A Brig of War by Richard Woodman Read Free Book Online

capes and islands,’ said Drinkwater, ‘we should manage. Ah, and that reminds me, during the morning watch tomorrow I’ll have a jackstay rigged over the waist and spread and furl a spare topsail on it to use as an awning and catchwater
    keep two casks on deck during your watch, Mr Lestock, and fill ‘em if you get the opportunity. Captain Griffiths intends only to stop if it becomes necessary, otherwise we’ll by-pass the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Agulhas current and take wood and water somewhere on the Madagascan coast. In the meantime direct your attention to the catchwater if you please.’ Lestock returned to the deck, the worried look still on his face.
    ‘It would seem that an excess of salt spray also draws the moisture from a man,’ observed Appleby archly.
    ‘Aye, Mr Appleby, and over-early pickles the brain,’ retorted Trussel.
    Day succeeded day as the trades blew and the internal life of the brig followed its routine as well as its daily variations. Daily, after quarters, the hands skylarked for an hour before the hammocks were piped down. The flying fish leapt from their track and fanned out on either bow. Breakfasts were often spiced by their flesh, fried trout-like and delicious. During the day dolphins played under the bowsprit defying efforts to catch them. The sea at night was phosphorescent and mysterious, the dolphins’ tracks sub-aqueous rocket trails of pale fire, the brig’s wake a magical bubbling of light. They reeled off the knots, hoisting royals and studding sails when the wind fell light. Even as they reached the latitude of the Cape Verdes and the trades left them, the fluky wind kept a chuckle of water under the forefoot.
    It was utterly delightful. Drinkwater threw off the last of his depression and wallowed in the satisfying comfort of naval routine. There was always enough to occupy a sea-officer, yet there was time to read and write his journal, and the problems that came inevitably to a first lieutenant were all sweetly soluble. But he knew it could not last, it never did. The very fact of their passage through the trade-wind belt was an indication of that. At last the winds died away and the rain fell. They filled their water casks while Griffiths had the sweeps out for two hours a daylight watch and Hellebore was hauled manually across the ocean in search of wind.
    ‘Duw, I cannot abide a calm hereabouts,’ Griffiths growled at Drinkwater, staring eastward to where, unseen below the horizon, the Gambia coast lay.
    ‘I remember the smell, bach. Terrible, terrible.’ For a second Drinkwater could not understand, then he remembered Griffiths’s slaving past. ‘The Gambia, sir?’ he asked quietly.
    ‘Indeed yes
    the rivers, green and slow, and the stockades full of them; the chiefs and half-breed traders and the Arabs
    and us,’ he ended on a lower note. ‘Christ, but it was terrible
    ‘ It was the first time he had ever disclosed more than the slightest detail of that time of his life. They had often discussed the technicalities of slaving ships, their speed and their distant loveliness, but though there was a growing revulsion to the trade in Britain neither he nor Griffiths had ever voiced the matter as a moral problem. He was tempted to wonder why Griffiths had remained to become chief mate of a slaver when the old man answered his unasked question.
    ‘And yet I stayed to become mate. You are asking yourself that now, aren’t you?’ He did not wait for a reply but plunged on, like a man in the confessional, too far to regret his repentance. ‘But I was young, duw, I was young. There was money there, money and private trading and women, bach, such women the like of which you’d never dream of, coal black and lissom, pliant and young, opening like green leaves in spring,’ he sighed, ‘they would do anything to get out of that stinking ‘tween deck
    anything.’
    Drinkwater left the old man to his silence and his memories. He was still at the rail when