As soon as Erasmus Kemp had rejoined the ship she weighed and set a course northwards for St Augustine. In the southwesterly land breeze she made good time. Erasmus stood at the rail scanning the coast through a telescope, but he saw no sign of human habitation, only the pale stretches of the shore and the low line of scrub beyond it, broken occasionally by dark, dome-shaped belts of forest like sudden islands. When they were still south of Cape Canaveral the wind veered eastward, obliging them to stand further out for fear of the shoals, and he lost all sight of the coast.
Late in the afternoon, after some hesitation, he settled down to look at the journal. Some reluctance he did not fully understand, some fear of being mastered, held him back, though he was conscious of no curiosity in regard to his cousin’s thoughts and feelings, only of the desire to find evidence of his crimes.
He began at the later pages – evidence would be here, if anywhere. The ink had faded badly in places and mould had attacked the edges of the leaves here and there, but a good deal was legible still. He turned the leaves, his eyes moving impatiently over the obliterated passages. The journal gave off the faint, sweetish perfume of neglect.
… perhaps seeing some advantage to be gained from me as the owner’s nephew, a matter he refers to frequently and with significant inflections. He is sniffing for a source of power, or preparing to shift allegiance. Certainly Thurso may not now be such a star to follow. Feeling among the people against him is strong, it can be sensed in the men’s looks and mutterings among themselves. Cavana has scarce said a word since the casting overboard of his monkey … a favourable wind, but the terrible deity who may have sustained Thurso all these years of his trading for slaves shows himself whimsical at last, as we see in these calms that have descended on us and keep us still among the shoals with seldom enough wind to give the ship steerage way, for she is now so foul she will not feel a small breeze.
April 20
Woke this morning to strains of ‘Nancy Dawson’, played by Sullivan for the negroes to dance to. It is in his face that he does not much relish this use to which his music is put, but Thurso … considerations of humanity, but for the sake of his ‘prime’, that is the four per cent promised him by my uncle on every slave reaching Jamaica and sold there. I care not if we never reach Jamaica nor any … Dancing will not keep them alive while the bloody flux moves among them; this demon was with us when we set sail from the coast and grows apace in spite of all my efforts to air and fumigate their rooms below deck. Almost every morning now we bring up dead shackled to the living. Yesterday one of the women was delivered of a dead baby, which Libby threw over the side.
April 26
I continue, in spite of these terrible conditions, to hold long conversations with Delblanc, and they are a solace to me, though I think him not enough of a realist. He maintains there could be a world, a society, without victims and without injustice, where the weakness of one was not an invitation to the strength of another, except to succour or protect. I go so far with him as to believe it true that the moral character of man is formed by what happens to him in the world and that our nature originates in external circumstances. Why then do we languish under wars and tyrannies? Delblanc would say it is due to the harmful effect of government upon us, government being powerful for evil only and powerless for … conditions on this ship one would be bound to agree. We are a sick and disaffected body of men, with a human cargo constantly dwindling, presided over by a man who grows every day more mad in appearance, hoarse and staring, with congested-looking features, and accompanied always … flogged a man today only for going to complain about the condition of the salt beef, which is black and glazed over and clearly putrid, as I have myself verified … Barton sends those he does not favour to scrape and swab out the slaves’ quarters, a task much hated by reason of the poor creatures sometimes being so enfeebled by the flux as not to have strength to reach the necessary-buckets. There are four of these in each of the apartments. It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets, in endeavouring to get to them, tumble over their companions in consequence of their being shackled. These accidents, though unavoidable, are productive of continual quarrels, in which some of them are always bruised. In this situation, unable to proceed and prevented from going to the tubs, they desist from the attempt; and as the necessities of nature are not to be resisted, they ease themselves as they lie.
There followed now several pages which some particular wear or friction, or perhaps the poorer quality of the ink, had rendered illegible. Erasmus felt hot and half stifled in the close confines of the cabin. The sweetish smell that rose from the pages came like some repugnant claim on him. He had retrieved this record from its journey to dust, and the rescue seemed to make him for the moment his cousin’s accomplice. Perhaps in the final pages Paris might have written something to incriminate himself. The writing here was more hasty and ragged, though still for the most part clear enough.
This morning we consigned to the sea Evans, who had been declining these two weeks past with a low fever and died on deck. Also two slaves, a man of the bloody flux and a boy of the gravel and stoppage of the urine, thus bringing … McGann in irons for the second time, for begging rice from the negroes’ bowls. Now that supplies are running low, the slaves get more than the crew, which is reasonable from Thurso’s point of view since he has no hope of selling the latter and may save their wages if they die. Water too is growing scarce – the men are rationed to one pint a day. McGann is sick with scurvy, but his appetite seems not to be affected. On being detected he was beaten by Barton with a rope’s end, then set in irons on the deck. He sits there in his shackles with his face screwed up tight and the red bonnet, which he has worn all the voyage, still hanging over his brow … not far from death, in my judgement, but still has not relented in the matter of his wager with Sullivan.
He is not the only one of our people to beg thus. I have been surprised to see the negroes give sometimes from their own portions, notwithstanding the grievous condition they are themselves in. It cannot be pity, how could they pity the men who have brought them to this pass? Crew and slaves are in the embrace of a wretchedness so profound that it precludes all animosity, all personal … my cabin here, I can hardly breathe in the mid-parts of the day and seek what breezes I can get on the weather side. The stench of the ship is truly terrible, there is not only the reek that rises from the bilges, but the smell of the slave quarters grows daily less supportable, for all our applications of vinegar and sulphur. My fancies grow sick, I feel the breeding of disease in the pores of her timbers and … We are a foul breath on the ocean that bears us.
Not only fancies are bred in these days but memories dredged up as it were from the sea. I have been thinking much of you lately and of our child that we never saw. It haunts my thoughts that you cried out for me and I was not there. Worse than this, against all reason and yet beyond my power to suppress, there is the fear that you were there in the crowd, that you saw me, head and hands thrust forward in that grotesque position, my face bleeding and fouled, and it was this memory of my face that you carried to the grave, while yours in my memory is flawless and … these ugly thoughts, my dearest.
I know that if I had not persisted in publishing my opinions – which I did out of arrogance … into prison and ruin. Because of this I took Kemp’s offer, not from any necessity of a material nature, but from the necessity of my shame … regard myself as valueless, as disposable for any purpose, however unworthy … throw my life away but I have been brought with despair to see that this was the same self-regard as before. I have assisted in the suffering inflicted on these innocent people and in so doing joined the ranks of those that degrade the unoffending … This has been my crime and I am more guilty in it than the common seamen, who can plead the dire necessity of –
Erasmus closed the book with sudden violence. He understood better now the initial reluctance he had felt. Reading had brought his cousin too close. In some such cramped and narrow space as this, where he himself was now, Paris must have written the words. His image came through them, undimmed by the years: the awkward, heavy-shouldered form in its clerical black, the lined face with its look of obstinate patience. He had suffered … Erasmus felt the touch of an intolerable compassion. At the same time he could hardly believe what he had been reading. It struck him as verging on madness. This wild confession, this owning to a crime so outlandish, so totally different from the true ones of mutiny and theft of the negroes, outraged him with its insolence and perversity. In the conflict of these feelings Erasmus was swept by doubt and loneliness. His whole being seemed under threat of dissolution. What became of law, of legitimacy, of established order, if a man could assume such attitudes of private morality, decide for himself where his fault lay? It turned everything upside down. He could think of nothing more damnable. And yet … He remembered suddenly the second, rarer smile his cousin had, the one that came slowly, transforming his face. Briefly, unwillingly, Erasmus glimpsed the possibility of freedom.
His face and hands felt hot, feverish almost. He went to the water jug on his narrow table and washed, cupping the cold water in his hands and throwing it repeatedly up into his face. After this, feeling the need for air, he mounted to the deck and found a sky still smouldering in the aftermath of sunset. Embers of cloud glowed in the east and there were long rifts of fire low over the sea. He stood at the rail, breathing deeply, watching the flame die slowly to colours of cinders and ash, allowing his knowledge of his cousin’s wickedness to return and comfort him.