by Max Besora
“My God, I hope it’s a Spanish ship. The las’ rover attack cos’ us forty tousand gold florins a damage,” said one of the sailors.
“If all we lose is money and not our lives …” added another, loading a cannon with gunpowder.
“Itz da Bucintoro, from Venice!” shouted a third.
“Nah, itz duh Miñona from England!” bellowed a fourth.
“Tamee looks like the Cagafogo, from Portugal!” shrieked a fifth.
“As it a Franch flag, or Hitalian?” asked a sixth.
The mysterious vessel looked like a merchant ship but, when it got close to one of the brigantines that followed the Argos, they hoisted their colors, revealing the red cross of Saint George.
“Yer all wronge, chumps … it’s the Dragon!” said the pilot. “English corsairs!”
As the enemy ship drew closer to the Spanish fleet, Captain Nino bellowed out orders in the pidgin common tongue to the boatswain and sailors:
“Cast off th’ cargo! Steer th west cuarta t’ southeast! Release the mizzenmast! Women t’ th’ hold! Crump th’ clew lines t’ th’ spars o th’ topsail and th’ velancho! Let leese th’ sheet ‘n th’ tow sails! Load th’ falconets and th’ pasamuro! Get those mololas off the deck! Lead rowers: get rowing! Helmsman, yaw to the right! ’Prentices, lash th’ cable! Everyone, prepare fer battle! N’ be careful not t’ wag aft!”
Despite the captain’s orders, the enemy ship was much faster and soon overtook the two Spanish caravelles that trailed the Argos and, burning their waterlines with cannonballs, sank them both. After that nautical murder, the corsair ship came up right alongside the Argos. Bombing attack, bombing counterattack, it was a humdinger of a hullabaloo.
Gregorio Izquierdo (pulling up his pantaloons and still “standing at attention”) and Doña María came out on deck and face to face with that mayhem. The crew was overcome by terror as projectiles fell on the ship, hammering sails and timbering, sinking the forecastle, perforating barrels and sending bits of human flesh flying through the air. The corsairs’ cannonballs decimated both the main mast and the foremast. The thundering sounded like the end of the world and the stench of burnt flesh and gunpowder scented the atmosphere, drying out the throats and stinging the eyes of those preparing for hand-to-hand battle. When the powder was exhausted, the real combat began, amid a cloud of gray, and it was a furious one. The corsairs besieged the ship with gunfire and swords, killing, torturing, burning, and destroying willy-nilly and many promptly died. Artillerymen, cannon loaders, and soldiers fired at the enemy at close range, and every shot of flintlock and harquebus found a body to fell, leaving cadavers everywhere. One of those bullets hit a barrel of gunpowder, which detonated. Amid the enemy fire, some continued to battle the corsairs while others rushed to put out the flames, hauling buckets of saltwater amid the horses trotting spooked and chickens running around frantically. The British had them outnumbered, but the Spaniards didn’t back down and fought fiercely for as long as they could. Even the women and Father Claver joined in. Olga, Doña María’s lady-in-waiting, was run through with three swords but still had time to deal a fatal punch that exploded a corsair’s head; Martulina the Divina slit corsair necks with the delicacy her profession required, and our hero wielded two harquebusses at once and was shooting without even taking aim first. The battle was such a chunky bone-broth of blood and guts that even the fish in the ocean looked on gobsmacked.
Before long the entire deck was a vast puddle of death. Both sides had lost more than half their men, but the Castilians had finally surrendered. The pirate captain quickly appeared onboard the Argos: it was the famous English corsair Francis Drake88, also known as “El Draque”—the Dragon. Despite his long shadow and his formidable reputation, his physical appearance was that of a stocky, short man with proper British rosy cheeks.
“Goodevening, ladies and gentlemen. I am not a rover, nor a ‘bucanerow.’ I am the most British privateer from the East to the West coast,” he said displaying a document with the English royal seal. “Mine name art Francis Drake, at your service. I request thy peaceful surrender.”
“What’s this Brit sayin?” asked the boatswain.
“That we should surrender without a fight,” said Captain Nino.
Forthwith, Francis Drake proceeded to tally up his wounded. His men set him up with a table and chair on the deck of the Argos, as they served him his five o’clock tea and a string quartet from the Royal London Symphonic—which the famous privateer always brought with him—played chamber pieces by English composers such as John Dowland, Robert Johnson, Holborne, and Pilkington for lute, zither, and harpsichord. As the music played, Drake dipped his silver quill and, between sips of tea, wrote:
“Whutz he doin’ now?” asked a sailor.
“Counting his dead and wounded so his Queen, ole Betty, will pay him back for the money he’s lost,” said another.
“Hang me if I understand a thing,” said our hero. “Whence doth this whole song and dance come?”
“The British, they like to do things their own way,” added Martulina, cleaning the blood off her sword. “They even have the rudder on t’other side of the boat, just to be different from everybody else.”
After jotting down all the losses on his side, Francis Drake greeted the captain of the Argos very courteously and with numerous curtsies, and then the corsairs proceeded to grab everything of value on the ship, such as jewels, paintings, furniture, animals, and rum, as well as kidnapping all the women onboard under thirty years old, for their pleasure and for ransom.
“No!” exclaimed our hero, seeing that they were also taking Doña María Fernanda Esmeralda Brunilda Isegarda Sigismunda Regenta Magdalena Grande de los Cerros Medianos de la Onza, along with other women.
“Fear not, my love!” she said, cutting off a lock of her hair and giving it to him, while a corsair grabbed her and threw her over his back like a sack of potatoes.
“I doth protest!” exclaimed Gregorio Izquierdo, pulling out his inner lawyer from inside his soldier’s shell, as he clung to the lock of hair. “The ocean is considered, ere Roman times, res communis omnium, and as such thou hath no ryght to this kidnapping!”
“Sorry, barrister,” said one of the corsairs, carrying off Doña María. “Danger has jurisdiction over the ocean sea and all the lands of the world.”
“I maye be violated,” said Doña María. “I may be killed, but we’ll always have our bryef amorous time together!”
“Damn mine luck …” grumbled our hero, struck melancholy by the whole affair as he watched the corsair ship head off with his beloved, who waved goodbye to him from the other deck.
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88. i.e. Here the narrator has, once again, committed a flagrant anachronism. Francis Drake died of dysentery in 1596, while Orpí crossed the ocean, according to Pau Vila’s biography, around 1623, making this historical encounter impossible.
Chapter XIV
In which Gregorio Izquierdo hallucinates sirens, all due to his heartbreak
After the corsairs’ butchery, everyone who survived had to lend a hand with the cleanup and repair of the ship, and to gather up some survivors from the two caravelles that Francis Drake had sunk. Meanwhile, the Argos had sprung leaks all over from the fearsome hurly-burly.
“We’re sinking, amirite?” asked a sailor.
“I shant abandon this ship, even dead …” said the captain. “Worke that pump! Bail, for fuck’s sake, bail!”
Finally, the holes made by the cannonballs were patched and the water in the bilge was cloudy, a sure sign it wasn’t coming in from the ocean sea. The masts were repaired, the sails sewn up, and order once again reigned on the vessel. In fact, the fair weather conditions were too fair. The wind had vanished and the ship now looked like an eggshell bobbing in a puddle of oil. Everything was static.
“Accurses, we’re in a calm!” lamented a sailor.
“I seconde that emotion,” said Martulina. “Calm means calamity. Without wind, we’
ll rot here, in the midst of the ocean sea.”
“I prefer death to the loss of mine divine lady Doña María Fernanda Esmeralda Brunilda Isegarda Sigismunda Regenta Magdalena Grande de los Cerros Medianos de la Onza,” was the depressed mantra of Gregorio Izquierdo, sniffing the lock of his beloved’s hair.
That calm meant not one, but numerous misfortunes. The first was that it brought a plague of rats onboard the Argos. They pissed everywhere, gobbled up all the food, and gnawed on the boat’s timber, causing new leaks, and they got into scrapes with the handful of hens the corsairs hadn’t stolen or killed. The heat would soon rot the meat and vegetables in the hold. Someone had the indecent suggestion of eating the horses, but our hero said he would rather die than devour his loyal Acephalus. Then some of the crew started to chow down on the leather of their shoelaces and clothing. One of the sailors even took a bite out of Martulina’s military jacket.
“This jacket is property of the Crown, tis not for eating,” she said, pricking the famished sailor with her sword as a warning.
In the end, since the clothing was hard to digest, they concluded it would be better to eat the rats themselves. Soon there were specialized hunters who sold them to the crew for half a ducat. More than three thousand rats were roasted on the grill. The problem with that rodent diet was that it brought with it an even more serious problem: scurvy. The gums of the infected were so badly inflamed that you couldn’t even see their teeth. The disease claimed nineteen lives, and the corpses were thrown into the open sea, where the aquatic fauna ate them up. After that, no one was interested in eating more rat.
“Now we’ well and truly done fo,” said a Cuban sailor. “Nada de food in ten ’hole day.”
The wind still didn’t blow, and those who drank seawater all ended up sick. Some began to die of starvation. One day Gregorio Izquierdo, who was famished like the rest, in desperation ate a bit of leather from one of the boat’s masts, and in ten minutes’ time his belly began to emit horrific sounds and he had a frantic need to void his bowels. The Argos only had two latrines and both had been destroyed in the battle with the corsairs. There was only one solution. Our hero grabbed one of the rope ladders on the main mast, clambered up to the ledge of one of the crossbow holes on the poopdeck, lowered his drawers, and shat into the ocean, in full view of everyone.
“I’m sorry …” he apologized to a sailor who was staring. “It’s imperative.”
“As Salazar says, Muita vegadas chega a merda ao ollo de o cu,89” quoted a sailor.
“How right he was, and emfatickly. This fylth is a shameful mess. By law, there should be decent toilets aborde these vessells. I shall present a formal complaint to the Casa de Contratación when I returnne to Seville.”
And it was as his sphincter relaxed that our hero heard a song emerging from the deep ocean. He tried to find the source of that strange melody, and glimpsed a movement in the waves. Looking closer, he thought he saw the body of a woman with bare breasts and a fish tail, diving in and out of the waters. Gregorio Izquierdo’s pulse began to race.
“Milady Doña María Fernanda Esmeralda Brunilda Isegarda Sigismunda Regenta Magdalena Grande de los Cerros Medianos de la Onza, my beloved! Lord in heaven … she’s been turned into a siren!”
Everyone on deck ran over to where our hero crouched, his ass still in the air, squinting out at the ocean.
“How now, a siren!” said a sailor, “Dats a valrus!”
“You’re ’allucinatin’, Orp … oop, I mean Gregorio,” said Martulina the Divina, “Hunger can make ya see things what isnt dere.”
“Cant you hear her?” he said, reverting to Catalan in his hallucinating state, and trying to jump into the water while the others held him back. “It’s Doña María who warbles thus … ! Raped and murdered by the savage corsairs, she’s become a siren! Thus I shall become a felo-de-se90!”
It took a few sailors to keep our hero from such an idiotic death and, a few moments later, he regained his senses, pulled up his drawers, and ran to search for a book. Then he recited the following to the curious:
“Listen, Columbus wrote, in his ship’s diary on January 9, 1493 that: ‘On the previous day, when the Admiral went to the Rio del Oro, he said he quite distinctly saw three sirens, which rose well out of the ocean sea; but they are not so beautiful as they are said to be, for their faces had some masculine traits.’ In other words, sirens!” declared Gregorio Izquierdo. “Ugly as sin, but sirens! Otherwise it’s surely one of the monsters catalogued in Saint Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae.”91
“That be a blunder,” said Captain Nino, who had approached to see what all the fuss was about. “In sooth they were manatees, cetacean water mammals. The females have a pair of knockers on them that can easily be mistaken for a siren’s.”
“Art thou sure?” asked our hero, stricken by the sad reality.
“Entirely so. I recommend you cease the reading of so many fantastickal books, since they are comprised largely of calumnies,” said the captain. “But at least we’ll be well supplied with grub for some time … bring out the nets!”
After fishing some of the quasi-sirens, the entire crew enjoyed a piscivorous feast beyond their wildest imaginings. Luck seemed to have returned to the Argos, since that same night a north wind began to blow and the ship set sail once more.
“Thar blows de Galerne!” said a deckhand.
“Tis the angels puffing to billow the sails from the clouds,” said the Jesuitic Father Claver.
The crew sang a Te deum laudamus, and some other prayers and litanies, sated with their solid food and happy to be alive and on their way. But their adventures were not over, as our readers shall learn forthwith in the next Chapter, upon turning the page.
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89. “Many times the shit reaches the hole of the ass,” Navegación del alma, Eugenio de Salazar, 1600.
90. i.e. An Anglo-Latin term for one who commits suicide.
91. The references to fable reinforce the mythical view of the conquistador and were generally common in that period, as seen in the aforementioned Etymologiae and in the various chronicles of the conquest. Although, truth be told, by Orpí’s time, that mythology was a bit passé, frankly.
Chapter XV
In which our hero befriends a slave and frees many others from the same condition
The next day dawned shrouded in thick, thick fog. The Argos seemed to be floating among clouds and the blue of the sky had vanished. The sailors hauled down the sails and started telling each other jokes. Even the topman allowed himself the distraction of smoking some tobacco. It was as he puffed on his cigar that he saw a caravelle flying past the prow. He rubbed his eyes to see if he was dreaming, and when he focused his vision again the boat was already almost crashing into the Argos. The din was so tremendous and everyone on deck, after rolling (briefly) on the ground, ran for their weapons against a more than likely boarding.
“Everyone get ready!” shouted the captain.
“This time I shant wane in my industry against these sea dogs,” said our hero, unsheathing his sword.
But they weren’t boarded. Everyone remained with their weapons at the ready, muscles tense, fingers on harquebus triggers or with their swords or lances in the air while an anxious silence hovered over the deck. The ghost boat floated beside the Argos in silence, its sails lowered and prow destroyed. It seemed abandoned. Captain Nino resolved to board the boat and when they landed on the other deck they found it scattered everywhere with sailor corpses.
“What a bloodbath …” murmured Martulina to our hero, who, hearing screaming from the hold, decided to open up its doors.
When he opened the hatch that led to the hold, Gregorio Izquierdo found a most atrocious, appalling spectacle: from the beams hung ten bodies that were swaying inert, beginning to rot. When they went down the stairs they saw forty or fifty people, skin black as coal, huddled in fear at the back of the room. Some of them were only half-alive, most were silently withering with hunger a
nd thirst, others whined in pain. On the floor were excrement, urine, and amputated limbs. The stench was so horrific that some sailors had to run out of there to keep from vomiting.
“Who art these poor people in chains?” asked our hero.
“Most lik’ly African slaves abandoned to their fate,” responded Captain Nino, who was coming up behind him. “And what a stench … bloody hell!”
“Who could bee responsible for such butchery?” said Gregorio Izquierdo, stepping over dismembered corpses on his way to the forecastle, where all the survivors were staring at him with terrorized eyes. “Let’s see, who amongst ye speaks Spanish?”
A very tall and brawny man stood up, his torso covered in old scars, and he spoke. “I speak, yo glace. My name is Esteban, but evelybody know me as Estebanico the Blackamoor.”
“Very well, Estebanico, tell all these folks to come up to the deck, where they shall be given food and care,” said our hero. “And then thou shalt tell us what happened here, if thou will.”
Once all the survivors were up on deck, the Jesuits tended their wounds while the sailors prepared some food for them. The bodies of the dead were tossed into the ocean, all the surviving slaves were transported to the Argos, and the ghost ship was burned. As it sank, Estebanico the Blackamoor began his story while he slurped his turtle soup.
“You al not going to believe the adventuls I’m about to tell you, Don Glegolio. I glew up in Azamor, near the African coast on the Atlantic, but I was acquiled as a slave at an eally age by a Spanish nobleman, Andlés de Carranza, who filst took me to Spain and then to conquer La Flo’ida, in the New World, in sealch of the Fountain of Youth.”
“Herotodus spoke of it in the third book of The Histories,” noted our hero. “Howe peculiar!”
“That I don’ know because I don’ know how to lead,” continued Estebanico. “What I do know is that, even without knowing how to shoot a halquebus, I went deep into the vast extensions of Nolth Amelica following those clazy Spania’ds. We were moldan thlee hundled soldiels, but a month later we wele only fo’ left. The Indian tlibes extelminated us melcilessly. Finally I was captuled by a tlibe with othel shipwlecks like Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca.”