Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

Before I did that, we built a fire. Valentin told me that making fire was the hardest part of living in the rain forest like he did. He had to make a fire by scraping the back of his knife with the right kind of a rock to make sparks. He tried to save fire when he had one, but usually it did not work-it was just ashes and charcoal by the time he needed it again. Since I was there, we made ours by putting a little priming powder on a piece of tinder and snapping the lock of my musket.

We roasted meat and ate, and Valentin showed me how to rub pig fat on the places the mosquitoes like best to keep them off. It was messy and got to smelling bad, but you had to do it or they would eat you alive. Even with a lot of pig fat on I still got bitten, but nowhere near as much.

After that, he taught me how to build a rack of green sticks so we could smoke the rest of the meat. Boucaner is what the French say. After that, we had to keep the fire going without getting it too high. That was pretty tough, because pig fat kept running down and burning, which meant that the hotter the fire was already, the hotter it got. We had to keep pulling it apart with sticks and pushing it back together.

We had time to talk just the same. It was in French and I do not remember Valentin's exact words, but I asked him how he got where we were.

"I was a servant on a big farm in Languedoc. I signed a paper, so the company would take me across the ocean. I was to serve three years, then I would be free. I meant to claim land and farm it for myself.

"When I got here the company sold me to Lesage, a hunter and a cruel man. He told me he had bought me for five years. I said, no, three, and he beat me. After that, he beat me often. He did not feed me or give me clothes, though the paper I had signed said I was to have good food and clothes from my employer. My clothes wore to rags, and I lived on what I could find when he was away hunting, and what I could steal. Sometimes other hunters gave me something. Sometimes they would not. Some of the other hunters had servants, too. Some were treated badly, but all were treated better than I. When we had meat to smoke for our employers, I ate some if I could. If I was seen to eat it, I was beaten.

"The rack burned through, and some meat fell into the fire. I knew I would be beaten to death for that. I took some of the burned meat and this knife I had been given to cut the meat and ran into the jungle. Francine followed me. She had been one of Lesage's dogs. Perhaps it was because I petted her sometimes, perhaps only because I had the meat.

"I have lived here ever since. It is not as good as home but better than being starved and beaten. There are many wild fruits here that can be eaten. I know them all. I throw my stick at birds-some are very good to eat. Sometimes the hunters shoot the wild horses for sport and leave them to rot. I wait until they have gone, and eat. Horseflesh is good food. There is more food along the shore, but I do not go there often. I am afraid Lesage will see me, or that others will and take me back to him."

I am not sure anymore how long Valentin and I stayed together. Two weeks is probably about right, but it could have been three or even four. When we heard shots, we got out of that area. I think that happened twice. We stayed away from the places where the red flies and mosquitoes were worst, or tried to. Valentin said there were a lot of farms on the southeast end of the island, where there was more flat land. We did not go there.

There were a few farms on our end of the island, too. They grew tobacco, mostly, and had a few cattle. Valentin told me that the farms on our end were French, those on the other end Spanish. The Spanish farmers tried to chase the French out sometimes, he said. They had more men, but the French were better fighters.

We hunted birds sometimes. I had no birdshot for my musket, only round bullets about as big around as my thumb, so I had to shoot them sitting and try not to spoil too much of the meat. There were ducks and wild geese, and a big bird Valentin called a turkey, although it was not. Those big birds were the best. The ducks and geese were so fat I used to be afraid they would melt away to nothing. When I shot them on water, Francine would swim out and get them for us. It was pretty safe, because waterbirds would not land on water that had crocodiles in it. When Valentin told me you could not shoot crocodiles because the bullets would not go in I tried to shoot a couple, and he was right. On Hispaniola you wanted to stick with clear water all the time, so you could see the crocodiles if there were any.

Mostly we hunted wild cattle and wild pigs. The pigs were dangerous, because they would try to kill you. If there were lots they would probably scatter, but they might try to mob you. If there were only a few, they always scattered, but one might rush you just the same. They had tusks and clicked them together when they were mad-that was the sound I had heard the first time we killed a pig.

So the cattle were safer to hunt, but it was not easy to get a shot at one. It always took a lot of stalking, and three times out of four you came up empty. I got two while I was with Valentin, and one more pig. We always had plenty to eat, and meat to smoke, too.

Storing it was the problem. If it got wet it would rot like any other meat, and there were wild dogs that would take it if we were not around to protect it. What we did at first was hide it in a dry hollow in the rocks, and put a big flat rock on top to keep out the dogs. Later Valentin told me there was a dry cave we might be able to use.

We went to look at it, and there were bones in it, the bones of at least a hundred people. I wanted to know who they had been, and he said sauvages. Native Americans, in other words. They had hidden in that cave, but someone had found them and massacred them there. We dumped the bones at the back of the cave, and left our dried meat in there. Before we left we piled rocks in front of the mouth to close it. It was not very big, but the cave was a lot bigger inside. I told Valentin I was surprised there were no bats in it, but he said it was too low for them, they liked to sleep a lot higher up. I said it was too low for me, too, because I had never been able to stand up straight in there, although Valentin could.

The next day I think it was, I shot the wild bull. It chased us up on the rocks, and that gave me a chance to reload and shoot it again. Altogether I shot at it five times. I know that, because I counted my shots. When we butchered it, I had hit it three times. So that was pretty poor shooting.

After that I got to worrying about what would happen when I ran out of powder. I could get my bullets back, sometimes, and use them again. But when all the powder was used up I would be out of luck, and sooner or later I was sure to lose my last bullet, too. I thought about making bows and arrows. I was pretty sure we could do it, but I did not know anything about shooting with a bow. And if it was as good as a gun, why did people stop using them when they got guns?

So while we were cooking our dinner, I started asking Valentin about the hunters again. I said that it was all right, living like this in the rain forest, but the hunters probably lived better than we did. They could get powder and bullets from the ships they sold meat to, for one thing.

"Rum, too, Christophe. Needles for sewing, and the coarse thread for sewing sails. That is what they sew their clothes with. Money, and they go to Tortuga to be drunk and lie with women."

"Then why don't we join them? We can hunt."

"They would return me to Lesage, and he would beat me until I died."

"Not if they didn't recognize you. Aren't there different groups? The captain who left me here told me there were lots of buccaneers on this island."