John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Stay, Master Poet, or thou'rt dead," said a voice behind him, and he whirled about to face a brace of black-garbed fiends from Hell, each with his left hand leaning on an ebon cane and his right aiming a pistol at the poet's chest.

"Doubly dead," the other added.

Ebenezer could not speak.

"Shall I send a ball through his Romish heart, Captain Scurry, and spare ye the powder?"

"Nay, thankee, Captain Slye," replied the other. " 'Twas Captain Coode's desire to see whate'er queer fish might strike the bait, ere we have his gullet. But the pleasure's thine when that hour comes."

"Your servant, Captain Scurry," said Captain Slye. "Inside with ye, Cooke, or my ball's in thy belly."

But Ebenezer could not move. At length, belting their pistols as unnecessary, his fearsome escorts took each an elbow and propelled him, half a-swoon, to the rear door of the ordinary.

"For God's sake spare me!" he croaked, his eyes shut fast.

" 'Tis not that gentleman can do't," said one of his captors. "The man we're fetching ye to is the man to dicker with."

They entered into a kind of pantry or storage room, and one of his captors — the one called Slye — went ahead to open another door, which led into the steamy kitchen of the King o' the Seas.

"Ahoy, John Coode!" he bellowed. "We've caught ye your poet!"

Ebenezer then was given such a push from behind that he slipped on the greasy tiles and fell asprawl beside a round table in the center of the room, directly at the feet of the man who sat there. Everyone laughed: Captain Scurry, who had pushed him; Captain Slye, who stood nearby; some woman whom, since her feet dangled just before his eyes, Ebenezer judged to be sitting in Coode's lap; and Coode himself. Tremblingly the poet looked up and saw that the woman was the fickle Dolly, who sat with her arms about the archfiend's neck.

Then, as fearfully as though expecting Lucifer himself, he turned his eyes to John Coode. What he saw was, if rather less horrendous, not a whit less astonishing: the smiling face of Henry Burlingame.

"Henry!"

His friend's smile vanished. He pushed the barmaid off his lap, sprang scowling to his feet, and pulled Ebenezer up by his shirtfront.

"You blockhead!" he said angrily, before the poet could say more. "Who gave ye leave to sneak about the stables? I told ye to scour the docks for that fool poet!"

Ebenezer was too surprised to speak.

"This is my man Henry Cook," Burlingame said to the black captains. "Can ye not tell a poet from a common servant?"

"Your man?" cried Captain Scurry. "I'faith, 'tis the same shitten puppy was annoying us this morning — is't not, Captain Slye?"

"Aye and it is," said Captain Slye. "What's more, he was scribbling in that very book there, that ye claim is the poet's."

Burlingame turned on Ebenezer again, raising his hand. "I've a mind to box thy lazy ears! Idling in a tavern when I ordered ye to the docks! Small wonder the Laureate escaped us! How came ye by the notebook?" he demanded, and when Ebenezer (though he began to comprehend that his friend was protecting him) was unable to think of a reply, added, "I suppose ye found it among our man's baggage on the wharf and marked it a find worth drinking to?"

"Aye," Ebenezer managed to say. "That is — aye."

"Ah God, what a lout!" Burlingame declared to the others. "Every minute at the bottle, and he holds his rum no better than an altar-boy. I suppose ye took ill of't, then" — he sneered at Ebenezer — "and puked out your belly in the stable?"

The poet nodded and, daring finally to trust his voice, he asserted, "I woke but an hour past and ran to the wharf, but the Laureate's trunk was gone. Then I remembered I'd left the notebook in the stable and came to fetch it."

Burlingame threw up his hands to the captains as in despair. "And to you this wretch hath the look of Maryland's Laureate? I am surrounded by fools! Fetch us two drams and something to eat, Dolly," he ordered, "and all of you begone save my precious addlepate here. I've words for him."

Captain Slye and Captain Scurry exited crestfallen, and Dolly, who had attended the whole scene indifferently, went out to pour the drinks. Ebenezer fairly collapsed into a chair and clutched at Burlingame's coat sleeve.

"Dear God!" he whispered. "What is this all about? Why is't you pose as Coode, and why leave me shivering all day in the stable?"

"Softly," Henry warned, looking over his shoulder. " 'Tis a ticklish spot we're in, albeit a useful one. Have faith in me: I shall lay it open plainly when I can."

The barmaid returned with two glasses of rum and a plate of cold veal. "Send Slye and Scurry to the wharf," he directed her, "and tell them I'll be on the Morpheides by sundown."

"Can you trust her?" Ebenezer asked when she had gone. "Surely she knows thou'rt not John Coode, after this morning."

Burlingame smiled. "She knows her part. Fall to, now, and I'll tell you yours."

Ebenezer did as advised — he'd had no food all day — and was somewhat calmed by the rum, which, however, made him shudder. Burlingame peered through a crack in the door leading into the main hall of the King o' the Seas, and apparently satisfied that none could overhear, explained his position thus:

"Directly I left you this morning I went straightway to the dock to fetch fresh breeches, pondering all the while what you had told me of the two pirate captains. 'Twas my surmise they were no pirates, the more for that 'twas you they sought — what use would a pirate have for a poet? Yet, from your picture of them, their manner and their quest, I had another thought, no less alarming, which I soon saw to be the truth. Your two black scoundrels were there on the very dock where stood our chests, and I knew them at once for Slye and Scurry, two smugglers that have worked for Coode before. 'Twas clear Coode knew of your appointment and meant you no good, though what his motives were I could but guess; 'twas clear as well your hunters did not know their quarry's face and could be lightly gulled. They were speaking with the lad that sails the shallop; I made bold to crouch behind our trunks and heard the ferryman say that you and your companion were in the King o' the Seas — happily I'd given him no name. Slye said 'twas impossible, inasmuch as but a short time since they'd been in the King o' the Seas, and had run out on seeing their victim in the street but had lost him."

"Aye, just so," Ebenezer said. " 'Tis the last thing I recall. But whom they spied I cannot guess."

"Nor could I. Yet the ferryman held to his story, and at length Slye proposed another search of the tavern. But Scurry protested 'twas time to fetch John Coode from off the fleet."

"Coode aboard the fleet!"

"Aye," Burlingame declared. "This and other things they said gave me to believe that Coode hath sailed disguised from London on the very man-o'-war with the Governor and his company, who joined the fleet this morning. No doubt he fears for his cause, and wished to see first-hand what favor his enemies have with Nicholson. Then, I gathered, Slye and Scurry were to meet him in the Downs and fetch him to their own ship, which sails tonight for the Isle of Man and thence to Maryland."

"I'God, the boldness of the man!" exclaimed the poet.

Burlingame smiled. "You think he's bold? 'Tis no long voyage from London to Plymouth."

"But under Nicholson's very nose! In the company of the very men he'd driven from the Province!"

"Yet as I crouched this while behind our baggage," Burlingame said, "an even bolder notion struck me — But first I must tell you one other thing I heard. Scurry asked Slye, How would they know their leader in disguise, when they'd seen not even his natural face? And Slye proposed they use a kind of password employed by Coode's men before the revolution, to discover whether a third party was one of their number. Now it happened I knew two passwords very well from the old days when I'd feigned to be a rebel: In one the first man asks his confederate, 'How doth your friend Jim sit his mare these days?' By which is meant, How sure is King James's tenure on the throne? The second then replied, 'I fear me he'll be thrown; he wants a better mare.' And the third man, if he be privy to the game, will say, 'Haply 'tis the mare wants a better rider.' The other was for use when a man wished to make himself known to a party of strangers as a rebel: he would approach them on the street or in a tavern and say 'Have you seen my friend, that wears an orange cravat?' That is to say, the speaker is a friend of the House of Orange. One of the party then cries, 'Marry, will you mark the man!' which is a pun on Queen Mary and King William.