Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

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?

All right. But the slaves I had freed were bound to think that with me gone there was a swell chance they would get chained up again-and wind up grinding sugarcane on somebody's plantation, too. They would not take kindly to anybody knifing me, and if it came to a vote I would have five right there, my four gromettos and me. If we could win over one pirate we would be a majority.

The downside was that they might try to free some of their friends and take over the ship, but that was really an upside for me. The pirates would think of that, too, and they could not help seeing that if we did not stick together we would not stand a chance.

With two watch-keeping officers, I got to spend a bit of time in my cabin, and one of the things I did there was play around with the pistols and muskets in the arms chest. My father had two guns. There was a big one he wore when he went out of the house, and a little one he wore all the time, even when he was sitting by the pool. Both of them had laser sights-you squeezed the grips, and the laser jumped out to show you where your bullet was going to hit. I knew about those because he showed them to me one time, but I was just a kid then and he would not let me touch the guns.

The pistols and muskets in the arms chest were not like those guns at all. There were no laser sights, and they were single-shots, all of them. They had flints in their hammers, and there were more flints in a bag, with wrenches for opening the hammer jaws and putting a fresh flint in. (There were tools for knapping the flints, too, but I did not know what they were for then.) You cocked the hammer and made sure it stayed back with a safety catch. Then you pointed the muzzle up, and poured in gunpowder from a brass flask that measured it for you. The big flasks were for the muskets and gave a big charge. The medium flasks were for the pistols. After that, you got a ball, set it on the muzzle, and tapped it in. Once it was in, you could ram it down with the ramrod, a big wooden rod with a brass tip that was fitted under the barrel.

When the ball was down as far as it would go, you still had to open the pan and put in fine powder from one of the little flasks. Close the pan again, take the catch off the hammer, and you were ready to shoot.

I have learned since that somebody who has had a lot of practice can do all that faster than you would believe, but back then it took me about ten minutes to load one of the muskets. I fired it out an open window of the cabin, and of course that had half the crew pounding on my door. I told them I was having a little target practice and not to worry.

I had expected the musket to kick a lot, but it was too heavy. I never did find out how heavy those things really were, but if they had been any heavier one man could not have carried them around.

The pistols were the same way. I said my father had a big gun, but it could not have been half as heavy as they were. The barrels were closer to two feet long than one, and I thought they would be better if the barrels were shorter. Later I found out how handy those long barrels could be once you had fired the one shot in the gun. I loaded one and stuck it in my belt, but pretty soon I took it back out. It was too heavy to tote around all day, as far as I was concerned.