Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

One of the things I did on larboard watch was be lookout. That was the same as starboard watch, but I had never gotten to do it on starboard watch. After I had been on larboard watch for a couple of days and my eyes were not so swollen I got tagged for it. It meant I climbed up the foremast and stood on the topsail yard, holding on to the masthead. It was a job nobody wanted, because it meant you had to stand or squat there for hours, and the roll was a lot worse at the top of the mast.

I loved it. One of the great things about my life has been that every so often I have really enjoyed something everybody else hated, and that was one of them. First off, I was all alone up there with nobody to hassle me. Another was that I could look up at the sky and way, way out to the horizon as much as I wanted. It was what I was supposed to be doing. That night there was no chop at all, just a greasy swell, and a million stars looked down at me. I saw the Angel of Death one time. (Maybe I will tell about all that later.) His robe is black, just like they say. But it is spangled all over with real stars, and when I saw it I knew that dying is really not as bad as everybody thinks. I still did not want to die, but I knew that if I did it would not be the worst thing that ever happened to me, and that afterward I would not have to worry about it anymore, ever again.

One of the pigs had died that day, so we had roast pork at supper. Whenever one of the animals died, we ate it. It was warm where we were, just like Cuba, so we ate it ASAP. Probably we would have eaten it fast anyway. The captain and the mate got the best cuts, and the rest of us got the rest. I do not think we ate the guts, but I know we ate the stomach and the head. And the heart and the liver, and all that. And hollered for more, and cussed the cook for holding out on us.

So I was a little bit sleepy up there, but naturally I could not sleep and would have fallen if I had. I would shut my eyes just for a minute, and feel myself starting to go, and grab on and wake up. About the third or fourth time I saw something way off to starboard when I woke up. There was no moon that night, but I thought I saw something white above the black bulk of it, and a dark line going up that might have been a mast. I yelled down that there was a vessel out there with no lights, and the rest of the watch woke the mate.

I expected him to be mad, and maybe he was. He asked where it was, and when I had told him, he asked eight or ten questions I could not answer. Eventually they unshipped the boat and rowed over for a look. It was a long time before they came back, and when they did they would not tell me anything, not even when we went off watch. I still felt bad, and I was pretty tired by then, so I just slung my hammock and turned in.

Pretty soon the rumble of our guns woke me. I got up and went up on deck to see what was happening. There was a little breeze, and we were making maybe two knots. The captain had the whole starboard watch pretending they were loading the guns, then running them out for real. That had made the noise. Once they were out they pretended to shoot them, ran them back in (more noise), and did the same thing all over again: the wet swab, the imaginary powder charge, the imaginary ball, run them out, and slow match to the touchhole.

We mounted five guns a side. They were small-four-pounders I found out later-but I had never paid much attention to them, and I had never seen slow match. So I found it all pretty interesting.

After a while the boat went out with a big empty box. It floated pretty well when they dropped it off, one corner up and maybe two-thirds underwater. Then each gun was loaded for real, one at a time, and the slow match lit from the galley fire, and each gun crew on the starboard side got to take a shot at the box.

I watched the whole thing, knowing I would not be able to sleep anyway, and when the boat went out again with an empty keg for the port guns to shoot at, I was pulling one of the oars.

It took me longer than it should have to connect the dark ship I had seen with the guns, but eventually I did. It was in the air, if you know what I mean. I overheard people talking and so forth. Everybody on that ship had been dead, and their ship drifting. Maybe Spain was at war with England again. Maybe not. Nobody knew, but they might know in Veracruz.

It means "true cross"-you probably know. It was bigger than I had expected, and rawer than I had expected. Once we had unloaded all the cargo, the captain let us leave the ship if we wanted to go. Our ship was tied to a pier, and the mate stayed on board with a couple of other men. We had to promise to come back that night, each of us promising before we set foot on the gangplank. Everybody except me wanted to sit around in cantinas, tell jokes and lies, pinch girls, and maybe get laid. I wanted to get out where I would not have to look at their ugly faces, stretch my legs, and see the town.

And I have got to say that there was a lot to see. They were building a fort to defend the harbor, plus three churches-all four going up at the same time. It was about noon and really hot by the time we got the Santa Charita unloaded, and just about everybody was having a siesta. The big stones kept moving just the same, one after another lifted up, swung carefully around, and set down on the mortar, then pried until it was lined up just right. It was done slowly, you bet it was. But it was always slow.

Those stones kept moving because slaves were doing the work, and they got it with whips if they quit working. In one way it was not much different from being a sailor. We got hit, generally with a rope with a knot at the end, if we did not work and work hard. And I knew by then that we could get flogged, too, if we did something really serious. The difference was in the faces and the eyes.

We had come aboard because we wanted work, and we would get paid when the ship got back to Spain. We were loose now in Veracruz, and if we wanted to walk away there was nobody to stop us. (I was thinking a lot about that right then.) The slaves were not going to get paid, or even get enough to eat. They were chained together in gangs because they were going to run away the first time they got a chance and everybody knew it. The guards sat in the shade with muskets in their laps, and yawned and tried to scratch under their armor, and once in a while one said something to someone else. But they did not sleep. They were soldiers, I found out later, and besides their muskets they had the long straight swords that soldiers call bilbos. The slave drivers were civilians, guys who knew (or were supposed to know) how stone walls ought to be built.

The slaves were mostly indios, what in English you call Native Americans. The rest were black. I want to say Afro-Americans, only later at one of the churches I tried to talk to one and he did not know any English. Or much Spanish either.

The fort was the first thing I had gone to look at, because I had seen it while we were unloading. It was only later that I went around to the churches. I had gone to the market hoping to steal something to eat. Let me be up-front about that. Pretty soon I saw a man unloading a wagon and helped him, and when we were finished I asked for one of the mangos we had been unloading, and he let me have it. So I walked around some more, peeling it and eating, and wondering where the heck I was and what had happened to me. And two of the churches were right there at the sides of the market, so I sat down in the shade to watch the slaves finish the tower for the bells.

Pretty soon a priest came out with water for them. He was forty or fifty and pretty fat, but he went out into the hot sunlight where they were and let them each drink from his jug until the water gave out, and talked to them a little. He had a wooden crucifix, pretty big. He would point to it and talk. Then he would go back into the church. And by and by he would come out with more water.