Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"Good! Do not be afraid for me, Crisoforo. 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.

By the time they got the longboat turned so that the bow was toward the ship and the crew facing me, Yancy was lying dead on the sand at my feet. I yelled for them to stop where they were, and I would wade out and climb in.

Probably I should have prayed for Yancy that night, since I had been the one who did for him. I meant to, but I got busy with other things, kissing and tickling and all that, and I did not. I have prayed for him since, though, and I will say mass for him today.

He was about as tall as I was, and probably a hundred pounds heavier. Maybe he really was a good fighter, too-I know he thought he was. I have fought quite a bit in my life. I do not think I am a real good fighter, only a pretty fair one. Just the same, I have learned two big things about fighting and I will pass them along. The first one is that if you rush somebody you have to make good on it. Rushing works best when the man you are fighting does not expect it. If he knows you are coming, maybe you better think of something else.

The second one is even more important. It is that if everybody knows you are a good fighter, you do not have to do it much. People who go around picking fights do not want to lose them. It means that every fight you have is more important than it looks. You want to win it, and you want to tear the other guy up so everybody knows who won and there is no doubt about it. Never listen to guys who talk about fighting fair. Half the time they are just trying to tie one hand behind you. If you box or play cards or shoot dice, you ought to play fair. Those are games. A fight is not a game.

Now it is late and I ought to lock up the Youth Center and go back to the rectory, so I will just tell you what my father told me about knife fighting. The one who wins is the quick one with something in his other hand. It can be just about anything-keys he can throw like I threw those coins, a rock, or a stick. His coat. Anything. He uses it to get the other man's attention just for a quarter of a second. If you can make a long cut without getting cut yourself, you are going to win. If you can get your knife in deep without breaking the blade, same thing. I have been hearing confessions. It is something we do not do here anywhere near as much as we did in the monastery, even though the people here have a lot more to confess than I ever had when I was there. So I would have more confession if I could, but I am not the pastor.

Of course we cannot talk about anything we are told, but a British accent I heard today reminded me of Capt. Burt. There are not many Catholics in England and we do not get a lot of English people in this parish, which is more Latin than anything else. So I listened as much to the way this person talked as I did to what this person told me.

Capt. Burt never got to go back to Surrey like he planned, and I used to think that even though he was dead he had been better off than I was, because I had no Surrey to go back to. Not really. But I heard a girl waiting outside the confessional laugh at something some guy in the line had said, and that was when it really came home to me that I do. My Surrey is not a place, but a person. I am going back to her, no matter what.

So I should say here that when we had been together a few days she said something that should have bothered me a lot more than it did. I have written it in this, and later on I will talk about it more. There was trouble about the pool table again, and I had to make it clear to everybody that I am not Fr. Phil. I am Fr. Chris, and if you push me I know how to push back hard. I always forgive the boys, but I have found that it is better to knock them down first and forgive them when you help them up. They need to bounce off the floor if they are to repent.