Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

"Bueno. You need someplace to sleep and meals. You come with me. You got to work and work hard, but we'll feed you and give you a hammock and a place to sling it, and when we get home you'll get some money."

That is how I got to be on the Santa Charita. English sailors talk about signing articles and all that, but I did not really sign anything. The mate I had talked to just talked to the captain, and the captain wrote my name in his book. Then the mate told me to make my mark beside it, so I initialed it and that was all there was to it. I think the mate's name was Gomez, but I have known a lot of people with that name and I may be wrong. We said Senor. He was a little man with big shoulders, and smallpox had given him a really tough time when he was younger. It took me two or three days to get used to the way he looked.

I got a hammock in the forecastle, like he promised. The food was not good except when it was, if you know what I mean. I had never drunk wine before, except just a sip of the Precious Blood at mass sometimes, so I did not know how bad the wine was. Or how weak it was, either. We had been loading cargo for Veracruz, a lot of it live pigs and chickens in cages, and the deck was a mess to the big. We would clean up one side, then the other, then back to the first one. We pumped water out of the harbor and squirted it out of a hose, mostly, and when we were not doing that, we pumped the ship. It leaked. Maybe there are wooden ships somewhere that do not leak, but I have never been on one.

You could go ashore when you were off watch. I did that just like the others, but I could not have gotten drunk or hired a whore even if I had wanted to. (Which I did not.) The Spanish sailors were not nearly as bad about getting drunk as some I have known since, but they were worse about women. The night we sailed they smuggled a battery girl on board and hid her. When we had gotten the anchor up and the pilot was taking us out of the harbor, the captain and Senor pulled her out of the hold and threw her over the side. I had seen something of her by then and had not liked it, but I would never have done that. It was the first thing that made me really understand what kind of a place I had landed in.

The second thing came three or four nights later. When we got off watch and went below, two guys grabbed my arms and another one pulled my jeans down. I fought-or thought I did-and yelled my head off until somebody about knocked it off. You know what happened after that. So did I, after I woke up. The only good thing that came out of it was that my old jeans got ripped so bad that I had to have new pants, and I found out you could get them from the bosun. He took care of the slop chest. He charged too much against my pay and my new canvas pants were too big, but I was so glad to get rid of those tight jeans I did not care.

About then I started going aloft, making sail and taking it in. Vasco and Simon told me I would be scared to death and dirty my new pants, but I told them they had better be scared, because I was going to grab them if I fell and take them down with me. I meant what I said, too.

The weather was calm with just a little bit of a breeze, you stood on the foot rope and held on with one hand, and I was not scared at all. Besides, you got a great view from up there. I did my work, but I sneaked looks every chance I got. There was the beautiful blue sea, and above us the beautiful blue sky with a couple of little white clouds, and I kept thinking that the earth was a beautiful woman, and the sky was her eyes-and thinking too how the sea and the sky would be there when everybody on our ship was dead and forgotten. I liked that, and I still do.

When we were down on the main deck again, I kept hoping the captain would want to take a reef in the topsail, but he did not. Only by then I knew that we furled all sail at night and lay to. (And I thought all ships did.) So I would get my chance for sure before we went off watch.

Here I ought to say that we were the starboard watch, which meant the one that Senor bossed and the one that did just about all the work. There was a larboard watch, too, which was a lot smaller. The larboard watch could sleep on deck if there was nothing for them to do, and sometimes they shot craps. Our ship was a brig, a bergantin was what we called it. It means that it had two masts the same size, both square-rigged. I was a foremast man then, not that it matters.

While I am filling you in, let me say too that in those days I knew a lot more Spanish sea talk than English, although all the other sailors knew a whole lot more than I did. They would not tell me what they meant, either, just saying that it was a comb to smooth the water or a dildo for a whale or whatever. I had to figure out everything for myself, and I got laughed at if I was even a little bit wrong.

Another thing I did not know then was that our handy bergantin was one of the kinds of ships pirates like best. The others are Bermuda sloops and Jamaica sloops. They are both bigger than most sloops, and a lot faster. The hulls are pretty much the same, and the difference is in the rigs. Everybody has his own tastes, but I always liked the Bermuda rig, myself.

When the sun was on the horizon, we went aloft again and furled the sails, the mainsail first, then the topsail. The stars were coming out and the wind picking up a little, and I remember thinking that sailors were the luckiest people in the world.

As soon we slid down to the deck, we were dismissed and went below and they jumped me again. This time they did not catch me completely off guard, and I fought. Or anyway, I would have called it fighting if anybody had asked. They beat and kicked me until I passed out and they got what they wanted. I did not know then that it was the last time.

I would not call what I did that night fighting, or what I did afterward sleeping, either. Sometimes I was conscious and sometimes I was not. I prayed that God would send me back to Our Lady of Bethlehem. I threw up a couple of times, and one time was on the deck. The larboard watch made me clean that up, although I was so bad I fell down two or three times while I was trying to do it.

The next day el capitan saw how bad I was-both my eyes were swollen just about shut, and I had to hold on to something to keep from falling over-and put me on the larboard watch myself. He did not try to find out who had beaten me or even ask me to tell him. (I think I might have.) He just said I was larboard watch until he changed it, and sent me below. It meant my old watch had to do the same work minus one man, so that was their punishment. When we came on watch about sundown, I made up my mind that they would get some more punishment from me as soon as I felt better.

(All this comes back to me with a vengeance tonight, because of what happened yesterday evening. I made four of our boys in the Youth Center quiet down, and they waited for me to come out at ten. They were all good-sized and pretty strong. Tough, too, they thought. They got in each other's way, and if there was only one of me, every kick and punch did real damage. They finally knocked me down and knocked my wind out. When they had kicked me a couple of times they beat it, practically carrying Miguel. I caught up with them after about three or four blocks.)

Larboard watch was easy, and it was a good thing it was, because I was still coughing a little blood now and then. I just rested, and slept when I could, and when we were off I stayed awake most of the time, keeping quiet in my hammock. It was nice, just a gentle rocking like a cradle, and I got to thinking I would kill everyone on board and have the whole ship to myself with nobody around anymore to do what they had done. I knew I would not really do it, and that I could not have managed the ship alone. But it was nice to think about, and I did. Later that helped me understand Jaime.