John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

Their savagery made Ebenezer blanch. Beside him where he stood near the shallop's foremast was the oldest member of the pirate crew, Carl, the sailmaker — a wizened, evil-appearing little man in his sixties with a short, dirty beard and no teeth at all — chuckling and shaking his head at the scene.

"Is the ship full of women?" the Laureate asked him.

The old man nodded mirthfully. "She's the whore-boat out o' London." Once or twice a year, he explained, the Cyprian's captain took on a load of impoverished ladies who were willing to prostitute themselves for six months in the colonies, where the shortage of women was acute. The girls were transported without charge; the enterprising captain received not only their fares but — in the case of girls with special qualifications such as virginity, respectability, or extreme youth, or comeliness — a bonus as well from the brothel-masters who came to Philadelphia from all over the provinces for the purpose of replenishing or augmenting their staffs. As for the girls, some had already been prostitutes in London, others were women rendered desperate by poverty or other circumstances, and some simply hard-reasoning young serving girls bent on reaching America at any cost, who found six months of prostitution more attractive than the customary four-year indenture of the colonial servant.

"Every pirate on the coast keeps his eye out for the Cyprian this time o' year," the sailmaker said. "There's better than a hundred wenches behind that door. Lookee there at Boabdil!"

Ebenezer saw the naked Moor push aside his shipmates and raise a huge maul that he had found nearby, probably left on deck by the brigantine's carpenter. With one blow he splintered the door and dived headlong inside, the others close behind him. A moment later the air was split with screams and curses.

Ebenezer's knees trembled. "Poor wretches! Poor wretches!"

"This!" scoffed Carl. " 'Tis but a bloody prayer meeting, this is! Ye should have shipped with old Tom Tew of Newport, as I did. One time last year we sailed from Libertatia to the coast of Araby, and in the Red Sea we overhauled one o' the Great Mogul's ships with pilgrims bound for Mecca; a hundred gun she carried, but we boarded her without losing a man, and what do ye think we found? Sixteen hundred virgins, sir! Not a maidenhead more nor less! Sixteen hundred virgins bound for Mecca, the nicest little Moors ye e'er laid eyes upon, and not above a hundred of us! Took us a day and a night to pop 'em all — Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Portogeezers, Africans, and Englishmen, we were — and ere we had done, the deck looked like a butcher's block. There is not the like o' that day and night in the history of the lickerish world, I swear't! I cut a brace myself, for all I was coming on to sixty — little brown twins they were, and tight as a timber-hitch, and I've ne'er got up the old fid since!"

He rambled on, but Ebenezer could not bear to hear him out. For one thing, the scene on deck was too arresting for divided attention: the pirates dragged out their victims in ones and twos, a-swoon or awake, at pistol-point or by main strength. He saw women assaulted on the decks, on the stairways, at the railings, everywhere, in every conceivable manner. None was spared, and the prettier prizes were clawed at by two and three at a time. Boabdil appeared with one over each shoulder, kicking and scratching him in vain: as he presented one to Captain Pound on the quarter-deck, the other wriggled free and tried to escape her monstrous fate by scrambling up the mizzen ratlines. The Moor allowed her a fair head start and then climbed slowly in pursuit, calling to her in voluptuous Arabic at every step. Fifty feet up, where any pitch of the hull is materially amplified by the height, the girl's nerve failed: she thrust bare arms and legs through the squares of the rigging and hung for dear life while Boabdil, once he had come up from behind, ravished her unmercifully. Down on the shallop the sailmaker clapped his hands and chortled; Ebenezer, heartsick, turned away.

He saw Bertrand a little distance behind him, watching with undisguised avidity, and recalled his plan. The time was propitious: every member of the shallop's crew except old Carl was busy at his pleasure, and even Captain Pound, who normally stood aloof from all festivities, had found the Moor's trophy too tempting to refuse and had disappeared with her into the brigantine's cabin.

"Look sharp!" he whispered to the valet. "I'm going for the Journal now, and then we'll try to slip aboard the Cyprian ." And ignoring Bertrand's frightened look, he made his way carefully aft to the doorway of Captain Pound's quarters. It required no searching to find what he sought: the Journal lay in plain view on the table, its loose pages held fast by a fungus-coral paperweight. Ebenezer snatched it up and scanned the first page with pounding heart: a transcription of the Assembly's convening, meaningless to him. But on the recto —

"Ah!"

A Secret Historie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake From Jamestowne in Virginia, he read, Undertaken in the Yeer of Our Lord 1608 By C aptJ noSmith, & Faithfullie Set Down in Its Severall Parts By the Same. And below, in an antique, almost illegible hand, the narrative commenced, not as a diary at all but as a summary account, probably meant as the initial draft of part of the author's well-known Generall Historie of Virginia:

Seven souldiers, six gentlemen, D rRussell the Chirurgeon & my selfe did embark from the towne of Kecoughtan, in Virginia, in June of the present yeer 1608,

To walk a wayless Way with uncouth Pace,

W chyet no Christian Man did ever trace. .

Much farther than this the poet dared not read at the moment, but he could not refrain from thumbing rapidly through the rest of the manuscript in search of the name Henry Burlingame. It did not take long to find: No sooner was the King asleep, he read on an early page, then I straightway made for the doore, and w dhave fulfill'd his everie wish, had not L dBurlingame prevented me, and catching hold of my arme, declar'd, That he did protest my doing this thing. .

"Burlingame a Lord!" Ebenezer exclaimed to himself, and joyfully thrust the manuscript into his shirt, holding it fast under the waist of his breeches. He peeped out onto the deck. All seemed clear: the only man in a position to spy him was the Moor in the Cyprian's mizzen-rigging, and he was occupied with climbing down for further conquests, leaving his first quite ravaged in the ratlines. The sun was setting; its long last rays lit the scene unnaturally, from the side, with rose and gold.

"Hi ho, Master Eben!"

The Laureate quailed at the salute; but the voice was Bertrand's.

"Stupid fellow! He'll do me in yet!" He looked for the valet in vain on the shallop's deck: the sailmaker stood alone by the railing.

"Come along, Master Eben! Over here!" The voice came from the direction of the brigantine. Horrified, Ebenezer saw Bertrand standing in the vessel's stern, about to have at a plump lass whom he was bending over the taffrail. Ebenezer signaled frantically for the man to come back, but Bertrand laughed and shook his head. "They've asked us to join 'em!" he called, and turned to his work.

For Ebenezer to slip aboard unnoticed was unthinkable in the face of this defection. All over the Cyprian the debauch continued; the hapless women, gilded by the sunlight, had for the most part abandoned hope, and instead of running, submitted to their attackers with pleas for mercy or stricken silence. The poet shuddered and fled to his cell in the rope-locker, determined, since he could not make his escape, to take advantage of the diversion to read through the precious manuscript. He borrowed a lamp from the fo'c'sle, closed the heavy door, took out the Journal, and lay on his bed of tattered sailcloth, where he read as follows: