Gene Wolfe - Pirate Freedom

Was that colonel at the fort stupid? Maybe he was-I fooled him, after all. But I spoke his language at least as well as he did, and he had no reason to suspect me. The north end of the island was the obvious place to land, and that ambush he had planned was well thought out. If we had walked into it the way he expected, we would have been wiped out. He was not stupid, he was careless.

As I write this, it is Christmas Eve, and that is what I plan to preach about at midnight mass. Before I get back to Maracaibo, I should say that my homily seemed to go pretty well. I began by explaining that intelligence in God's service is a great blessing, but that we are not judged by it.

"It is innate. For God to favor you because you're smart would be as unjust as it would be for Him to favor me because I'm tall. We're all born with certain talents-His gold, that the Master has left with us-and without certain others. If we are wise, we use our talents in His service. Every member of our choir was born with a good voice, and has wisely chosen to honor God with it. You can think of many other examples, I know.

"Saint Thomas Aquinas was a genius, and Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us of Jesus more than any other saint. I would not be surprised to learn that Saint Teresa of Avila was the most extraordinary woman since the Holy Mother. Have any of them gone to a better Heaven than Brother Juniper? I promise you, they haven't-and they wouldn't want to. Many saints were just children when they died-Saint Agatha is the one I think of first, but there are a lot of others. Bernadette was a plain village girl, and so was Saint Joan.

"Examples like the ones I just gave could be trotted out all day, but you saw much better ones when you came into church. Wise men from the east were called to witness the Incarnation. So were shepherds. Shepherds and wise men, both called as witnesses.

"So am I called. So are every one of you, or you wouldn't be here. Many of you are smart, I know. I know, too, that I'm not. I'm a plain man and not always a good man, a man who in a rougher age might've been a pig farmer or a pirate. Knowing it, I'm very happy in the knowledge that God does not put me down because I'm not a genius. He asks me to be careful- something every one of us can do. If I'm careful to learn the will of God for me and careful to do it, then I'm one of the witnesses Jesus wants.

"You see, it doesn't matter whether we're captains or just ordinary sailors. The wise men went away and told others that Christ had come into the world. The shepherds did the same, spreading glad tidings of great joy.

"You and I can do it, too. If we know what Christmas means and where true happiness lies, then all we have to do is to wish others a Merry Christmas. And mean it.

"I wish you a Merry Christmas, you good people of Holy Family. A Merry Christmas to us, one and all." HERE I SIT, tapping my teeth with the end of my pen. I feel sure I have forgotten half the things I wanted to write about Maracaibo. No doubt that is for the best.

In Maracaibo I understood why Capt. Burt had wanted two hundred marines. He could have held them together and kept them from looting until the Spanish had been beaten, not just driven from the city. General Sanchez could have held his Spaniards together, too, and hit us hard that evening. I have already said what would have happened if he had. Was he a bad general? I doubt it. He had known, I think, what he ought to do. But he had worried much too much about what people might say if he left the civilians to escape-or be captured-on their own. Some of those civilians had been men of wealth and position. (I know they were, because we captured some of them.) They would have yowled like cats to the governor in Caracas that Sanchez had not protected them. From his viewpoint, he had been smart.

A plain general, one who thought of his men on the battlefield and not of the governor and what the governor might say and do, would have beaten us. Year in and year out, the Spanish thought too much about governors and about Madrid. In the end it cost Spain an empire that covered a quarter of the world.

This time we went to Port Royal to refit. Now Capt. Burt had a major win for us to talk about, and we were turning men away by the second day. Each ship was to sail when ready. We would meet again at the Pearls.

The Weald was the first to put out. At the time, I thought nothing of it. Somebody had to be first.

We were keeping the Spanish ships we had taken at Maracaibo, and Red Jack was made captain of one of them, which meant I lost him. It also meant the crew got to elect a new quartermaster, and they picked Red Knife, a Zambo Moskito. I thought I was probably going to have to shoot him before the year was out. In a day or two, I found out that he and Hoodahs were great buddies, so I relaxed quite a bit. I never did shoot him, or have a reason to, either. Red Knife was as steady as they come, and as tough as they come, too.

Perhaps I should say here that it takes a while to find out that two Native Americans are friends. It is when one looks at the other and they both understand. If they are friends, they are a team, and you do not hear their signals.

The Pearls are beautiful islands. I have probably said that already. There are Native Americans there, but we never did find out what tribe they belonged to. They hid, and if there were any on an island we landed on, they would be gone in a few hours. At first I thought they had been raked over good by Spanish, and perhaps they had been. Later it came to me that they might have been raked over just as hard by people like us. They had learned that whites had guns, and that a lot of whites would shoot them just for practice. That was all they needed to know. When the last ship got there, we set out.

If I were to tell everything that happened as we sailed south, I would never be through. Our policy was not to rob any ship that did not look big and rich, and not to take any town, no matter how small it was. We followed those rules all the way south to the Strait of Magellan, and followed them even more strictly for a long time after that. We watered where nobody was, if we could. If we could not, we said that we were English merchants come to trade. We traded for supplies or bought them. All this was so nobody would get alarmed, not from any reformation. We wanted water and supplies, and no trouble. By and large, that was what we got.

People who have not done it talk loosely of going around the Horn. It means rounding Cape Horn, the south end of South America. The good thing about the Cape Horn Passage is that it is not tight. You have a lot of gray water between you and the Cape, and between you and the ice. The bad things are that it is hundreds of miles longer, and the icebergs are even worse. The Strait was worse still, or that was how it seemed. Ice and storms and contrary winds. Novia and I had a big fight, and she said she would kill me if she were not so tired, and I said I would kill her if I were not. In another minute or two we were in each other's arms, me laughing and she crying.

In five more we had forgotten what our big fight was about. All this was on a deck that seemed like it was dead set on throwing both of us into the sea.

I know we lost men in the Strait. Some fell from the rigging, and some were washed overboard. I should know how many we lost and what their names were, but I do not. It is all a long nightmare that passed while I was awake. Six men, at a guess. Or eight.

When a ship has gone into the Strait four times and been blown back out three-which is what happened to us-the Pacific Ocean looks like paradise. Everyone on board expects more storms. Everyone expects to be wrecked, and sees the wrecks of other ships on rocks. There are fires at night on Tierra del Fuego, and everyone knows those fires have been lit by Native Americans who are following the ship, hoping to loot a wreck. It is a cold Hell.