Читать книгу The Ghost Tree - Barbara Erskine - Страница 31

Thomas

Black faces I had seen aplenty when I was back in Scotland and in England. Most, though not all, appeared to be servants. I don’t think I considered the matter of slavery then. I heard my parents talk about it, and my sisters, but not in any way that engaged me, with my own boyish interests paramount. When I reached the Caribbean I was all at once in a world of men and women and children who had been brought there on the slave ships from Africa. The ships themselves were notorious – some lay at anchor in Bridgetown Bay when we first arrived, redolent of the horrors that went on below decks – but on the plantations we visited, in the houses of the owners and administrators who were our hosts, the slaves seemed content with their lot. I did not then understand the concept of freedom or self-determination. Had my lot been any worse than theirs, conscripted as I was, in my own eyes anyway, into the navy and taken away across the ocean against my will? Their quarters were pleasant, their food better by far than any they could have been used to in their native land, or so I supposed, and better than that on many a ship of His Majesty’s navy, their clothing neat and clean. I saw them dancing and I heard them sing. My captain loved one of them, and as I discovered later had a child with her whom he adored. He saw nothing wrong with their situation, so nor did I, then.

And one of them saved my life.