John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Fearful of what lay ahead, Ebenezer yearned to kiss Anna one last time; he hesitated, and in the end decided not to risk the guard's displeasure, but all the way aft he railed inwardly against his own timidity. The small light of the binnacle showed Captain Cairn standing tensely at the helm and revealed the countenance of the notorious Long Ben Avery: a sad-eyed, beagle-faced fellow, not at all fearsome to behold, who wore a modest brown beard and curled mustachios.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, scarcely raising his eyes from the compass. "I shan't detain ye long. Would ye say she lies abeam, Captain Cairn?"

"Off the starboard bow," the Captain grumbled. "If we don't run aground ye'll soon hear the surf to leeward."

"Excellent." The pirate captain frowned and sucked at his pipe. "Aye, there's the surf; thou'rt a rare good pilot, Captain Cairn! Now, gentlemen, I've but one question to put — Ah, damn this tobacco!" He drew at the pipestem until the coals glowed yellow. "There we are. 'Tis a simple question, sirs, that ye may answer one at a time, commencing with the tall fellow: are ye, or have ye ever been, an able seaman?"

The pirate called Mr. Shannon prodded Ebenezer with his pistol, but the poet wanted no urging to reply; his heart glowed like the pipe coals with hope at their captor's gentlemanly air. "Nay, sir, I'm but a poor poet, with no craft save that of rhyming and no treasure save my dear sister yonder, for whose honor I'd trade my life! Dare I ask your pledge as one gentleman to another, sir, that no harm will be offered those ladies?"

"Ask the second gentleman, Mr. Shannon."

The guard poked Bertrand.

"Nay, master, 'fore God I am no seaman, nor aught else in the world but a simple servingman that curses the hour of his birth!"

"Very good." Captain Avery sighed, still watching the binnacle. "And you, sir?"

"This is but the third time I've been on shipboard, sir," McEvoy declared at once. "The first was as a redemptioner, kidnaped out o' London by Slye and Scurry; the second was as a passenger on this very ship this morning. I swear to ye, I know not my forepeak from my aft!"

"Cleverly put," Captain Avery approved. "Then it seems I cannot enlist ye for my crew. Mr. Shannon, will ye escort these pleasant gentlemen o'er the taffrail?"

Ebenezer stiffened as if struck, and Bertrand fell to his knees; even Captain Cairn seemed not to realize for a second what had been said. The guard gestured towards the taffrail with one of his pistols and nudged the trembling valet with his boot.

"There's a little island to leeward," observed Captain Avery. "With some luck and the sea behind ye, ye might manage it. Count five, Mr. Shannon, and shoot any gentleman who lingers."

"One," said Mr. Shannon. "Two."

McEvoy gave a great oath and kicked off his boots. "Farewell, Eben," he said. "Farewell, Henrietta!" He sprang over the rail and splashed into the sea astern.

"Three." Mr. Shannon smiled at the remaining two as they also removed their boots. An inquiring female voice called back from the mast, but the question was lost on the wind. Bertrand gave a final whimper and vaulted overboard.

"Four."

Ebenezer hastened to the taffrail. Hoping against hope, he called to the pirate captain's back, "Do I have your pledge, sir? About the ladies?"

"I pledge to swive your pleasant ladies from sprit to transom," said Long Ben Avery. "I pledge to give every jack o' my crew his slavering fill o' them, sir, and when they're done I pledge to carve your little sister into ship's-beef and salt her down for the larboard watch. Fire away, Mr. Shannon."

Given another ten seconds Ebenezer might have run forward to die at Anna's side, but under the inpulse of the sudden command he sprang wildly over the rail and smacked face-first into the icy water. The triple shock of the threat, the fall, and the cold came near to robbing him of his senses; he retched with anguish, coughed salt water from his throat, and after some moments of frantic indirection, caught sight of the sloop's light receding into the darkness. The waves slapped and tossed him; merely to float, as he had done once before in similar straits, would be to perish of the cold in short order. Taking his bearings from the sloop and the direction of the seas, he thrashed out for the island allegedly to the east.

"Halloo!" he called, and imagined that he heard an answer up the wind. A thought as chilling as the Bay occurred to him: what if there was no island after all? What if Long Ben Avery had fired their hopes as a cruel jest? In any case, if there was an island, it would have to be close, or he was a dead man; the following seas pushed him in the right direction but diminished by half the effectiveness of his stroke, and the low temperature robbed him of breath.

He was encouraged, a minute or two later, by a positive cry ahead: "This way! I'm standing on bottom!"

"McEvoy?" he called joyfully.

"Aye! Keep swimming! Don't give up! Where's Bertrand? Bertrand!"

From ahead and somewhat to the right of the poet came another response; not long afterwards the three men were panting and shivering together on a dark pebbled beach.

"Praise God, 'tis a miracle!" Bertrand cried. "Twice drowned by pirates and twice washed safe on an ocean isle! Methinks we could walk down the strand a bit and find Drakepecker once again!"

But McEvoy and Ebenezer were too sickened by the plight of the women to rejoice at their own good fortune. The poet deemed it best to say nothing of Captain Avery's parting threat, since they were unable to prevent his carrying it out; even so, McEvoy vowed to devote the rest of his life to pursuing and assassinating the pirate.

By comparison with the air on their wet clothes, the Bay seemed tepid. "We must get out of the wind and make a fire," McEvoy said.

"We've no way to light one," Ebenezer pointed out listlessly. Now that he was safe, his mind was full of Anna's fate and their last interview; he began to wish that he had drowned.

"Then let's build a shelter, ere we freeze," McEvoy said.

They hurried up onto the island proper, which appeared to be only a few hundred feet across; there they found loblolly pines, a few scrubby myrtles, and much underbrush, but not much likely-looking material for a shelter; nor was the growth an adequate windbreak. The leeward slope of the island was somewhat more comfortable, though even there it was unthinkable that they could long survive soaking wet in a forty-mile winter wind.

"M-marry, sirs, l-look yonder!" Bertrand cried, shaking with cold. " 'Tis a light!"

Indeed, out over the water to the east of them shone what appeared to be the lighted windows of a house. The distance was hard to estimate, but unless the structure was very small, McEvoy judged, it lay three or four miles away. In the face of Ebenezer's previous objection he declared that they must build a fire at once, set fire to the entire island if need be, to attract rescuers; else they'd be dead before sunrise.

"Let's scour the island," he proposed. "If we hit on naught better, why, we'll claw out a trench and bury ourselves together under evergreen boughs. Methinks we must prance and swing our arms about."

They decided to search together, in order to utilize the sooner anything they might come across. One man on the beach, one on the brush line, and one at the edge of the heavier growth, they proceeded northwards up the lee shore of the island. But their search seemed vain: every stick of wood was wet, and no one yet had proposed any means of ignition should it have proved dry. Moreover, the growth thinned out as they approached the northern end of the island, which appeared to be half a mile or so in length.

Not far from the point, Bertrand, who had been patrolling the brush lines, called for them to come at once and behold another miracle. "Lookee here, what I came nigh to breaking my toes on!"