Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

He got the watch up to the quarterdeck rail for me. This is more or less what I said, only I said it in my second-rate French:

"Friends, we're on our way to Port Royal to sell the Rosa and her cargo. When we do there will be plenty of money for everybody."

Some of them cheered.

"We're not going to sell this ship, though. She's fast, and we're going to make her faster. Handled right, she'll bring us ten times more than she'd fetch at auction. The thing is, she's got to be handled right. We can't slug it out with a Spanish galleon, not even with the Magdelena doing most of the fighting. So we've got to be able to run, and we've got to be able to catch. Anybody want to argue with that?"

Nobody did.

"Fine. We're going to put her through some maneuvers now. Me and Bouton are going to be jumping around yelling at you, trying to get everything better and faster. If you don't like that, I don't blame you. I've been yelled at a lot, and I never liked it for shit. But those officers who yelled at me were trying to save me from drowning. If the ship wasn't handled right and fast, we were all going to drown. That's true here on the Castillo Blanco, too. We handle it right or we drown. Or hang. I'm a pirate, so I've got a noose around my neck right now. You've got a noose around yours, too, every man of you. Feel it?

"Stations now! Stations, everybody!"

After that we tacked, wore ship, and so on. We took in canvas, and we let canvas out. At first we had to yell at the men to get down when she gybed, but they caught on faster than I expected. We kept them at it until the watch was over, then we went to it with the next watch while they stayed out of the way and jeered. One of the good things was that we did not have to kill anybody.

Another good thing was that I took the wheel for the last hour or so of that second watch. I wanted to see how she answered her helm, and she drove like a sports car. What a ship! I had been shouting out the maneuvers, stand by to go about and all that. Finally I called, "Mister Bouton! Run up the black flag!"

Although he was a big, solid man, he was back up on the quarterdeck and into the signal chest like a boy, and had the flag climbing its halyard almost before I caught my breath. We had a good breeze by then, and I stood there at the wheel looking up at that flag snapping at the masthead while the whole crew cheered. I was as happy right then as I have ever been in my life.

We ate at eight bells, Bouton, Novia, and me messing together at the little table Don Jose had talked about. It was a lot better food than Novia and I had been getting, and we enjoyed it. There is nothing like warm sunshine, salt air, and a stiff breeze to give you an appetite.

Looking at all that good food, I happened to think of the fat woman back in Spain who had told me to take a walk. I asked Novia whether she had been a good cook and easy to work with. Novia said no and no, but did not want to talk about her. I would not mention it here if it had not been for what happened that night.

After dinner, Bouton and I went down for a look in the sail locker. There were studding sails for every sail on the ship, sailmaker's supplies, and a lot of spare canvas. Everything was new. As I said, I had already fallen for that ship, and just looking at her stuff made me feel good. When I went back up on deck, I got a couple of men started on a jib for one of the forestays.

Maybe here I should explain that both masts were raked. That means the foremast slanted forward and the main backward, so their tops were farther apart than their bases. Raking the masts like that meant that each could carry more sail, and that the main was less liable to kill the wind for the fore with a following breeze. It also meant that there was more rigging and more complicated rigging, and things were more likely to go wrong with it. The foremast had a stay running to the top of the lower mast and another running to the top of the topmast. We bent that first jib sail on the fore topmast stay.

After that, I took the keys to the cabins and let Bouton drill the men at the guns while we searched. The first place we looked was the cabins that had belonged to de Santiago and his wife, and Guzman and his. It seemed to me that those were the most likely places for them to have hidden their money, where they could keep an eye on it.

I know I have written before about the smallness of the cabins on ships. These were smaller than that. There are rich people with walk-in closets that are bigger than those two little cabins under the quarterdeck. I had to walk bent way over in them. Novia could stand up straight, but it always looked to me like the top of her comb was going to hit the deck beams.

There were two doors, both locked and very small and narrow, down a few steps from the main deck. One went straight into the tiny cabin that had been the Guzmans'. The other went into a hall a few steps long that was so tight my shoulders rubbed both walls. It led into the back cabin, the one that had been the de Santiagos'. That cabin was a shade bigger and had two windows. (The Guzmans' cabin only had one.) When she saw it, Novia said very firmly, "This is where we sleep, Crisoforo."

I said, "Yeah, sure," and sat down, which was a big relief after all the bending over. The little table was in that cabin, with two chairs, chests, a cabinet, and two tiny little bunks. The Guzmans' cabin had not had anything beyond bunks, a matching cabinet, and four chests, and it had been crowded just with those. "When we get to Port Royal," I told Novia, "I'm going to have that wall torn out and make one cabin for us back here."

"One door, too, Crisoforo."

"Right. One door, twice as wide as those two little ones. They must go crazy getting this table out of here."

"It folds." She showed me how, and while I did it myself she went back to looking up between the deck beams. Finally I asked what she was looking for.

"A box. A wooden box for the money and fit between the beams. It is dark up there in the spaces, no? A box the same color, not so deep as the beams. Open it, and the money is in a bag so it will not scatter. That is what I would do."

"Okay," I said, "but Senora Guzman couldn't hide up there."

"We say there is a woman. I say it, too. What if we are wrong? Suppose there is not a woman?"

"Suppose there's no box, Novia?"

"You are not helping. If there is no box, the money is elsewhere. We must burn the feet of Don Jose." She got up to feel in a corner. "You say the woman hides where the money is. Why a hiding place so large?"

"So a lot could be hidden there, I guess. Silver bars, maybe. Or silver and good dinnerware. Something like that."

Novia kissed me. "I love you, mi corazon, but you are wrong. He would put such things in a chest."

"Then let's look in those chests," I said. We did, and found a lot of clothes and a little jewelry. After that we looked in the bunks. There was a cabinet on the blank wall between the two cabins, high and wide but very shallow, a place where you could hang a few clothes out of sight, and maybe put a spare pair of shoes.

"Senora Guzman left hers out for everyone to see." Novia was holding up a necklace. "So were we told. Did you see it?"

I shook my head.

"Nor I. One of your buccaneers took it, perhaps."

I promised to ask Bouton.

If I were to detail all the places on that ship we searched, I would be sure to leave some out. Let me just say that we searched every place we could think of, and looked in a lot of them twice. We found no woman and no money.

We did not find a ghost, a curse, or a monster, either.

The wind died toward evening, and we held a little meeting in the captain's cabin of the Magdelena-Bouton, Rombeau, Novia, and me. I explained that I was going to keep the Castillo Blanco as a second ship for us, arming her with bigger guns and more of them at Port Royal and making a few other changes. Rombeau was captain of the Magdelena now, and Bouton first mate of the Castillo Blanco. I was going to be captain of the Castillo Blanco, at least until we found the woman and the money, and maybe after that.