The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  “Pernicious drivel!” Ebenezer scoffed. “What cause hath Baltimore to do such evil?”

  “What cause! The Pope is sworn to beatify him if he Romanizes Maryland, and canonize him if he snatches the whole country! He’ll make a bloody saint of him!” It was to prevent exactly this catastrophe, Lucy Robotham had declared, that her father and the rest had joined with Coode to overthrow the Papists in Maryland, coincidentally with the deposition of King James, and to petition William and Mary to assume the government of the Province. “Yet old Coode was ill paid for’s labors,” Bertrand said, “for no sooner was the house pulled down than the wreckers fell out amongst themselves, and Baltimore contrived to get this fellow Nicholson the post of Governor. He flies King William’s colors, but all the world knows he’s a Papist at heart: when he fought with James at Hounslow Heath, he said his mass with the rest, and ’twas an Irish Papist troop he took to Boston.”

  “Dear Father!” Ebenezer cried. “What a sink of calumny this Robotham strumpet was! Nicholson’s as honest a man as I!”

  “He is the Duke of Bolton’s bastard,” the valet went on stubbornly. “And ere he took up with the Papists he was aide-de-camp to Colonel Kirke in Africa. They do declare he had a draught of wine from the Colonel’s arse at Mequinez, to please the Emperor Muley Ishmael—”

  “Stop!”

  “Some say ’twas May-wine and others Bristol sherry; Mistress Lucy herself held with the May-winers.”

  “I’ll hear no more!” the poet threatened, but to his every protest Bertrand made the same replies. “There’s a lot goes on that your honest wight dreams naught of,” or “More history’s made in the bedchamber than in the throne room.”

  “ ’Tis not a fart to me who’s right or wrong,” he said at last. “This Coode hath ginned us either way, and we’ll ne’er set foot on land.”

  “How is that?” the poet demanded. “I’ve fared no worse here than aboard the Poseidon, and we’re only to be held till farther notice.”

  “No doubt!” the servant said. “But if thou’rt such a cannon as Charles Calvert thinks, is’t likely Coode will turn ye loose to blast him? ’Tis a mystery to me we’re still alive!”

  Ebenezer could not but acknowledge the logic of this position, yet neither could he be immediately terrified by it. Captain Pound was unquestionably formidable, but he was not cruel: although in the incident related by Burlingame he had apparently condoned rape, he seemed to draw the line at murder, and his plundering of the Poseidon had been almost gentlemanly. Moreover he was not even avaricious, as pirates go: for weeks on end the shallop cruised with apparent aimlessness from north to south and back again, flying English colors; when a sail appeared on the horizon the pirates gave chase, but upon overhauling the other ship they would salute it amiably, and Captain Pound would inquire, as might the captain of any vessel met at sea, what port the stranger was bound for, and with what cargo. And though the replies were sometimes provocative—“Bark Adelaide, a hundred and thirty days out of Falmouth, for Philadelphia with silk and silverware,” or “Brig Pilgrim out of Jamaica with rum for Boston”—only twice during the three full months of his imprisonment did Ebenezer witness acts of piracy, and these occurred consecutively on the same early August day, in the following manner:

  For several days the shallop had ridden hove to, though the weather was fine and nothing could be seen on any quarter. Just after the midday meal on the day referred to the lookout spied a sail to westward, and after observing it for some time through his glass, Captain Pound said, “ ’Tis the Poseidon, all right. Take ’em below.” The three kidnaped sailors were ordered to their quarters in the fo’c’sle, Bertrand was confined to the sail-locker, and Ebenezer, who had labored all morning at the apparently pointless job of shifting cargo in the hold, was sent below to complete the task.

  “Poor Captain Meech!” he thought. “This devil hath lain in wait to ruin him!” Though.he deplored the idea of piracy in general and wished neither Meech nor his passengers harm, he could not feel pity for the sailors who had done him such an outrage; having witnessed already the ferocity of the pirates, he rather relished the idea of a fight between them and the Poseidon’s crew. In any case he had no intention of missing the excitement on deck: during the chase, which lasted no more than an hour, he toiled dutifully in the hold, moving barrels and boxes aft in order (he understood now) to make room for additional loot; but when the grapples were thrown and all but a handful of the pirates crouched at the lee rail ready to board, he climbed to the edge of the after hatch and peered over.

  His heart leaped at sight of the familiar vessel: there was the quarterdeck whereon he’d debated with Bertrand the right demeanor for a poet and from which he’d been cast providentially into the sea; there on the poop stood Captain Meech, grim-faced, exhorting his men as before not to jeopardize the passengers’ safety by resisting the assault, even though he had mounted a brand new eight-pounder in the bow.

  Ebenezer clucked his tongue. “Poor wretch!”

  There in the waist the ladies squealed and swooned as before, while the gentlemen, frowning nervously, were led off to their cabins for robbing; there by the foremast the sailors huddled. Ebenezer saw several of his molesters, including Ned, and many new faces as well. The pirates, having been at sea for at least the six weeks since their last encounter, took no pains to disguise their lust for the ladies and the female servants: they addressed them in the lewdest terms; pinched, poked, tweaked, and stroked. Captain Pound had his hands full preventing wholesale assault. He cursed the crew in his quiet hissing voice and threatened them with keelhauling if they did not desist. Even so, the mate himself, black Boabdil, driven nearly berserk by the sight of an adolescent beauty who, perhaps seasick, had been brought up on deck in her nightdress, flung her over his shoulder and made for the railing, clearly intending to have at her in traditional pirate fashion; it took the Captain’s pistol at his temple to restrain the Moor’s ardor and send him off growling and licking his lips. The girl, happily, had fainted at his first approach, and so was oblivious to her honor’s narrow rescue.

  So desperate did the situation become that at length the Captain ordered all hands back aboard the shallop, though the pillaging was not entirely finished, and cast off the grapples. He carried with him Captain Meech, two members of the Poseidon’s crew, and one of her longboats, giving as his reasons the need for a consultation on the subject of longitude and the possibility that not all of the eight-pounder’s ammunition had been confiscated; he would set them free, he declared, as soon as the shallop was out of range. Then he set the still grumbling crew to stowing the fresh provisions in preparation for the formal dividing of the spoils, and retreated with his hostage to the chartroom.

  Now Ebenezer had of course abandoned his observation post when the pirates came back aboard, and so dangerous was their mood that before the first barrel of port came down the hatch he hid himself far aft, behind the old cargo, to avoid their wrath. His hiding place was a wide black cranny, perhaps three feet high, that extended on both sides of the keel under the cabins, as far aft as the rudderpost in the stern. Since the space provided access to the steering-cables running from the wheel on deck through blocks to the rudder-post itself, it was provided with a false floor over the bilge, on which the Laureate lay supine and still. Over his head, which was not two feet from the stern, he heard the sound of chairs scraping on the floor, and presently a pair of chuckling voices.

  “By Heav’n, the black had like to split her open!” said one, and Ebenezer easily identified Captain Pound. “I thought he’d pitch me to the fishes when I stopped him!”

  The other laughed. “He’d ha’ spitted her through for all I’d cross him, Tom, I swear’t! ’Twere a pity, though, I’ll grant ye; she’s a gentleman’s morsel, not a beef-bull’s, and I mean to try her ere we raise Lands End.”

  Ebenezer was not surprised to hear the voice of Captain Meech, but he was horrified at the intimacy suggested by their conversation.
/>   “Do ye look for trouble?” Meech asked.

  “God knows, Jim. Boabdil is a wild one when he sets his cap for coney. They all need a week ashore, or I’m a dead man.”

  “Well, I’ve no orders for ye about your poet, but I did bring ye this—they smuggled it aboard at Cedar Point.”

  There was a pause while Meech brought forth whatever it was he referred to, then a slap as of papers on the table. Ebenezer strained his ears, though every word thus far he had heard distinctly. He forgot completely about the original purpose of his concealment.

  “A Secret Historie of the Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake,” Pound read aloud. “What foolery is this?”

  “No foolery,” Meech laughed. “Old Baltimore would cut your throat for’t! Look on the backsides.”

  The papers rustled. “ ’Fore God!”

  “Aye.” Meech confirmed whatever realization his friend had reached. “They got it off Dick Smith in Calvert County—God knows how! He’s Baltimore’s surveyor general.”

  “But what am I to do with it?”

  “They said Coode himself will come for’t in a month or so. This is only a part of the whole Journal, from what I gather; if he can find the rest ere things get settled, then Nicholson can’t touch him. Right now the place is a bedlam, Tom: ye should see St. Mary’s City! Andros came and went; Lawrence is back in; Henry Jowles hath Ninian Beale’s old job; old Robotham’s back in, that hath the daughter ye liked—remember Lucy?”

  “Aye,” said Pound, “from the last time. She hath a birthmark on her arse, you told me.”

  “Nay, Tom, no birthmark! ’Tis the Great Bear in freckles, I swear’t, and the pointers point—”

  “No more!” Pound laughed. “I remember where the pole-star was, that all men’s needles aimed at. Go on with Maryland, now, ere ye have to leave.”

  “Marry, what a wench!” Meech said. “Where was I? Did I tell ye about Andros?” He went on to relate that John Coode’s brother-in-law, Neamiah Blackistone, so influential under the late Governor Copley, had died in disgrace last February after the Commissioners of the Customs-House, on evidence from the “Burlingame’s Journall documents” smuggled to Lord Baltimore by Nicholson, had charged him with graft. Sir Edmund Andros of Virginia had returned to St. Mary’s in May with Sir Thomas Lawrence, whom Copley had impeached and made him President of the Council and acting Governor of Maryland—to the rebels’ dismay, since it was Lawrence who had smuggled the notorious Assembly Journal of 1691 to Nicholson. Then Nicholson had landed, embraced his good friend Lawrence, and made a Maryland councillor out of Edward Randolph, the Jacobite Royal Surveyor so well known up and down the colonies for his prankish contempt of provincial authorities. But so far from thanking his old superior Andros for governing in his absence, Nicholson had promptly called that government illegal, declared null and void all statutes passed thereunder, and demanded (thus far in vain) that Andros return the five-hundred-pound honorarium awarded him for his services by Lawrence’s Council! The insurrectionists, Meech declared, were making the most of this rebuff to turn Andros against Nicholson; their leader Coode still held with impunity the post of sheriff in St. Mary’s County and a lieutenant-colonelcy in the county militia under Lawrence himself, and in these capacities drew his salary from the very government he was doing his best to overthrow. Andros had already allowed Coode the services of his “coast-guard” Captain Pound, of course, and in addition had virtually promised Coode asylum in Virginia if, as was feared imminent, Nicholson opened cases against him, his ally Kenelm Cheseldyne of the Assembly, and old Blackistone’s widow. The insurrectionists, Meech said further, were engaged both defensively and offensively: they were ransacking the Province for the other portions of the incriminating Journal, which they understood to be cached with various Papists and Jacobites, and at the same time they were inciting the Piscataway Indians to rebel, perhaps in league with other Indian nations.

  “Marry, ’tis a perilous game they play!” said Pound. “I’m happy to be at sea!”

  “I’m happy to be sailing east to London, Tom; this Coode would burn a province on a bet. Yet he doth pay handsomely.”

  “Speaking whereof—”

  “Aye,” Meech said. There was another pause. “They gave me this to give ye for holding Cooke, and there’s another like it for keeping these papers.” Nicholson had learned of the Journal’s absence, he explained, and was turning the Province upside down to find it—hence the rebels’ decision to remove it from the colony altogether until things settled down. Pound was to cruise in his present latitude for six weeks, or until a ship came out from Coode to fetch the papers. At that time he would receive his fee and, in all likelihood, instructions concerning his prisoners.

  “Good enough,” said Captain Pound. “Now let me give ye your share from the last trip.”

  “Did ye do well by’t, Tom?”

  “Not bad,” Pound allowed, and added that since the terms of their agreement gave all the cash to the pirates and all the jewels to Meech, who could easily sell them in London, it was to be expected that on westbound trips the pirates would fare as well or better, but on eastbound trips, when many of the passengers would have nothing left but the family jewels, Meech would get the lion’s share. The transaction was completed; Meech made ready to depart in the longboat, and Ebenezer, who had heard the entire colloquy in horror and astonishment, prepared to evacuate his hiding-place, the pirates having long since finished loading the hold.

  “One more thing,” Meech said, and the poet scrambled back to hear. “If Coode hath not found the rest of his Journal by the time he fetches this part, tell him I’ve a notion where to look for’t, but ’twill cost him twenty pounds if he finds it there. Did ye see what’s writ on the back of all those pages?”

  “You mean this Voiage Up the Bay of Chesapeake? What is it?”

  Meech explained that Kenelm Cheseldyne had recorded the Journal of the 1691 Assembly on the reverse pages of a bound quarto manuscript provided him by Coode, which happened to be an old diary the rebel had acquired while hiding out in Jamestown. “ ’Twas a wight named Smith wrote the diary—damnedest thing ye ever read!—and they all call it ‘Smith’s book’ for safety’s sake, the Papists as well as the rebels, though few of ’em e’er laid eyes on’t.” What would be more natural, then, he asked of Pound, than for Baltimore to distribute the portions for safekeeping to various confederates of the same surname?

  Ebenezer began to sweat. Pound, to his great relief, laughed at the conjecture as preposterous, but promised to relay it to Coode’s agents for what it was worth.

  “Which is twenty pounds,” Meech declared merrily. “Come, threaten me to my boat, now, or they’ll see our game. I’ll be back with the Smoker’s Fleet next spring or before.”

  Ebenezer scrambled out of his cranny, over boxes and barrels, and up the ladder to the hatch, nearly sick with indignation and excitement. He was bursting to tell Bertrand all he’d heard; in the considerable uproar that greeted the appearance of the two captains he was able to climb to the deck and move forward to the fo’c’sle companionway (which led also to his berth in the rope-locker) without attracting undue notice.

  The men were indeed in mutinous spirits, ready to make trouble at the slightest excuse. Grudgingly they released the two terrified sailors from the Poseidon, whom they had tormented throughout the captains’ private conversation; their faces darkened as Meech’s longboat, under the barrels of their pistols, struck out for its mother ship on the north horizon.

  Ebenezer slipped through the fo’c’sle to his cell—which customarily remained unlocked—and told Bertrand the story of Meech’s treachery, Coode’s latest intrigues, and the valuable document in the Captain’s quarters.

  “I must lay hands on those papers!” he exclaimed. “How Coode came by them I can’t imagine, but Baltimore shall have them!”

  Bertrand shook his head. “Marry, sir, ’tis not thy fight. A poet hath no part in these things.”

  “Not so,”
Ebenezer replied. “I vowed to fling myself into the arms of Life, and what is life but the taking of sides? Besides, I’ve private reasons for wanting that Journal.” How pleased would Burlingame be, he reflected happily, to learn that Captain John Smith had a secret diary! Who knew but what these very papers were the key poor Henry so long had sought to unlock the mystery of his parentage?

  “I see those reasons plain enough,” the valet declared. “The book would fetch a pretty price if ye put it up for bids. But ’twill do ye small good to steal it when we’ve no more than a fortnight left on earth. Marry, did ye see what spirits the Moor is in? If this Coode doth not kill us, the pirates will.”

  But the Laureate did not agree. “This faction may be our salvation, not our doom.” He described the delicate atmosphere on deck. “ ’Tis Pound that holds us prisoner, not the crew,” he said. “They’ve naught to gain by killing us if they mutiny, but they may well kill him. What’s more, they know naught of the Journal. Belike they’ll make us members of the crew, and once the turmoil hath subsided I’ll find a way to steal the book. Then we can watch our chance to slip ashore. Or better, once we’re pirates like the rest we can hide aboard some ship we’re sent to plunder; they’d never miss us. Let ’em mutiny, I say; we’ll join them!”

  As if the last were a command, an instant later a shout went up on deck, followed at once by a brace of pistol-shots. Ebenezer and Bertrand hurried up to declare their allegiance to the mutineers, who they readily assumed had taken charge of the shallop, and indeed they found Boabdil at the helm, grinning at the men assembled in the waist. But instead of lying dead on the deck, Captain Pound stood beside him, arms crossed, a smoking pistol in each hand and a grim smile upon his face, and it was one of the crew, a one-eyed Carolina boy named Patch, who sprawled, face-down and bleeding on the poop companionway.