The piers were empty, and in the distance, in the city, one could faintly hear a pair of drunks fighting and a dog barking. As always, John the Whale leaped to the ground with breathtaking agility for someone his size and tied the rope to the prow. The pirates were ready to trod firm ground, after almost twenty days of bouncing around like crickets in a box.
But when the first man placed a foot on the gangplank to disembark, Barracuda spoke at last. He grabbed onto the helm and said in a loud and clear voice, “Good!” And with just that word, everyone froze in place and turned to look at the bridge. “This crew is dissolved. From this moment, I free you of your commitment to me. You can go and make a laughingstock of me; I won’t reproach you. I have just one more thing to say: may that scurvy-livered Phineas rot in a cesspool of monkey slime! And now you can go.”
All those pirates, coming from many different places, with different histories, and different ways of thinking, all remained equally stupefied. And all must have thought the same thing I did: “So what am I supposed to do from now on?” Nuño looked at Two Molars, Two Molars looked at Boasnovas, and Boasnovas looked at Erik the Belgian.
John the Whale, who climbed back on board at that precise moment, saw their faces and asked, “What’s going on?”
“We’ve been thrown out,” the Belgian said in a weak voice. He was a strong, tall guy and bald but (almost as if to compensate) with an enormous red mustache.
“Who’s thrown us out? Where are they throwing us?” the Whale stuttered.
“Into the street,” Boasnovas answered. “Onto solid ground. We’re no longer the crew of the Southern Cross.”
A collective sigh went up, and everyone sagged their shoulders in defeat. But the Whale still didn’t understand.
“But, what have we done? What did we do wrong?”
“It’s because of the treasure,” said Malik, who was from Mali. “Because we didn’t find it.”
“But we did find it! Didn’t we? It was just where Barracuda had said it was.”
“I told you lot to get off of my ship,” Barracuda bellowed, and in the bat of an eye, we were standing on the pier.
Three of the strangest of days went by. Fifty-two pirates wandered aimlessly around Maracaibo, without any appetite or thirst; we were in shock. Barracuda spent those three days cloistered in the English Inn, without seeing anyone. He went to the inn the night we landed and asked the inn’s bookkeeper to write a note. Barracuda stuck it on the door and then went up to his room without saying a word. The paper read:
Full crew sought.
Offered: food and part of the booty, as usual.
No mangy curs nor big mouths accepted.
Candidates should present themselves on Saturday morning in front of the Southern Cross,
on the western pier.
The announcement was at once the gossip of the entire city. Although, I will tell you that the poor bookkeeper had to read the sign to so many illiterate pirates that he almost tore it down and ate it. Many thought that the captain had fired us because of a mutiny. Others claimed that we had found Krane’s treasure and that we were going to abandon pirating. Some heathens even tried to rob Malik in the Tavern of the Red Lady, but they instead treated him to dinner once they discovered he didn’t have a single escudo on him.
A pirate can be a friend and also an enemy, according to circumstances; it’s nothing personal. I don’t know if the crew said anything in Maracaibo, but I know that Nuño and I didn’t say anything to anyone about Kopra. And John the Whale didn’t say anything because he was with us those days, and he was unable to form a single word as if he had suddenly become an orphan—an enormous and silent orphan.
I must say, for those who don’t know it, Maracaibo is a foul hole where the worst of the worst come to rest: thieves, swindlers, assassins, and traitors of all kinds. If you’d seen the things I’ve seen, you’d prefer to be lost in a jungle full of hungry tigers rather than to be on the streets of Maracaibo. That’s why, as soon as we saw the captain’s announcement, we three knew, without a doubt, what we were going to do. But what happened on Saturday morning was something that we could have never imagined.
I can still picture Captain Barracuda’s face when he arrived early that day on the pier hoping to find a row of men ready to embark, but he found only the same pirates who had disembarked three days earlier! The entire crew was there—not one pirate missing—ready to head off wherever the wind would take us. No questions asked!
The captain was thunderstruck, and if he wondered how it was possible that no one else had shown up, he didn’t say anything. But I think that when he saw Boasnovas’ black eye, One-Legged Jack’s split lip, and the other pirates’ bruises, he understood that it hadn’t been easy for us to get rid of the other candidates. He walked slowly, looking at us one by one. The Whale smiled at him, the Belgian cleared his throat, Malik saluted him like a soldier, and I didn’t know what to do.
Only Nuño, the captain’s right-hand man, took a step forward and, showing the notice he had torn from the door of the English Inn, said, “Captain, we’ve come to enlist on the Southern Cross.”
Barracuda was silent for just a few seconds, but it seemed like hours. “What is this? A joke?” he said at last.
“Hardly a joke,” Nuño said, adjusting his vest. “We’re presenting ourselves on the day and at the time indicated on this announcement.”
Another eternal silence.
“That business about the treasure doesn’t matter to us!” a voice called out from the back, and the captain tensed, clenching his teeth.
“What I mean to say is . . . That is, it’s that . . . ” Two Molars stammered, twisting what little hair hung from his head.
But he couldn’t say anything more, so Nuño spoke again. “The sea is full of ships heavy with gold, and we’ll have opportunities to capture them. We’re pirates. We don’t know how to do anything else. So it’s obvious: you need men, and we need to sail. It’s advantageous for everyone.”
Anyone familiar with Barracuda knew that he was never content (or at least, he never seemed to be), and he never had a kind word for anyone. We didn’t know how Barracuda would react to our proposition since we were dealing with one of the harshest pirates of the Caribbean’s emerald waters.
And here’s what happened: the captain climbed aboard, went to the bridge, and remained there, silent as a coat rack. And we pirates, standing there on land, didn’t know what to do. That’s how that man was!
Nuño, who knew Barracuda best, tentatively stepped onto the gangplank, like someone sticking a foot into a puddle of crocodiles. The wood creaked. Barracuda didn’t move a muscle, and so Nuño shouted, “Let’s set sail! Everyone to their stations! What are you waiting for, a map of the deck?”
And we, after looking at one another, ran on board as if we had rehearsed it, without tripping or even bumping into one another, straight to our places. The Whale released the moorings, and other pirates pulled on the riggings and loosened the sailcloths. No one noticed that Two Molars had climbed onto the ship with a suspicious package under his arm, just as no one had noticed that he had disembarked with it three days earlier. But don’t you forget it because it’s important. It’s a fact that, if he hadn’t done it, this story wouldn’t have taken place. Because without any of us the wiser, Phineas Krane’s book had disembarked and re-embarked with Two Molars.
We set sail for Española, an island on the main route of ships returning to Europe loaded with gold and precious stones. And, you might recall, the island on which I had been abandoned years ago. It was a good place for us to get to work and practice our primary trade: boarding and looting ships.
We were in good spirits, except for Barracuda, who spent the nights pacing the deck like a lost soul. It was going to be difficult for him to forget that he had wasted six years of his life searching for what he thought was a fabulous treasure and wh
at had proven to be a disaster. For the rest of us, accustomed to the ebbs and flows of a pirate’s life, it didn’t seem too serious a setback, to tell the truth. We were pirates, after all—men who earned fortunes by day and lost them by night; men who went to bed rich and woke up dirt poor; and men who ate in a palace on Monday and wallowed in a dungeon on Wednesday. Anything else would have surely bored a pirate.
Four days later, someone (I think it was One-Legged Jack) discovered Two Molars crouching under the pantry steps, reading by the light of a candle. Two Molars begged One-Legged Jack not to say anything. And it’s not that Jack was a gossip or anything like that; he was a little Englishman with one wooden leg (a peg leg) who didn’t talk much at all. But who would think that a secret could be kept in a floating shell full of men with nothing to do except look at one another for hours on end? And, thus, the next night, Two Molars had more of an audience than he might’ve desired.
We went down into the pantry, Erik the Belgian, Boasnovas, Jack, and myself (I carried a lighted candle). The Whale followed and tried to slip in with us, but, as I’ve already told you, it wasn’t easy for him to pass unnoticed. His steps sounded like an elephant’s as he came down the wooden stairs. As soon as Two Molars saw us, he hid something behind his back and began to shout and curse for us to leave and get some fresh air on deck. But, of course, we didn’t go.
“What have you got there?” asked Erik the Belgian in a loud voice, making us all giggle.
“Don’t shout,” One-Legged Jack chided him. “Do you want everyone to come down here?”
“Come on, what have you got there?” Boasnovas repeated, trying to speak softly. “Sparks, lift up that light so we can see what it is!”
I lifted the candle, and Two Molars, who was a reasonable fellow, understood that he couldn’t hide whatever it was for very long, being on a ship in the middle of the sea and with days and days ahead of us before landfall. So he gave in. Slowly, from behind his back, he pulled something rectangular wrapped in a dirty piece of cloth. He placed it on the floor and unwrapped it. Our eyes nearly leaped from their sockets.
“Is it . . . the book of the treasure?” John the Whale asked.
“Phineas’ book,” Boasnovas exclaimed, softly.
“It didn’t belong to anyone,” Two Molars replied. “And nobody wanted it!”
“And what did you want it for?” the Whale asked him. “A book! Why, none of us can read!”
“A little bit,” Two Molars muttered. “I said I could read, a little bit!”
“But . . . why do you want a book?” Erik asked as he turned the pages full of squiggles that none of us could understand.
“That’s none of your business,” Two Molars answered, snapping the book closed.
“What do you mean it isn’t?” Boasnovas asked, his eye crossed. “This loot belongs to all of us . . . If it’s worth something, you should tell us.”
“It isn’t worth anything! It’s a souvenir, nothing more!” Two Molars said.
“A what?” the Whale whispered behind us. “Wasn’t it a book?”
“Oh, shut up, you oaf!” Erik the Belgian answered. “It’s French.”
“The book?”
“No, Whale, no! The word! Souvenir is French; it means a memento.”
“I don’t understand anything . . . Why do we care if it’s French?”
“Shut your big trap, Whale!” Boasnovas told him, losing his patience. “And you, Two Molars, explain why you wanted to bring Krane’s book on board.”
“Yeah, that’s right!” Jack added. “It must be worth something since you kept it . . . and haven’t breathed a word about it to the rest of us!”
“It’s not worth a thing, I tell you,” Two Molars shouted back. “Leave me alone already! It’s . . . It’s just . . . It’s just that it names me!”
“That it what?” I asked, not understanding anything.
“It names me,” said Two Molars. “I am in there, in this book! When I was flipping through it, I saw my name. I was curious to know what old Phineas had written about me. I was with him on the Prince of Antigua, a ship unlike anything you’ve ever seen. I sailed under his command for almost four years, before he set off for the Southern Seas, and I can tell you that he was smarter than the devil himself.”
“You are in the book!” Boasnovas said, his mouth gaping, while his single eye ran across the pages. “Where? Tell me where it says ’Two Molars.’”
“It doesn’t say that anywhere! I was younger then. Nobody called me that . . . It says my real name: Anton the Corsican.”
“Anton?” we all said in chorus, and a little giggle escaped from John the Whale.
“Yes,” the toothless old man said, staring us down. “Do you think I was born with these wrinkles and a mouth like this?”
“No, we’re sure that you were born with fewer teeth than the two you have now,” Boasnovas said, quietly laughing.
“Come on, Two Molars, read what it says about you,” One-Legged Jack said, offering him the book.
Then, the man formerly known as Anton the Corsican took the enormous tome, opened his underpopulated mouth, and began to read in fits and starts. I will reproduce the text here without the many, overlong pauses Two Molars made as he read. I don’t want to abuse your patience.
We sailed following the wake of a ship named The Lady of the Sea. We knew that she returned to Veracruz loaded with gold from the booty of Portobelo. We had gotten the tip thanks to the fact that Anton, a young lad born in Corsica who sailed with me, had managed to become friendly with a French merchant marine whom he had invited for a drink in a Miskito Cays’ tavern. I had no doubt that the information was trustworthy because the clever Corsican speaks fluent French and because he could also spot a liar from across the room.
When Two Molars finally finished reading, we looked at him with something resembling admiration. We had never known anyone whose name was in a book, immortalized in ink forever. At most, we had seen our faces drawn on some “Wanted” poster, with a sum listed below as a reward. Two Molars was so puffed up; I thought his boots would come unbuckled. But all this magic was undone by the Whale when he asked, “And what about me? Does it say something about me?”
“How is it going to say anything about you, Whale,” Erik the Belgian said, rolling his eyes. “Let’s see now, did you know Phineas Krane?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you!”
“Know Krane?”
“Yes!”
“Not me . . . ”
“Well then, there you have it. How is he supposed to have written something about you, you big mackerel? He wrote a book about his life, about the people he knew! Why would he mention you?” Erik asked.
“I’m a pirate too . . . Maybe he mentions me.” Now the Whale got a bit angry. “What do you know? You don’t know how to read! There are lots of words there! Maybe one of them is ‘John Tortichellobelloponte’!”
“What?” we all said in unison.
“Tortich-what?” I asked, unable to believe what I’d heard.
“Tortichellobelloponte,” he repeated calmly. “My mother said my father was Italian.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Boasnovas said, putting an end to the question. “Whatever you’re called, it’s not possible for you to appear in the book . . . Perhaps old Two Molars isn’t even in there! Who knows if what he read aloud is actually in the book? He could tell us anything, taking advantage of us because we don’t know how to read.”
“That’s absurd! What do I gain from lying to all of you?” asked Two Molars. “Besides, nobody asked you here. I was just fine here all on my own!”
“Then, this tells everything about Old Phineas’ life,” I said, really interested, picking up the heavy book for the first time. “Wow! It must be a fascinating story. They say he was as clever a pirate as anyone—one of those people who
always knew how to be in the right place at the right time. And courageous! People still talk in awe of the treasures he looted and the ships he captured.”
“That’s true, lad,” One-Legged Jack agreed. “Nobody could hold a candle to him on the sea. Barracuda was still a babe when Krane was already the scourge of these waters. Just to speak his name provoked such fear in some ports that they called him the Typhoon because after he came through, nobody remained standing.”
“I saw him once,” Erik the Belgian said. “In Martinique. He was with men who, most likely, were from the Orient. Back then, nobody had seen many Chinese around here, so they immediately attracted attention. Krane was buying black powder. After that, he captured more than fourteen ships. I served Olaf the Magician back then. Maybe Krane remembered me in the book. We ate in the same place . . . It would have been impossible to overlook us: a table full of noisy blonds and redheads!”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Erik!” interrupted Nuño, who had followed us down. “You’re nothing more than a Northern brute like thousands of others. Now I, on the hand, spent an entire night with him, in jail in Belize. The next morning, his crew freed him, but we had time for a long, extended talk. I am sure that’s in his book. We had a lot of laughs.”
“Two Molars!” I suddenly cried out, without knowing why. “Teach me to read!”
“To read?” John the Whale repeated, staring at me as if I were some strange creature that crawled out from the sea. “Why would you ever want to do something so difficult?”
“Why, to know what it says here!” I answered, running my finger across the etchings on the cover of the book. “The life of Phineas Krane! Can you imagine? With all the things he did, the adventures he had, and the treasures he won! It must be an incredible story to listen to! And it’s all here, in his own voice . . . Well, in his own hand, at any rate! Teach me!” I insisted.
“No! No . . . ” Two Molars stuttered. “I wouldn’t know . . . It’s hard enough for me to recognize some letters . . . I go very slowly.”
The Treasure of Barracuda Page 2