Pirate Freedom (8 page)

"The gold I take from the Dagos is gold they stole from the savages."

I nodded. I did not want to, but I did.

"I don't know everythin' you've been taught, or how much of it you believe. But that's the way the world is, Chris, and that's the way it's goin' to stay. Well by God, I can play the game as well as any Dago. No, better. And I've proved it."

All of a sudden he smiled. "Let's have a drink on that. Your captain had some decent canary."

He got out the wine and poured a glass for each of us. "You're a gentleman, Chris. So'm I, and a king's officer, eh? Even if he won't own to me out loud. We can be pals without agreein' on everythin' under the sun, can't we?"

I said, "Yes, absolutely."

"So drink up. Want to join us? No, I can see you don't. Per'aps you'll change your mind later though."

He sipped his wine, smacked his lips, and chuckled. "Want to know what happens at Westminster? The Dago ambassador comes to the king and complains about me. The king and all his ministers look grave as parsons and say I'll be dealt with severely, and as fast as they can lay hands 'pon me. When he's gone, they have a good laugh and another drink."

He drained his glass. "We'll sell the cargo of this ship in Port Royal, and we'll sell it cheap because sellin' it anyplace else would mean a long voyage.
My men'll spend their share of the price we get there, too, or most of it. A lot of that will end up in London as taxes. So what I do helps England and hurts Spain. How many nights' sleep has the king lost tryin' to dream up a surefire way to rein in Bram Burt, do you think?"

I said, "None, I guess."

"Exactly right."

Capt. Burt sat down again. "I said the men spend their takin's in Port Royal. Mostly it's wagered and wagered again till it's lost. I fancy a girl and a glass as much as any other man, Chris, but I don't gamble unless I feel sure I can win. I've chests buried on two islands, and one fine day I'll dig 'em up, put a bit more with 'em, and turn my prow to England, a rich man. Squire Burt, eh? Me and the old'uns, we'll live in a house with thirty rooms and servants, and every maid in Surrey will set her cap for Squire Burt, the man that brought home a fortune from the West Indies."

I did not know what to say, so I nodded.

"I won't ask you to join us, Chris. I've asked twice already, and I don't ask most men even once. But anytime you change your mind, sing out. I'll keep you here on my ship for a bit so you can see how it's done, then we'll see about gettin' you a ship of your own. You've a hammock in the fo'c'sle? And a seabag?"

I said I did, a small one.

"Fine. Fetch 'em both. You're my prisoner, so I can't have you minglin' with my crew. But I don't want to clap you in irons, 'cause I know you'll come 'round. Stay close, so you get an education, eh? Stay close and stay awake."

I said, "Aye aye, sir."

"You'll answer to 'All hands,' but won't stand watch. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, 'less you want to feed the fish."

SO THAT WAS
how it was for a while. Capt. Burt slept in the captain's bunk, I in my hammock, slung on the other side of the cabin, which was not very large by landsmen's standards. I hung around him, ran errands when he told me to, and tried to learn. Once or twice I was pretty badly tempted to join, but I never did.

Here is the thing. The clothes were different, the talk was different, and even the guns and rackets were different, but he wanted me to be a wiseguy.
I did not know much about wiseguys, and I do not know much now. But I knew enough, even back then, to know that I did not want to be one. I do not think my father wanted me to be one either. That was why he sent me to Our Lady of Bethlehem in the first place, or I think that it must have been.

In a minute I'm going to tell about pirates, but there is not any real difference between pirates and wiseguys. One is at sea and the other is in cities. A big part of it is money, and money is just another way of saying freedom. If you have money, you can do pretty much whatever you want to do. (If you do not believe me, look at the people who have it.) You eat what you want to eat and you drink when you want to drink. Can have two or three women at the same time, if that is what you want. You can sleep late if you want to, and you do not have to work. If you want fifteen suits, you can have fifteen suits, and you can travel if that's what you want. If you like a certain kind of work, you can do it. But nobody can make you.

That is not exactly how it is for pirates or wiseguys either, but it is close. And that is why they do it.

You take a pirate ship like the
Weald
, which was the new name they gave the
Santa Charita
. Twenty-six of us had done all the work. But when we left Port Royal we had almost a hundred on board. Capt. Burt explained to me that he needed to have men enough to work the sails and man all the guns at once. And of course he was right, and it meant there were a lot more hands to do the work, so no one had to work very hard. Somebody who worked too slow might get yelled at, but he never got hit with a rope or anything like that. If he was really goofing off, eight or ten others would jump him—I saw that happen to a guy named Sam MacNeal, and I will tell about him pretty soon if I have time—but nobody could just stand there with a rope and give it to him.

There was a lot of drinking, and there was one man in the crew who was pretty drunk all the time. Everybody just let him alone. They said he did it about once a year, and it would stop when he could not get any more. He would be sick then for about a week, and after that a good sailor and one of the bravest men on board. They called him Bill Bull, and that may have been his real name. We all stunk but he stunk worse, and anytime I get tempted to drink a lot (which does not happen much) I remember Bill Bull and how bad he smelled.

In Port Royal, after we sold the cargo, the money got split up according to rule, which was basically one share for every man on board except me.
Capt. Burt did the splitting and got ten shares, and if he put a little extra into his own pocket, I would not be surprised. It always seemed to me like he had green eyes. Still, every man got a lot, and in Port Royal he could buy anything he wanted.

And I mean
anything
. If it was for sale anywhere in the world, it was for sale in Port Royal. Things that were not for sale anywhere else were for sale there, too.

There is another thing I ought to say about pirates. Last night I saw a movie on TV about us, and it got a lot wrong. The worst thing was ages. Everybody on that pirate ship looked like he was at least thirty, and a lot seemed ten or twenty years older. Real pirates are not like that. Pirates are just about all young. A lot of our men were sixteen or seventeen, and I do not believe there was anyone on the
Weald
as old as thirty.

Capt. Burt did not put her into dry dock, but we had carpenters come aboard, and a sailmaker and so forth, and he made a lot of changes. When we put out again, we had bigger guns and more of them and the mainmast was fore-and-aft-rigged instead of square. It meant the ship would not be as fast before a following wind, or as easy to handle with a wind like that either. But it would be easier in general, it could turn a lot handier, and it could sail closer to the wind.

There is a lot more that I could tell, but I think most of it will be better and clearer later on. Let me just say here that having no money I stayed on the ship most of the time and tried to take care of things there, which Capt. Burt appreciated and thanked me for. And that when we put out again there were two carronades on the quarterdeck, and Capt. Burt and I shared the captain's cabin with a long nine.

There was more trouble about MacNeal, too, and when we came to a little island pretty close to Jamaica that had a few trees on it and no people, we just put him ashore there and left him.

AFTER I SAW
what they did with MacNeal, and how he begged, and how they did it anyhow, I thought sure that was what was going to happen to me. I knew that if I was left on a little island like that with a bottle of rum, my seabag, and a pistol, I would probably die. Not because I would shoot myself like they thought MacNeal would—I would never do that—but from hunger and thirst. I would try to fish, and dig up shellfish if there were any, set out shells to catch water when it rained, and hold on as long as I could. But if nobody picked me up in a week or two, I would die.

I said to myself, "All right, I'll die. But I won't beg, and I won't murder." It sounded good, but I was not sure I could really keep to it, especially the part about not begging.

Then we sighted a ship. "Dago, by the look of her," Capt. Burt said. And he had a couple of men get out the signal box and run up 'WARE PIRATES in Spanish. I told them how to spell it.

After that they wanted to talk, the captain shouting at us through a megaphone, and us yelling, "No tan aprisa! Qué? Más despacio!" and so forth. When our side lay a half cable from theirs, we ran out the guns and told them that if they surrendered their lives would be spared.

They started to run out their own guns—three small pieces on that side—and we gave them a broadside. I do not mean that I helped fire those shots. I was with the foremast men, but I was part of the crew when they were fired. There is no getting around that. And I helped Capt. Burt with the Spanish.

Our broadside did quite a bit of damage and killed most of the gun crews. They surrendered and we boarded. Capt. Burt told me to come with him, and I did. I do not mean that he made me. He just gave the order, and I did it. I am not going to lie about it, not to you and not to myself.

She stunk. The whole ship stunk something terrible. I said something about it, and Capt. Burt said she was a slaver and they all stunk like that.

When I heard there were slaves on board, I went below. The men were chained on platforms about two feet apart, layer after layer of them. They could not get off. The women were loose in the hold, some of them with babies. (Later we found Azuka hiding in the captain's cabin.) The shit and piss and vomit and everything else went down into bilges, some of it. And some stayed right where it was.

I came up feeling sick, and when I got on deck, I chucked over the side. After that I tried to tell Capt. Burt how it was, but he would not listen. He made me listen to him instead. He was going to talk to what was left of the crew, and he wanted me to repeat what he said in Spanish.

I did, and there was not a whole lot of it. He said he would have spared everybody if they had surrendered. ("Struck their colors" is how he really said it.) They had not, so he was going to kill half of them and let the other half go to tell people ashore what happened to people who did not surrender when we ran up the black flag. First he wanted to know which ones were married.

It was not as many as there had been on the
Santa Charita
, but it was all but two. He separated the groups, and told the single men they could join our crew if they wanted. Nobody who joined would be killed. It was a Spanish sailor and a grometto, and they did.

After that, he divided the others into two groups—three in each group— by pulling out men one at a time and tying their hands. Three pirates were
counted off, and each cut the throat of one of the men whose hands had been tied. The bodies were thrown over the side, and the rest rowed away in the jolly boat.

By then the
Weald
and the slave ship had been grappled together, pirates on the
Weald
throwing ropes to others on the slave ship. The slave ship was the
Duquesa de Corruna
when she was captured, but afterward I changed her name to the
New Ark
.

I see I have gotten ahead of myself again. Here is what happened. I buttonholed Capt. Burt and said I had to talk to him about the slaves.

"Stow it," he said. "I've got to talk to you about 'em first. Find out where the chains are fastened, and fetch up as many as are on one chain. I want to look at 'em. We'll jaw about the rest later. Take Lesage with you."

I started to say something, but he ordered me to get moving. I know now that he was afraid another Spanish ship might show up while the
Weald
and the slave ship were tied together.

Lesage and I grabbed the men who had joined, and asked how we could get the slaves loose. The keys were in the captain's cabin, and we found them without a lot of trouble and found a slave woman hiding in a wardrobe in there. The men slaves were chained in bunches of eight on that ship, and we unchained the bunch nearest the hatch and brought them up on deck. There was no trouble from them.