The Sot-Weed Factor

by John Barth

  Having had no prior experience of privateers, Anna Cooke seemed merely dazed by what was taking place, but Roxanne and Henrietta clung to each other and redoubled their lamentations. To all entreaties the kidnapers replied with a sneer, and the prisoners were obliged to descend into the cramped and lightless hold of the sloop, which stank of oysters. McEvoy embraced Henrietta in an effort to comfort her, and Ebenezer did likewise Anna; Bertrand and Mrs. Russecks had to deal with their terrors unassisted, and it is surely to that latter’s credit that she never once mentioned the downward-spiral theory of history, which was much on the anguished poet’s conscience. Over their heads they heard Slye and Scurry agree to move the sloop from Church Creek out into Fishing Creek lest any villagers hear the prisoners’ complaints, but to wait until nightfall before running down the Little Choptank to their rendezvous with Captain Avery.

  A long while they languished in despair as black and exitless as their prison. Then when the sloop got under way Anna began to whimper, and her brother was moved to say, “What a wretched thing is happiness! How I contemn it! An interlude such as ours of the past few days—’Sheart, ’tis a waterhole in the desert track of life! The traveler mistrusts his fortune; shocked by the misery he hath passed, sickened by the misery yet to come, he rests but fitfully; the dates lie like pebbles in his stomach; the water turns foul upon his tongue. Thus him whose fancy gives purpose to the journey; but on this path, who is no pilgrim is perforce a vagrant, and woe to us less blest! For us ’tis causeless martyrdom, ananabasis, and when Chance vouchsafes some respite she earns our anger, not our gratitude. Show me the happy man who is neither foolish nor asleep!”

  If his companions understood this apostrophe, they did not respond to it. Anna proposed that the three women destroy themselves at the earliest opportunity rather than suffer mass ravishment by the pirates. “ ’Tis not that I choose death to dishonor,” she explained. “My virginity means naught to me, but inasmuch as they’ll surely murther us after, I’d as lief die now and have done with’t. If Eben will not throttle me, I mean to drown myself the moment they fetch us on deck.”

  “La, girl,” Mrs. Russecks scoffed from across the black enclosure, “put such notions out o’ thy pretty head! Suppose Henrietta and I had taken our lives when Tom Pound captured us? We’d not be here today!”

  There was general, if grim, laughter at the unintended irony of this remark, but Mrs. Russecks insisted that anything—even ten years as a sea-going concubine—was endurable so long as one could hope for ultimate improvement. “We’ve no assurance they mean to murther us,” she said. “I’faith, we’re not even raped yet!”

  Sensing that Anna’s resolve was beginning to falter, Ebenezer pursued this point. “Do you recall when we read Euripides with Henry, how we contemned The Trojan Women out of hand? Hecuba we called a self-pitying frump, and Andromache either a coward or a hypocrite. ‘If she loves her Hector so, how is’t she lets wretched Pyrrhus make her his whore? Why not take her own life and save the family honor?’ What unrelenting moralists children are! But I tell you, Anna, I contemn the woman no more. We praise the martyr; he is our shame and our exemplar; but who among us fallen will embrace him? What’s more, there is a high moral in Andromache; her tears indict the bloody circus of man’s lust; her sigh drowns out the shouts of a thousand heroes, and her resignation turns Hellas into Vanity Fair.”

  Ebenezer himself was not so persuaded by this argument as he hoped Anna would be. Committing suicide merely to escape pain he could not but regard as cowardly, though he understood and sympathized with such cowardice; suicide as a point of honor, on the other hand, like martyrdom, made him uneasy. The martyr, it seemed to him, was in a sense unnatural, since blind Nature has neither codes nor causes; it was from this point of view that Andromache, like Ecclesiasticus, appeared the more sophisticated moralist, and heroes of every stamp seemed drunkards or madmen. Yet the very un-Naturalness, the hubris, as it were, of heroism in general and martyrdom in particular were their most appealing qualities. Granted that the Earth, as Burlingame was fond of pointing out, is “a dust-mote whirling through the night,” there was something brave, defiantly human, about the passengers on this mote who perished for some dream of Value. To die, to risk death, even to raise a finger for any Cause, was to pennon one’s lance with the riband of Purpose, so the poet judged, and had about it the same high lunacy of a tilt with Manchegan windmills.

  But if his words were not altogether heartfelt, his purpose was, and sensing that his arguments had had some effect on Anna, he returned to them several hours later when the sloop was under way again—presumably to James Island. “I beg you to think of one thing only: Reason aside, is there aught on earth you prize? Suppose us safe in Anne Arundel Town: what would you wish for then?”

  “Some years of peace,” Anna replied unhesitatingly. “I’ve no use any longer for estates or e’en for a husband, since—since Henry is denied me. What can they matter, after all that hath occurred? In time, perhaps, new goals may beckon, but just now I should wish to live some years in utter peace.”

  Ebenezer stirred. “How my heart responds to that ambition! But stay, there is no point: if aught in life hath value to us, we must not give o’er its pursuit.”

  He felt Anna tremble. “ ’Tis not worth the cost!”

  “Nor is aught else.”

  She wet his hand with tears. “If I must suffer what I shall, then I amend my wish: I wish we two were the only folk on earth!”

  “Eve and Adam?” The poet’s face burned. “So be it; but we must be God as well, and build a universe to hold our Garden.”

  Anna squeezed his hand.

  “What I mean,” he said, “we must cling to life and search each moment for escape…”

  Anna shook her head. “Anon they’ll run you through and throw you to the fishes, and I… Nay, Eben! This present hour is all our future, and this black cave our only Garden. Anon they’ll tear our innocence from us…”

  He sensed her eyes upon him. “Dear God!”

  Just then a shout came down from above, answered by another off in the distance: the rendezvous had been made.

  “Make haste!” cried Anna.

  The poet groaned. “You must forgive me—”

  Anna shrieked and fled on hands and knees across the hold; a few minutes later, when the hatch-cover was lifted and a lantern held down the ladderway, Ebenezer saw her shuddering in the arms of Mrs. Russecks.

  “Ah, now,” said the lantern-bearer, “I do despise to be a spoilsport, but Captain Avery wishes to speak to the six of ye on deck. He hath offered to torture the ladies at once if ye do not come promptly and civilly, sirs.”

  After a moment’s hesitation the prisoners complied, urged on by Henrietta and Mrs. Russecks. Night had fallen, and a strong, cold breeze had blown up out of the west; for all the turmoil in his head, Ebenezer was surprised to observe that the sloop had not anchored but only come up “in irons” some distance from the pirate ship, whose lights could be seen several hundred yards ahead. Slye and Scurry had picked up a small party, and the prisoners were instructed to stand fast amidships while the vessel was got under way again. The poet’s heart lifted: could it be that they were not to be transferred to the other ship?

  Captain Cairn, who happened to pass nearby, confirmed his hope. “I’m to pilot their Captain up the Bay,” he murmured, “lest his ship be spied and taken.” He could say no more, for the pirates sent him aft to tend the mainsheet. Captain Slye and Captain Scurry bid the prisoners a sneering farewell and departed in a dinghy to their own ship, which presumably lay with Avery’s Phansie in the lee of the island. Darkness prevented Ebenezer from seeing his new captor, who from the helm of the sloop ordered one of his two lieutenants to mind the jib sheet and the other—a gaunt, blond-bearded youth who looked more like a rustic than a pirate—to guard the prisoners. When Ebenezer moved to put his arm about Anna’s shoulders she recoiled as if he were a pirate himself.

  “Stand off, there, matey,”
the guard threatened. “Leave that little chore to us.”

  The women huddled together in the lee of the mast: the two younger ones still sniffed and whimpered, but Mrs. Russecks, seeing that their ordeal was not yet upon them, regained composure enough to embrace and comfort them both. Whatever the pirate captain had on his mind, it was clearly not so pressing as Captain Scurry (who had summoned the prisoners from the hold) had led them to believe; for more than an hour the three men stood mute and shivering before their guard’s pistols while the sloop bowled northwards on a broad reach up the Chesapeake. The wind was fresh, the Bay quite rough; the moonlight was occulted by an easting scud. At last a voice from the helm said, “Very well, Mr. Shannon, fetch the gentlemen aft.”

  Fearful of what lay ahead, Ebenezer yearned to kiss Anna one last time; he hesitated, and in the end decided not to risk the guard’s displeasure, but all the way aft he railed inwardly against his own timidity. The small light of the binnacle showed Captain Cairn standing tensely at the helm and revealed the countenance of the notorious Long Ben Avery: a sad-eyed, beagle-faced fellow, not at all fearsome to behold, who wore a modest brown beard and curled mustachios.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said, scarcely raising his eyes from the compass. “I shan’t detain ye long. Would ye say she lies abeam, Captain Cairn?”

  “Off the starboard bow,” the Captain grumbled. “If we don’t run aground ye’ll soon hear the surf to leeward.”

  “Excellent.” The pirate captain frowned and sucked at his pipe. “Aye, there’s the surf; thou’rt a rare good pilot, Captain Cairn! Now, gentlemen, I’ve but one question to put—Ah, damn this tobacco!” He drew at the pipestem until the coals glowed yellow. “There we are. ’Tis a simple question, sirs, that ye may answer one at a time, commencing with the tall fellow: are ye, or have ye ever been, an able seaman?”

  The pirate called Mr. Shannon prodded Ebenezer with his pistol, but the poet wanted no urging to reply; his heart glowed like the pipe coals with hope at their captor’s gentlemanly air. “Nay, sir, I’m but a poor poet, with no craft save that of rhyming and no treasure save my dear sister yonder, for whose honor I’d trade my life! Dare I ask your pledge as one gentleman to another, sir, that no harm will be offered those ladies?”

  “Ask the second gentleman, Mr. Shannon.”

  The guard poked Bertrand.

  “Nay, master, ’fore God I am no seaman, nor aught else in the world but a simple servingman that curses the hour of his birth!”

  “Very good.” Captain Avery sighed, still watching the binnacle. “And you, sir?”

  “This is but the third time I’ve been on shipboard, sir,” McEvoy declared at once. “The first was as a redemptioner, kidnaped out o’ London by Slye and Scurry; the second was as a passenger on this very ship this morning. I swear to ye, I know not my forepeak from my aft!”

  “Cleverly put,” Captain Avery approved. “Then it seems I cannot enlist ye for my crew. Mr. Shannon, will ye escort these pleasant gentlemen o’er the taffrail?”

  Ebenezer stiffened as if struck, and Bertrand fell to his knees; even Captain Cairn seemed not to realize for a second what had been said. The guard gestured towards the taffrail with one of his pistols and nudged the trembling valet with his boot.

  “There’s a little island to leeward,” observed Captain Avery. “With some luck and the sea behind ye, ye might manage it. Count five, Mr. Shannon, and shoot any gentleman who lingers.”

  “One,” said Mr. Shannon. “Two.”

  McEvoy gave a great oath and kicked off his boots. “Farewell, Eben,” he said. “Farewell, Henrietta!” He sprang over the rail and splashed into the sea astern.

  “Three.” Mr. Shannon smiled at the remaining two as they also removed their boots. An inquiring female voice called back from the mast, but the question was lost on the wind. Bertrand gave a final whimper and vaulted overboard.

  “Four.”

  Ebenezer hastened to the taffrail. Hoping against hope, he called to the pirate captain’s back, “Do I have your pledge, sir? About the ladies?”

  “I pledge to swive your pleasant ladies from sprit to transom,” said Long Ben Avery. “I pledge to give every jack o’ my crew his slavering fill o’ them, sir, and when they’re done I pledge to carve your little sister into ship’s-beef and salt her down for the larboard watch. Fire away, Mr. Shannon.”

  Given another ten seconds Ebenezer might have run forward to die at Anna’s side, but under the inpulse of the sudden command he sprang wildly over the rail and smacked face-first into the icy water. The triple shock of the threat, the fall, and the cold came near to robbing him of his senses; he retched with anguish, coughed salt water from his throat, and after some moments of frantic indirection, caught sight of the sloop’s light receding into the darkness. The waves slapped and tossed him; merely to float, as he had done once before in similar straits, would be to perish of the cold in short order. Taking his bearings from the sloop and the direction of the seas, he thrashed out for the island allegedly to the east.

  “Halloo!” he called, and imagined that he heard an answer up the wind. A thought as chilling as the Bay occurred to him: what if there was no island after all? What if Long Ben Avery had fired their hopes as a cruel jest? In any case, if there was an island, it would have to be close, or he was a dead man; the following seas pushed him in the right direction but diminished by half the effectiveness of his stroke, and the low temperature robbed him of breath.

  He was encouraged, a minute or two later, by a positive cry ahead: “This way! I’m standing on bottom!”

  “McEvoy?” he called joyfully.

  “Aye! Keep swimming! Don’t give up! Where’s Bertrand? Bertrand!”

  From ahead and somewhat to the right of the poet came another response; not long afterwards the three men were panting and shivering together on a dark pebbled beach.

  “Praise God, ’tis a miracle!” Bertrand cried. “Twice drowned by pirates and twice washed safe on an ocean isle! Methinks we could walk down the strand a bit and find Drakepecker once again!”

  But McEvoy and Ebenezer were too sickened by the plight of the women to rejoice at their own good fortune. The poet deemed it best to say nothing of Captain Avery’s parting threat, since they were unable to prevent his carrying it out; even so, McEvoy vowed to devote the rest of his life to pursuing and assassinating the pirate.

  By comparison with the air on their wet clothes, the Bay seemed tepid. “We must get out of the wind and make a fire,” McEvoy said.

  “We’ve no way to light one,” Ebenezer pointed out listlessly. Now that he was safe, his mind was full of Anna’s fate and their last interview; he began to wish that he had drowned.

  “Then let’s build a shelter, ere we freeze,” McEvoy said.

  They hurried up onto the island proper, which appeared to be only a few hundred feet across; there they found loblolly pines, a few scrubby myrtles, and much underbrush, but not much likely-looking material for a shelter; nor was the growth an adequate windbreak. The leeward slope of the island was somewhat more comfortable, though even there it was unthinkable that they could long survive soaking wet in a forty-mile winter wind.

  “M-marry, sirs, l-look yonder!” Bertrand cried, shaking with cold. “ ’Tis a light!”

  Indeed, out over the water to the east of them shone what appeared to be the lighted windows of a house. The distance was hard to estimate, but unless the structure was very small, McEvoy judged, it lay three or four miles away. In the face of Ebenezer’s previous objection he declared that they must build a fire at once, set fire to the entire island if need be, to attract rescuers; else they’d be dead before sunrise.

  “Let’s scour the island,” he proposed. “If we hit on naught better, why, we’ll claw out a trench and bury ourselves together under evergreen boughs. Methinks we must prance and swing our arms about.”

  They decided to search together, in order to utilize the sooner anything they might come across. One man o
n the beach, one on the brush line, and one at the edge of the heavier growth, they proceeded northwards up the lee shore of the island. But their search seemed vain: every stick of wood was wet, and no one yet had proposed any means of ignition should it have proved dry. Moreover, the growth thinned out as they approached the northern end of the island, which appeared to be half a mile or so in length.

  Not far from the point, Bertrand, who had been patrolling the brush lines, called for them to come at once and behold another miracle. “Lookee here, what I came nigh to breaking my toes on!”

  At his feet they saw a longish black shape, which on closer approach they recognized as a stranded dinghy.

  “I’faith!” cried McEvoy, scrabbling inside to examine it. “There’s even an oar! She must have blown hither in a storm!”

  “I doubt she’s seaworthy,” Ebenezer warned, observing that several inches of water stood in the bilge. “But we might use her for a shelter.”

  “Nay,” McEvoy protested. “She might be tight, Eben, else the water would have leaked out, would it not? I say let’s make a try at yonder light! But stay—we’ve only one oar.”

  “There’s a trick called sculling…” Ebenezer offered doubtfully. “But i’Christ, John, listen to that chop—’tis like the ocean! We’d drown in five minutes!”

  “But if we manage it, we’re safe,” McEvoy reminded him. “If we stay here, belike we’ll freeze to death ere sunrise, and e’en if we do not, who’s to say we’ll be rescued in the morning?”

  They pondered the alternatives briefly, and the third course of sending one of their number to bring assistance to the others.

  “ ’Twill take one man to scull and another to bail,” Bertrand ventured. “We’d as lief die together, as apart, hadn’t we, sirs?”

  “Then I say let’s drown together instead o’ freezing,” said McEvoy. “What say ye, Eben?”