Kingston by Starlight Read online

  So, dispensing with song, I had reached the maintop gallant mast, the small circular basketlike platform where I was to keep the lookout. I sat down and let my legs dangle through the railing. There is a calmness about the sea at night that can be found nowhere else and that serenity is undistill’d and unmatch’d in the post at the masthead, some two hundred feet above the rest of the crew, some hundreds of leagues from the rest of humanity. It is as alone as one can feel, and yet, you feel as one with all else. The men below had ceased their revels and either lay in the lower decks, recovering from their bacchanalia, or were bent over the railings, groaning and giving Poseidon his tribute. I could hear the soft splash of the waves ’gainst the oaken sides of the ship. A few of the men slept in pairs on the deck, holding on to each other for warmth, tho’ the tropic night was far from cold. The oil lights along the William’s rails had been dimmed, and a soft golden glow came from them only. There was nothing to compete with the silver light of the stars and constellations. My eyes were open, and I was obeying my charge to keep watch for passing ships. But, in truth, I felt as if I was dreaming while awake.

  “Do you feel it, lad?”

  It was Sugar-Apple, drunk on his own brew, bellowing up at me from the gangway.

  “Do I feel what?”

  “Why, the Chocolate Gale, lad! And none other!”

  “What?”

  “The wind that rules the seas throughout the West Indies and waters of the Spanish Main is brisk and arrives prevailingly from the Northwest,” said Sugar-Apple. “Sea-dogs have called it the Chocolate Gale, and the old tars say there is sorcery in it!”

  “Sorcery? Of what sort?”

  “At certain times the gust carries with it aromas, echoes, and eluvium of a most mysterious sort, tho’ any land that might have originated such elements be far, far, far away. . . .”

  With that Sugar-Apple stumbled away, mug in hand.

  Perhaps it was just another ship’s tale, but that very night I felt the gale. By my faith, I became aware of it wafting ’gainst my ear, arriving in kindly zephyrs, softer than baby’s laughter. I smelled spices in the air— curry, pimento, escallion. I remember’d then the cooking of my neighbor Zed, how he would, in my youth, prepare me bowls of pungent pepperpot soup, or fry me potato fritters with sugar sprinkled on top. He would tell me stories of Jamaica, where he had once sailed, and relay legends of giant spiders and rebels hidden in the Blue Mountains. He would complete the tales he had only half-told the others, and whisper to me that wise King Gormund and Balor of the Evil Eye were both African rulers of Ireland in the misty mythic past, and that Irish lore confirmed it, even if the elders would not speak of it. Zed also spoke of Gaodhal Glas, ancestor of all Irish people, and how Moses cured him of a snakebite in Egypt, and as a result, Ireland is free from serpents forevermore. Even at that tender age I loved stories of daring-do and folklore and he had a seemingly inexhaustible supply.

  It was then, lost in anamnesis, that it struck me how much I missed my parents. What a sad corsair I was, sitting among the sails and weeping for want of apron strings. We feel the absence of a thing much more than its presence; that, of course, is old wisdom. But the reason, I think, is this: when a thing is here, it is mere sensation, and then is skin deep. When a thing is gone, imagination takes over, and that goes deeper than bone.

  I kept my watch and lost myself. Just as the surf erodes the shore, so, too, does the sea erase boundaries. The ever-crashing waves and the shifting winds make a mockery of maps and lines drawn by diplomats, kings, and queens. The wind courses over all, fills every sail, and belongs to no one. So, following suit, the other lines to which we are so accustom’d on land, fall away while shipboard. While the gale blew, I forgot time and distance, and various memories came rushing through me, as if they were immediate sensations. The gale also seem’d to carry with it the sound of Zed’s voice, softly singing. I strained to hear the melody, which slipped in and out of the breeze. It was a sweet sound, diaphanous and sad and pure. Then I realized the voice was coming from below.

  There was a shadow looming over quarterdeck on the starboard side (or perhaps it was larboard— I was still educating myself on nautical terms). I had no idea how long it had been there or who it was. It was a shadow darker than the surrounding gloom and therefore noticeable. It seemed to have a voice but no form. I wondered if I had fallen asleep and I pinch’d myself on the chin to assure myself that I was awake. The apparition continued singing in a tone of immense melancholy. Was it Sugar-Apple?

  By this point I had grown extremely curious as to the source of this woeful voice. The song seemed to have no lyric, but was nonetheless, by means of pacing and pitch, laden with meaning: it seemed to both celebrate privateering and abhor it. Many of the men on board, I had come to learn, were victims of privateers themselves. Like First-Rate, they had, at some point, found their vessels taken by Calico and then were forced to choose between a life of infamy or no life at all. I could hear in this song the same sort of struggle— of a life lost and another found, of regrets and more than a little guilt.

  And still the wordless song continued. It was too sad to be the joyful Sugar-Apple. Almost involuntarily now, I was standing up in the topgallant mast, leaning over the railing, ready to climb down from my high perch and to pursue and uncover the vocalist behind the song on the quarterdeck.

  Then I saw something that stopped me. The sea was an immense darkness, from horizon to horizon. But at the water’s edge there was a faint light, from unseen stars and the approaching day. Along this line, then, things could be seen in silhouette. And this came into my view: a dark spot ’gainst the light of the advancing morn.

  My heart was set aracing.

  I cried down to the decks: “Sail ho!”

  chapter 12.

  The day broke like a blister, spilling blood into the sky. The smell of sea salt was in the air, and of men’s sweat, and the call of gulls was all around as the white-wing’d creatures circled our craft, sensing action, hoping for food. The wind veer’d to the northeast and eastnortheast, and she was a fine gale at that, one that fill’d the sails, raised the spirits, and fired the blood.

  “Rouse up, you sleepers!” the call went out. “Show a leg then! Rouse up, rouse up!”

  The men of the William, but moments ago groggy from the revels of the night, now with much ebullition and resolution, attended to their stations. The William had not taken a ship in many weeks, more weeks than the men cared to admit or perhaps could even quite recall. Now, in these ravenous moments at the start of the pursuit, the ship herself seem’d almost to be grumbling and moaning in anticipation, like a hungry man’s stomach growling at the sight of victuals. Men’s voices, orders and answering shouts, grunts and bellows, virile laughter and booming work chants, resounded across the decks with the seabird screeches.

  “Privateers bold and brave are we

  “Who sail on the snowy crested sea

  “Blow high! Blow high!

  “We live and we fight, for plunder, no more

  “We long for the sea and love not the shore

  “Blow high! Blow high!”

  Calico was at the poop deck, First-Rate on his right hand, Bishop on his left just behind, and Poop lurking somewhere in the shadows in the far rear of the captain’s deck, giving more credence to his nickname. Angel had taken to his gun-post on the starboard side, and was checking his powder and fuses, eager for a fight.

  “How many shots do you have ready?” a fellow gunner called to him.

  “Seventeen,” replied Angel.

  Zayd was also on deck, his cutlass drawn and at the ready, as if the boarding battle was imminent. Even Sugar-Apple had come up from his kitchen below and join’d the men on the quarterdeck.

  “Hej pa dig!” he called out gaily.

  Sugar-Apple was, of course, utterly unfit to join the battle given his one-and-three-quarters’ worth of legs and eight fingers and his general and immense corpulence, but he was eager to witness in close pr
oximity the works of grim-faced Mars. Smiling broadly, he join’d in with the lusty song of the other men.

  “A broadside we send as we near the foe

  “We board, we plunder and off we go

  “Blow high! Blow high!

  “And it ever has been, and will still be to me

  “And the same to all sea-dogs bold and free”

  I wished I could see faces. From my high perch, I could view the ordering of the decks, and I could spy well the white sail of the prize we chased. And I could see clearly Calico’s black-sleeved arms gesturing, exhorting, pointing toward the prey. But I could only imagine his brooding eyes, flashing like dark clouds bursting with storm; I guessed that in one hand he clutched his beloved black die with its blood red markings, twirling it in his fingers even as he ran through the odds of success and failure in his mind. Now his strong voice echoed up, hard and sharp as iron ’gainst iron. Our prize was on the starboard side, not dead ahead, and Calico meant to turn the ship hard and bear down upon it.

  “Ready about!” he cried, preparing the craft for tacking.

  “Stations for stays!” Bishop bellowed, calling the men to attention.

  “Ready! Ready!” cried Calico. “Ease down the helm!”

  Following his command, First-Rate, who, as helmsman, was at his place behind the wheel, pulled it ’round spoke by spoke and easily, rather than jamming her hard. This sort of conservation of force, it was explained to me later, results in a decrease in drag on the rudder, making a ship more maneuverable in pursuits.

  “Helm’s a-lee!” said Calico.

  At this signal, the men let go the foresheet and the headsheets, allowing the bow to swing into the wind. This took away some of the power from the fore course, allowing the ship to turn in the wind and pursue the ship we covet’d.

  “Ready! Easy down the helm!” commanded Calico. “Rise tacks and sheets! Haul taut! Mainsail haul!”

  In the midst of this action, Hunahpu and Xbalanque join’d me at the masthead.

  “You have an eye as sharp as Xbalanque’s and mine,” said Hunahpu, congratulating me on spotting the sail.

  I nodded, a bit speechless from the unexpected compliment. Perhaps there was some difference in the temperament of the twins.

  “The forenoon watch is ours,” Xbalanque hissed. “Take to your hammock and let the sea-dogs with experience deal with the action afoot!”

  By my reckoning, it was at least a full hour before their time to replace me at the masthead, but I offered up no argument. With nary a glance back— though I felt Xbalanque’s scowl clawing at my scalp as I climbed down the maintop-mast— I left my place and occupied a spot on the quarterdeck. This is where the action was in any case. Sugar-Apple did me a kindness and, upon seeing me, tossed me my weapons for the fight— an elegantly cast pistol with a fifteen-inch barrel and silver butt cap, and a handsome cutlass with a curved twenty-seven-inch steel blade, an iron shell-guard, and an ornate brass hilt wrought to resemble a snarling dog. He winked at me as I caught the pistol in my left hand and nearly lost a finger on my right in securing the cutlass and slipping it into my belt. From watching the others, I was picking up a thing or two about handling small arms, but, at this point in my education, I was still more of a peril to myself than to others. Zayd, who now had a large battle-axe in his huge palms, regarded me silently as he stood nearby. Could he sense my raging incompetence? Did he realize that, amid all these sea-dogs, I was as dangerous as a kitten?

  “Wouldn’t miss this for all the spices in the East Indies,” Sugar-Apple said, drawing up to me. He was gnawing on a biscuit slathered with foul-smelling butter.

  “What makes you so eager for the fight?” I asked. “It’s not as if, in your state, you can join the fray!”

  “The first fight, the first fight— there’s where heaven in its glory resides,” said Sugar-Apple. “The Norse had it right when they imagined Valhalla, that sweet place of constant battle and eternal strife! The initial engagement of any voyage gets the blood up— more than ale, more than whoring, more than anything to be found on land. You’ll not feel this alive again— until you’re dead and at Valhalla’s banquet table!”

  “’Tis only a fishing vessel,” I said, as the craft we pursued came closer into view.

  “Any catch is welcome when the fish aren’t biting! These are trying times for men on account.”

  “How so?”

  “The Governor drives us hard. A sloop such as ours lives off the sea— like a fisherman subsists off his haul.”

  “But we fish for men and gold and provisions.”

  “Aye, you’ve got it, lad. No honest port will take us in for careening and stores.”

  “Are we running low?”

  “On everything— on water, on victuals, on ammunition, and lastly on patience, and that’s most precious of all. So, to be sure, the captain will take this vessel.”

  “Sugar-Apple— the other day, when you spoke of Cork . . .”

  “That was another life, and another job. To tell the whole story would take longer than it took to live it! Suffice it to say that there are some folks in dear old Cork who would like to see me skewered and roasted, and not because of my cooking. They want what’s in my iron trunk, but they’ll never get it— not while the William’s afloat!

  “Why are they after you? Who are they? What’s in the . . .”

  I swallowed my words. Just then I noticed that while Hunahpu, up in the masthead, was tracking the vessel I first spotted, Xbalanque seemed to be tracking me. Had he heard everything? What would he and his twin make of it?

  “Sugar-Apple . . .”

  “Not, now, lad— look you windward!”

  The vessel was now in full view, and we were in theirs. At such times, when one ship pass’d another on the high seas, it was common for the vessels to hail each other, and to perhaps exchange mail or news from their port of origin. Indeed, two figures had come on deck of the one-masted fishing vessel; one held a net in his hand and a fishing spear, the other waved agreeably with both hands as if to bid us good morn.

  Calico sent the signal to hoist our colors. Red dawn had given way to gray skies, and against the expanse of morning unfurl’d our black flag— black as a moonless night, black as the shadows beneath a bed, black as laughter at a funeral.

  By my soul, let me submit this full admission, to all who hear me and to heaven’s company besides, that my heart fluttered with wild abandon, like a bird of the field unnaturally imprison’d in a golden cage and then set free, when I saw that black flag unfurl’d. Life is lived, by the most of us, in fear— of robbery, of violation, of the thousand evil and unfortunate circumstances that can harm the flesh and crush the spirit. Now, under the shadow of my black flag, I was, at long last, a woman of action. No more was I waiting for life to happen, waiting for events to take what toll they would; I was part of nature, one of the hard inescapable facts of the world, like sea and air and fire and rock. I was thunder, I was the quaking earth, I was a wave ’gainst the shore. I would change lives by the law of my desire.

  We had closed the distance between our ship and the intended prize with some rapidity, and we could now see the faces of our soon-to-be victims. A fisherman and a young woman it was, and their eyes were focused upward at the black flag flying high above our ship. The female passenger— who was tender in years, no longer a child but not yet an adult— was, to be sure, the figure I had seen waving so gaily in the minutes before. Now her hands were limp by her sides, and her large eyes full of fright. I quickly sized up the scene, or imagined that I did: the fisherman, I surmised, was a man without sons, who had finally resolved to teach his daughter the trade. This, perhaps, was their first voyage, and, given her lack of experience, she had perhaps steered them too far away from land, and into waters rife with hidden dangers— including perils such as the men of the William.

  Bishop was now beside Angel and whispering something low and nasty and nefarious into his ear. Both men were gazing at the fisherman�
�s daughter as a wolf considers a fawn. Angel spat on his gun and polished the barrel, which pointed up at an acute angle. It was a medium-sized cannon, of perhaps three feet in length, made of bronze and mounted on a swivel. In twin sacks next to the gun, Angel had at the ready a supply of three-quarter pound shot. He also had his signature weapon: iron balls joined by a chain called Angel-shot. This ammunition, fired from a gun, hissed through the air and sliced off limbs and the like in its deadly trajectory.

  “Split her beard!” Angel laughed, in response to something I did not hear. “Aye, split her beard!”

  Calico bid Angel and Bishop to end their discussion and for Angel to fire a warning shot, as was custom, above the heads of the passengers of the fishing vessel.