Authors: Gene Wolfe
"I will not undress for you until I have bathed. But do you not recall Coruña?"
I guess I gulped. I know it took me a minute to catch my breath. "Estrellita! You're Estrellita!"
She did not answer, just kissed me. After that I usually called her Novia. It means sweetheart. That is what I am going to call her here.
WHEN WE WERE
through kissing, I left her in the cabin with Melind and went up on deck. Shore people use gallons and gallons of fresh water for a bath, twenty or thirty liters, maybe. Enough to fill a small bowl twice is what it really takes, and there was plenty of water in the captain's cabin—soap, a sponge, and more. I showed her where everything was and heard her bar the door behind me.
We did not have many real sailors, like I said before. Besides me, there were only three who were really good, three men who had been in my piragua. I got them together, asked how old each of them was, and made the oldest first mate. The next oldest was second mate, and the youngest third mate. My second mate could not read or write, so I got another man who
could to help him with the logbook when he was on watch. I told him and the men that he was quartermaster, and the second mate—his name was Jarden—would teach him how to steer while they were on watch. A quartermaster ought to know how to steer.
Then I sat them all down and said, "This ship is a lot slower than she looks. Why aren't we making more speed?"
It had to be because the bottom was foul—they all agreed on that.
"Okay. We've got two choices, the way I see it. We can go to Port Royal or someplace else like that, put her in dry dock, and pay somebody to scrape her and tar her again. There's two problems with that approach. One is that we don't have the money, and the other is that we're liable to lose half our crew while we're getting it scraped and tarred. Anybody want to argue?"
Nobody did, or at least not much.
"We could fix it by knocking over a few Spanish ships first. That would be swell. Pay the crew a lot of money, and they'll have fun instead of hooking up with somebody else. We can pay for the work on the ship, too. Or maybe we take a ship we like better with a clean bottom, though I wouldn't bet on that one. The problem is that to take a ship we've got to find one and catch it, and we'd need a fast ship to do it."
Rombeau said, "We must scrape and tar it ourselves, Captain. We have plenty of men." He was my lieutenant, and when he said that, I knew I had picked the right guy.
I nodded. "That's what I was getting at. Has anybody here ever done it? I haven't."
Nobody else had either. So we got to talking about ways we might be able to do it, and after an hour or so we came up with a pretty good plan.
NOVIA AND I
were not really alone that night; Melind was there, too, but he could not see or hear us. She had opened all the windows, and the wind was soft and carried the smell of flowers on some island far away. I blew out the lantern—moonlight and starlight were plenty for us. We must have kissed a thousand times, but I cannot remember hardly anything we said. She said I must have had a lot of women, I do remember that, and I told her the truth— that I had never done it with even one. She called me a liar, but she was just teasing me.
She had been with a man before, she said, but only one man. "Once I loved him. Now I hate him. I would have killed him, Crisóforo, but I was afraid. I was a great coward when I left him."
And she said, "I do not want clothes when I am alone with you." It was not exactly what I had imagined some girl saying in the confessional, but plenty close enough.
I DO NOT
remember how long it was after that. It could have been the next day, or two or three days after. All I really remember is that I was leaning on the stern rail listening to Jarden teaching the quartermaster how to handle the wheel when one of the men came up and said the boy in the cabin wanted me. I said okay, went down into the cabin, and Melind was dead.
We buried him at sundown, sewing him into a spare hammock and weighting it with a roundshot. Maybe I should not put it in here, but we never did make anybody walk the plank. I never knew pirates to do that and I was one. But when Melind was in his hammock we laid him on a plank, and when we had finished the service (the crew singing a couple of French hymns, me saying the Our Father and Hail Mary in Latin) six men picked up the board, held the foot over the rail, and raised the head so Melind slid off the board into the Caribbean. I cannot forget how I leaned over the rail and watched the water swallow him, clear water at first, then light blue, then darker and darker until I could not see him anymore. Someday I was going to die, too, and I felt like I was watching myself go down. There are worse graves than the one poor Melind got, a lot of them.
But there are no better ones. None at all. May he await his resurrection in peace. God grant him rest is the prayer of his friend.
He was a Norman, big and strong, and pretty close to blond. Not much older than I was back then. He had a smile you wanted to earn, and he could do tricks with his voice, private and friendly one minute and booming out like those speakers on police copters the next. He was a good shot and a real good tracker, and he used to talk about his mother and sister when we had eaten all we wanted and drunk a little wine, and were just sitting around the fire. That is all I know about him. I never even knew his first name.
When the service was over, I told the crew that by the Custom of the Coast we would have an election to pick a new captain. I said we would hold it in the morning so as to give everybody time to think things over.
As soon as I said that, a guy named Yancy piped up. He wanted the election right now, and he wanted everybody to vote for him. I said, no, it was not decent. We ought to be thinking about Melind now, and all of us ought to have a little bit of time to think about who would make the best captain.
He argued until I told him to shut his mouth or I would shut it for him.
Here is one of the places where it is hard for me to be completely honest.
I did not really want to be captain, or anyway, not much. There was too much responsibility. If it had not been for the other thing, I could have given in to Yancy pretty easily, or had the crew vote on picking a captain that day like he wanted.
Here is the truth. The other thing was that I wanted to be able to spend the night alone with Novia, who was drawing little pictures of me while she waited for me in the captain's cabin. We had done it quite a bit by that time, but it was still new to me and I was wild to get at her again. It meant we would have to have the cabin or one of the mate's cabins, and I did not want to take the chance that night. So I told Yancy that in the morning would be plenty soon enough. I do not think he liked me anyway, and he sure did not like that. I got my way just the same.
That night, while she and I lay together on the wide bed we had made for ourselves on the floor—two blankets I think we had between us and the boards—I said, "How did you live on this ship without anybody finding out you were a girl, Estrellita?"
She grinned at me. "I couldn't be flogged. Men are stripped to the waist for flogging, so I had to be good. I hoped that if they punished me, I would be bent over a gun and beaten as the other boys were. The trousers were on for this, but I was never punished at all. How did you become captain, Crisóforo? You were a common seaman when you sang at the window in Coruña."
"I may be again after we vote," I said. "I'll tell you all about that later. You came looking for me?"
"Of course. He would not let me see you and you went away. I thought I would be a sailor on your ship. You would know, but no one else. It was not easy for me to leave the house. When he ceased his vigilance, I fled. I bought sailor's clothing and changed in the bedroom of a friend. Your ship was gone, but I learned where. When I found this ship which was going to the West Indies also, I joined its crew. They thought me a boy and gave me silly tasks that need no skill. If we fought, I was to bring up powder to the guns."
She laughed. "I know something of powder, but I did not tell them so. Really, Crisóforo, it was not difficult. We slept in our clothing."
I said, "Sure. Everybody does. You never know when you might have to go on deck, and it's four-hour watches."
"Sometimes two. I did not rouge, spoke and walked like a boy, and kept to myself. Kept silent, so that it is a great relief for me to speak with you like this. There was but one lantern in the forecastle, you understand, and it an old and smoky one."
"Sure. I've slept in one."
"Thus you know. Always I had to wait until night to relieve myself, and that was difficult. We will not speak of it."
"All so you could find me."
She kissed me. "Now I will say something. I am a willful woman. Bad! Very bad!"
"I've got it."
"I am sick of playing boy. I will wear women's clothes for you as soon as I find some. Your crew—everyone—will know I am a woman."
I said, "I think some do already."
"Good! Do not be afraid for me, Crisóforo. I have my knife." She jumped up and showed it to me, one of those big, rat-tailed Spanish folders. "And I will stay here in our cabin unless I go with you. My hands will be soft again for you. I will grow round again, as a woman should be. Are you afraid for yourself?"
That made me feel better, because it had seemed to me her face and lips were too thin. I said, "No, I'm not. But what if I lose in the morning? What will we do then, Estrellita?"
"We will leave this ship in a boat, like those others. If they will not give us one, we will take it."
I admired her guts, and I have ever since. I have seen whole ships full of men with a lot less guts than she had in a curvy little body I could have picked up and thrown.
NEXT MORNING I
got the crew together like I planned. I asked whether there was anybody there who wanted to be captain, and Yancy jumped up. I told him he ought to tell everybody why he was the best for the job, sat down, and let him talk.
He did for a long time, mostly about things that he had done before: what he had done in France, why he had come over, and so on. Finally they made him shut up and sit down.
I got up again and asked if there was anybody else. There was not so I said, "Okay, I know you're sick of listening so I'll make it short. I've been doing the job since Melind got hurt. You know what kind of captain I'll be. We all want to go to France."
That was not a lie. I had never been there, and I thought it would be interesting.
"But we don't want to go back there as beggars. Or anyway I don't. I want to have quite a chunk of money. Maybe some of you would like to hear people say you went to the West Indies to make your fortune and came home with nothing but the clothes on your back? Speak up, if that's you. I'd like to hear about it."
Nobody said a word.
"Fine. We all feel the same way. The Spanish owe us."
A lot of them agreed with that, some pretty loud.
"If I have my way, we're going to get what they owe. I've been a pirate. Some of you know that already and know that I know how it's done. I'm going to do it again if you'll choose me. The king of Spain is going to hear about us again—" Here I had to yell. "And he's going to be sorry as hell he ever heard about us the first time!"
Three voted for Yancy, counting him. All the rest voted for me. About an hour later, he challenged me to fight it out. He was big and tough, and I know he thought he would kill me.
Jackson on the
Weald
had told me how pirates handled that, so that was how Yancy and I did it. I had thought we would fight with muskets, but somebody must have told him about Gagne and he would not go for it. I pretended to be really unhappy about that, but finally gave in: "Okay," I said, "cutlasses."
After that, we had to find an island where nobody would interfere. It took two days, which gave me plenty of time to think back to things my father had said about knife fights. (A cutlass is just a long, heavy knife with a big hand guard, really.) I had found a little money in the captain's cabin, and I left the gold with Novia and put the rest in my pocket—all the copper and some silver.
We got in the longboat together, Yancy in the bow and me in the stern, and the crew rowed us out to a little bit of an island where nobody lived.
The quartermaster got us to stand ten long steps apart just like I had told him. "When we have gone, shipmates, you must settle things between you. Only one of you will return to the ship. We will remain within hailing distance. When the winner halloos, we will come back for him."
I nodded to show I understood. Maybe Yancy nodded, too. I do not know.
When they had pushed out the longboat and gotten on board it again, I said, "Look, Yancy, I'm your captain whether you like it or not. You're a tough fighter and I'm not looking forward to losing you. What do you say we call it off right now?" My left hand was in my pocket getting the money while I said all that.
The longboat's crew started backing water on one side and rowing on the other to turn it around, and he rushed me. I threw the coins in his face and stuck my cutlass clear through his chest. Back when we took the
Magdelena
, I had seen a Spanish officer do that with one of their straight swords, taking a long step forward with his right leg. I did not do it as well as he had, but I did it good enough and I caught Yancy's wrist with my left hand.