'Take your field, M'sieur Bowen, medicine. The Cape Coast is the unhealthiest place in the world. I often have to take my ship thirty miles up rivers to collect my cargo—in itself a great risk to the ship. I've read the burial service over more bodies consigned to those rivers than ever at sea. I sail from France with a crew of thirty-five—because I need twenty left alive for the passage from the Cape Coast to the West Indies. Many times I've made a passage with only a dozen... The rest have died of sicknesses for which there is no cure, only a death of the most painful kind. When you came in sight,' he said to Ramage, 'only twenty of the thirty five who left France had survived: fifteen died in the Bight of Benin—one stabbed by a treacherous slave-trader, the rest from sickness.'
'But losing crew from sickness is hardly a financial loss,' Ramage objected pointedly.
Marais gave a sly grin. 'I understand the implication; but there is a loss because men who ship in slavers are not gamblers. They won't sign on and agree to collect their pay at the end of the round voyage, so if they died the owner doesn't have to pay, which is what you are thinking. Oh no! They want a large advance before they leave France. Why, 'Come, come,' Ramage interrupted. 'If you paid such large advances they'd desert on the eve of sailing.'
Without saying it, Marais' hands and a twitch of his head indicated this was proof enough of the crude way of British sailors but that French sailors were cleverer.
'The advance, usually four months' pay, is delivered by my agent to whoever the seaman nominates—a week after we have sailed.'
'What do you barter for the slaves?' Bowen asked.
'All sorts of manufactured goods. Cloth and clothing— the brighter the better—brass and iron cooking pots, beads, knives, looking-glasses—they're very popular—liquor, muskets, shot, powder, cutlasses------'
'Muskets and shot?' exclaimed Bowen.
'Of course—the chiefs pay well for them. They're cheap affairs, naturally; more danger to the men that fire them than their targets!'
'And how—well, what happens when you first arrive on the Coast?'
Marais grinned at Ramage. 'First we discover whether there are any British ships of war in the area. Then—well, let's describe it as it was before the war, then I shan't give away any secrets.
'First, M'sieur Bowen, there's a slaving season—that's obvious, because we don't want to arrive in the Caribbean during the hurricane season. So on the Coast the trading settlements and local native chiefs have been preparing for us by collecting slaves. When enough slave ships arrive, the slaves are taken to the market and each captain inspects them.
As he chooses one, so he bargains with the owner—usually a slave-trader or the agent of the particular chief—and agrees on the price.'
Bowen asked: 'These chiefs—where do they get the slaves?'
'You might well ask! From many places. To start with a chief takes up any young men or boys in his own tribe who have misbehaved. Not criminals necessarily, you understand? Then, if it's a large tribe and the chief wants a lot of muskets, or a lot of bright clothes for his wives—well, he's likely to march some of his own people to the settlement.
'Of course, the tribes often raid each other's villages to capture men to sell as slaves. That's quite usual—you can always tell by the tribal marks on the faces. If you see a chief's agent at the market has, say, two vertical scars on his cheek and the slaves he's offering have one horizontal scar, you know they're prisoners of war from another tribe. If they are the same scars—well, the chief is either selling those who've misbehaved, or he's getting greedy.'
'But surely you don't get all your slaves at the settlements?' asked Ramage, remembering Marais' reference to rivers. 'Most of the settlements are on the coast, aren't they?'
'We get perhaps half from the settlements: the best—and the most expensive. The rest we find up the rivers, visiting small villages.'
'You capture them,' Bowen said bluntly.
'Oh no!' Marais exclaimed. 'For a start it'd be too dangerous to send a party of seamen on shore; in fact we usually have a guard boat rowing round the ship day and night. No, a hundred seamen wouldn't last an hour in that jungle— they'd be riddled with spears and arrows from three yards away by natives they couldn't even see, or else they'd come back riddled with sickness.
'Oh no, M'sieur Bowen, we arrive at a village and wait. First a representative of the chief—perhaps even the chief himself—comes out in a canoe for a palaver. He tells us how many slaves he has and the price he wants. One of my men—usually the mate—goes back with him and inspects them. When they return, we agree on the price. And usually, after dark, more canoes arrive with slaves from villages near-by.'
'Where do the other slaves come from then?"
'I never ask, but it's obvious.' Marais shrugged his shoulders. 'You must understand that a man with two sons and six daughters considers he has six useless mouths to feed: he values only his sons. So he's likely to sell some of his daughters. If he has little land and many sons—well, the extra sons too. Particularly if he dislikes any of them.'
Bowen groaned.
'My friend,' said Marais, 'don't be shocked; don't judge them by your standards. These people live different lives and have different codes. They're happy and they work just enough to avoid starving. And it's difficult to starve because fruit and many vegetables grow wild in the jungle, and they catch fish in the rivers.
'And you must remember the family is not the family as we Europeans understand the word. Before I went to the Coast I'd have been shocked if I'd known what I'm telling you now. After twenty years, I understand.
'Incidentally, things we do shock them. The idea of spending sums of money in building enormous ships solely for fighting—that shocks them. They have large canoes—but when they're not fighting another tribe they're used for fishing or trade.
'You consider government. When a chief dies, all the elders elect a new chief—the man they think is best qualified to lead them in battle, administer justice and so on. The European system makes them laugh—a hereditary king whose son'—he glanced significantly at Ramage—'might be stupid or insane or otherwise totally unfit for the crown; men three or four hundred "minor chiefs" elected without qualifications by fools who were probably bribed with pints of ale... You'll admit the results in Europe are a series of situations where nothing gets done and the minor chiefs—your Members of Parliament, the French senators—simply make speech after speech. Who's to say which system is best? In my opinion one system suits the Cape Coast, another suits Europe.'
'When you have me slaves on board,' Bowen asked, 'how are they fed, exercised, cared for?'
Marais looked at him squarely. 'M'sieur, I think you are a supporter of that M'sieur Wilberforce. But always remem her this—it would be madness for a slaver captain not to care for the slaves. For every slave that dies—pouf, there's a twenty-five guinea investment and another twenty-five guinea profit thrown over the side. If you had hundreds of guineas invested in a company, I think you'd make quite sure the company's goods were well cared for.
'However, to answer your question. The slaves—in La Merlette, anyway, and she is typical—get three meals a day, and the food is what they're used to. Once we're at sea they spend at least five hours a day on deck. True, each pair of men is shackled together with leg irons, but they get plenty of exercise—they even manage to dance. Their accommodation is cleaned out while they're on deck, and we give them brandy each day.'
Ramage grunted. For all the talk—and Marais was sincere and the logic of some of his arguments was inescapable even if you disagreed with him—it didn't change Ramage's views on slavery. That chiefs of tribes would sell their own youth into slavery didn't justify slavers buying them. Nor did it justify plantation owners buying them from me slavers.