The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox

there’s a cure for man himself.” I stared at him, still wondering why he’d given me such a blow when I’d cried out at the sight of the dead child. I hoped he’d been trying to protect me. I knew now how the crew responded to any sign of my distress at the plight of the blacks.
    â€œNever mind that, Ned,” said Gardere sulkily, opening his eyes wide. “You’re not a saint, you know.” Gardere’s voice was thick as though his throat was full of honey, and his words were faintly slurred. All the men had been drinking heavily ever since Gardere and Purvis had come off watch. Even though it was so late, they had not, as was their habit, flung themselves instantly into their hammocks.
    We had weighed anchor and sailed that evening so the slaves would not see the shore of their homeland disappearing, and a fresh land wind was bearing us along smoothly. But the men were not eased by our progress; their mood was restless and shadowed by gloom. All day, they’d been telling each other stories of lost ships although none so dreadful as the one I’d just heard.
    But the stories did not drown out the sounds from the holds. Not all the gabble of the sailors, the sustained flow of the wind that drove us on, could mask the keening of the slaves as they twisted and turned on the water casks, or struggled to find an edge of one of a handful of straw pallets upon which to rest their shackled ankles. I dozed. I woke. Never to silence. Would it go on this way to the end of our voyage? Sharkey claimed they would settle down. Settle down to what?
    It seemed that Benjamin Stout was to be in charge of the slaves. Next day, he raced from one task to another. Although I had grown to dislike the slowness of his walk and gesture, I found his energy even more repulsive. He saw to the water rations, to Curry’s activities with the huge cauldron. Frequently, he hung over the holds, shouting down a few words of the African language. I asked Ned if he, too, could speak African. He told me there were as many languages in Africa as there were tribes but since none of them were Christian he would not corrupt his tongue by learning a single word from any of them. Did he know, I asked him, what people we carried on our ship? Ashantis, he’d replied with disgust, probably captured in tribal wars with the Yoruba.
    â€œBut the children don’t battle, do they?” I asked.
    â€œThe chiefs kidnap the children,” he replied. “The slavers give good trade goods for them because they fetch such high prices in the West Indies.” He looked contemptuously toward the now distant shore, more like a low-lying cloud than land. “The African was tempted and then became depraved by a desire for the material things offered him by debased traders. It’s all the Devil’s work.”
    I looked at him curiously. “But you’re a slaver, ain’t you, Ned?”
    â€œMy heart’s not in it,” he said flatly. I wondered about his heart, imagining it to be something like one of the raisins Curry used to slip into the duff.
    We hadn’t had such a good thing to eat as duff in many weeks. Being on a ship and eating from its stores was like a man burning down his house to keep warm.
    I had not yet been seriously afflicted with the thing called sea-sickness. But early the next morning, we hit a strange turbulence in the sea so that The Moonlight pitched forward, then rolled sideways in such rapid alternation that my stomach did likewise. I took only a swallow of water. I felt that if I didn’t keep my mouth tightly closed, I should be turned inside out like a garment that was to be laundered.
    If the ship’s wild pitching made me ill, it drove the blacks below into frenzies of terror. Howls and cries rose out of the holds unceasingly. The ship herself seemed to protest the violence of the water, whining and creaking more loudly than I’d ever heard her.
    Ben Stout,