Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"Sure," I said. "I've got one already."

The sewing dropped into her lap. "For your backs, imbeciles!"

"That does it," I told Azuka. "I'm sending you over tomorrow morning. Now get out of here."

In the morning the Rosa was nowhere in sight. I talked it over with Rombeau and Dubec. Both of them said she was probably ahead of us. Rombeau said that Jarden was the impetuous type and had probably sailed harder that night than he and Dubec had. Dubec thought Jarden was probably going to try to beat us to Port Royal, sell the Rosa, and split with the money. Both of them said we ought to set more sail and catch up.

I thought it over and ordered all sails furled. I had two good reasons, and I have generally found that if you can think of two good reasons for doing something you ought to do it.

The first was that I wanted to make one of my jib sails for the Magdelena like we had on the Windward, only bigger. It had worked fine and given us more speed, and I could not see a single reason why it would not work on Magdelena, too. As unhandy as our crew was, I did not want to have a lot of sailcloth laid out on deck and half the watch working on that while we were under sail, but this would give me a fine chance to get one made and bent.

The second was that I knew that even without a jib, the Magdelena could sail rings around the Rosa. Magdelena was built for speed and had a clean bottom now. Rosa was built to carry freight and to sail with a small crew. If Rosa had fallen behind us, she would catch up in three or four hours, tops. If she had gotten ahead, well, we were still a couple of days out of Port Royal. Maybe more. We could wait until noon and still get there before Rosa did.

The sea was not dead calm, as I remember, but you had to look for the chop to notice one. I explained my jib design to Rombeau and told him how well it had worked, and he got his watch to making one. Dubec pointed out that there was a stay on the mainmast, too. If the jib worked on the foremast stay, what about putting a sail on the mainmast stay? I said that was a great idea-which it was-and promised we would try it.

Sure enough, here came the Rosa about the middle of the morning. When she was close enough, Jarden hailed us and said there was somebody on board I might want to talk to. Should he send him over?

I said, "No, I'll come over myself, and you'd better furl all sails so as not to get ahead of us."

This time I had four reasons for deciding the way I did. If you ever read this far, you will have guessed the first already. I wanted to take Azuka over before she and Novia really got into it.

The second was that I wanted to talk to Jarden about keeping up and hoisting lanterns and so forth. And the third was that I wanted to give the watch time to finish my jib.

The fourth was probably the most important of all: I wanted to find out what was going on. We had let the Spanish crew have all Rosa's boats when we had captured her, so how was Jarden planning to send anybody over to me?

When we got there, there was a boat bottom up on the forward hatch. Jarden had a guy I had never seen before up on the quarterdeck with him. He was short and stocky and had a bristly gray beard and the look of a man who had done quite a few things in his life. "This is Antonio," Jarden told me. "He says he is not Spanish but Portuguese. He wants to make one with us."

I shrugged. "Maybe we can use him. Where'd you find him?"

"He was in that boat you were looking at, Captain. There were five others in there with them, all Spanish. They were out of water. I got them on board and gave them some."

I asked Antonio whether he understood French, and when he said, "Un peu," I asked him to talk some Portuguese.

He did, telling me where he was from and his family and so forth. I do not know Portuguese, but it was near enough to Spanish that I could guess at most of it. And I could certainly tell that it was not some made-up gibberish but a real language he knew well.

So I said, "That's Portuguese all right. Now let's hear your Spanish."

His Spanish was not as good-better than his French, but I could tell he had not grown up talking like that. After that I asked Jarden where the rest of the Spanish were, and he said he had killed them and thrown them over the side.

I felt bad about it and I still do. I had just been hit with one problem, and now I had two. The new one was that I wanted to give Jarden what for in a mild and good-mannered sort of way-you know, three Our Fathers and five Hail Marys. I could not do that up on his own quarterdeck with Azuka and eight or ten of his men in earshot.

The other problem, about five seconds older, was that I wanted to talk to Antonio quite a bit, and it was pretty clear that I was going to have to talk Spanish to him if I wanted to learn much. It would not be too bad for Jarden to hear me rattling away in Spanish, but I did not want his crew to. If they got to thinking I was really Spanish, they would get that across to my crew pretty quick. When they did that, I would be in the soup.

So I told Jarden I wanted to talk to him and Antonio in the captain's cabin. It turned out to be one of the worst ideas I have ever had, but that is what I did. If I had it to do over again-well, I could use up lots of paper writing about that, but what is the use?

We went into the captain's cabin and sat down, Jarden and me on chairs and Antonio on the bunk. Azuka wanted to come in, too, but I chased her.

I started on Antonio, asking my questions in French then switching to Spanish for things he did not understand. There is no use writing down all that. Here is the gist.

"You and some Spaniards were in one boat when Captain Jarden picked you up?"

"Si, Captain."

"What happened? How did you come to be there?"

"We were taken by pirates, Captain. They spared us, putting us into that boat, but gave us only one small keg of water. We had been at sea four days and three nights when Captain Jarden took us on board."

I turned to Jarden. "Why did you take them on board if you meant to kill them? You must have known they were Spanish."

He sighed. "I need seamen, Captain. The men I have must be shown everything. I hoped some would join us, as this one did."

"The rest refused?"

He nodded.

"They would tell you nothing?"

"Nothing of value, no."

"Did any of them speak French? How did you question them?"

"Through Antonio here. I told them quite directly that we would kill them unless they gave us the information of good and engaged with us. I do not think they believed I would do it."

"I wish you hadn't. I might have gotten something from them." I returned to Antonio. "Did they believe him? What do you think?"

He shook his head.

"Did you?"

He fingered his beard, which looked as stiff as a brush. "No, Captain."

"But you joined us anyway?"

"I thought he would return them to the boat, Captain. I had sat enough in the boat."

"You were their leader." It was a guess, from his age.

"No, Captain. Captain Lopez was."

"Who might have told us a lot. Merda di cane!"

I took a deep breath, leaned back, and made a steeple of my fingers. "Let's start at the beginning. What were you doing on a Spanish ship?"

"Working, Captain." He spread his hands. "I had no ship, and this one paid. Not well, but enough."

"Where did you come aboard?"

"At Lisboa, Captain. That is my home. The San Mateo unloaded cacao there. I came looking for a berth, and we agreed."

The way he said that had given me a hint. "You were one of the mates?"

"No, Captain. I was Sailing Master."

I had not heard of that, but it sounded good. I said, "What can you do, Sailing Master? What are your skills?"

"On a ship, Captain? Everything."

"Carpenter?"