Peruvian silver box: but of late he had seemed to observe a diminution in their powers, possibly caused by long keeping. He did not appear to feel quite the same markedly anaesthetic effect in his mouth and pharynx: it might be no more than the result of long habituation, but he resolved that as soon as the squadron was within reach of Brazil he would send over for a new supply, and this evening, since he wished to play particularly well, he took an unusually large dose. He did play well: they both played well, and they thoroughly enjoyed their music. But whereas the Commodore, heavy with work, port and toasted cheese, went straight to sleep the moment his head touched the pillow of his swinging cot, Stephen found the wakeful coca-leaves as active as ever - they far outdid coffee in banishing even the thought of sleep - and as he wished to write up his notes in the morning he took a powerful sleeping draught, together with a bolus of Java mandragore, and thrust balls of wax deep into his ears against the ship noises, the changing of the watch, the eventual holystoning, scrubbing and swabbing of the decks, the screech and thump of the pumps. Long practice had made him proficient at this exercise; but he was in some ways a simple creature and he had never perceived that on every succeeding Lady Day he was a year older, and that he was now exhibiting a vigorous young man's dose for a middle-aged body.
It was often difficult to wake him in these circumstances. Today it was harder still.
'I beg pardon, sir,' said Wilkins, the senior master's mate, to Harding, now the Bellona's first lieutenant, 'but I can't wake him. I plucked off the clothes - he offered to bite, and then curled up again, though We both hallooed in his ear and shook the cot.'
It was Killick who brought him on deck at last, partly washed, partly clothed, but unshaven; stupid, sullen, blinking in what light there was.
'There you are, Doctor,' cried Jack, very loud. 'Good morning to you. I hope you slept?'
'What's afoot?' asked Stephen, peering heavily about. The squadron was hove to, and in their midst, with her topsails struck, lay a shabby merchantman, wearing Spanish colours, somewhat to the windward of the Bellona. As he looked so the breeze wafted a sickening reek across the deck, and he was not surprised to hear Jack say 'She is a slaver. Mr Whewell knows the vessel, the Nancy, formerly belonging to Kingston but lately sold. The master is coming aboard. I should like you to make out his nation if you can, and look at his papers, if they are foreign.' ('Lord, how I hope he is a wrong 'Un' he added in a private undertone.)
Aboard the slaver smoke was already pouring from the galley; large numbers of black, naked women, girls and children stood about the deck; the boat was slowly lowered down, and as the rim of the sun blazed above the horizon the master came across with his papers and an interpreter.
'Do you speak English, sir?' asked Captain Pullings.
'Very little, se?' said the master in a foreign accent. 'Him interpret.'
'You speak Spanish, however?' said Stephen in that language.
'Oh si, si, se?' with an attempt at cheerful ease.
They exchanged a few sentences. Stephen held out his hand for the passport, and after a glance he tossed it overboard. The man uttered a howl and made as though to dive after it, but checked at the view of the populated sea. 'He is an imposter,' said Stephen. 'An Englishman. He knows no Spanish. His papers are false. You may safely seize the ship.' And to Jack, 'Let us go across.'
Jack nodded and called to Whewell. 'There is nothing like the dawn for these discoveries,' he said as they pulled over the water in his barge. 'Time and again I have found a prize, and to leeward too, just before the first light.'
But his voice changed entirely as they neared the slaver: the stench grew worse, the water still more filthy, and he fell abruptly silent at the sight of two small girls, grey and dead, going over the side. For a moment they were disputed by sharks hardly longer than themselves, until a huge fish, gliding from under the keel, tore them apart.
The negroes did not understand what was happening; they had no notion of rescue, but only of some change of captivity, probably for the worse; they were frightened; at the same time they were desperate for their food and water. Whewell tried to reassure them in a variety of languages and the lingua franca of the Coast: apart from some of the small children, they did not believe him.
The men had not been let out yet, but now the hatches were lifting and the first group came staggering up the ladder, still writhed and bent from their all-night crouch with headroom of two feet six inches at the best. Jack, Stephen, Whewell and Bonden went down into the unbreathable fetor, watched nervously by the slaver's hands, who held their whips in an uncertain, awkward fashion. The slaves farthest aft came out, scarcely looking at them, rubbing knees and elbows and galled heads: they were chained in pairs: their expressions upon the whole were inhuman - apathy with underlying dread - but no evident single emotion.
The files seemed endless, scores and scores of bowed, thin, wretched men, naked and a lightless black; but in time it thinned and almost stopped. Whewell said 'Now we have reached the sick, no doubt. They are always stowed forward, where there is a little air through the hawse-holes. Perhaps you would like to come and see, Doctor?'
Stephen, who had known some shocking prison infirmaries, lunatic asylums and poor-house wards, had a professional armour; so, from his voyages in a slaver, had Whewell; Jack had none - the gun-deck amidships in a hard-fought fleet action, the slaughter-house as it was called, had in no way prepared him for this, and his head swam. He walked forward doggedly after them, bowed under the low beams: he heard Stephen give orders for the removal of the irons, saw him examine several men too weak to move, in the dim light and stifling air, understood him to say that there was dysentery here, that hands were needed, water and swabs.
He reached the deck; the slaver's men looked at him in dismay, and in a strangled, savage, barking voice he ordered six below with buckets and swabs, six to the pumps, and four to look alive there in the galley - all whips overboard. Some of the slaves looked at him, but without much curiosity; some were already washing; most sat there on the deck, still bowed.
'Bellona,' he hailed.
'Sir?'
'Send that fellow over, with his men. A file of Marines and an officer; the armourer and his mate. The surgeon's assistants.'
He called for the ship's steward, told him to spread all the cabin bedding out on deck, and as the sick came up, supported or carried, he had them laid upon it. The Nancy's master came aboard. 'Take this swab,' said Jack, bending over his appalled face as he climbed the side. 'Take this swab and clean up below, clean up below, clean up below.'
