Free Until the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead by S. Thomas Russell Page B

priests in the sick-berth. Both the Spaniards were here, as was Mr Percival, chatting with Angel in Spanish.
    The ship was not a mile distant, and Hayden could plainly see that she had only thirty feet of her foremast standing and had used spare spars or recovered yards to jury-rig a mast that crossed but one yard.
    â€œOn deck!” came the call from Wickham. “I can make her out, Captain . . . She’s a slaver.”

Seven
    I t was not just caution that had the
Themis
hove-to a hundred yards to windward—the horrifying stench of slavers was notorious. Even the brisk trade could not carry this odour away. Hayden had sent Archer across to the slave ship, and now he returned with the ship’s master in his cutter.
    All along the deck the men stared at the drifting ship, which was stuffed to the gunwales with a cargo of Africans—men, women, and children. The slavers had allowed a few of these poor creatures out onto the deck to stand upright and take the ocean air—not from compassion, Hayden guessed, but in an attempt to bring a greater portion of their cargo to market alive and in a condition to be sold. These dusky men, all but naked, stared back at the crew of the Navy ship, perhaps uncertain if they were saviours or presented an even greater danger.
    â€œPoor buggers,” Barthe pronounced by Hayden’s elbow, though whether he meant the men being carried into slavery or the crew of the stricken ship he could not say.
    Smosh was positioned at the rail beside the master. “These men trade in souls,” he declared.
    Percival glanced at him. “You do not believe, Mr Smosh, that the inferior races were put here to serve men?”
    â€œI do not believe any race was put upon this earth to be worked and sold like cattle.”
    The cutter came alongside at that moment and the master of the slaver—a ship out of Bristol—clattered up the side, Archer at his heels.
    Archer touched his hat. “Richard LeClerc, Captain Hayden, Master of the
Orion
.”
    Hayden shook the man’s hand. “Are you the owner, Captain LeClerc?”
    â€œNo, sir. She’s owned by a syndicate. All Bristol men of good standing.” The man looked over at Archer, clearly unsettled. “We lost our masts in the gale, Captain. No doubt you went through it yourselves . . . though you fared better than we. I can likely make port under jury, sir—not Port Royal, where I was bound, but some port—the problem is I won’t have half a cargo when I arrive, for I didn’t set out with water or victuals for such a slow crossing.”
    â€œI can tow you into Barbados, to which port I am bound,” Hayden offered. “It will not be fast, but quicker than you are sailing now and you shall not end up on a reef—I will see to that. Have you stores for a fortnight?”
    The master shifted from one foot to the other, creases wrinkling up his forehead and appearing around his eyes.
    â€œA fortnight . . . mayhap. We will be on tight rations, though. I cannot grant you salvage rights—not when there is the least chance I can make port on my own. I
can
offer you a portion of the profits, sir.”
    â€œThere are seldom ‘profits’ when such arrangements are entered into, Captain LeClerc.”
    â€œA portion of the sale of my cargo, then. Five percent,” the master said. “We have seven hundred alive yet, and I expect to have nearly that many when we arrive.”
    Hayden wished he were anywhere but on his deck having this discussion, for he wanted nothing to do with this man’s trade, but he could not leave a ship to sail on under her scrap of canvas, all but unmanageable, a sea of reefs and islands before her, not to mention her shortage of victuals and water. The human suffering would be beyond comprehension.
    Behind the slaver, Barthe was making small motions with his head and half gestures with limp