John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"These are no brigands, but honest English planters!" Ebenezer laughed. " 'Tis some island of the Indies we have hit on!" And for all the others warned him to be silent, he cried out for joy, burst out onto the roadway, and ran whooping and hallooing to the wharf. The young savages fled into the forest; Bertrand, filled with gloom and consternation, lingered by the warehouse wall to watch.

"Countrymen! Countrymen!" Ebenezer called. The Negroes stopped their song and left their labors to see him go by, and the white men too turned round in surprise at the outcry. It was indeed a most uncommon spectacle: even thinner than usual from the rigors of his months on shipboard, Ebenezer bounded down the log road like a shaggy stork. His feet were bare and blistered, his shirt and breeches shred to rags: bald and beardless at the time of his abduction from the Poseidon, he had let his hair grow wild from scalp and chin alike, so that now, though still of no great length, it was entirely matted and ungroomed. Add to this, he was more sunburnt than the planters and at least as dirty, the very picture of a castaway, and his haste was made the more grotesque by the way he clutched both arms across his shirt front, wherein he carried still the curling pages of the Journal.

"Countrymen!" he cried again upon reaching the landing. "Say something quickly, that I may hear what tongue you speak!"

The men exchanged glances; some shifted their positions, and others sucked uneasily on their pipes.

"He is a madman," one suggested, and before he could retreat found himself embraced.

"Thou'rt English! Dear God, thou'rt English!"

"Back off, there!"

Ebenezer pointed jubilantly seawards. "Where is that vessel bound, sir, as thou'rt a Christian Englishman?"

"For Portsmouth, with the fleet — "

"Praise Heav'n!" He leaped and clapped his hands and called back to the warehouse, "Bertrand! Bertrand! They're honest English gentlemen all! Hither, Bertrand! And prithee, wondrous Englishman," he said, and laid hold of another planter who, owing to the water at his back, could not escape, "what isle is this I have been washed to? Is't Barbados, or the far Antilles?"

"Thy brains are pickled with rum," growled the planter, shaking free.

"The Bermoothes, then!" Ebenezer cried. He fell to his knees and clutched the fellow's trouser legs. "Tell me 'tis Corvo, or some isle I have not heard of!"

" 'Tis not the one nor the other, nor any isle else," the planter said. " 'Tis but poor shitten Maryland, damn your eyes."

"Maryland!" Ebenezer released his victim's trousers and looked back toward the woods he'd emerged from, at the fields of green tobacco and the Negroes grinning broadly beside their hogsheads. His face lit up. Still kneeling, as though transfixed, he laid his right hand over his heart and raised his left to the gently rolling hills, behind which the sun was just descending. "Smile, ye gracious hills and sunlit trees!" he commanded. "Thine own sweet singer, thy Laureate, is come to noise thy glory!"

This was a disembarkation-piece he had composed aboard the Poseidon some months before, deeming it fit that as Laureate of Maryland he should salute his bailiwick poetically upon first setting foot on it, and intending also to leave no question among his new compatriots that he was poet to the bone. He was therefore not a little piqued to see his initial public declamation received with great hilarity by his audience, who guffawed and snorted, smacked their thighs and held their sides, wet their noses and elbowed their neighbors, and pointed horny fingers at Ebenezer, and broke wind in their uncouth breeches.

The Laureate let go his pose, rose to his feet, arched his great blond eyebrows, pursed his lips, and said, "I'll cast you no more pearls, my friends. Have a care, or I'll see thy masters birch you one and all." He turned his back on them and hurried to the foot of the landing, where Bertrand stood uncomfortably under the scrutiny of several delighted Negroes.

"Put by your dream of seven cities, Bertrand: you stand upon the blessed soil of Maryland!"

"I heard as much," the valet said sourly.

"Is't not a paradise? Look yonder, how the sunset fires those trees!"

"Yet your fellow Marylanders would win no place at Court, I think."

"Nay, who shall blame them for their disrespect?" Ebenezer looked down at his own garb and Bertrand's, and laughed. "What man could see a Laureate Poet here? Besides, they're only simple servants."

" 'Tis an idle master lets 'em drink their afternoons, then," Bertrand said skeptically. "I cannot blame Quassapelagh — "

"La!" the poet warned. "Speak not his name!"

"I merely meant, I see his point of view."

"Only think!" Ebenezer marveled. "He was king of the salvage Indians of Maryland! And Drakepecker — " He looked with awe on the muscular Negroes and frowned.

Bertrand followed the thought, and his eyes welled up with tears. "How could that princely fellow be a slave? Plague take your Maryland!"

"We must not judge o'erhastily," Ebenezer said, but he stroked his beard reflectively.

All through this colloquy the idle Englishmen had wheezed and snickered in the background. One of their number — a wiry, wrinkled old reprobate with clipped ears and a branded palm — now scraped and bowed his way up to them and said with exaggerated accent, "Your Grace must pardon our rudeness. We're at your service, m'lord."

"Be't so," Ebenezer said at once, and giving Bertrand a knowing look he stepped out on the pier to address the group. "Know, my good men, that rude and tattered though I appear, I am Ebenezer Cooke, appointed by the Lord Proprietary to the office of Poet and Laureate of the Province of Maryland; I and my man have suffered imprisonment at the hands of pirates and narrowly escaped a watery grave. I shall not this time report your conduct to your masters, but do henceforth show more respect, if not for me, at least for Poetry!"

This speech they greeted with applause and raucous cheers, which, taking them as a sign of gratitude for his leniency, elicited from the Laureate a benign smile.

"Now," he said, "I know not where in Maryland I stand, but I must go at once to Malden, my plantation on Choptank River. I shall require both transportation and direction, for I know naught of the Province. You, my man," he went on, addressing the old man with the branded palm who had spoken previously. "Will you lead me thither? I'm certain your master shan't object, when he learns the office of your passenger."

"Aye, now, that's certain!" the fellow answered, with a glance at his companions. "But say, now, Master Poet, how will ye pay me for my labor? For we must paddle o'er this river here, and there's nothing floats like gold."

Ebenezer hid his discomfort behind an even haughtier mien. "As't happens, my man, what gold I have is not upon my person. In any case, I daresay your master would forbid you to take money in such a worthy service."

"I'll take my chances there," the old man said. "If ye cannot pay me, ye'll cross as best ye can. Is't possible so great a man hath not a ring or other kind of valuable?"

"Ye may have mine," growled Bertrand. " 'Tis a bona fide salvage relic, that I hear is worth a fortune." He reached into his breeches pocket. "Hi, there, I've lost it through a hole — "

"Out on't!" Ebenezer cried, losing patience with the Marylander. "Not for nothing am I Laureate of this Province! Ferry me across, fellow, and you shall be rewarded with the finest gold e'er mined: the pure coin of poetry!"

The old man cocked his head as though impressed. "Coin o' poetry, is it? Ye mean yell say me a verse for paddling across the river?"