Authors: Gene Wolfe
We told them in English, Spanish, and French that four slaves were wanted aboard the
Weald
, their chains would be taken off, and they would get better food. Three seemed to understand, so we unlocked those, sent them over, and brought up another bunch. Capt. Burt picked one who seemed to be in good shape and looked smart, and sent him over, too.
After that, he had the pirates on both ships come up on deck, and had me come up on the quarterdeck with him. "We're free Brethren of the Coast," he told them, "free to elect as captain anyone we want. I plan to send this prize to Port Royal, and send it there as fast as I can. If you know anythin' about the business, you know that two or three slaves die every day on a slaver, so it's best it go direct and fast. I'm puttin' Chris here in charge. He can navigate, and he's got a good head on his shoulders. He'll take no prizes, but sail straight to Port Royal and sell the slaves and the ship. Six hands ought to be enough to handle her, so I want six men willin' to vote him captain. Who wants to go?"
I do not remember how many came forward—a dozen or so. Capt. Burt
chose six and told them I was their new captain. After that, we cast loose and got under way.
The first thing I did was to set a course for Port Royal. After that I had the women and children brought up on deck, with one of the bunches of men. Chain gangs, I guess you would call them. That gave us a chance to hose down their shelf with seawater, and hose down the bilges, too. Of course all that had to be pumped out after that, along with all the filth. It was a lot of pumping, and the men said the slaves ought to do it. I agreed, and we picked out four strong-looking ones and set them to work.
I gave the first gang an hour on deck, then sent them back down and brought up the second, and so on through the day. By nightfall I was getting dirty looks from some of the men, so I walked up to Magnan and cold-cocked him.
He went down, but he bounced up pretty fast and tried to draw his cutlass. I got there first, got it away from him, and threw it up on the quarter-deck. (Lesage left the wheel for a minute and got it for me, though I did not know that then.)
We went at it again, and pretty soon somebody threw Magnan a dirk. He cut me a couple of times before I got it, but when I had it I pinned him and put the point up his nose. I told him, "If I have any more trouble with you, I'm going to stick this big shank in clear to the guard, capeesh?" Then I slit his nose, just on the one side. It is done sometimes to punish slaves, both sides. I did not know that when I did it.
When I stood up, I was bleeding pretty freely. I told the other four pirates that I was not going to try to find out who had thrown Magnan the dirk, but I was going to keep it. I said I wanted the sheath, too, and that if I did not get it they were going to have serious trouble with me.
I went into the captain's cabin after that. I had seen medical supplies in there when Lesage and I were looking for the keys. I got them out and tried to bandage my cuts. There was no disinfectant, but there was brandy in a decanter, and I splashed a lot of it on the cuts. I had bandaged my side and was trying to get a bandage to stay on my right arm when somebody knocked. It was a soft little knock, like the person was scared, and I could not even guess who it might be.
I opened the door, and it was the slave girl we had found in there. She had the sheath and gave it to me, and said that the other masters had given it to
her and made her knock. I say she said that, but about half was gestures. She knew a couple of hundred words of Spanish, I would say, and her pronunciation was so bad I had to get her to say some words over and over. I asked her name, and she said Santiaga. After she finished bandaging my right arm, I got her real name out of her. It was Azuka.
She went over to the bunk and got ready for what she thought was coming next. When I said she had to go out, she cried. The other women had beaten her, she said, and made fun of her because we had killed her man. It was mostly making fun, I think, because I could not see that she had been badly hurt. No swollen eyes or cut lips or anything like that. Anyway, I told her that was her problem and they would get tired of it pretty quick.
Then she wanted to know if it would be all right if one of the other masters became her new man.
I said sure.
What about the one at the wheel?
I said that would be okay, but she would have to wait until he was off duty—until his work was finished.
She smiled and went out.
My cabin was right under the quarterdeck, like they usually are, and the chains ran down the aft bulkhead, so I could hear just about everything they said. She could not speak French and Lesage could not speak Spanish, or very little, but it took them about as long to understand each other as it would take me to tie one shoe. Azuka was naked and that probably helped.
When it was over, I put my new dirk into its sheath, stuck it in my belt, and had a good look around the cabin. The arms locker was under the captain's bunk, and the key was on the bunch we had already found. Except for four muskets, it was nearly empty until I put in the things that had been picked up off the deck after the fight. My guess is that most of the cutlasses and pistols had been issued to the crew as soon as the ship got to Africa. On a slave ship, there is always a chance that the slaves will try to take over.
I had been thinking a lot about that for two reasons. The first was that some of the crew said these slaves would try to when they were brought up on deck. I limited that to sixteen men—two bunches—at a time because I was afraid they might be right. I said that if sixteen unarmed men who were chained together could beat seven armed men who were not, they deserved to win.
The second was that I had been thinking about taking off their chains some night and telling them to go to it. In a lot of ways I would have loved to do that, but there were five big problems with it.
Five!
Number one was that there was not enough food and water on the ship for us to sail it back to Africa. Number two was that I could not talk to them. Even if I could have, they might not have followed my orders. As it was, they could not even understand them.
Number three was worse: they were not sailors. Unless the weather was good all the way, we would not make it there and everyone on board would die.
Number four would have given me fits if the first three had not been so bad. The crew had made me captain. (Capt. Burt had put on board only men who would vote for me.) If I unlocked the slaves, those men would die, not just the one whose nose I had cut, but Lesage and all the rest of them.
You will have guessed number five already. I would be stranded in Africa, and if Capt. Burt ever got hold of me I was dead meat alla grande.
So no. It sounded good, but that was out.
I kept worrying about it just the same. Suppose we just landed them on the coast of Mexico or South America someplace and turned them loose? In the first place, I did not think I could talk the crew into doing it. They would mutiny as soon as they caught on. In the second place, the Spanish would round up the slaves I freed and they would be slaves all over again. So that was out, too. I was going to have to take them to Port Royal and sell them, because there was nothing else I could do.
Praying to God only brought me back to that priest in Veracruz.
Looking around the cabin, I found a Toledo hanger. It was good and sharp. I had been needing something like that, so I put it on. There were a couple of whetstones, too, oil, and some other stuff.
Out on deck, one of the kids had fallen overboard. If we had been going fast it would have been bad, but we were still loafing along under topsails. We threw him a rope, got him back on board, bent him over a gun, and whaled the merda out of him.
After that, I went looking for Azuka. Lesage had chased her off the quarterdeck, and she was not all that easy to find. I had her get the mothers to line up the kids. More or less together, we explained to them that anybody who fell overboard in the future would be left to the sharks. I did not think I
would really have the guts to do it, but I knew the pirates would. And if I did not hear about it until it was too late, nothing I did then would help the kid who fell off.
Pretty soon the watch was over, and Lesage asked if it would be okay if he took Azuka to the first mate's cabin. I said sure, he was first mate until I said different. I took the wheel myself, and ordered my watch—three men—to make sail. We set fore, main, and mizzen, one mast at a time. She did not exactly fly after that, but our speed went from one knot to three. I remember it because I cast the log myself, as well as making the entry.
(It was that logbook that really got my head straight about what had happened when I left the monastery. The entries were dated, of course, and the years were wrong. Years were supposed to begin with a twenty, and these did not.)
Lesage had been doing the same thing—tying the wheel, casting the log, and writing in the book. He had been turning the glasses, too, and he had rung the bell to signal the end of the watch.
That and seeing how tough it had been for my watch to make sail made me realize how badly we needed more men. In a gale, I would call for all hands. When I did, I would have six men. Two men per mast, in other words, and I had seen how fast a gale can come up. Landsmen think the wind rises gradually. I know, because I have talked about it with them. It does not. It comes at you like an eighteen-wheeler and you had better do something ten minutes ago.
Pretty soon the men came to the quarterdeck rail. Red Jack spoke for them, pulling his cap and saying we were all shipmates, he was quartermaster now, and by the Custom of the Coast there should be no trouble about it if they spoke their minds.
I said, "Stay polite, and there'll be no hard feeling here, Jack."
"Cap'n, we can't make sail proper, nor take in sail neither with so few as what we got."
"You did the best you could, Jack. Did you hear me yelling at you? You didn't. I didn't say a word."
"I know, Cap'n, and we take that kindly. Only we're askin' that all hands be called to make and take."
Ben Benson said, "Or else we furl fore and main, and run so."
I had been wanting to look over the slaves anyhow. I did it then, and shook my head. "We'd lose too many, and it's money out of our pockets.
We've got to get them to Port Royal as quick as we can before the water runs out."
Red Jack nodded to that. Magnan never said a word the whole time. (He was the man whose nose I had cut.)
I had them take down the slaves who had been on deck and bring up a new bunch. One was big and looked strong, so I had Ben take the wheel and tried to talk to the strong slave. He did not know any language I knew, but there was another slave on the same chain who knew a little French. I told him he could join my crew if he would swear loyalty to me. He could not wait, so I got the keys and unchained him. He knelt and swore in his own language (bowing to me about twenty times while he was still on his knees), and I gave him one of the cutlasses. His name was Mahu, only later Novia and I called him Manuel.
After that I went back to the big man I had picked first, scribed a line on the planking with the point of my hanger, pointed to Mahu, and indicated that he had been on that side, where the slaves were, but that he had crossed over to my side. The big man nodded to show he understood, and I had Mahu ask whether he wanted to do the same thing.
He nodded a lot, talking in his own language, and Mahu explained that he agreed and would obey me as his captain. He got his chains taken off too, swore, and got a cutlass. His name was something I could not have remembered for five minutes, so I told him his new name was Ned. Big Ned was what we called him, and is the way I remember him. He generally looked like he was mad enough to kill somebody. The funny thing was that he did not mean it—that was just the way his face was. He hardly ever smiled, but he had a big booming laugh. I would not have wanted to fight him.
When the larboard watch came on, I got the whole crew together and told them Big Ned and Mahu were part of the starboard watch now, it would give us more hands when we needed them, and it was up to everybody on board to teach them seamanship. Nobody disagreed, so I told Red Jack that as quartermaster he was in charge of the larboard watch, and turned the one that had been mine over to Lesage.
You can guess what came after that, and so did I. The larboard watch said they were even more shorthanded than the starboard watch had been and wanted me to let them have a couple of slaves, too. I frowned and pointed out that freeing so many slaves was going to cut into our profits. They said we had better than two hundred on board, not counting women and children, and
two gone would not matter. Finally I said we would have a meeting next day and vote on it. It was pretty hard to keep my face straight through all this, so I went into my cabin and slammed the door before I got to giggling.
Here is the way I saw it. There was a good chance of trouble with the six pirates I had gotten from Capt. Burt. Any four of them could have voted me out, to begin with. Magnan would vote against me as sure a gun. Lesage would probably vote for me unless they were going to make him captain. If they were, that was two against me already—two more and they could vote me down. Or one of them might just waste me. There was not a one of them who would not as soon kill a man as eat alongside him, and if somebody had a grudge and thought he could get away with it, why not?