Kingston by Starlight

by Christopher John Farley

  The man spat on the deck. A look of anger now crossed his face, like a gray cloud ’cross the sun.

  “Overwhelm me if you will, but live with the knowledge that I, alone in number, challenged your pride and your manhood and came out the better. Ha! I thought more of the Brethren of the Coast, but clearly I was in error.”

  The men aboard the Will were now in a state of much agitation— merriment, mostly, but mixed with some anger. Who was this stranger to boast so?

  “Come!” said the man. “If you are proud of your profession, attempt to take me, one after the other. Your mothers wait for you in hell!”

  Rackam met the man’s gaze across the railings and the water. Then the captain began to unhook his shirt to prepare for, it appeared, close and brutish combat.

  First-Rate put his hand on Rackam’s shoulder.

  “He’s not proven he can contend with the likes of you,” he said. “And he’s not shown that he’s a man of his word. He may ambush you with fifty men if you cross over there.”

  “What is your counsel, then?” said Rackam.

  “I’ll take him,” growled Angel.

  “Go on, take my life!” shouted the man. “I an’t happy here!”

  The ships were now but a few feet apart. Angel stripped off his tan shirt. He revealed a torso that was of a goodly build and bronzed by the sun and roughed by the elements. Indeed he was built far sturdier than his opponent; in this battle he was like a castle opposing a wattle house. Angel had a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other. He stood at the railing for a time menacing the solitary stranger across the gap and, with much alacrity, he leapt the distance between the two ships, over the railing, over the watery divide, and onto the opposing deck.

  Angel landed ten paces from the stranger, but he stumbled a bit, and that proved to be his undoing. The man was on him quicker than a shadow. With his cutlass, he disarmed Angel of his pistol and it spun away down the deck. Angel recovered his bearings to strike the man with his fists, but too late— with a crack, the man fired his pistol and at close range. Angel stood for a bit, amazement in his eyes at the speed of his defeat. He turned on his heel, walked a few paces back toward the Will, and then tumbled over the railing into the blue water.

  “Rest in peace, sea-bitch!” the man said. “I only regret your death wasn’t slow!”

  Now, my blood was up. Several men were ready to mount their own challenges, Rackam chief among them, but I was the quickest of all. I leapt the expanse between our ships, a cutlass in my grip. Rackam called out to me, reached out to restrain me, but I was already in the air; all I could hear was “Revenge! Revenge!” and my ears were ringing with the sound like the belfries of churches on Sabbath.

  Would that Rackam had succeeded in his efforts to restrain me! For, in truth, my skill with the sword and pistol, tho’ improved, was akin to a seven year old’s prowess with pen and ink. My feet were, and not for the last time, running far in front of my head. So how should I tell this tale, and yet retain some measure of heroic drama, which, it is said, is the very soul of any story?

  Should I say then that our swords rang like music? As with his attack on Angel, the stranger was on me even as I hit the deck. I had certain parries and thrusts that I had learned from Zed, and from watching men in duels and in fisticuffs. I moved through them deliberately, but with grace; I was like a dancer, going through his paces, moving sweetly to a familiar refrain. My opponent, however, was something else entirely. He reminded me of something wild, unpredictable, unchoreographed. Animals, too, have their dances and courtship movements. But they require no music, they adhere to no known rhythm.

  Should I say, then, that our swords struck again and sparks flashed where the blades met? Now I faced him. I could smell his breath, which was curiously sweet— like leaves of mint and rue. Looking close at him, he had a distracting, manly beauty. He was not large, but he was stout; his countenance was stern but not unyielding, and his movements were decisive but flowing, like a strong river.

  If this was a hero’s tale, I would say again that our cutlasses rang once more. Ahh— this was the music for this gambol, and our hearts were pounding out the rhythms. The song was a duet of steel ’gainst steel. Cross the quarterdeck the deadly dance went, along the gangway, and down the forecastle. There I jumped down to the head and he pursued me. I could not feel my limbs. This was not due to any accident or exertion, but because of a wild emotion that built up in me as we fought on. I could hear the cheers of the men, waving and stomping their feet. No doubt Xbalanque was taking bets— and laying odds against me.

  What a tale this could have been! See now how the grave sky gave way to rain, like a woman, heavy with child, when her water, after months of burden, at long last breaks. The ship on which we fought rocked as a tall sea buffeted it with much force, to and fro. Yet all this commotion, the other men, the sky and the sea, the shouts and the roars, all of this had no effect and was of no import to me. I saw and I heard and I felt only him as our swords crossed and recrossed across the ship’s deck, back and forth, thither and yon. His blue eyes blazed through the rain, like harbor lights seen from the far-flung fathoms; his breathing came heavily now, and his nose curled up like some snarling passionate beast sniffing out its prey. I saw the flash of his tongue and he seem’d to me mouthing words to himself, whether prayers or curses, I knew not. But we fought on.

  I parried and thrust at him, and he hacked at me; my forays were made carefully and with an economy of motion, his strokes were wild and bold. Now, I changed my stratagems for the moment and took a cruder swing, bracing my feet and putting the bulk of my weight into the attack. My blade struck his and the man, being unprepared for such a forceful cut, stumbled somewhat and released his blade. I was unable, however, to reap benefit from his misfortune; I, too, lost my bearing having unleashed too wild a stroke. I found myself tangled in loose rigging. In finding my feet once more, I lost my grip on my cutlass, which, along with my opponent’s blade, slid across the deck, clattering all the way.

  We both stopped short, startled by the strange turn of events. He readied his flintlock, and I brandished mine, but— alas!— the rain had wet the powder in both pistols, rendering them useless for our aggressions. Again, I paused and he did as well, and before long we found ourselves again and flew at each other, each with the mind to tear at the other with bare hands, having neither blade nor pistol to accomplish the job otherwise. Together, we tumbled to the deck.

  But, in truth, this was not how the battle unfolded. Our swords never rang, and our pistols were never brought to bear. The only element of my story that’s true is the tumbling. When first my foot landed on the quarterdeck of the ghost ship, I remembered my fear, remembered that my skills with side arms were suspect, and suddenly had a clear, terrifying image in my head of being gutted by a cutlass. Having lost my concentration, my heel slipped and I fell. My attacker tumbled over me, losing his footing and his weapons. We then grappled like schoolboys, tangling ourselves in the rigging, until Rackam, leaping from the Will, came between us and pulled us apart. We paused on either side of him, chests heaving. A length of cord was still tangled about my waist.

  “It seems we are at a draw,” I said.

  “Don’t it?” the man growled back.

  Rackam put his hand on my shoulder and turned to the stranger.

  “You have proved yourself,” Rackam said. “Will you join us?”

  The man’s eyes were cauldrons of rage. Then, like the night turning to sweet morn, the fellow’s demeanor changed. All that was fierce was, with alacrity, affable; it was the same sky, but brighter. He laughed and took Rackam’s hand in his, shaking it with vigor.

  “Prithee,” I inquired, “by what name are you known?”

  He drew a knife from his boot— and I stepped back, readying a defense. The man laughed and, stepping forward, he cut the rigging from around my waist, freeing me.

  “Call me Read,” he said.

  “And call me Bonn,” I replied. />
  chapter 17.

  The morn arrived with fresh gales of wind from the west-southwest to the northwest with some small rain. The zephyrs continued to blow into the forenoon watch; accordingly we got down our fore-yard and reef’d our mainsail and our foresail. There came a great sea, and the ship took on a fair amount of water to leeward but we sailed on; as the day wore on, the weather turn’d toward moderate. In the late afternoon, a man died of the Bloody Flux and, after Zayd had a look at him, we threw the corpse overboard. No prayer was said, and the fatality contributed to the general mood of turgidity among the crew.

  Read, however, seemed fill’d with much vigor, and upon establishing a hammock in the ship’s hold (he took Angel’s bedding spot), he immediately began to explore the ship to familiarize himself with its crew and its affairs. Having left his previous ship with little or nothing to represent himself, he challenged a baker’s dozen of the crew to a game of Nine Pins. His prowess at the game was equaled only by the charm he show’d with each victory, expressing much empathy with the loser and good humor at his own success and, after the series was completed and his prizes and money collected, I dare say that I may have been the only person, save Read himself, who noticed that he won his tidy fortune without having entered any original stake.

  The men, for the most part, overlook’d the loss of Angel and welcomed Read quite readily into their company, in part because the life of the sea is hard and violence and competition are necessarily expected, and also in part because of a general recognition that every hand was needed if the crew was to survive our present circumstances. A search of Read’s ship had revealed nothing in the way of valuables— it was a ghost craft, with no maps, no charts, no crew, and no foodstuffs of any sort. Read offer’d no explanation but had seem’d eager to set off from his former vessel with as much haste as could be muster’d. The Will still needed supplies. We remained desperately on the hunt.

  Short, hard squalls were common in these waters, and, after one blew through hard, agile hands were needed to adjust the rigging and reset the sails, some of which were torn and loosened from the blast. Although tired to the marrow of my bones, I answered the call. Now, rigging a schooner is rough, sweaty work— such vessels have two tall masts that rake aft, and a long bowsprit, which points out at a small angle. On the bowsprit and the jib-boom, along with five other hands, I helped set the staysails and jibs. Then, already exhausted from that work, we hung on the foremast a square sail, next, abaft the foremast, we positioned a gaff foresail and, finally, panting to catch our breath, we stretched out a gaff-topsail on the top-mast and let out a cheer, one and all, as the breeze caught it and puffed it full.

  The early evening produced a change in fortune and helped secure a place in the men’s hearts for Read. Xbalanque and Hunahpu were on the watch and, as in the previous day and the day before that, they had seen nothing; Read, however, employing a spyglass he had won from one of the men, spotted a sail and sounded the call from a place on the quarterdeck. It was a small craft, with one mast and a crew of three, but we boarded her anyway, as we were in such a state that no fish was small enough to throw back, even the minnows. Read leapt first onto the craft and found a store of salted beef and three kegs of rum; the latter prize was greeted by the men with as much enthusiasm as the old explorers must have greeted the discovery of the Americas. After relieving the ship’s crew of their goods, we sent them on their way— Rackam told ’em to get his name right when they reported to old Governor Rogers— and then, despite the fact that the captured store was likely to last little more than a few days, we commenced a period of revelry to celebrate the find.

  Read, who by appearances had consumed more than his finder’s share of the kegs, climbed high into the riggings and called out to the men. Evening had come and most of the men were sleeping, tired, or drunk. At Read’s voice, tho’, a cheer went up. Read acknowledged the huzzahs with coruscating eyes and a swirl of his hand and began to sing a song. No, it was not so much a song as its opposite: he spoke in words shot through with appetency as storm clouds are pierced with lightning. His verses had no melody attached to them, but were, instead of tuneful, pure bolts of rhythm that sparked the heart to beat faster and fired the senses. He chanted in a high voice, but one that was clear and strong and that penetrated the night. How I wished my vocals could intertwine with that spiral of sweet sound without revealing my true gender! How I wished circumstances had not dictated that I wainscot my heart! After a verse or two other crew members joined in with abandon.

  “Come with me

  “We’ll ride on the ink-dark sea.

  “Don’t you long to

  “Ride or die?

  “Fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-la-la-la”

  “Ride or die!” Read shouted, raising his mug from his place high in the rigging. “Those are words to live by— and perish by! Curse the devil, spit in the ocean, and raise a mug high you sea-dogs! Ride or die!”

  “Ride or die!” went up the cry from one and all— save two: Bishop, who took an early rest, and Xbalanque, who remained snarling in the shadows, apparently enraged and ashamed that the sail had been spotted on his watch, but not by him. Hunahpu seem’d as taken as the others with the newcomer and cheer’d as lustily as any, but his twin had the look of a fierce mongrel trapped in some corner, his soup bone taken away.

  I must say that, tho’ I did not share in Xbalanque’s particular emotions, my spirits were not as light as the ones that had floated Read to the upper riggings of the ship. I had no quarrel with Angel, one of our latest casualties, and a man, at least to me, who seem’d to have done his job with some degree of reliability and vigor. Now he was dead, and at Read’s hand. I had also developed no small affection for Sugar-Apple, regardless of the shortcomings of his culinary art; since his loss, I had been increasingly aware of the fact that I had no close companions aboard the ship, no mate with whom I could unload the contents of my heart or discuss the events of my watch. I was without friends and family, bereft of a mother and a father. Who would press me to their bosom? Who would whisper to me words of affection and camaraderie? The instantaneity with which the crew had taken to Read left me with an ugly enviousness that I tried to bury deep inside myself, like some miscarriage ashamedly interred in a midnight cemetery.

  And yet there were stirrings in the dirt. How different Read was from myself, how much more agile in his relationships! The men gathered ’round him as he told stories of his many scars— he had been shot seven times, by seven different shooters on seven separate occasions, and the marks on his arms, legs, stomach, and back testified to his words. I stood to the side, mute, my body unmarked, unremarkable, and utterly unrevealable. The men were under his spell, I was under a curse. Read was quick to laugh, whereas I preferred to offer only a grudging smile, and then only on occasion. He was full of anecdotes and tall tales, some true, some perhaps not so true, but all entertaining; in the opposite, I was given to merely lending an ear and not wagging my tongue.

  My growing resentment for Read was bolstered by his unfettered affection toward me. Time and time again, when we spotted each other on deck, he would bellow a hearty well-met if he was far away, and, if in closer proximity, he would slap my back with manly enthusiasm or else drape one of his well-formed arms ’round my shoulders. Often he would lean close in and whisper some secret joke about one of our fellows, only for my hearing; other times he would playfully toussle my hair and give me an affable kiss on the cheek. I offer’d him no encouragement in his affections; indeed my response to him was just short of Hyperborean, and yet, like a born native of some icy land, he drove forward into my wintry blasts.

  Read had also fallen in tight with Rackam, and the two would often pass the afternoons playing chess on the poop deck. They played on a checker’d board, with pieces made of ebony and sculpted whale bone. I had a passing familiarity with chess, but no deep intimacy; with much spying, I managed soon enough to master the rules. The two were evenly matched, and won and lost games in rough
ly equal amounts. Read was given to launching bold attacks, slashing with his queen, capturing pieces at will with his knight; Rackam’s approach was to engineer complex gambits that put his positions and pieces at risk in order to lure his opponent into a hidden trap. Both pressed attacks ruthlessly— but I sensed they both had weaknesses. After some thought and careful study, I devised an opening by which the offense could be sharpen’d if more care was placed in the defense.

  The crew was hungry, thirsty, tired, and yet Read seem’d to bring with him good humor and good luck, and the stink of our former mood seem’d to blow away, as if carried by a fresh, clean wind. Three days after he join’d our company, yet another sail was spotted, and immediately the call went up to give chase. The sail was located on my watch and my cry went up simultaneously with Read’s from the deck below.

  As we pressed the pursuit, Rackam was of a mind to fly the Jolly Roger and thus strike fear into the hearts of our prey, perhaps spurring them to surrender. Read, who over the last few days had gained the captain’s ear if not his heart, offer’d an alternative. It was early in the morn, and the sun’s full light had not yet entered the sky. The ship in our sight had not yet altered her course and, by all appearances, was not yet aware of our presence. She was a formidable foe: a three-masted vessel with some twelve guns mounted on her railings, and perhaps more mounted on deck. Read argued that we use the element of surprise and that we dispatch two longboats, crew’d with seven hands each and that the men take out the opposing crew at the mounted guns before the Will initiated an open attack. Rackam and the crew put the plan to a vote and not a man was in disagreement, tho’ I failed to raise my hand for either the negative or the affirmative and Xbalanque crept away before the tally was taken. I did not see how Bishop voted.