John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"Recite?" Ebenezer scoffed. "Nay, man, I shan't recite; I shall compose! I shall extemporize! Your gold will not be soiled from many hands but be struck gleaming from the mint before your eyes!"

The man scratched one clipped ear. "Well, I don't know. I ne'er heard tell of business done like that."

"Tut," Ebenezer reassured him. " 'Tis done from day to day in Europe, and for weightier matters than a pitiful ferry ride. Doth not Cervantes tell us of a poet in Spain that hired himself a harlot for three hundred sonnets on the theme of Pyramus and Thisbe?"

"Ye do not tell me!" marveled the ferryman. "Three hundred sonnets! And what, pray, might a sonnet be?"

Ebenezer smiled at the fellow's ignorance. " 'Tis a verse-form."

"A verse-form, now!"

"Aye. We poets do not merely make poems; we make certain sorts of poems. Just as in coins you have farthings and pence and shillings and crowns, in verse you have quatrains and sonnets and villanelles and rondelays."

"Aha!" said the ferryman. "And this sonnet, then, is like a shilling? Or a half crown? For I shall ask a crown to paddle ye o'er this river."

"A crown!" the poet cried.

"No less, Your Excellency — the currents and tides, ye know, this time of year."

Ebenezer looked skeptically at the placid river.

"He is a rogue and very Jew," Bertrand said.

"Ah well, no matter, Bertrand." Ebenezer winked at his valet and turned again to the Marylander. "But see here, my man, you must know a sonnet's worth a half pound sterling on the current London market."

"Spare me the last line of't then," said the ferryman, "for I shan't give change."

"Done." To the bystanders, who had watched the bargaining with amusement, he said, "Witness that this fellow hath agreed, on consideration of one sonnet, not including the final line, to ferry Ebenezer Cooke, Poet and Laureate of Maryland, and his man across the — I say, what do you call this river?"

"The Choptank," Ebenezer's boatman answered quickly.

"You don't say! Then Malden must be near at hand!"

"Aye," the old man vowed. " 'Tis just through yonder woods. Ye can walk there lightly once ye cross this river."

"Excellent! Done, then?"

"Done, Your Highness, done!" He held up an unclean finger. "But I shall want my payment in advance."

"Ah, come now!" Ebenezer protested.

"What doth it matter?" whispered Bertrand.

"What warrant have I thou'rt a poet at all?" the man insisted. "Pay me now, or no ferry ride."

Ebenezer sighed. "So be't." And to the group: "A silence, now, an it please you."

Then, pressing a finger to his temple and squinting both his eyes, he struck an attitude of composition, and after a moment declaimed:

"Hence, loathed Melancholy,

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born

In Stygian cave forlorn

'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy!

Find out some uncouth cell,

Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,

And the night-Raven sings;

There, under Ebon shades, and low-browed Rocks,

As ragged as thy Locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell."

There was some moments' silence.

"Well, come, my man!" the poet urged. "You have your fare!"

"What? Is that a sonnet?"

"On my honor," Ebenezer assured him. "Minus the final line, to be sure."

"To be sure, to be sure." The boatman tugged at his mutilated ear. "So that is my half-pound sonnet! A great ugly one 'twas, at that, with all those shrieks and hollowings in't."

"What matter? Would you lift your nose at a gold piece if the King had an ugly head? A sonnet's a sonnet."

"Aye, aye, 'tis truth," sighed the ferryman, and shook his head as though outwitted. "Very well, then; yonder's my canoe."

"Let's be off," said the poet, and took his valet's arm triumphantly.

But when he saw the vessel they were to cross in, he came near to letting his ferryman keep the sonnet gratis. "Had I guessed this swine trough was to be our boat, I'd have kept the dark Cimmerian desert in my purse."

"Complain no more," the boatman answered. "Had I but known what a grubby pittance was your sonnet, ye'd have swum for all o' me."

Thus understanding each other, ferryman and passengers climbed cautiously aboard the dugout canoe and proceeded out onto the river, which lay as smooth as any looking glass. When well past mid-channel they found the surface still unrippled, the passengers began to suspect that the difficulty of the crossing had been exaggerated.

"I say," asked Bertrand from the bow, "where are those wicked tides and currents, that made this trip so dear?"

"Nowhere save in my fancy," said the ferryman with a grin. "Since ye were paying your passage with a poem, I had as well demand a big one — it cost ye no more."

"Oho!" cried Ebenezer. "So you deceived me! Well, think not thou'rt aught the richer for't, my fellow, for the sonnet was not mine: I had it from one whose talent equals my own — "

But the boatman was not a whit put out by this disclosure. "Last year's gold is as good as this year's," he declared, "and one man's as good as another's. Though ye did play false upon your pledge, I'm nowise poorer for't. A ha' pound's a ha' pound, and a sonnet's a sonnet." Just then the canoe touched the opposite shore of the river. "Here ye be, Master Poet, and the joke's on you."

"Blackguard!" grumbled Bertrand.

Ebenezer smiled. "As you will, sir; as you will." He stepped ashore with Bertrand and waited until the ferryman pushed back onto the river; then he laughed and called to him: "Yet the truth is, Master Numskull, you sit fleeced from nape to shank! Not only is your sonnet not my doing; 'tis not even a sonnet! Good day, sir!" He made ready to flee through the woods to Malden should the ferryman pursue them, but the gentleman merely clucked his tongue, between strokes of his paddle.

"No matter, Master Madman," he called back. " 'Tis not the Choptank River, either. Good night, sir!"

Upon realizing that the ferryman had marooned him in he knew not what wild woods, Ebenezer set up a considerable hallooing and crying, hoping thereby to attract someone from the opposite shore to rescue him; but the men in Scotch cloth were evidently in on the prank, for they turned away and left the hapless pair to their own devices. Already the light was failing: at length he left off his calling and surveyed the woods around them, which grew more shadowy by the minute.

"Only think on't!" he said. " 'Twas Maryland all along!"

Bertrand kicked disconsolately at a tree stump. "More's the pity, says I. Your Maryland hath not even civil citizens."

"Ah, friend, your heart was set on a golden city, and Maryland hath none. But Gold is where you find it, is't not? What treasure is more valuable than this, to reach unscathed our journey's end?"

"I would I'd stayed with Drakepecker on the beach," the valet said. "What good hath come since we discovered where we are? Who knows what beasts we'll find in yonder shadows? Or salvages, that rightly hate an English face?"

"And yet, 'tis Maryland!" Ebenezer sighed happily. "Who knows but what my father, and his father, have crossed this selfsame river and seen those selfsame trees? Think on't, man: we are not far from Malden!"

"And is that such a joyous thought, sir, when for aught we know 'tis no more your estate?"

Ebenezer's face fell. "I'faith, I had forgot your wager!" At thought of it he joined his valet's gloom and sat at the foot of a nearby birch. "We dare not try these woods tonight, at any rate. Build up a fire, and we'll find our way at dawn."