John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

But he stopped in mid-sentence and rushed forward to turn Bertrand's face towards his own. Ebenezer's muscles tightened: since the Negro had retained his spear but let go the old chief's arm most uncourteously, the poet rather expected to see Bertrand run through on the instant for the crime of averting his head. Nor were his fears allayed when the Negro gave a cry, snatched a bone knife from the belt of a nearby lieutenant, and leaped toward the valet with the weapon held back. His fellow chiefs frowned; the nearer spectators drew back in alarm, and their consternation mounted when, instead of ending the prisoner's life or dismembering him where he hung, the black king sliced all the thongs and fetters, kicked away the knee-high faggots, and flung himself prostrate at the reeling prisoner's feet!

"Master Eben!" the valet bawled, drawing back against the post. The old chief barked, and the younger made what appeared to be a sharp query, to which the Negro king replied in the Indian tongue, his voice heavy with emotion. The common had gone silent as a church. The Indian king frowned more severely, summoned lieutenants to support his ancient colleague, and strode as quickly as dignity permitted, not toward Bertrand but toward the much-distraught prisoner who had yet to be confronted with his judgment. He had advanced only a pace or two when Ebenezer recognized — under the war paint, regalia, and newly regained health — the ailing fugitive of the cliffside cave.

"Dear Christ, now I see't!" he cried. "Bertrand! 'Tis Quassapelagh and Drakepecker! Yon Dick Parker of McEvoy's is your Drakepecker, and here's Quassapelagh come to save me!"

Indeed, when the Indian had looked well into Ebenezer's face, his eyes lost their sternness, and at his command two guards stepped forward to release the poet's bonds.

"I set you free and beg your pardon," Quassapelagh said gravely. " 'Tis well no harm was done the man who saved my life."

Like Bertrand, Ebenezer was too overwhelmed to speak. His eyes welled with tears; he reeled and laughed hoarsely, shook his head, and looked to McEvoy as though in disbelief. The old chief, meanwhile, had not ceased to rail: he apparently understood no more of these marvels than did his subjects or the other two prisoners. Quassapelagh bowed slightly to Ebenezer, suggested that the poet remain where he was for a few minutes more, and returned to pacify the old man. The Negro king too, whom to everyone's dismay Bertrand had embraced upon realizing his identity, now disengaged himself and joined the council. It was clear from the tenor of their discourse that the old chief objected strenuously to freeing the prisoners; after a few moments Quassapelagh summoned Ebenezer, snatched his left hand, and muttered, "You have the ring Quassapelagh gave you?"

The poet fetched from his pocket the fishbone ring, thanking Providence and Joan Toast that he had exchanged his silver seal for it after all. Quassapelagh first showed the ring to the old chief and then, with some half-defiant proclamation, lifted it high for the crowd to view. At the same time Dick Parker, or Drakepecker, issued orders to Bandy Lou, who stood beaming nearby, and all the prisoners except the Captain were hustled back to the jail-hut before the old man had a chance to launch fresh protests.

"I'faith!" Ebenezer laughed tensely. "What a palace this hut seems now!"

On the common, where the mists had been brightened but not dispelled by the rising sun, there was considerable commotion. Peering between the legs of the guards outside their hut, Ebenezer saw the three leaders move off again towards the building from which they had appeared; the old one, clearly by no means pacified, was now supported by two Indians with headgear similar to his own.

" 'Tis a Holy Writ miracle!" cried McEvoy, his eyes and mouth still wincing with astonishment. "Nay, a miracle atop a miracle! How is't Dick Parker is alive, and knows ye? Marry, he fell on his belly as if your man here was a god!"

"I was no less, thank ye," Bertrand said proudly, "and a better parishioner no god could wish for! Hath he not risen to the top of the heap, though! Did ye see him stand up for me to the old tyrant, as bold as ye please?"

For McEvoy's benefit Ebenezer recounted the story of their freeing Drakepecker from his bonds, discovering the fugitive Quassapelagh ill of a festered wound, and leaving the black man to minister to his needs.

" 'Twas for that he gave us the fishbone rings, albeit he said naught of their meaning. What doth it signify, and how came a poor slave like Drakepecker to be a king?"

McEvoy could throw no light on the meaning of the ring. "As for the wight ye call Drakepecker, though, he is the same I spoke of before, that I called Dick Parker. The boat that spirited me off from London took him aboard in Carolina along with Bandy Lou and two score other slaves, to sell in Maryland. They had all been snatched from some African town not long before, and this Dick Parker was their king. The first mate chained him and Bandy Lou in the hold for the same reason I was there." The Irishman grinned. "Dick Parker was after raising a mutiny; the mate was for murthering him, but the captain thought if they could flog his spirit out, they could use him to keep the others from making trouble. Twice a day they laid the lash on him, and he'd spit on the sailor that tied him to the foremast and spit on the sailor that untied him after. O'er and again I advised him, through Bandy Lou, to put by his pride till he was sold and settled, and then escape and help the others; he'd reply my counsel was the best for Bandy Lou and the other lieutenants, but a king that was bought and sold was no king at all. If I declared no dead king ever won a battle, he'd reply 'twas not in the lion to play the jackal's part, and a dead king could still be a living example to his subjects. He gave orders to Bandy Lou to do as I advised, and the next time they fetched Dick Parker up for flogging he spat on the mate himself. 'Twas then they heaved him o'er the side, bound hand and foot. Half the slaves were sold in Anne Arundel Town next day, and the other half, along with us redemptioners, in Oxford the day after that. How the wight managed to stay afloat I'll never know."

Ebenezer shook his head, remembering the stripes on the Negro's back when they had discovered him on the beach. "So now he's king of the runaway slaves, and Quassapelagh king of the disaffected salvage Indians! Heav'n help the English if they carry out their plan!"

"Devil take 'em, I say," McEvoy replied, "they have it coming." Both he and Bertrand declared their intention to beg or steal passage back to London as soon as possible, so that they might wish the rebels success without wishing their own ill fortune. Ebenezer had not lost sight of his late reflections at the stake; yet though he could sympathize with the plight of the slaves and Indians and affirm the guilt even of white men who, like himself, had condoned that plight merely in effect, by not protesting it, he could by no means relish the idea of a wholesale massacre. On the contrary, with his two near-executions to dulcify it, life tasted uncommonly sweet to the poet just then, and he shuddered at the thought of anyone's being deprived of it.

"We must find a way to save the Captain," he declared. "He hath less reason to be here than any of us, since 'twas neither search nor flight that brought him." And he added, though he quite understood the limitations of the statement, "If he dies, 'tis I must answer for't, inasmuch as I hired him to ferry me to Malden and paid him extra to leave at once despite the weather and the time of day."

Both McEvoy and the valet protested this assumption of responsibility and McEvoy asserted further that though he had every wish for the old man's safety, he was not prepared to sacrifice or even jeopardize his own for it.