John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Ah, mate," said Chips, who watched behind his shoulder, "what prank is this ye play us for our kindness? Sign thy own name, not thy master's!"

"Is't you've heard before about the code?" Ned asked suspiciously.

"Nay, gentlemen, I mean no prank. 'Tis time you knew the truth." He proceeded then to tell the whole story of his disguise, explaining as briefly as he could what made it necessary. The liquor oiled his tongue: he spoke eloquently and at length, and by way of credentials even recited from memory every couplet in his notebook. "Do but say the word," he concluded. "I'll fetch my valet hence to swear to't. He could not quote a verse from memory and scarce could read 'em off the page."

At first openly incredulous, the men were clearly impressed by the time the poet was finished. No one suggested summoning Bertrand to testify. Their chief reservation, it turned out, was the fact that Ebenezer had been content with a fo'c'sle hammock while his servant enjoyed the favors of Miss Lucy Robotham, and the Laureate turned this quickly to account by reminding them of his hymn to virginity: such behavior as Bertrand's was unthinkable in a man to whom virginity was of the essence.

" 'Sbody!" the boatswain cried. "Ye mean to say a poet is like a popish priest, that uses his cod for naught but a bilge-pump?"

"I speak for no poet save myself," Ebenezer replied, and went on to explain, insofar as modesty permitted, the distinction between ecclesiastical celibacy and true virginity. The former, he declared, was no more than a discipline, albeit a highly commendable one in that it turned to nobler work the time and energy commonly spent on lovemaking, spared the votary from dissipating entanglements with mistresses and wives, and was conducive in general to a longer and more productive life; but it was by no means so pure a state as actual virginity, and in point of fact implied no necessary virtue at all — the greatest lecher is celibate in later years, when his powers have fled. Celibacy, in short, was a negative practice almost always adopted either by default or by external authority; virginity, on the other hand, was a positive metaphysical state, the more to be admired since it was self-imposed and had in itself neither instrumental value nor, in the male, physical manifestation of its possession or loss. For him it had not even the posthumous instrumentality of a Christian virtue, since his interest in it was ontological and aesthetic rather than moral. He expatiated freely, more for his own edification than that of the crew, who regarded him with awe.

"Ye mean to sit there and tell us," the boatswain asked soberly in the middle of a sentence, "ye never caulked a fantail in your life? Ye never turned the old fid to part some dock-whore's hemp?"

"Nor shall I ever," the poet said stoutly, and to forestall further prying he returned the proclamation and proposed a drink to his new position. "Think not I count your honor less as Laureate," he assured them. "Let's have a dram on't, and ere the night's done I'll pay my toll with something more sweet than silver." Indeed, he meant to do them no less an honor than to sing their praises for ever and all in verse.

The sailors looked at each other.

"So be't!" old Ned cackled, and the others voiced approval too. "Get some rum in him, mates, 'fore the next watch!"

Ebenezer was given the bottle and bade to drink it all himself. "What's this?" he laughed uncertainly. "A sort of initiation ceremony?"

"Nay, that comes after," said Chips. "The rum's to make ye ready."

Ebenezer declined the preliminaries with a show of readiness for any mock ordeal. "Let's put by the parsley and have at the meat, then; you'll find me game for't!"

This was the signal for a general uproar: the poet's arms were pinioned from both sides; his chair was snatched from under him by one sailor, and before he could recover from his surprise another pressed his face into a pillow that lay in the center of the table, having magically appeared from nowhere. Not given by temperament to horseplay, Ebenezer squirmed with embarrassment; furthermore, both by reason of his office and from simple fear of pain he did not relish the idea of ritual bastinados on his backside, the administering of which he assumed to be the sailors' object.

When to his horror it grew clear, a moment later, that birching was not their intent at all, no force on earth could keep him silent; though his head was held as fast as were his limbs, he gave a shriek that even the main-top lookout heard.

"Captain Meech will hang you for this!" he cried, when he could muster words.

"Ye think he knows naught o' the code o' the sea?" Ebenezer recognized old Ned's evil cackle behind him. "Ye saw his name on the paper, did ye not?"

And as if to confirm the hopelessness of his position, no sooner had he recommenced his shrieks than the mate on deck thrust his head down the companionway to issue a cheerful ultimatum: "The Captain says belay the hollering or lay the wretch out with a pistol-butt. He's bothering the ladies."

His only threat thus spiked, Ebenezer seemed condemned to suffer the initiation in its ruinous entirety. But a sudden cry went up on deck — Ebenezer, half a-swoon, paid no attention to it — and in an instant every man ran for the companionway, leaving the novice to his own resorts. Weak with outrage, he sent a curse after them. Then he made shift to dress himself and tried as best he could to calm his nerves with thoughts of retribution. Still oblivious to the sound of shouts and running feet above his head, he presently gave voice to a final sea-couplet, the last verse he was to spawn for weeks to come:

"Hell hath no fouler, filthier Demon:

Preserve me, LORD, from English Seamen!"

Now to the general uproar on deck was added the sound of musket fire and even the great report of a cannon, though the Poseidon carried no artillery: whatever was happening could no longer be ignored. Ebenezer went to the companionway, but before he could climb up he was met by Bertrand, in nightgown and cap, who leaped below in a single bound and fell sprawling on the floor.

"Master Ebenezer!" he cried and, spying the poet by the ladderway, rose trembling to his knees. At sight of the man's terror Ebenezer's flesh tingled.

"What is't, man? What ails you?"

"We're all dead men, sir!" Bertrand wailed. " 'Tis all up with us! Pirates, sir! Ah, curse the hour I played at Laureate! The devils are boarding us this moment!"

"Nay! Thou'rt drunk!"

"I swear't, sir! Tis the plank for all of us!" In the late afternoon, he explained, the Poseidon had raised another sail to the southeast, which, taking it for some member of the fleet, Captain Meech made haste to overhaul before dark — the man-o'-war that was to see them safely through pirate waters had been out of sight since Corvo, and two ships together were more formidable prey than one alone. But it had taken until just awhile ago to overtake the stranger, and no sooner were they in range than a shot was fired across their bow, and they realized too late that they were trapped. "Would Heav'n I'd stayed to face Ralph Birdsall!" he lamented in conclusion. "Better my cod lost than my life! What shall we do?"

The Laureate had no better answer for this than did his valet, who still crouched trembling on his knees, unable to stand. The shooting had stopped, but there was even more shouting than before, and Ebenezer felt the shock of another hull brushing the Poseidon's. He climbed a little way up the ladder — just enough to peer out.

He saw a chilling sight. The other vessel rode along the Poseidon's starboard beam, made fast to her victim with numerous grappling hooks. It was a shallop, schooner-rigged and smaller than the Poseidon, but owing to its proximity and the long weeks during which nothing had been to be seen but open sea on every hand, it looked enormous. Men with pistols or torches in one hand and cutlasses in the other were scrambling over the railings unopposed, the firelight rendering them all the more fearsome, and were herding the Poseidon's crew around the mainmast; it appeared that Captain Meech had deemed it unwise to resist. The Captain himself, together with his fellow officers, could be seen under separate guard farther aft, by the mizzen, and already the passengers were being rousted out from their berths onto the deck, most in nightclothes or underwear. The men cursed and complained; the women swooned, shrieked, or merely wept in anticipation of their fate. Over the pirates' foremast hung the gibbous moon, its light reflecting whitely from the fluttering gaff-topsails; the lower sails, also luffing in the cool night breeze, glowed orange in the torchlight and danced with giant shadows. Ebenezer leaned full against the ladder to keep from falling. To his mind rushed all the horrors he'd read of in Esquemeling: how Roche Brasiliano had used to roast his prisoners on wooden spits, or rub their stripes with lemon juice and pepper; how L'Ollonais had pulled out his victims' tongues with his bare hands and chewed their hearts; how Henry Morgan would squeeze a man's eyeballs out with a tourniquet about the skull, depend him by the thumbs and great toes, or haul him aloft by the privy members.