The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,36
goin’ agin him.”
“I see, yes. So he put the matter to you …”
“The slaves was dyin’, we had been blown off course, we was still a good many days from Jamaica. Them as died aboard was of no value, but if they was jettisoned with lawful cause the ship’s owner could claim insurance. Thurso said he would make sure every man jack of us got a piece of that money.”
“It is easy to promise money that is not your own,” Ashton said. “Would you be ready to swear in court that the captain offered you a bribe to do as he wished?”
It was a false move, too precipitate; he saw it immediately in the faces that were turned to him, the stillness that seemed to descend on the forms of the men as they stood there against the wall. No answer was made to his question. After some moments the carpenter said, “Then there was the shortage of water, sir, that was what made it legal-like.”
“Are you sure water was short? Had you been placed on rations?”
“That I don’t remember,” Barber said. “Any of you lads remember if we was rationed for water?”
No reply came to this, and there was no movement among the men.
“There had been copious rain during the night, or so I am given to understand,” Ashton said.
“Water was short,” Hughes said. “We was aboard the ship an’ you wasn’t.”
In spite of himself and the resolution of forbearance he had made, Ashton stiffened at the insolence of this, and raised his head to meet the man’s gaze directly. He saw dark eyes that made no move to evade his own; there was a fire of violence in them such as he had rarely seen. For the first time he felt glad of the presence of the armed guards just beyond the gate. He needed only to raise his hand to summon them.
“Please listen to me,” he said. “I understand why you should want to maintain the legality of drowning your fellow human beings—for that is what they were, made in God’s image, just as you and I are, and completely unoffending. But there is no protection for you in this, even if it could be proved. It is no defense, with the capital charges of murder and piracy you will be facing, to plead that the jettison was lawful, that you were laboring under necessity. That is the line the ship’s owner will take, Mr. Erasmus Kemp. He will be supported in it by the testimony of the first mate, Barton. By asserting that there was a shortage of water, you will only succeed in helping Kemp to obtain the insurance money he is claiming on the deaths of these poor people. Surely you can see that? Kemp is the man who brought you to this ruin.”
No answer came to this, and he saw no change in the attitude of the men. He had been too optimistic. How could they regard him as a friend, as someone who desired to help them? He came from the world outside the prison, the world that asks questions, calls people to account. He needed their trust, he was exerting himself on their behalf, but it was not to save them from the gallows—this he admitted freely to himself. Their ultimate fate did not really matter to him, he did not feel concerned in it. Through them, through the public notice they might draw to this atrocious crime, thousands of lives might be changed, might be saved.
He still had his appeal to make. He had been wrong to hint at blame. It was essential now to get them back to the narrative, bring them together again in the effort of recollection. “So all the crew were involved in it?” he said. “In the casting them over, I mean.”
“Yes, all of us,” Barber said. “That is, all of us ’cept for Morgan and Hughes. Morgan was in the galley an’ Hughes was up aloft, keepin’ an eye out for the weather.”
Once more Ashton encountered that fearsome regard. Unlike Morgan, Hughes had not tried to exculpate himself; he had not deigned to.
“We had to make a ring round them in case they tried to run,” Barber said.
“I was one of them that done the handlin’,” the one-eyed man said. “Me an’ Haines an’ Wilson was the ones that hoisted them over.” It was clear that he had misunderstood the whole tone of the conversation, the defensiveness of his shipmates. He had spoken in