The Covenant (17 page)

On New Year’s Day 1637 a grizzled mariner of Plymouth, England, reached a major decision. Captain Nicholas Saltwood, aged forty-four
and a veteran of the northern seas, told his wife, “Henrietta, I’ve decided to risk our savings and buy the
Acorn
.” Forthwith he led her to The Hoe, the town’s waterfront, and resting there in the exact spot occupied by Sir Francis Drake’s ship in July of 1588, when he waited for the Spanish Armada to come up the Channel, stood a small twomasted ship of one hundred and eighty-three tons.

“It will be dangerous,” he confided. “Four years absent in the Spice Islands and God knows where. But if we don’t venture now …”

“If you buy the ship, how will you acquire your trade goods?”

“On our character,” Saltwood said, and once the
Acorn
was his, he and his wife circulated among the merchants of Plymouth, offering them shares in his bold adventure. From them he wanted no money, only the goods on which he proposed to make his fortune and theirs. On February 3, the day he had hoped to sail, he had a ship well laden.

“And if the sheriff abides his word,” he told his wife, “we’ll take even more,” and they went together to the ironmonger’s, and as before, their surety was their appearance and their reputation. They were sturdy people and honest: “Matthew, I want you lad to keep watch on my foremast. If I raise a blue flag, rush me these nineteen boxes. I’ll pay silver for seven. You contribute the dozen, and if the voyage fails, you’ve lost all. But it will not fail.”

At the door of the mongery he kissed his wife farewell: “It would not be proper for you to deal with the sheriff. I believe he’ll come. You watch for the blue flag, too.” And he was gone.

Three bells had sounded when a cart from Plymouth prison hove into sight, bearing ten manacled men guarded by four marching soldiers and a very stout sheriff, who, when he reached the wharf, called out, “Captain Saltwood, be you prepared?”

When Saltwood came to the railing the sheriff produced a legal paper, which he passed along for one of his soldiers to read, since he could not: “Ship
Acorn
, Captain Saltwood. Do you agree to carry these men condemned to death to some proper spot in the southern seas where they are to be thrown ashore to establish a colony to the honor of King Charles of England?”

“I do,” Saltwood replied. “And now may I ask you, has the passage money been voted?”

“It has,” the fat sheriff said, and as he stepped aboard the
Acorn
he counted out the five pieces of silver for each of the condemned men. “Now the delivery. Captain ate
the rogues you’re getting.” And as the manacled prisoners came awkwardly aboard, chains dangling, the soldier read out their crimes: “He stole a horse. A cutpurse. He committed murder, twice. He robbed a church. He ate another man’s apples. He stole a cloak …” Each man had been sentenced to death, but at the solicitation of Captain Saltwood, who needed their passage money, execution had been stayed.

“Have you granted them equipment to found their colony?” Saltwood asked.

“Throw them ashore,” the sheriff said. “If they survive, it’s to the honor of the king. If they perish, what’s lost?” With that the four soldiers climbed into the cart and pulled the wheezing sheriff in behind them.

“Run up the blue pennant,” Saltwood told his mate, and when it fluttered in the breeze the ironmonger hurried down to the ship with his nineteen crates of tools badly needed in the distant islands.

As soon as the
Acorn
stood out from harbor, Saltwood ordered his carpenter to strike off the manacles, and when the convicts were freed he assembled them before the mast: “During this trip I hold the power of life and death. If you work, you eat and are assured of justice. If you plot against this ship, you feed the sharks.” But as he was about to dismiss the unfortunates, he realized that they must be bewildered by what might happen to them, and he said reassuringly, “If you conduct yourselves well, I shall seek the most clement coast in all the seas. And when the moment comes to disembark, I shall provide you with such equipment for survival as we can spare.”

“Where?” one of the men asked.

“Only God knows,” Saltwood said, and for the next ninety days the
Acorn
sailed slowly southward through seas it had never traversed before, and the heavens showed stars which none had ever seen. The prisoners worked and partook of such food as the regular crew received, but always Saltwood kept his pistols ready, his defenses against mutiny prepared.

On the ninety-first day out, the
Acorn
sighted St. Helena, where the condemned men prayed to be set ashore, but a congenial port like this was not the intended destination, so the convicts were kept under close guard while the ship was provisioned, and after four restful days the
Acorn
headed south.

On May 23, in rough weather, the little ship, barely visible against the massiveness of Africa, stood off the sandy beach north of Table
Mountain, for it was here that Captain Saltwood proposed to cast his convicts ashore. But before he did so, he gave them a selection of implements from one of the crates of tools, and his men contributed food and spare clothes for the apprehensive settlers.

“Be of good cheer,” Saltwood advised the convicts. “Select one of your group to serve as leader, that you may subdue the land quickly.”

“Won’t you sail closer to the shore?” one of the men asked.

“This coast looks dangerous,” Saltwood said, “but you shall have this little boat.”

As the convicts climbed down into the frail craft he called, “Establish a good colony so that your children may prosper under the English flag.”

“Where will we find women?” the impertinent murderer called.

“Men always find women,” Captain Saltwood cried, and he watched as the criminals manned the oars and rowed ineffectively toward the shore. When a tall wave came, they could not negotiate it; the boat capsized and all were drowned. Captain Saltwood shook his head: “They had their chance.” And he watched with real regret as his boat shattered on the inhospitable beach.

But this voyage of the
Acorn
was not remembered for its loss of the ten convicts, because such accidents were commonplace and barely reported in London. When the stormy seas subsided, men from the ship went ashore at the Cape proper, and one of the first things they did was check the area for post-office stones; they found five, each with its parcel of letters, some intended for Amsterdam, some for Java. The former were rewrapped in canvas and put back under one stone; the latter were taken aboard for delivery in the Far East. Under a special stone engraved with the
Acorn
’s name, the mate deposited a letter to London detailing the successful passage via St. Helena but ignoring the loss of the ten prisoners.

The shore party was about to embark for the long trip to Java when a group of seven little brown men appeared from the east, led by a vivacious young man in his twenties. He offered to trade sheep, which he indicated by cleverly imitating those animals, if the sailors would provide him with lengths of iron and brass, which again he indicated so that even the dullest sailor could catch his meaning.

They asked him his name, and he tried to say Horda, but since this required three click sounds they could make nothing of it, and the mate said, “Jack! That’s a good name!” And it was under this name that he was taken aboard the
Acorn
and introduced to Captain
Saltwood, who said, “We need men to replace the convicts. Show him to a bunk for’ard.”

He was naked except for a loincloth made of jackal skin, and a small pouch tied about his waist; in it he carried a few precious items, including an ivory bracelet and a crude stone knife. What amazed the sailors were the click sounds he made when talking. “God’s word,” one sailor reported to another, “he farts through his teeth.”

Within a week of watching the sailmaker ply his awls and needles, Jack had fashioned himself a pair of trousers, which he wore during the remainder of the long voyage. He also made a pair of sandals, a hat and a loose-fitting shirt, and it was in this garb that he stood by the railing of the
Acorn
when Captain Saltwood led his little ship gingerly into the Portuguese harbor at Sofala.

“You were daring to enter here,” a Portuguese merchant said. “Had you been Dutch, we would have sunk you.”

“I come to trade for the gold of Ophir,” Saltwood said, whereupon the Portuguese burst into disrespectful laughter.

“Everyone comes for that. There is none. I don’t believe there ever was.”

“What do you trade?”

“Where do you head?”

“Malacca. The Spice Islands.”

“Oh, now!” the trader said. “We accept you here, but anyone who tries to enter the Spice Island trade … they’ll burn your ship at Malacca.” Then he snapped his fingers. “But if you’re brave, and really want to trade, I have something most precious that the Chinese long for.”

“Bring it forth,” Saltwood said, and with obvious pride the Portuguese produced fourteen curious, dark, pyramidal objects about nine inches square on the base. “What can they be?”

“Rhinoceros horn.”

“Yes! Yes!” In the pages of his ship’s log, on which he had prepared his notes for this great adventure, he had noted that rhinoceros horn might profitably be carried to any ports where Chinese came. “Where would I trade them?” he asked.

“Java. The Chinese frequent Java.”

So a bargain was struck, after which the Portuguese said, “A warning. The horns must be delivered as they are. Not powdered, for the old men who yearn to marry young girls must see that the horn is real, or it won’t work.”

“Does it really work?” Saltwood asked.

“I don’t need it yet,” the Portuguese said.

Wherever the
Acorn
anchored, Jack studied the habits of the people, marveling at their variety and how markedly they differed from the English sailors with whom he was now familiar and whose language he spoke effectively. At stately Kilwa he noticed the blackness of the natives’ skins; at Calicut he saw men halfway in darkness between himself and his shipmates; at resplendent Goa, where all ships stopped, he marveled at the temples.

He gained great respect for Captain Saltwood, who not only owned the
Acorn
but ran it with sagacity and daring. For one dreamy day after another the little vessel would drift through softly heaving seas, then head purposefully for some harbor none of the crew had heard of before, and there Saltwood would move quietly ashore, and talk and listen, and after a day of cautious judgment would signal to his men, and they would bring to the marketplace their bales of goods, unwrapping them delicately to impress the buyers. And always at the end of the trading, Saltwood would have some new product to fill his holds.

Like all the little brown people, Jack loved to sing, and in the evening when the sailors idled their time in chantey, his soft clear voice, echoing like some pure bell, joined in. They liked this; they taught him their favorite songs; and often they called for him to sing alone, and he would stand as they lolled, a little fellow four feet ten, his slanted eyes squeezed shut, his face a vast smile as he chanted songs composed in Plymouth or Bristol. Then he felt himself to be a member of the crew.

But there was another tradition, and this one he disliked. From time to time the English sailors would cry, “Take down your pants!” and when he refused, they would untie the cord that held up the trousers he had sewn and pull them down, and they would gather round in astonishment, for he had only one testicle. When they questioned him about this, he explained, “Too many people. Too few food.”

“What’s that got to do with your missing stone?” a Plymouth man asked.

“Every boy baby, they cut one off.”

“What’s that got to do with food?” The Plymouth man gagged. “My God, you don’t …”

“So when we grow up, find a wife, we must never have twins.”

Again and again when the voyage grew dull the sailors cried,
“Jack, take down your pants!” and one sultry afternoon in the Indian Ocean they brought down Captain Saltwood. “You’ll be astonished!” they said admiringly as they sought the little fellow, but when they found him and stood him on a barrel and cried, “Jack, down with your pants!” he refused, grabbing himself about the middle to protect the cord that tied his trousers.

“Jack!” the men cried with some irritation. “Captain Saltwood wants to see.”

But Jack had had enough. Stubbornly, his little face showing clenched teeth, he refused to lower his pants, and when two burly sailors came at him he fought them off, shouting, “You not drop your pants!” And there he stood on the barrel resisting, until Saltwood said quietly, “He’s right, men. Let him be.”

And from that day he never again dropped his drawers, and his self-stubbornness had an unforeseen aftermath: he had been the sailors’ toy, now he became their friend.

The part of the journey he liked best came when the
Acorn
slipped past the great Portuguese fort at Malacca and wandered far to the east among the islands of the spice trade; there he saw for the first time cloth woven with gold and the metalwork of the islands. It was a world whose riches he could not evaluate but whose worth he had to acknowledge because of the respectful manner in which his friends handled these treasures.

“Pepper! That’s what brings money,” the sailors told him, and when they crushed the small black corns to release the aromatic smell, he sneezed and was enchanted.

“Nutmeg, mace, cinnamon!” the sailors repeated as the heavy bags were heaved aboard. “Turmeric, cardamom, cassia!” they continued, but it was the cloves that captivated him, and even though guards were posted over this precious stuff, he succeeded in stealing a few to crack between his teeth and keep against the bottom of his tongue, where they burned, emitting a pleasant aroma. For some days he moved about the ship blowing his cloved breath on the sailors until they started calling him Smelly Jack.

How magnificent the East was! When the
Acorn
completed its barter, Captain Saltwood issued the welcome command: “We head for Java and the Chinese who await our horns.” And for many days the little ship sailed along the coast of Java with sailors at the rail to marvel at this dream-swept island where mountains rose to touch the clouds and jungle crept down to dip its fingers in the sea.