Read the passage below from olaudah equiano’s autobiography:

i was soon put down under the decks, and there i received such a salutation [greeting] in my nostrils as i had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness [horribleness] of the stench and crying together, i became so sick and low that i was not able to eat. i now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables [food]; and on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across i think the windlass [a part of the ship], and tied my feet, while the other flogged [beaten or whipped] me severely.

what most accurately describes the narrator’s circumstance?
a he is a passenger on the middle passage, a ship that carries enslaved people from west africa to the americas.
b he is a slave trader who is hungry, sick, and has trouble breathing on a ship.
c he is an enslaved person on a ship who wishes to die rather than endure the inhumane conditions he faces.
d he is a one of many prisoners on the middle passage, a trade route from west africa to spain.