a little, passing the Governor's house, the fort and the market. Then I should like to see Mr Houmouzios, the money-changer.'

  It was a wide, spreading town, with most houses lying well apart in the enclosures of their own, often with palms rising high above their walls. They met few people as they walked along, and John Square, seeing that Stephen was willing to talk, went on, 'And I knew another naturalist, sir, when I was a boy: Mr Afzelius, a Swedish; and he spoke right careful London English too. He was a botany. No book, either, though he was here for years.'

  'No book, alas?'

  'No book, sir. When the French took the town in ninety-four they burnt his house with the rest, and all his papers and his specimens. It humbugged his heart so cruelly, he never wrote his book.'

  They both shook their heads, walking in silence for a while, until indeed they reached the market: and as they turned the corner they entered another world, crowded, busy, talkative, cheerful, full of colour—stalls with fruit and vegetables of every kind, brilliant in the mounting sun: plantains, bananas, papaws, guavas, oranges, limes, melons, pineapples, pigeon-peas, ockra, cream-fruit, sweet-sops, coco-nuts; and close-woven baskets full of rice, maize, millet, grains of Paradise, as well as yams and cassava and some sugar-cane. Fish in gleaming plenty: tarpon, cavallies, mullets, snappers, yellow-tails, old-maids, ten-pounders (thought rather coarse, said Square, though nourishing), and of course great heaps of oysters. There were grave Arabs walking about, swathed in white, and a few redcoats from the fort, and most stalls had a resident dog or cat; but the world in general was black. There were however varying degrees of darkness, from the Krooman's shining ebony to milk-chocolate brown. 'There is a Zandi from Welle, right down in the Congo,' said Square, nodding discreetly to just such a person, bargaining in passionate Sierra Leone English for a ten-pounder that did not, she claimed, weigh more than eight: 'Niminy-piminy, nutting at all,' she cried. 'And there are some Yoruba. Agbosomi you can always tell by their tattoo: they speak Ewe, same like Attakpami. See the Kondo tribal cuts on those cheeks: quite like the Grebo. There is a Kpwesi from here talking to a Mahi from Dahomey.' He pointed out many more, and said, 'All the nations that were ever sold on the Coast or round even to Mozambique live here: and there, sir, are some Nova Scotia blacks. But you know all about Nova Scotia, sir.'

  'I do not,' said Stephen.

  'Well, sir, they were slaves in America that fought on the King's side; and when the King's men were beat, they were moved to Nova Scotia: then after about twenty years those that were still alive after all that snow were brought here. Some had learnt Gaelic in those parts.'

  'God be with them,' said Stephen. 'Now I should like to see Mr Houmouzios, if you please.'

  'Aye aye, sir: right away,' said Square. 'His station is at the far corner there, under the canopy, or awning, as they say.'

  Mr Houmouzios was a Greek from some far African diaspora: he sat under his awning at a table covered with saucers holding a great variety of coins, from minute copper objects to Portuguese joes worth four pounds apiece, together with delicate scales and an abacus. To his left sat a small black boy, to his right a bald dog so huge that it might have belonged to another race, a dog that took no notice of anyone at all, except those who might offer to touch the table.

  'Monsieur Houmouzios,' said Stephen in French, as it had been agreed long since, 'Good day. I have a letter of change for you.'

  Houmouzios gazed at him mildly over his spectacles, and replying in a curiously old-fashioned but perfectly fluent Levantine version of the same language bade him welcome to Sierra Leone, looked at the document, said that he never brought such sums into the market and, in the local English, told the boy t
o fetch Socrates, an aged clerk. As soon as he arrived Houmouzios led Stephen to a singularly beautiful Arab house with fretted shutters and a fountain in the courtyard, and begging him to sit on a raised carpet observed that in these particular transactions a degree of identification was called for: the Doctor would forgive him for respecting this unnecessary form, but it was a superstition with people of his calling.

  Stephen smiled, said, 'Oh, of course,' and felt in his pocket for some coins. He found none, and was obliged to borrow six English pennies: these he arranged in two lines and then altered the position of three so that they, always being in contact with two others, formed a circle with the third movement.

  'Very good,' said Houmouzios. He drew a purse from under his shirt, told out fifty guineas, and said, 'I have heard from my chief that I may have the honour of receiving messages for you from time to time. Be assured that they too will rest in my bosom.'

  'There is another small point,' said Stephen. 'Can you recommend any merchant in Freetown with correspondents in Brazil or Buenos Aires?'

  'Now that the trade is illegal there is not much intercourse; but I do carry on a certain amount of banking business with export firms in Bahia—bark, rubber, chocolate, vanilla and the like.'

  'Coca-leaves?'

  'Certainly.'

  'Then please be so good as to order me an arroba of the best upland Peruvian small-leaf. Here are five guineas as earnest-money.'

  'By all means. I shall send at the first opportunity, and it should be here within a month or six weeks.'

  'You are very good, sir,' said Stephen, and having drunk a cup of coffee he took his leave, pleased with the contact. So often these arrangements, these letter-boxes, had a more than squalid side to them: on occasion an intelligence-agent's life was very dangerous indeed, but what was in a way more wearing was that it almost always brought him into touch with dubious, often semi-criminal characters whose good-fellowship and conniving smiles were profoundly disagreeable. Yet arrangements of this kind, which so often had the air of shady financial deals or adulterous correspondence, were essential: even in a well-regulated embassy or legation or consulate loose talk was so usual that a parallel means of communication was an absolutely necessary evil; and Maturin was certainly not going to endanger the success of the present expedition (which he rated very high) by entrusting the enterprising Governor or his staff with anything in the least confidential.