John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"By Heav'n, the black had like to split her open!" said one, and Ebenezer easily identified Captain Pound. "I thought he'd pitch me to the fishes when I stopped him!"

The other laughed. "He'd ha' spitted her through for all I'd cross him, Tom, I swear't! 'Twere a pity, though, I'll grant ye; she's a gentleman's morsel, not a beef-bull's, and I mean to try her ere we raise Lands End."

Ebenezer was not surprised to hear the voice of Captain Meech, but he was horrified at the intimacy suggested by their conversation.

"Do ye look for trouble?" Meech asked.

"God knows, Jim. Boabdil is a wild one when he sets his cap for coney. They all need a week ashore, or I'm a dead man."

"Well, I've no orders for ye about your poet, but I did bring ye this — they smuggled it aboard at Cedar Point."

There was a pause while Meech brought forth whatever it was he referred to, then a slap as of papers on the table. Ebenezer strained his ears, though every word thus far he had heard distinctly. He forgot completely about the original purpose of his concealment.

"A Secret Historie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake," Pound read aloud. "What foolery is this?"

"No foolery," Meech laughed. "Old Baltimore would cut your throat for't! Look on the backsides."

The papers rustled. " 'Fore God!"

"Aye." Meech confirmed whatever realization his friend had reached. "They got it off Dick Smith in Calvert County — God knows how! He's Baltimore's surveyor general."

"But what am I to do with it?"

"They said Coode himself will come for't in a month or so. This is only a part of the whole Journal, from what I gather; if he can find the rest ere things get settled, then Nicholson can't touch him. Right now the place is a bedlam, Tom: ye should see St. Mary's City! Andros came and went; Lawrence is back in; Henry Jowles hath Ninian Beale's old job; old Robotham's back in, that hath the daughter ye liked — remember Lucy?"

"Aye," said Pound, "from the last time. She hath a birthmark on her arse, you told me."

"Nay, Tom, no birthmark! 'Tis the Great Bear in freckles, I swear't, and the pointers point — "

"No more!" Pound laughed. "I remember where the pole-star was, that all men's needles aimed at. Go on with Maryland, now, ere ye have to leave."

"Marry, what a wench!" Meech said. "Where was I? Did I tell ye about Andros?" He went on to relate that John Coode's brother-in-law, Neamiah Blackistone, so influential under the late Governor Copley, had died in disgrace last February after the Commissioners of the Customs-House, on evidence from the "Burlingame's Journall documents" smuggled to Lord Baltimore by Nicholson, had charged him with graft. Sir Edmund Andros of Virginia had returned to St. Mary's in May with Sir Thomas Lawrence, whom Copley had impeached and made him President of the Council and acting Governor of Maryland — to the rebels' dismay, since it was Lawrence who had smuggled the notorious Assembly Journal of 1691 to Nicholson. Then Nicholson had landed, embraced his good friend Lawrence, and made a Maryland councillor out of Edward Randolph, the Jacobite Royal Surveyor so well known up and down the colonies for his prankish contempt of provincial authorities. But so far from thanking his old superior Andros for governing in his absence, Nicholson had promptly called that government illegal, declared null and void all statutes passed thereunder, and demanded (thus far in vain) that Andros return the five-hundred-pound honorarium awarded him for his services by Lawrence's Council! The insurrectionists, Meech declared, were making the most of this rebuff to turn Andros against Nicholson; their leader Coode still held with impunity the post of sheriff in St. Mary's County and a lieutenant-colonelcy in the county militia under Lawrence himself, and in these capacities drew his salary from the very government he was doing his best to overthrow. Andros had already allowed Coode the services of his "coast-guard" Captain Pound, of course, and in addition had virtually promised Coode asylum in Virginia if, as was feared imminent, Nicholson opened cases against him, his ally Kenelm Cheseldyne of the Assembly, and old Blackistone's widow. The insurrectionists, Meech said further, were engaged both defensively and offensively: they were ransacking the Province for the other portions of the incriminating Journal, which they understood to be cached with various Papists and Jacobites, and at the same time they were inciting the Piscataway Indians to rebel, perhaps in league with other Indian nations.

"Marry, 'tis a perilous game they play!" said Pound. "I'm happy to be at sea!"

"I'm happy to be sailing east to London, Tom; this Coode would burn a province on a bet. Yet he doth pay handsomely."

"Speaking whereof — "

"Aye," Meech said. There was another pause. "They gave me this to give ye for holding Cooke, and there's another like it for keeping these papers." Nicholson had learned of the Journal's absence, he explained, and was turning the Province upside down to find it — hence the rebels' decision to remove it from the colony altogether until things settled down. Pound was to cruise in his present latitude for six weeks, or until a ship came out from Coode to fetch the papers. At that time he would receive his fee and, in all likelihood, instructions concerning his prisoners.

"Good enough," said Captain Pound. "Now let me give ye your share from the last trip."

"Did ye do well by't, Tom?"

"Not bad," Pound allowed, and added that since the terms of their agreement gave all the cash to the pirates and all the jewels to Meech, who could easily sell them in London, it was to be expected that on westbound trips the pirates would fare as well or better, but on eastbound trips, when many of the passengers would have nothing left but the family jewels, Meech would get the lion's share. The transaction was completed; Meech made ready to depart in the longboat, and Ebenezer, who had heard the entire colloquy in horror and astonishment, prepared to evacuate his hiding-place, the pirates having long since finished loading the hold.

"One more thing," Meech said, and the poet scrambled back to hear. "If Coode hath not found the rest of his Journal by the time he fetches this part, tell him I've a notion where to look for't, but 'twill cost him twenty pounds if he finds it there. Did ye see what's writ on the back of all those pages?"

"You mean this Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake? What is it?"

Meech explained that Kenelm Cheseldyne had recorded the Journal of the 1691 Assembly on the reverse pages of a bound quarto manuscript provided him by Coode, which happened to be an old diary the rebel had acquired while hiding out in Jamestown. " 'Twas a wight named Smith wrote the diary — damnedest thing ye ever read! — and they all call it 'Smith's book' for safety's sake, the Papists as well as the rebels, though few of 'em e'er laid eyes on't." What would be more natural, then, he asked of Pound, than for Baltimore to distribute the portions for safekeeping to various confederates of the same surname?

Ebenezer began to sweat. Pound, to his great relief, laughed at the conjecture as preposterous, but promised to relay it to Coode's agents for what it was worth.

"Which is twenty pounds," Meech declared merrily. "Come, threaten me to my boat, now, or they'll see our game. I'll be back with the Smoker's Fleet next spring or before."

Ebenezer scrambled out of his cranny, over boxes and barrels, and up the ladder to the hatch, nearly sick with indignation and excitement. He was bursting to tell Bertrand all he'd heard; in the considerable uproar that greeted the appearance of the two captains he was able to climb to the deck and move forward to the fo'c'sle companionway (which led also to his berth in the rope-locker) without attracting undue notice.