John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

A long while they languished in despair as black and exitless as their prison. Then when the sloop got under way Anna began to whimper, and her brother was moved to say, "What a wretched thing is happiness! How I contemn it! An interlude such as ours of the past few days — 'Sheart, 'tis a waterhole in the desert track of life! The traveler mistrusts his fortune; shocked by the misery he hath passed, sickened by the misery yet to come, he rests but fitfully; the dates lie like pebbles in his stomach; the water turns foul upon his tongue. Thus him whose fancy gives purpose to the journey; but on this path, who is no pilgrim is perforce a vagrant, and woe to us less blest! For us 'tis causeless martyrdom, ananabasis, and when Chance vouchsafes some respite she earns our anger, not our gratitude. Show me the happy man who is neither foolish nor asleep!"

If his companions understood this apostrophe, they did not respond to it. Anna proposed that the three women destroy themselves at the earliest opportunity rather than suffer mass ravishment by the pirates. " 'Tis not that I choose death to dishonor," she explained. "My virginity means naught to me, but inasmuch as they'll surely murther us after, I'd as lief die now and have done with't. If Eben will not throttle me, I mean to drown myself the moment they fetch us on deck."

"La, girl," Mrs. Russecks scoffed from across the black enclosure, "put such notions out o' thy pretty head! Suppose Henrietta and I had taken our lives when Tom Pound captured us? We'd not be here today!"

There was general, if grim, laughter at the unintended irony of this remark, but Mrs. Russecks insisted that anything — even ten years as a sea-going concubine — was endurable so long as one could hope for ultimate improvement. "We've no assurance they mean to murther us," she said. "I'faith, we're not even raped yet!"

Sensing that Anna's resolve was beginning to falter, Ebenezer pursued this point. "Do you recall when we read Euripides with Henry, how we contemned The Trojan Women out of hand? Hecuba we called a self-pitying frump, and Andromache either a coward or a hypocrite. 'If she loves her Hector so, how is't she lets wretched Pyrrhus make her his whore? Why not take her own life and save the family honor?' What unrelenting moralists children are! But I tell you, Anna, I contemn the woman no more. We praise the martyr; he is our shame and our exemplar; but who among us fallen will embrace him? What's more, there is a high moral in Andromache; her tears indict the bloody circus of man's lust; her sigh drowns out the shouts of a thousand heroes, and her resignation turns Hellas into Vanity Fair."

Ebenezer himself was not so persuaded by this argument as he hoped Anna would be. Committing suicide merely to escape pain he could not but regard as cowardly, though he understood and sympathized with such cowardice; suicide as a point of honor, on the other hand, like martyrdom, made him uneasy. The martyr, it seemed to him, was in a sense unnatural, since blind Nature has neither codes nor causes; it was from this point of view that Andromache, like Ecclesiasticus, appeared the more sophisticated moralist, and heroes of every stamp seemed drunkards or madmen. Yet the very un-Naturalness, the hubris, as it were, of heroism in general and martyrdom in particular were their most appealing qualities. Granted that the Earth, as Burlingame was fond of pointing out, is "a dust-mote whirling through the night," there was something brave, defiantly human, about the passengers on this mote who perished for some dream of Value. To die, to risk death, even to raise a finger for any Cause, was to pennon one's lance with the riband of Purpose, so the poet judged, and had about it the same high lunacy of a tilt with Manchegan windmills.

But if his words were not altogether heartfelt, his purpose was, and sensing that his arguments had had some effect on Anna, he returned to them several hours later when the sloop was under way again — presumably to James Island. "I beg you to think of one thing only: Reason aside, is there aught on earth you prize? Suppose us safe in Anne Arundel Town: what would you wish for then?"

"Some years of peace," Anna replied unhesitatingly. "I've no use any longer for estates or e'en for a husband, since — since Henry is denied me. What can they matter, after all that hath occurred? In time, perhaps, new goals may beckon, but just now I should wish to live some years in utter peace."

Ebenezer stirred. "How my heart responds to that ambition! But stay, there is no point: if aught in life hath value to us, we must not give o'er its pursuit."

He felt Anna tremble. " 'Tis not worth the cost!"

"Nor is aught else."

She wet his hand with tears. "If I must suffer what I shall, then I amend my wish: I wish we two were the only folk on earth!"

"Eve and Adam?" The poet's face burned. "So be it; but we must be God as well, and build a universe to hold our Garden."

Anna squeezed his hand.

"What I mean," he said, "we must cling to life and search each moment for escape. ."

Anna shook her head. "Anon they'll run you through and throw you to the fishes, and I. . Nay, Eben! This present hour is all our future, and this black cave our only Garden. Anon they'll tear our innocence from us. ."

He sensed her eyes upon him. "Dear God!"

Just then a shout came down from above, answered by another off in the distance: the rendezvous had been made.

"Make haste!" cried Anna.

The poet groaned. "You must forgive me — "

Anna shrieked and fled on hands and knees across the hold; a few minutes later, when the hatch-cover was lifted and a lantern held down the ladderway, Ebenezer saw her shuddering in the arms of Mrs. Russecks.

"Ah, now," said the lantern-bearer, "I do despise to be a spoilsport, but Captain Avery wishes to speak to the six of ye on deck. He hath offered to torture the ladies at once if ye do not come promptly and civilly, sirs."

After a moment's hesitation the prisoners complied, urged on by Henrietta and Mrs. Russecks. Night had fallen, and a strong, cold breeze had blown up out of the west; for all the turmoil in his head, Ebenezer was surprised to observe that the sloop had not anchored but only come up "in irons" some distance from the pirate ship, whose lights could be seen several hundred yards ahead. Slye and Scurry had picked up a small party, and the prisoners were instructed to stand fast amidships while the vessel was got under way again. The poet's heart lifted: could it be that they were not to be transferred to the other ship?

Captain Cairn, who happened to pass nearby, confirmed his hope. "I'm to pilot their Captain up the Bay," he murmured, "lest his ship be spied and taken." He could say no more, for the pirates sent him aft to tend the mainsheet. Captain Slye and Captain Scurry bid the prisoners a sneering farewell and departed in a dinghy to their own ship, which presumably lay with Avery's Phansie in the lee of the island. Darkness prevented Ebenezer from seeing his new captor, who from the helm of the sloop ordered one of his two lieutenants to mind the jib sheet and the other — a gaunt, blond-bearded youth who looked more like a rustic than a pirate — to guard the prisoners. When Ebenezer moved to put his arm about Anna's shoulders she recoiled as if he were a pirate himself.

"Stand off, there, matey," the guard threatened. "Leave that little chore to us."

The women huddled together in the lee of the mast: the two younger ones still sniffed and whimpered, but Mrs. Russecks, seeing that their ordeal was not yet upon them, regained composure enough to embrace and comfort them both. Whatever the pirate captain had on his mind, it was clearly not so pressing as Captain Scurry (who had summoned the prisoners from the hold) had led them to believe; for more than an hour the three men stood mute and shivering before their guard's pistols while the sloop bowled northwards on a broad reach up the Chesapeake. The wind was fresh, the Bay quite rough; the moonlight was occulted by an easting scud. At last a voice from the helm said, "Very well, Mr. Shannon, fetch the gentlemen aft."