Pirate Freedom (10 page)

All right. But the slaves I had freed were bound to think that with me gone there was a swell chance they would get chained up again—and wind up grinding sugarcane on somebody's plantation, too. They would not take kindly to anybody knifing me, and if it came to a vote I would have five right there, my four gromettos and me. If we could win over one pirate we would be a majority.

The downside was that they might try to free some of their friends and take over the ship, but that was really an upside for me. The pirates would think of that, too, and they could not help seeing that if we did not stick together we would not stand a chance.

WITH TWO WATCH-KEEPING
officers, I got to spend a bit of time in my cabin, and one of the things I did there was play around with the pistols and muskets in the arms chest. My father had two guns. There was a big one he wore when he went out of the house, and a little one he wore all the time, even when he was sitting by the pool. Both of them had laser sights—you squeezed the grips, and the laser jumped out to show you where your bullet was going to hit. I knew about those because he showed them to me one time, but I was just a kid then and he would not let me touch the guns.

The pistols and muskets in the arms chest were not like those guns at all. There were no laser sights, and they were single-shots, all of them. They had flints in their hammers, and there were more flints in a bag, with wrenches for opening the hammer jaws and putting a fresh flint in. (There were tools for knapping the flints, too, but I did not know what they were for then.) You cocked the hammer and made sure it stayed back with a safety catch. Then
you pointed the muzzle up, and poured in gunpowder from a brass flask that measured it for you. The big flasks were for the muskets and gave a big charge. The medium flasks were for the pistols. After that, you got a ball, set it on the muzzle, and tapped it in. Once it was in, you could ram it down with the ramrod, a big wooden rod with a brass tip that was fitted under the barrel.

When the ball was down as far as it would go, you still had to open the pan and put in fine powder from one of the little flasks. Close the pan again, take the catch off the hammer, and you were ready to shoot.

I have learned since that somebody who has had a lot of practice can do all that faster than you would believe, but back then it took me about ten minutes to load one of the muskets. I fired it out an open window of the cabin, and of course that had half the crew pounding on my door. I told them I was having a little target practice and not to worry.

I had expected the musket to kick a lot, but it was too heavy. I never did find out how heavy those things really were, but if they had been any heavier one man could not have carried them around.

The pistols were the same way. I said my father had a big gun, but it could not have been half as heavy as they were. The barrels were closer to two feet long than one, and I thought they would be better if the barrels were shorter. Later I found out how handy those long barrels could be once you had fired the one shot in the gun. I loaded one and stuck it in my belt, but pretty soon I took it back out. It was too heavy to tote around all day, as far as I was concerned.

We ended up with four gromettos, like I had planned, which gave us a big enough crew to set the spritsail under the bowsprit and the topgallants— everything she had, in other words. There were topgallants for the foremast and mainmast. The old
New Ark
was no greyhound even when she was carrying all that canvas, and we had to take in some anytime there seemed to be the slightest chance of a blow. Mahu was scared to climb a mast at first, but we got him over that.

There were two ways to sell slaves in Port Royal. The fastest was to sell everybody to one buyer. The other was to wait for the next slave auction, and auction them off one by one there. The advantage of one buyer was that we would get the money quick. Wait for the auction, and we might get more.

There were disadvantages, too. As soon as I sold everybody to one buyer,
the crew would expect some money, and that would mean no crew when I tried to sell the ship. I wanted crew so I would have a crew to clean the ship and fix it up, like we had the
Santa Charita
.

That is why I decided to wait for the auction, which was only a few days off. The crew griped about it, but I got them to working hard, and kept them at it.

There was another advantage to waiting that I had not figured on at all. I could get all the slaves up on deck, and get them better food, too. (I sold a few things off the ship, piecemeal, to buy the food.) Just a few days of that, and they were all looking a lot healthier. One more was that Lesage wanted to buy Azuka. I did not want to sell her right off, because I was pretty sure the rest of the crew would say I had not charged him enough. I would have had to give her to him on credit anyway, since he would not have any money until we paid off. That would mean that the rest of them would have wanted to buy slaves on credit, too.

So we waited, and I got fruit for everybody. Fruit is full of vitamins, and oranges and limes were pretty cheap. We were afraid some of the women and kids would jump into the harbor and swim for it, but nobody did. Of course I had two men with muskets watching them all the time. That was the easy duty, so I gave it to the ones who had been working hardest.

Another problem with waiting for the auction turned out to be that some of our slaves did not sell—five men and four kids. I turned that into an advantage. I paid the crew. (They were wild to get ashore and spend it and would have smoked me if I had not.) When they were gone, Lesage and I fixed up the ship some more with the men and kids we had left.

Lesage was still on board because we had not auctioned Azuka yet. I put her up at the next auction, and he bid on her and got her. Lesage had killed one of the men, but I put up the other four and all four kids with lower minimum bids, and sold them all.

After that I sold the
New Ark
to a man who had already been on board looking at her. I named a price just a little bit higher than his latest offer, and he took it.

After that I had a lot of money, because the ship brought more than the slaves had. It takes two or three voyages to pay off a slave ship. But before I tell about that, I ought to cover the distribution. Things went by shares. Each man got one. The captain (me) got ten. The quartermaster (Red Jack) got
seven. The mate (Lesage) got five. If there had been a barber-surgeon, he would have gotten four. A bosun, a carpenter, or a sailmaker would have gotten two. Capt. Burt got ten, too.

There were four pirates originally, not counting the two officers. Add the four gromettos, so eight shares there. Seven, five, ten, and ten made thirty-two more, so forty in all. That was how I split up all the slave money. I gave everyone his fair share, and I bought a soft leather money belt that I could wear under my clothes for my share and Capt. Burt's. For the gold, really. I just put the silver and change in my pockets like everybody else.

The ship money was different, because I had to buy a sloop for us to go back in, fit her out, and provision her. I did, too. Her name was the
Windward
, and I did not change it. She had the Jamaica rig, meaning a short mast and a long boom. I did not change that, either, but I had seen a Bermuda rig in the harbor, and it stuck in my mind.

Before I go on, I ought to say that sloops are always pretty small and always one-decked. Flush-decked is what they say. Sloops are boats, not ships. If a boat like that has one mast, it is a sloop. Two, and things get complicated. Say the second is shorter than the first. If it is forward of the stern post, the boat is a ketch. Aft of the stern post, and the boat is a yawl. Is that clear? If a flush-decked boat has two square-rigged masts the same size, she is a brig. Same thing for a ship—two square-rigged masts the same size make her a brig. (The
Santa Charita
was a brig until Capt. Burt put a gaffsail on her main. Then she was brigantine. A brigantine is not a little brig, it is a brig with a four-and-aft main.)

If the first mast is smaller than the second, it is called the foremast, like the first mast of a brig. We called a boat like that a sloop or a two-stick sloop, but it is a schooner now. The
Windward
had one mast, so she was a sloop for sure.

When she was ready to go, I would need a crew. So I braced each man when he came for a share of the ship money. Most of them did not want to ship on her—they had money in their pockets, and they wanted to spend it. Lesage was the only one who hung on to his ship money, which told me something about him I had suspected already. He said he would stick with me if he could bring Azuka along. I said sure, so that gave me somebody to take care of the boat when I was ashore.

I had quite a bit of money myself, as you will have figured. I went ashore then, looked around more than I ever had before, and bought a dagger, a pretty big one with a good, big guard and an ivory grip. I had some long,
hard looks at the girls, too, and to tell the truth I did not like them as well as I had the girls in Veracruz. Some of those Veracruz girls had been trouble, and you could generally see it right off. I do not think there was a single English girl I saw in Port Royal who was not trouble, although some of the black girls might have been okay. On some it was easier to spot than others, but when you talked with them a few minutes, you knew they were trouble.

Another thing was that I could hardly understand most of them. I have spoken English since I was a baby. I speak Spanish so well that a Cuban or Mexican will think I am from his country—of course I am dark and have black hair, which helps. English is still my native language. Capt. Burt had a British accent, but I could understand him fine. I could not understand some of those Port Royal girls for beans.

One by one we got more men. Red Jack and Ben Benson came back, and so did Big Ned and Mahu. Some new men joined. When I had eight, not counting me, we put out. Nine men could barely have handled the
New Ark
, but it was a lot more than I needed for the
Windward
. I only shipped that many because Capt. Burt had said to bring back more than I brought, if I could. I had brought six, and I was afraid he might not want Ned and Mahu. If he would not take them, at least he had not lost men with me.

Azuka cooked for us, cleaned up, and turned her hand to just about anything we asked her to. She had clothes by then (and some junk jewelry), but there was a fight just the same. Lesage did not kill that guy, but he hurt him so bad he might just as well have. With nine men and a woman on that sloop, we were living in each other's armpits. I had the only cabin, and it was like sleeping in a closet.

I have told already how much I like the sea and the sky, the peace and beauty of it and how near to God I feel when I can just drink it in. Now I have to talk about something more—the thing behind my whole life, which is the way it seems to me now. It was the first watch and the sun was low, all orange and gold behind clouds. That was Lesage's watch, and he had a man on the pump and Ben at the wheel. I told him I would take the wheel myself, which would give him another man.

Pretty soon it got too dark to work, and everybody except me sat down or lay down, and most of them went to sleep. Finally I decided there were only two of us still awake, the
Windward
and me. We were on course for Tortuga, the big mainsail was drawing pretty well, and the sea so calm it seemed like it was sleeping, too. I knew that all sorts of things could go wrong.
There could be trouble with the men, we could founder in a gale, Capt. Burt might not get to Tortuga for a month, and so forth—more trouble than you could get from ten girls in Port Royal. But the sea was calm, the weather was good, and the boat was alive under my hands. I felt I could count on Lesage, Red Jack, Ben Benson, Big Ned, and Mahu—which made it five to four, even if the rest turned against me. We would go where I said to go, and anybody who did not like it would have a long swim. There was no novice master to worry about, and no feds. Just about everybody on earth was chained up, even if they could not see their chains, but I was not. I could breathe in a way most people never get to breathe. I stayed at the wheel like that for the whole watch, and I cannot tell you how wonderful it was.

The next day, I did it again. It looked like we might be in for a little blow, and I thought that with me at the wheel Lesage's watch would be able to handle the sails without my calling all hands. It was not bad at all. We set the spritsail, the main filled fit to bust, and we sailed along pretty good.

The wind was singing in the rigging, and after a half hour or so it came to me that it was trying to tell me something. That was one of the things— just about the only thing—I had gotten out of music class: listen to the words and notes of hymns and chants and see what they are saying. I shut my eyes for a minute, and it seemed to me I could hear Fr. Luis. No words, but the sound of his voice. I was outside the classroom, and he was lecturing at the blackboard.